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Donald Trump Teams with Country Music Star Lee Greenwood on New 'God Bless the USA' Bible Edition

Par : David Ng · David Ng

Former President Donald Trump has teamed up with country music star Lee Greenwood on a new, patriot-themed edition of the Bible -- the "God Bless the U.S.A." Bible, which comes with copies of the U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, and Pledge of Allegiance.

The post Donald Trump Teams with Country Music Star Lee Greenwood on New ‘God Bless the USA’ Bible Edition appeared first on Breitbart.

What Can $1.2 Trillion Buy In Washington? Nothing Good.

Politics

What Can $1.2 Trillion Buy In Washington? Nothing Good.

The more-than-1,000-page, $1.2 trillion minibus dropped just before 3 a.m. Thursday morning. Will anyone finish reading it before Congress votes on it?

Ghost Army Ceremony

In what has been a long, drawn-out appropriations process for fiscal year 2024, Congressional leaders believe they’ve finally come to an arrangement on the final six spending bills. Will legislators have the time to finish reading the leadership’s back-room deal before it comes to the floor, let alone the opportunity to amend it? Legislators on the Hill doubt it after leadership dropped the 1,000 page bill just before 3 a.m. on Thursday morning, less than 48 hours before a partial government shutdown. 

The 1,012 page bill is six appropriations bills clumped together in what’s being called a minibus (short for “mini omnibus”). Legislators in both chambers will have just hours to read through the minibus that carries a $1.2 trillion price tag before likely voting on the package that is set to be rushed through both chambers, despite a rule in the House that promises members 72 hours to review legislation. In an email to The American Conservative, Rep. Chip Roy of Texas put it this way: “House Republicans believe they will inspire Americans to polls by jamming through almost $1.2 trillion in over 1000 pages of open-border funding nonsense with about 24 hours to read it?  Situation normal….” The Texas Congressman encouraged TAC to finish the sentence.

Nevertheless, House leadership and GOP appropriators took a victory lap. “House Republicans have achieved significant conservative policy wins, rejected extreme Democrat proposals, and imposed substantial cuts to wasteful agencies and programs while strengthening border security and national defense,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said.

House Appropriations Chair Kay Granger said the package “funds our highest national security priorities—it invests in a more modern, innovative, and ready fighting force, continues our strong support for our great ally Israel, and provides key border enforcement resources.”

“At the same time, we made cuts to programs that have nothing to do with our national security and pulled back billions from the administration,” the GOP appropriations lead claimed.

Senate leadership has been quiet. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer continued his public dispute with Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has been silent on the bill so far, presumably as he deals with the bizarre death of his sister-in-law. Both point to a confidence that this bill, given the constraints and potential consequences, will sail through.

Senator Mike Lee of Utah could be making a victory lap of his own: His prophecies about the minibus have all come true. “I made a few predictions earlier in the week,” Lee told TAC. “I predicted that the bill would be more than 1,000 pages. It is. It’s 1,012 pages long. I predicted that it would contain hundreds of earmarks. It does. And I predicted that it would do nothing to address the massive deficit debt that we face. It doesn’t. And I predicted that it would do nothing to force the Biden administration to secure the border and stop the invasion at our southern border. And it doesn’t.”

Lee called the maneuver and the bill “insulting” in a phone interview with The American Conservative. “They’re giving it to us literally the day before the government is going to shut down? And they’re saying, ‘Sorry, there’s no more time to do it. You have to pass this now, or shut down the government and be blamed for the consequences’?”

Lee has taken to calling leadership in both chambers “the firm” as it negotiates massive spending deals behind closed doors. “What they’re saying [in this bill] is that the firm matters more than the people. That the firm’s interest in making sure that only the firm’s language, the firm’s earmarks, that the firm is blessed, is more important than allowing the American people through their elected lawmakers in Washington to have a say in how they spend the people’s money. Trillions of dollars’ worth.”

“No Republicans should vote for the bill for several reasons,” Virginia’s Rep. Bob Good, the House Freedom Caucus chair, told TAC over the phone. “One, it’s got thousands of earmarks for billions of dollars, which is a reason to vote against it to begin with. But of course, some Republicans are benefiting from those. Secondly, we don’t have time to read it to even know what we would be voting for—which is easier for me, since I knew I wasn’t going to vote for it anyway. But if I was going to own everything in that bill, I might want some time to read it to know what I have to defend after I vote for it.”

“At some point, having $35 trillion in debt is going to have an impact, and it’s not going to be sustainable,” Sen. Rick Scott of Florida told TAC in a phone interview. “I don’t know when that will be, but something’s going to happen because our interest expense now exceeds defense, exceeds Medicare. And inflation will not come down as long as we run massive deficits.

“In 2019, before the pandemic, the federal government in total spent $4.4 trillion. But Biden is budgeting an increase of basically $3 trillion over that for fiscal year 2025. This year, we’ll probably have a 56 percent increase in terms of total outlays. Discretionary spending has gone up 41 percent since 2018. Our population has grown at probably less than 2 percent, and discretionary spending is up 41 percent, total spending up 56 percent,” Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin explained to TAC. 

“What’s really gross is that this is being reported like it’s austere. I don’t think this is an austere budget,” Johnson added. “How can anybody justify that when we are running trillion and a half dollar deficits every year?”

The six-part minibus funds the Departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, Labor, and Homeland Security. The DOD will receive $886 billion, a 3 percent increase compared to last year. While DOD accounts for two-thirds of the package’s price tag, the biggest difficulty in spending negotiations since October, whether its base appropriations or supplemental funding, has been DHS, given the chaos on the southern border. At the 11th hour, the Biden administration encouraged congressional leaders to pass a full appropriations bill for DHS rather than another stopgap. Congressional leaders obliged.

$1.2 Trillion.

~216,000 words.

The #SwampOmnibus spends $5.5 million for every word.

~32 hours before the vote.

That’s 112 words a minute just to finish reading (not real analysis) before the vote…

That’s signing off on over $600 million per minute.

Is Pelosi in charge?

— House Freedom Caucus (@freedomcaucus) March 21, 2024

It’s no surprise, however, after McConnell’s recent maneuvering to ensure any border deal made during this Congress would be toothless, that the border security provisions of the minibus will do little to restore order on the southern border. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) receives $19.6 billion, which is $3.2 billion more than fiscal year 2023  and amounts to a nearly 20 percent increase in funding. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will receive $9.5 billion, which amounts to about a 14 percent increase compared to FY23.

The southern border is one of the few places where it currently makes sense to boost federal spending, but what is nearly $30 billion buying American taxpayers in border security? Republican appropriators boast that the money provides for 22,000 additional border patrol agents, “which is consistent with H.R. 2.” For a $2.273 billion price tag, GOP appropriators said DHS will add another 7,500 detention beds to increase the total to 41,500. There is also $283.5 million in “new border security technology,” $10 million “for task forces dedicated to countering the flow of fentanyl,” $3.4 billion for custody operations (including the additional beds), and $721 million for removal operations.

It’s $30 billion of lipstick on a pig.

At first glance, more border patrol agents sounds nice. So do more detention beds, when the alternative is catch and release. In the minibus, the GOP completely adopts Democrats’ framing on immigration: It’s simply a process and optics problem. The minibus affirms Democrats’ immigration narrative by providing “$160.1 million for refugee processing, asylum, and work authorization backlog reduction” amid $281.1 million for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), $29.9 million for family reunification, and 12,000 additional Special Immigrant Visas for Afghans.

Further, while GOP appropriators boast these provisions are in line with HR 2, the legislation does not include any provisions that leverage these resources to ensure the Biden administration enforces federal law. What good are 22,000 more CBP agents when the Biden administration orders them to sit on their heels or to rush illegal immigrants into the country as quickly as possible? ICE will, however, be compelled to publish crucial detainee data online, such as the number of transgender detainees.

“It doesn’t matter how many more. We could have 100,000 border agents, but when you have a White House that’s not going to secure the border, they’re just going to process people faster,” Scott told TAC. “There’s nothing in here that’s going to require him to secure the border. This president has made his decision that he’s going to completely be lawless.”

Not to worry, says Republican appropriators—$117 million will be directed towards the Emergency Food and Shelter program for sanctuary jurisdictions struggling to handle the massive influx of illegals. “Well, that’s a huge incentive,” Johnson said in response to more sanctuary jurisdiction funding.

“It contains nothing that forces the Biden administration to stop the invasion, and the chaos, and the humanitarian crisis at our southern border,” Lee told TAC of the supposed border security provisions.

“My concern would be they’re increasing spending for detention and more CBP officers—is that how it’s actually going to be used? Or is it going to be used, as I suspect, to become more efficient at encountering, processing, and dispersing,” Johnson told TAC. “How do you force this President to use the authority he has to secure the border? No matter what agreement we would reach with this guy, you can’t trust him. So now we’ve reached agreement on an appropriations bill. What kind of enforcement mechanism does it have? Can you trust him?”

Johnson reflected on the appropriations and supplemental negotiations since October of last year that led to Republicans being on the back foot. He said that “what was so disappointing in what was masterminded by McConnell, the secret negotiations within our conference” was that “we were looking for an enforcement mechanism” that McConnell, it was later revealed, prevented from the outset.

“What we really need is something that forces action. Because right now, he’s using his discretionary authority to just leave this stuff wide open. We need things that would remove some of his discretionary authority. And we also need things that would force outcomes or condition funding on the achievement of operational control of the border,” Lee said. “This bill doesn’t do any of those things. This is a fig leaf! They’ve offered a fig leaf in favor of border security, and nothing more.”

“The bill does not address any issues we have right now,” Scott claimed. “It’s not addressing the two biggest issues. It’s making inflation worse, and it’s not addressing the border crisis at all.”

Good told TAC that actual border security measures are “essentially non existent” in the bill. More border patrol agents and beds “are both intended by this administration to allow them to more quickly process more illegals into the country,” Good added. “We’ve got a willful, purposeful facilitation of the invasion by this administration who has done this on purpose and obviously doesn’t want any border security.”

Speaker Johnson has admitted as much: “While these changes are welcome, only a significant reversal in policy by the president to enforce the law can ultimately secure our border,” a statement from the house speaker read.

Congressional leaders and appropriators don’t seem to care much about America’s borders, but the minibus does provide millions to protect Ukraine’s borders. The Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative will receive $300 million, and another $335 million will be directed towards “U.S. allies and partners facing Russian aggression.” 

“Yet again, we’re fetishizing Ukraine’s border security issues, while ignoring our own,” Lee told TAC. “It is criminally reckless.”

“There’s so many questions that remain even unasked, much less unanswered, throughout this appropriation process,” when it comes to Ukraine, Johnson said. “I’m just getting repulsed by it quite honestly.”

This $635 million for the war in Ukraine, which some lawmakers apparently believe is much broader than the administration currently acknowledges, is likely just the tip of the iceberg. “Our foreign policy experts suspect the hundreds of millions for Ukraine is actually billions, due to various slush funds and gimmicks,” one senior Senate Republican staffer told TAC.

The minibus also provides $200 million for a new FBI headquarters—the FBI that has trained its sights on parents at school board meetings and Catholics who attend the traditional Mass. “Obviously, the FBI headquarters issue is a real big disappointment to a lot of Republicans,” Lee said. “This has become a symbolic and a substantive issue for many Republicans and with good reason. Democrats got huge wins with earmarks like that.”

The new FBI headquarters isn’t the only earmark conservatives should deplore, Lee suggested. He started rattling off earmarks in the minibus:

$1.8 million for a hospital in Rhode Island that performs late term abortions. It gives $475,000 for an activist organization that’s curriculum and materials are put together for kids ages two through five and introduces kids to “a wide variety of gender expressions and family structures,” whatever that means. $676,000 for an organization that has been actively supportive of Black Lives Matter. $2.8 million for an institution that released an inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility charter in 2020. $500,000 for a radical activist organization that hosts training workshops on implicit bias, social inclusion, inequity, decolonization, and land acknowledgement. $450,000 for a child care initiative that is being established to give childcare for immigrant families—so instead of securing our border, we’re using our taxpayer money not to secure the border, but to create welfare programs for illegal immigrants who have invaded our country at the invitation of President Biden.

Democrats also secured another billion in climate change funding.

“We ought to at least get something out of it if we’re going to spend this ungodly sum of money on these ridiculous earmarks and all the other bloated spending that this provides,” Lee added. “On border security, and we get nothing—nothing!”

Scott also expressed his disdain for the amount of earmarks in the bill. “We are in $2 trillion dollar deficits, and they’re doing special projects so somebody can brag that they brought money back home and act like that’s free?” Scott asked rhetorically. “It’s not free, somebody has to pay for it.”

Democrats not only boasted about getting their earmarks. They also claimed to have blocked a number of Republican “poison pill[s],” which certainly relate to the most pressing issues facing Americans today. Democrats declared victory over Republican attempts to block funding for “diversity, equity, and inclusion programs across the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community,” prohibit the government from being the arbiters of misinformation, and prevent flying the pride flag over some federal buildings, to name a few.

Leadership in both chambers are expected to jam the bill through as to get the president’s signature before Friday’s end. The House will likely vote on the bill under suspension of the rules around 11 a.m. Friday morning. There’s not much House conservatives can do to stop it. 

In the Senate, however, things could get interesting. Lee explained how conservatives might put up a fight in the amendment process:

The majority leader has a tool by which he can effectively block out amendments. He can effectively forestall other senators from having their amendments become pending, and, therefore, making sure that they are addressed, that they get voted on, or are dealt with in some meaningful manner. That procedural tool is colloquially referred to in the senate is “filling the tree.” Once he fills the tree, that power is significant, but a Republican minority, as long as we have at least 41 votes (and currently we have 49 Republicans in the Senate), can push back on that. 

The pushback that you give to a majority leader who fills the tree and thus blocks amendments is to, as we say, hold 41. If you hold 41 votes to oppose cloture, that is to vote “no,” on a motion to bring debate to a close, then you can effectively force the majority leader to reconsider and to allow some amendments. Normally, what happens, especially if they see that we have the ability to hold 41 and that we intend to do so, the majority leader will become a lot more gracious, a lot more hospitable, to the idea of having an amendment process, and he will schedule them. So that’s more or less what we’re looking at.

What such a delay can accomplish remains to be seen. “It is fascinating to me that we can’t have a robust amendment process,” Scott told TAC. “If I cant talk somebody into it, that’s my problem, but if I don’t have a chance to talk to people about my ideas, that’s a leadership problem. So this will just be another failed exercise for Republicans, but a great exercise for Democrats where they get exactly what they want, and we get no wins.”

Sen. Johnson would like to see amendments, too. “I think it’s important to have amendment votes because we should be highlighting how Democrats will oppose sending back criminals who are in this country illegally. They will support sanctuary cities getting funding even though sanctuary cities refuse to cooperate with ICE in detaining, or even providing notice when they’re going to release somebody that’s a criminal in this country illegally.”

But Sen. Johnson isn’t optimistic that amendments can stave off the inevitable for long. “Unfortunately, because of this process, it’ll be probably passed within about 48 hours, or something like that, then we’ll move on, we’ll forget about it,” he said. “That’s the well-known process of mortgaging our children’s future.”

The post What Can $1.2 Trillion Buy In Washington? Nothing Good. appeared first on The American Conservative.

What Can $1.2 Trillion Can Buy In Washington? Nothing Good.

Politics

What Can $1.2 Trillion Can Buy In Washington? Nothing Good.

The more-than-1,000-page, $1.2 trillion minibus dropped just before 3 a.m. Thursday morning. Will anyone finish reading it before Congress votes on it?

Ghost Army Ceremony

In what has been a long, drawn-out appropriations process for fiscal year 2024, Congressional leaders believe they’ve finally come to an arrangement on the final six spending bills. Will legislators have the time to finish reading the leadership’s back-room deal before it comes to the floor, let alone the opportunity to amend it? Legislators on the Hill doubt it after leadership dropped the 1,000 page bill just before 3 a.m. on Thursday morning, less than 48 hours before a partial government shutdown. 

The 1,012 page bill is six appropriations bills clumped together in what’s being called a minibus (short for “mini omnibus”). Legislators in both chambers will have just hours to read through the minibus that carries a $1.2 trillion price tag before likely voting on the package that is set to be rushed through both chambers, despite a rule in the House that promises members 72 hours to review legislation. In an email to The American Conservative, Rep. Chip Roy of Texas put it this way: “House Republicans believe they will inspire Americans to polls by jamming through almost $1.2 trillion in over 1000 pages of open-border funding nonsense with about 24 hours to read it?  Situation normal….” The Texas Congressman encouraged TAC to finish the sentence.

Nevertheless, House leadership and GOP appropriators took a victory lap. “House Republicans have achieved significant conservative policy wins, rejected extreme Democrat proposals, and imposed substantial cuts to wasteful agencies and programs while strengthening border security and national defense,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said.

House Appropriations Chair Kay Granger said the package “funds our highest national security priorities—it invests in a more modern, innovative, and ready fighting force, continues our strong support for our great ally Israel, and provides key border enforcement resources.”

“At the same time, we made cuts to programs that have nothing to do with our national security and pulled back billions from the administration,” the GOP appropriations lead claimed.

Senate leadership has been quiet. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer continued his public dispute with Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has been silent on the bill so far, presumably as he deals with the bizarre death of his sister-in-law. Both point to a confidence that this bill, given the constraints and potential consequences, will sail through.

Senator Mike Lee of Utah could be making a victory lap of his own: His prophecies about the minibus have all come true. “I made a few predictions earlier in the week,” Lee told TAC. “I predicted that the bill would be more than 1,000 pages. It is. It’s 1,012 pages long. I predicted that it would contain hundreds of earmarks. It does. And I predicted that it would do nothing to address the massive deficit debt that we face. It doesn’t. And I predicted that it would do nothing to force the Biden administration to secure the border and stop the invasion at our southern border. And it doesn’t.”

Lee called the maneuver and the bill “insulting” in a phone interview with The American Conservative. “They’re giving it to us literally the day before the government is going to shut down? And they’re saying, ‘Sorry, there’s no more time to do it. You have to pass this now, or shut down the government and be blamed for the consequences’?”

Lee has taken to calling leadership in both chambers “the firm” as it negotiates massive spending deals behind closed doors. “What they’re saying [in this bill] is that the firm matters more than the people. That the firm’s interest in making sure that only the firm’s language, the firm’s earmarks, that the firm is blessed, is more important than allowing the American people through their elected lawmakers in Washington to have a say in how they spend the people’s money. Trillions of dollars’ worth.”

“No Republicans should vote for the bill for several reasons,” Virginia’s Rep. Bob Good, the House Freedom Caucus chair, told TAC over the phone. “One, it’s got thousands of earmarks for billions of dollars, which is a reason to vote against it to begin with. But of course, some Republicans are benefiting from those. Secondly, we don’t have time to read it to even know what we would be voting for—which is easier for me, since I knew I wasn’t going to vote for it anyway. But if I was going to own everything in that bill, I might want some time to read it to know what I have to defend after I vote for it.”

“At some point, having $35 trillion in debt is going to have an impact, and it’s not going to be sustainable,” Sen. Rick Scott of Florida told TAC in a phone interview. “I don’t know when that will be, but something’s going to happen because our interest expense now exceeds defense, exceeds Medicare. And inflation will not come down as long as we run massive deficits.

“In 2019, before the pandemic, the federal government in total spent $4.4 trillion. But Biden is budgeting an increase of basically $3 trillion over that for fiscal year 2025. This year, we’ll probably have a 56 percent increase in terms of total outlays. Discretionary spending has gone up 41 percent since 2018. Our population has grown at probably less than 2 percent, and discretionary spending is up 41 percent, total spending up 56 percent,” Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin explained to TAC. 

“What’s really gross is that this is being reported like it’s austere. I don’t think this is an austere budget,” Johnson added. “How can anybody justify that when we are running trillion and a half dollar deficits every year?”

The six-part minibus funds the Departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, Labor, and Homeland Security. The DOD will receive $886 billion, a 3 percent increase compared to last year. While DOD accounts for two-thirds of the package’s price tag, the biggest difficulty in spending negotiations since October, whether its base appropriations or supplemental funding, has been DHS, given the chaos on the southern border. At the 11th hour, the Biden administration encouraged congressional leaders to pass a full appropriations bill for DHS rather than another stopgap. Congressional leaders obliged.

$1.2 Trillion.

~216,000 words.

The #SwampOmnibus spends $5.5 million for every word.

~32 hours before the vote.

That’s 112 words a minute just to finish reading (not real analysis) before the vote…

That’s signing off on over $600 million per minute.

Is Pelosi in charge?

— House Freedom Caucus (@freedomcaucus) March 21, 2024

It’s no surprise, however, after McConnell’s recent maneuvering to ensure any border deal made during this Congress would be toothless, that the border security provisions of the minibus will do little to restore order on the southern border. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) receives $19.6 billion, which is $3.2 billion more than fiscal year 2023  and amounts to a nearly 20 percent increase in funding. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will receive $9.5 billion, which amounts to about a 14 percent increase compared to FY23.

The southern border is one of the few places where it currently makes sense to boost federal spending, but what is nearly $30 billion buying American taxpayers in border security? Republican appropriators boast that the money provides for 22,000 additional border patrol agents, “which is consistent with H.R. 2.” For a $2.273 billion price tag, GOP appropriators said DHS will add another 7,500 detention beds to increase the total to 41,500. There is also $283.5 million in “new border security technology,” $10 million “for task forces dedicated to countering the flow of fentanyl,” $3.4 billion for custody operations (including the additional beds), and $721 million for removal operations.

It’s $30 billion of lipstick on a pig.

At first glance, more border patrol agents sounds nice. So do more detention beds, when the alternative is catch and release. In the minibus, the GOP completely adopts Democrats’ framing on immigration: It’s simply a process and optics problem. The minibus affirms Democrats’ immigration narrative by providing “$160.1 million for refugee processing, asylum, and work authorization backlog reduction” amid $281.1 million for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), $29.9 million for family reunification, and 12,000 additional Special Immigrant Visas for Afghans.

Further, while GOP appropriators boast these provisions are in line with HR 2, the legislation does not include any provisions that leverage these resources to ensure the Biden administration enforces federal law. What good are 22,000 more CBP agents when the Biden administration orders them to sit on their heels or to rush illegal immigrants into the country as quickly as possible? ICE will, however, be compelled to publish crucial detainee data online, such as the number of transgender detainees.

“It doesn’t matter how many more. We could have 100,000 border agents, but when you have a White House that’s not going to secure the border, they’re just going to process people faster,” Scott told TAC. “There’s nothing in here that’s going to require him to secure the border. This president has made his decision that he’s going to completely be lawless.”

Not to worry, says Republican appropriators—$117 million will be directed towards the Emergency Food and Shelter program for sanctuary jurisdictions struggling to handle the massive influx of illegals. “Well, that’s a huge incentive,” Johnson said in response to more sanctuary jurisdiction funding.

“It contains nothing that forces the Biden administration to stop the invasion, and the chaos, and the humanitarian crisis at our southern border,” Lee told TAC of the supposed border security provisions.

“My concern would be they’re increasing spending for detention and more CBP officers—is that how it’s actually going to be used? Or is it going to be used, as I suspect, to become more efficient at encountering, processing, and dispersing,” Johnson told TAC. “How do you force this President to use the authority he has to secure the border? No matter what agreement we would reach with this guy, you can’t trust him. So now we’ve reached agreement on an appropriations bill. What kind of enforcement mechanism does it have? Can you trust him?”

Johnson reflected on the appropriations and supplemental negotiations since October of last year that led to Republicans being on the back foot. He said that “what was so disappointing in what was masterminded by McConnell, the secret negotiations within our conference” was that “we were looking for an enforcement mechanism” that McConnell, it was later revealed, prevented from the outset.

“What we really need is something that forces action. Because right now, he’s using his discretionary authority to just leave this stuff wide open. We need things that would remove some of his discretionary authority. And we also need things that would force outcomes or condition funding on the achievement of operational control of the border,” Lee said. “This bill doesn’t do any of those things. This is a fig leaf! They’ve offered a fig leaf in favor of border security, and nothing more.”

“The bill does not address any issues we have right now,” Scott claimed. “It’s not addressing the two biggest issues. It’s making inflation worse, and it’s not addressing the border crisis at all.”

Good told TAC that actual border security measures are “essentially non existent” in the bill. More border patrol agents and beds “are both intended by this administration to allow them to more quickly process more illegals into the country,” Good added. “We’ve got a willful, purposeful facilitation of the invasion by this administration who has done this on purpose and obviously doesn’t want any border security.”

Speaker Johnson has admitted as much: “While these changes are welcome, only a significant reversal in policy by the president to enforce the law can ultimately secure our border,” a statement from the house speaker read.

Congressional leaders and appropriators don’t seem to care much about America’s borders, but the minibus does provide millions to protect Ukraine’s borders. The Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative will receive $300 million, and another $335 million will be directed towards “U.S. allies and partners facing Russian aggression.” 

“Yet again, we’re fetishizing Ukraine’s border security issues, while ignoring our own,” Lee told TAC. “It is criminally reckless.”

“There’s so many questions that remain even unasked, much less unanswered, throughout this appropriation process,” when it comes to Ukraine, Johnson said. “I’m just getting repulsed by it quite honestly.”

This $635 million for the war in Ukraine, which some lawmakers apparently believe is much broader than the administration currently acknowledges, is likely just the tip of the iceberg. “Our foreign policy experts suspect the hundreds of millions for Ukraine is actually billions, due to various slush funds and gimmicks,” one senior Senate Republican staffer told TAC.

The minibus also provides $200 million for a new FBI headquarters—the FBI that has trained its sights on parents at school board meetings and Catholics who attend the traditional Mass. “Obviously, the FBI headquarters issue is a real big disappointment to a lot of Republicans,” Lee said. “This has become a symbolic and a substantive issue for many Republicans and with good reason. Democrats got huge wins with earmarks like that.”

The new FBI headquarters isn’t the only earmark conservatives should deplore, Lee suggested. He started rattling off earmarks in the minibus:

$1.8 million for a hospital in Rhode Island that performs late term abortions. It gives $475,000 for an activist organization that’s curriculum and materials are put together for kids ages two through five and introduces kids to “a wide variety of gender expressions and family structures,” whatever that means. $676,000 for an organization that has been actively supportive of Black Lives Matter. $2.8 million for an institution that released an inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility charter in 2020. $500,000 for a radical activist organization that hosts training workshops on implicit bias, social inclusion, inequity, decolonization, and land acknowledgement. $450,000 for a child care initiative that is being established to give childcare for immigrant families—so instead of securing our border, we’re using our taxpayer money not to secure the border, but to create welfare programs for illegal immigrants who have invaded our country at the invitation of President Biden.

Democrats also secured another billion in climate change funding.

“We ought to at least get something out of it if we’re going to spend this ungodly sum of money on these ridiculous earmarks and all the other bloated spending that this provides,” Lee added. “On border security, and we get nothing—nothing!”

Scott also expressed his disdain for the amount of earmarks in the bill. “We are in $2 trillion dollar deficits, and they’re doing special projects so somebody can brag that they brought money back home and act like that’s free?” Scott asked rhetorically. “It’s not free, somebody has to pay for it.”

Democrats not only boasted about getting their earmarks. They also claimed to have blocked a number of Republican “poison pill[s],” which certainly relate to the most pressing issues facing Americans today. Democrats declared victory over Republican attempts to block funding for “diversity, equity, and inclusion programs across the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community,” prohibit the government from being the arbiters of misinformation, and prevent flying the pride flag over some federal buildings, to name a few.

Leadership in both chambers are expected to jam the bill through as to get the president’s signature before Friday’s end. The House will likely vote on the bill under suspension of the rules around 11 a.m. Friday morning. There’s not much House conservatives can do to stop it. 

In the Senate, however, things could get interesting. Lee explained how conservatives might put up a fight in the amendment process:

The majority leader has a tool by which he can effectively block out amendments. He can effectively forestall other senators from having their amendments become pending, and, therefore, making sure that they are addressed, that they get voted on, or are dealt with in some meaningful manner. That procedural tool is colloquially referred to in the senate is “filling the tree.” Once he fills the tree, that power is significant, but a Republican minority, as long as we have at least 41 votes (and currently we have 49 Republicans in the Senate), can push back on that. 

The pushback that you give to a majority leader who fills the tree and thus blocks amendments is to, as we say, hold 41. If you hold 41 votes to oppose cloture, that is to vote “no,” on a motion to bring debate to a close, then you can effectively force the majority leader to reconsider and to allow some amendments. Normally, what happens, especially if they see that we have the ability to hold 41 and that we intend to do so, the majority leader will become a lot more gracious, a lot more hospitable, to the idea of having an amendment process, and he will schedule them. So that’s more or less what we’re looking at.

What such a delay can accomplish remains to be seen. “It is fascinating to me that we can’t have a robust amendment process,” Scott told TAC. “If I cant talk somebody into it, that’s my problem, but if I don’t have a chance to talk to people about my ideas, that’s a leadership problem. So this will just be another failed exercise for Republicans, but a great exercise for Democrats where they get exactly what they want, and we get no wins.”

Sen. Johnson would like to see amendments, too. “I think it’s important to have amendment votes because we should be highlighting how Democrats will oppose sending back criminals who are in this country illegally. They will support sanctuary cities getting funding even though sanctuary cities refuse to cooperate with ICE in detaining, or even providing notice when they’re going to release somebody that’s a criminal in this country illegally.”

But Sen. Johnson isn’t optimistic that amendments can stave off the inevitable for long. “Unfortunately, because of this process, it’ll be probably passed within about 48 hours, or something like that, then we’ll move on, we’ll forget about it,” he said. “That’s the well-known process of mortgaging our children’s future.”

The post What Can $1.2 Trillion Can Buy In Washington? Nothing Good. appeared first on The American Conservative.

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Inside Conservatives’ Effort to Stop Another Ukraine War Package

Politics

Inside Conservatives’ Effort to Stop Another Ukraine War Package

Fresh off the Senate floor from his talking filibuster, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky spoke with The American Conservative.

Senate Continues Debate On Foreign Aid Package As It Moves Closer To Passage

Conservative senators are not rolling over in the face of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s efforts to jam billions of dollars of Ukraine aid through the legislature’s upper chamber.

On Saturday, Senator Mike Lee of Utah occupied the Senate floor for nearly four hours in a talking filibuster. Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio pulled back the curtain on McConnell’s motivations for forcing through the $95 billion supplemental in a Monday piece for The American Conservative. “Nearly a year away from an election that could give Trump the presidency,” Vance wrote, “Ukraine-obsessive Republicans have already given the Democrats a predicate to impeach him.”

On Monday afternoon, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky launched a talking filibuster of his own. “Open the champagne, pop the cork. The Senate Democrat leader and the Republican leader are on their way to Kiev. They’ve got $60 billion they’re bringing. I don’t know if it will be cash in pallets, but they’re taking your money to Kiev,” Paul said in his speech that lasted over an hour. Fresh off the Senate floor, Paul spoke to TAC.

Paul explained what is motivating him and his senate colleagues engaging in this talking filibuster. “We have so many problems to deal with in our country and along our border that we shouldn’t be prioritizing another nation’s border without first fixing our own border,” Paul told TAC in a phone interview. 

Shortly after Paul’s time came to a close, Vance took the baton to continue the talking filibuster, which has now spanned over 120 hours. 

Paul, like many of his conservative colleagues, is concerned about the national debt as well. The Kentucky senator noted the U.S. is currently running a deficit of $1.5 trillion annually. While $95 billion is a drop in the bucket compared to the $34 trillion debt, it is exactly this kind of uniparty spending and governance over time that has made sending $95 billion overseas seem inconsequential.

“Our debt is rising at an alarming rate,” Paul explained. “The Federal Reserve Chairman this week said it’s urgent that we do something about the debt, and yet the urgency falls on deaf ears. The urgency to Schumer, McConnell and Biden is to send another $100 billion overseas, when in reality that just makes our debt problem worse.”

“Shouldn’t we try to fix our own country first?” Paul asked his senate colleagues on Monday. In Sunday’s vote, 18 Republicans joined 47 Democrats and two independents to shut down further debate and advance the legislation. The final tally was 67–27 with all the no votes coming from the GOP conference.

Nevertheless, senate rules triggered a 30-hour clock for speaking on the floor after the senate voted to advance the legislation Sunday. “We have 30 hours of speaking, but the rules in the senate are very specific. Each senator can only speak for one hour.” Paul explained over the phone.

That makes organizing a speaking filibuster tricky. “We have a string of speakers speaking up to an hour. Mike Lee and I spoke earlier. We have a few minutes left. I think he has eight minutes left and I have 17 minutes left. If there’s a lapse in the floor and the vote hasn’t been called, both Mike Lee and I will go back to the floor and speak again.”

If there is a lapse in the talking filibuster before time is set to run out at 8:00 pm Monday, Democrats will move to end the filibuster and end debate. Nevertheless, that vote will trigger yet another 30 hour period. “It becomes a little tougher at night because you still get your one hour, but you got to get as many senators as you can to speak through the middle of the night,” Paul said.

Paul and his colleagues are fully aware they are not going to be able to permanently stop the Senate from passing the $95 billion supplemental.

“The reason for the talking filibuster is not that we’re going to win. They have the votes to win,” Paul said. “We’re causing them to ultimately expend seven days. We’ve made them be here on the weekend if they want to take our money and ship it to another country. The punishment we can inflict is we keep them here on the weekend; we keep them from campaigning; we keep them from fundraising.”

Because the Senate has been forced to work over the weekend, the talking filibuster isn’t winning the conservative objectors many friends. Some, Paul said , have been “hateful in private.”

“Some will come up to you and insinuate you’re doing this for unclean reasons, or you’re not doing this for any kind of moral reason, or you’re doing this to grandstand,” Paul said. “Then there’s all kinds of accusations you’re doing this to raise money.”

While the talking filibuster is unlikely to cause senators to change how they are voting on the supplemental, Paul suggested it could become a rallying point for the grassroots. “I think the vast majority of Republicans and conservatives across the country disagree with Mitch McConnell on this,” Paul added. “They would be horrified to find out Republican leaders are sending their money overseas while ignoring their own border. 

Paul claimed this was the “uniparty” at work in his Monday speech. “Really, there only is one party when you get down to it,” Paul said on the Senate floor. “This is a secret you’re not supposed to expose in Washington.”

“The reason they’re trying to get this done is Chuck Schumer has a trip planned to Kiev. They’re going to crack champagne with Zelensky and celebrate with pallets of cash,” Paul told TAC. “I’ve sort of sarcastically said, ‘I wonder who’s paying for the champagne.’ I guess we’re paying for the champagne, too.”

After a few more procedural votes, the Senate is expected to pass the $95 billion supplemental on Wednesday, but there are no guarantees that the Republican-controlled House decides to take up the legislation. TAC asked Paul what his message is for the House GOP members who will likely be considering the supplemental very soon. “Don’t!” he replied.

What can voters do? “They all need to call Speaker Johnson and their congressman and say, ‘Do not vote on this monstrosity. Do not send our money overseas and fix our border first.’”

The post Inside Conservatives’ Effort to Stop Another Ukraine War Package appeared first on The American Conservative.

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Inside a Betrayal: Hill Reacts to Senate-negotiated Border and Ukraine Deal

Politics

Inside a Betrayal: Hill Reacts to Senate-negotiated Border and Ukraine Deal

A deal spearheaded by Senator James Lankford seemed to prioritize Ukraine’s security over the honeycombed U.S. Southern border.

Senate Lawmakers Speak To Media After Weekly Policy Luncheons

A bipartisan group of Senators on Sunday released the text of a supplemental funding bill that purports to secure the southern border in exchange for Ukraine and Israel aid.

For months, the bipartisan group of senators have attempted to negotiate a border security deal that would also provide supplemental funding for Ukraine and Israel. Throughout the process, Republicans, especially members of the GOP-controlled House, have been skeptical of whatever the bipartisan group was cooking up behind closed doors. With the 370-page, $118.3 billion bill now public, it appears their skepticism was warranted. Shortly after the text’s release, GOP members of both chambers—including some who have been more sympathetic to providing more aid to Ukraine—tore apart the deal’s immigration provisions, which were shrouded in obscurity for months during Senate negotiations. 

Yet perhaps the most shocking part of this so-called border deal is that a majority of the funding, $60 billion, is not directed towards the southern border, but to Ukraine. When it comes to supplemental funding bills, the main subject of a piece of legislation is the cause that gets the most cash, and not necessarily the subject that receives the most language.

Beyond the $60 billion for Ukraine and a measly $20 billion for the border, which will likely be wasted due to the Biden administration’s outright refusal to enforce the laws already on the books, another $14.1 billion is allocated for Israel and another $10 billion is directed towards humanitarian aid. Though the true intent of the Senate’s negotiated “border deal” is to provide $60 billion for Ukraine, it is certainly worth getting into the specifics of the “border security” provisions since they reveal just how low the establishment will stoop to fund its wars of choice.

One of the key provisions Senate negotiators are relying on to secure the border is providing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary with a “border emergency authority” to prevent migrants from entering into the United States. The legislation mostly leaves the authority to the “sole and unreviewable discretion” of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, whom the House is currently considering bringing articles of impeachment against for his unwillingness to enforce the law. It adds that the secretary, at his discretion, may declare an emergency if “there is an average of 4,000 or more aliens who are encountered each day” over a seven-day period.”

The only circumstances in which the secretary is forced to use the emergency authority is when there are on average 5,000 migrant encounters over a seven day period or 8,500 migrant encounters in a single day. For the border to re-open, encounters have to fall to 75 percent of the stated threshold over a seven-day period. Could the Biden administration direct its agents to simply stop encountering migrants to meet these thresholds? It need not come to that because, while the mandatory activation of the border emergency authority sits at about half of the average daily encounters of migrants, according to Customs and Border Patrol data, the bill provides language that ensures the Biden administration can always circumvent triggering the emergency authority.

First, the bill creates massive carve outs in the application of the emergency authority for large swaths of migrants. One exemption for example, is for migrants whom immigration officers determine “should be excepted from the border emergency authority” in consideration of the “totality of the circumstances” and “operational considerations.” If the Biden administration determines a migrant should be let in and let go, that’s that. 

Even when the border emergency is in effect, DHS must “maintain the capacity to process, and continue processing…a minimum of 1,400 inadmissible aliens each calendar day cumulatively across all southwest land border ports of entry in a safe and orderly process developed by the Secretary.” The bill also places a cap on the number of days the emergency border authority can be in effect during a calendar year. In the first calendar year, the cap is 270 days; in the second year, 225 days; and the third, 180 days.

In circumstances where Mayorkas either chooses or is compelled by law to use the border emergency authority, President Biden can simply overrule him. The president can order the DHS secretary “to suspend use of the border emergency authority on an emergency basis” if the president deems an open border “is in the national interest,” the bill states. If the president does so, “the Secretary shall suspend the border emergency authority for not more than 45 calendar days within a calendar year.” When that clock runs out, nothing prevents Biden from resetting it.

“The whole section about declaring a border emergency is intended to get Republicans to go along with something that is chock full of democratic wish list items and would almost certainly make the border situation worse,” Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, told The American Conservative in a phone interview.

In the words of Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, one of the Democratic Senate negotiators who discussed the bill in a Twitter thread Sunday, “the border never closes.”

The bill also expands the number of immigrant visas through 2030. For example, the family-sponsored immigrant visa cap is upped from 480,000 to 512,000 with an increased floor of 258,000 (the current figure is 226,000). The employment-based immigrant visa cap is increased from 140,000 to 158,000. In total, the bill would create at least over 250,000 new visas over the next five years. 

Furthermore, all migrants allowed into the United States by the Biden administration via asylum claims “shall be issued employment authorization,” the bill states. To make matters worse, the bill does not compel the secretary to strip work permit privileges if the migrant fails to appear for status reviews. In a Twitter thread endorsing the deal, Mayorkas claimed the bill “would expedite protection and work authorization for those with legitimate claims.”

Senator Rick Scott of Florida put it simply in an email to TAC: “It also allows illegal aliens to take U.S. jobs that would otherwise be filled by Americans and funds lawyers for illegal aliens.”

The bill also stipulates certain migrants seeking entrance into the United States will be provided legal counsel paid for by the American taxpayer. These provisions do not only cover unaccompanied child migrants, but also adults deemed incompetent by an immigration judge. The bill allocates $36 million “for representation for certain incompetent adults,” and provides another $2.334 billion in grants to nongovernmental organizations that can provide migrants with legal and case management assistance among other services.

Krikorian told TAC that providing taxpayer funded lawyers for migrants is “currently prohibited by law.”

“Every illegal alien in proceedings has the right to bring a lawyer,” Krikorian explained, “but it specifically says it must be at no expense to the government. This [bill] changes that.”

It’s quite surprising, then, that the New York Times and other corporate media outlets have claimed the bill makes it more difficult to obtain asylum. While the legislation does change the credible-fear standard from “significant possibility,” which is left up to the executive branch to determine, to a “reasonable possibility,” which is statutorily linked to a well-founded fear, it essentially decentralizes asylum authority and informalizes asylum legal proceedings. In what should come as a relief to the New York Times, the combined effect of the bill’s asylum provisions is that it “creates a whole new parallel asylum system,” that heavily advantages the migrant seeking asylum, Krikorian told TAC.

“In effect, [the bill] codifies what is called the asylum officer rule that this administration did by regulation,” Krikorian said. “What that means is, asylum officers, who are the initial screeners under the current system, can now just give asylum to people. They can actually make the grant of asylum, which is illegal, but this administration is already doing it by regulation.”

“The reason that’s bad—and the reason the administration’s current asylum officer rule, which this is basically based on, is bad—is that there’s no cross-examination,” Krikorian continued. “There’s nobody representing the United States trying to poke holes in an asylum claimants story. It’s just an interview with a guy who, odds are, was a social worker before he came to work for the government.” The predictable consequence of this system, Krikorian claimed, is that “without an ICE lawyer there to try to poke holes in a story and without an impartial judge to assess what’s going on, you’re going to have much higher rates of asylum grants.”

The creation of this parallel asylum system, combined with automatic work permits and expanded visa system, plus the lack of any measures to ensure the Biden administration enforces laws already on the books have led Republicans to claim the bill is, in effect, an amnesty.

“While the language does not officially declare an amnesty in so many words, it continues to leave countless enforcement questions up to the discretion of President Biden, who can invoke ‘emergency’ exceptions any time he wants,” Senator Mike Lee of Utah told TAC in a statement. “His non-enforcement of our border and immigration laws are simply open borders and amnesty by another name, and this bill expands his ability to skirt existing law.” 

“This bill is worse than I could have imagined,” Scott told TAC. “Nearly two million people will still illegally enter the United States every year if this becomes law,” Scott continued. “THAT IS NOT BORDER SECURITY,” Scott wrote in all caps.

“The Biden-Schumer-McConnell supplemental bill not only fails to secure our southern border, but it makes the Biden border invasion policies like catch and release the law of the land,” Rep. Bob Good of Virginia told TAC in a written statement. “It also incentivizes ongoing illegal entry by handing out immediate work permits upon release.”

“Meanwhile, Secretary Mayorkas is being impeached for intentionally facilitating the border invasion,” Good continued. “Senate Republicans should not hand him a ‘get out of jail free card’ by voting to weaken our immigration laws and provide a rubber stamp for his failure to keep Americans safe.”

Beyond the policy particulars, the overarching problem with the legislation is that Senate Republican negotiators decided to fully embrace the Democrats’ framing of the border crisis. “The whole bill is based on not just Democratic agenda items but the democratic perception of the problem,” Krikorian said. Democrats and the Biden administration believe the problems at the southern border are merely a matter of optics.

“They don’t see the problem as huge numbers, potentially unlimited numbers, of people using asylum as a gambit to enter the United States,” Krikorian explained. “The issue for the Democrats is to try to manage the optics so that people don’t get pissed off.”

Senate Republicans played right into Democrats’ hands. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Oklahoma’s Senator James Lankford, who headed up the Republican side of negotiators, “want the Ukraine money so bad” that they are “like the guy walking into a car dealership who has his eyes so set on getting a sports car that he gets suckered into all sorts of add-ons,” said Krikorian.

There is certainly plenty for Ukraine in the bill. Not only will the $60 billion go towards providing Ukraine with weapons in a multi-year campaign to “hasten Ukrainian victory against Russia’s invasion forces,” nearly $8 billion is direct budgetary support for the Ukrainian government to prevent it from going bankrupt. Ironically, $300 million will go towards the Ukrainian State Border Guard Service and the National Police of Ukraine. Only $8 million is directed towards the inspector generals tasked with ensuring American taxpayer dollars are used appropriately in Ukraine.  

“Mitch McConnell’s weak caving to Democrats has created a bill that spends Americans’ tax dollars to hand Ukraine $60 BILLION – not just for weapons but so it can pay its government workers and run government programs,” Scott claimed.

In a statement released Sunday night, McConnell did not seem confident in the deal. Nevertheless, the Senate minority leader said “the Senate must carefully consider the opportunity in front of us and prepare to act.”

“This bill would completely fail to stop the crisis at our southern border,” Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio told TAC. “Throughout this process, the Republican establishment has been more focused on securing tens of billions in aid for Ukraine than on reducing illegal immigration. Their foreign policy goals have clouded this entire debate, and because of that the border bill is a total disaster that no Republican should support.”

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky tweeted that “from the squandering of your money to the fake border reforms, it’s safe to declare this bill as anti-American. I’m a NO.”

While Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is moving towards having the Senate consider the legislation later this week, it seems to have no path forward in the Republican House.

“I’ve seen enough,” House Speaker Mike Johnson tweeted Sunday night. “This bill is even worse than we expected, and won’t come close to ending the border catastrophe the President has created.”

“America’s sovereignty is at stake,” a later statement from Johnson and the rest of House GOP leadership read. “Any consideration of this Senate bill in its current form is a waste of time. It is DEAD on arrival in the House. We encourage the U.S. Senate to reject it.”

The post Inside a Betrayal: Hill Reacts to Senate-negotiated Border and Ukraine Deal appeared first on The American Conservative.

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Bipartisan Group of Senators Caution Biden Against Another Middle East War

A bipartisan group of senators are cautioning President Joe Biden not to get involved in another war in the Middle East, after he began sending missiles into Yemen earlier this month without congressional authorization.

Biden Prepares for Extended Yemen Bombing, Triggering Constitutional Alarm Bells

Foreign Affairs

Biden Prepares for Extended Yemen Bombing, Triggering Constitutional Alarm Bells

Under what authority is the president acting?

President Biden Convenes a meeting of the Reproductive Healthcare Task Force

The United States and Britain conducted another round of strikes Monday on the Houthi rebels as the Yemen-based group continues to disrupt international commerce in the Red Sea as a response to the war in Gaza. It was the United States’ eighth time striking the Houthis since January 11. When President Joe Biden initially started striking the Houthis, his administration claimed the strikes were constitutionally permissible and strategically sound, meant to both thwart immediate threats and establish deterrence.

A little less than two weeks later, the Biden administration is telling the American public to settle in and prepare for a longer, sustained campaign against the Houthi rebels. Openly admitting plans for such a crusade, however, raises essential questions on the constitutionality of the president’s actions and his administration’s broader Middle East strategy.

Administration officials, who spoke to the Washington Post on the condition of anonymity, told the Post that the administration is gravitating towards a longer-term strategy to erode the rebel’s capacity to disrupt international commerce. “We are clear-eyed about who the Houthis are, and their worldview,” one unnamed senior official told the Post. “So we’re not sure that they’re going to stop immediately, but we are certainly trying to degrade and destroy their capabilities.”

For the past week, The American Conservative has drawn attention to the administration’s attempt to shift the goal posts for this intervention.

After the United States’ first round of strikes against the Houthi rebels on January 11, the U.S. and partner nations appropriated the rhetoric of deterrence and de-escalation.

A statement from the U.S. and U.K., joined by Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, and the Republic of Korea, claimed, “These precision strikes were intended to disrupt and degrade the capabilities the Houthis use to threaten global trade and the lives of international mariners in one of the world’s most critical waterways.”

“Our aim remains to de-escalate tensions and restore stability in the Red Sea,” the statement continued. “But let our message be clear: we will not hesitate to defend lives and protect the free flow of commerce in one of the world’s most critical waterways in the face of continued threats.”

The Biden administration can claim its actions in the Middle East are meant to deter further Houthi attacks and de-escalate the situation all it wants, but that doesn’t make it true. While deterrence seeks to prevent a power from taking unwanted action, what the Biden administration seems to be pursuing in Yemen is “compellence,” which is an effort to pressure an actor to change its behavior through the use of force. As Will Ruger, president of the American Institute for Economic Research, recently told TAC, “Deterrence is when you signal that you’re going to do X if the other actor does Y. Instead, this is a form of compellence. It’s aiming to compel the adversary to do something that you want it to do.”

Rather than being deterred, the Houthis vowed to continue their Red Sea campaign. In one instance, the Houthi rebels damaged a Maltese-flagged and Greek-owned commercial vessel with a ballistic missile.

Nevertheless, administration officials continued to speak out of both sides of their mouths. “We did not say when we launched our attacks, they’re gonna end once and for all,” claimed national security adviser Jake Sullivan in an address to the World Economic Forum last week.

“We have to guard against and be vigilant against the possibility that in fact, rather than heading towards de-escalation, we are on a path of escalation that we have to manage,” Sullivan added.

The double-speak continued in the wake of Monday’s strikes. The U.S. and U.K., supported by Australia, Bahrain, Canada, and the Netherlands, hit eight different Houthi targets in Yemen on Monday. The sites, according to a joint statement from the involved powers, included an underground storage facility and others “associated with the Houthis’ missile and air surveillance capabilities.”

While the strikes were “intended to disrupt and degrade the capabilities that the Houthis use to threaten global trade and the lives of innocent mariners,” the countries admitted they had done little to change Houthi behavior, given “a series of illegal, dangerous, and destabilizing Houthi actions since our coalition strikes on January 11.” The statement concluded much like the previous statement:

Our aim remains to de-escalate tensions and restore stability in the Red Sea, but let us reiterate our warning to Houthi leadership: We will not hesitate to defend lives and the free flow of commerce in one of the world’s most critical waterways in the face of continued threats.

The president’s comments were more direct: “Are they stopping the Houthis? No,” Biden told a gaggle of reporters. “Will they continue? Yes.”

Despite admitting the shift in the Biden administration’s approach to the Post, the anonymous administration officials still couched the president’s actions in the language of deterrence. The Post’s story, paraphrasing the officials, claims that the administration is seeking “to provide a sufficient deterrent so that risk-averse shipping companies will resume sending vessels through the region’s waterways.” 

The officials also reportedly told the Post that, while the administration is looking towards the long term, they do not expect the operations to counter the Houthis will carry on for years like other recent U.S. forays into the Middle East. Yet the administration officials acknowledged they could not provide a benchmark for when the Houthis’ capabilities will adequately be degraded or an approximate end date to the Biden administration’s hostilities.

“It’s impossible to forecast exactly what’s going to happen, and certainly not [to predict] future operations,” one official claimed.

“We’re not trying to defeat the Houthis. There’s no appetite for invading Yemen,” an unnamed diplomat told the Post. “The appetite is to degrade their ability to launch these kind of attacks going forward, and that involves hitting the infrastructure that enables these kind of attacks, and targeting their higher-level capabilities.”

Yet U.S. officials did not initially expect the interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Syria to carry on for years, much less decades, when they began—and that’s raising eyebrows in Washington.

“The Biden administration’s strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen demonstrate why Congress needs to seriously debate outdated AUMFs,” Senator Mike Lee of Utah said in a written statement to TAC. “They also demonstrate the perils of our continued abdication of congressional war powers.”

On Tuesday, Lee signed on to a letter to Biden with Senators Tim Kaine of Virginia, Todd Young of Pennsylvania, and Chris Murphy of Connecticut challenging the constitutionality of the president’s actions. While the senators acknowledge Biden has the authority “to defend U.S. personnel and military assets from attacks and imminent attacks” and, arguably, “to defend U.S. commercial shipping,” the quartet argues that “most vessels transiting through the Red Sea are not U.S. ships, which raises questions about the extent to which these authorities can be exercised.”

“The Administration has stated that the strikes on Houthi targets to date have not and will not deter the Houthi attacks, suggesting that we are in the midst of an ongoing regional conflict that carries the risk of escalation,” the letter continued. “We have long advocated for deliberate congressional processes in and authorizations for decisions that put service members into harm’s way overseas. There is no current congressional authorization for offensive U.S. military action against the Houthis.”

The senators also note that Biden has “only submitted one notification to Congress under the War Powers Act, despite having conducted several rounds of strikes against Houthi targets,” and request “an explanation in writing of the legal authority” the president is using to justify previous or future strikes against the Houthi rebels.

“The Biden administration falsely claims that it can lawfully place troops in hostilities and engage in arguably offensive strikes simply by submitting a notification to Congress after the fact,” Lee told TAC. “If this administration wants to engage in a long-term campaign in Yemen, it must make the case to Congress and receive specific authorization, as the Constitution requires.”

“Given what the administration itself is saying, we are well beyond pure defense,” Ruger wrote in an email to TAC. “If we actually followed our Constitutional design in foreign policy, it would be past time for President Biden to go to Congress with a request to authorize the use of force and for Congress to have a robust debate about the policy.”

Ret. Col. Douglas Macgregor, a contributing editor to The American Conservative, commented to TAC via email: “Americans live under a post-Constitutional Government.”

Macgregor added, “No one in the House or Senate has debated the constitutionality of Presidential military action since 2001. The War Powers Act has never been applied.”

If the administration cared about the constitutionality of attacking the Houthis, things would be done much differently, Macgregor suggested.

“Since the Houthi actions do not pose an immediate threat to the United States or the American People the use of force would seem to require congressional approval. (It’s not an emergency),” Macgregor explained. “However, the American electorate shows no sign of being interested in what happens and Congress is ready, as always, to defer to Executive Authority.”

If Congress wanted to change its cowardly ways, it “should vote to immediately stop funding for U.S. Military Operations and Forces in the region until the President presents his case for action,” Macgregor said.

“The Founders wisely put the war power in Congress’ hands so that the peoples’ representatives could debate the best path forward, to understand the costs and benefits of alternative approaches, and bring the country behind a war policy if it were required to meet our national interests,” Ruger said. “But instead the Biden administration wants to go it alone,” he added, “so they shouldn’t be surprised if the policy fails for the people to blame them alone.”

“The narrative is irrelevant to the facts,” Macgregor argued. “The goal is to goad Iran into attacking U.S. Forces, thus providing the pretext for war with Iran.”

The post Biden Prepares for Extended Yemen Bombing, Triggering Constitutional Alarm Bells appeared first on The American Conservative.

South Korean Politician Is Attacked in Seoul

Bae Hyunjin, of the country’s governing party, was assaulted in Seoul and taken to a hospital. The attack came three weeks after another politician was stabbed.

Bae Hyunjin, a People Power Party lawmaker, at the National Assembly in Seoul last year.

Biden Admin Shifts the Goal Posts on Yemen Strikes

Foreign Affairs

Biden Admin Shifts the Goal Posts on Yemen Strikes

What goal is the Biden administration trying to accomplish with more strikes on the Houthi rebels?

President Biden Meets With Mexican President Obrador In The Oval Office
(Photo by Chris Kelponis-Pool/Getty Images)

On Tuesday, the United States executed further attacks on Houthi rebel positions inside Yemen. Per U.S. officials, the strikes destroyed four anti-ship ballistic missiles that the Houthis were purportedly preparing to launch as they continue their campaign of Red Sea commerce disruption.

This is the latest in a series of American strikes against the Houthis, who have been targeting shipping since the outbreak of war between Israel and Gaza. On January 12, the U.S. and the U.K. launched a coordinated strike on Houthi rebel positions, taking aim at more than 60 targets across 16 sites where the Houthis are known to operate in Yemen. Tuesday’s strikes were on a smaller scale than the earlier attack, and U.S. officials told POLITICO the action was not pre-planned, but rather taken quickly to prevent what officials believed to be an imminent attack. The head of U.S. Central Command reportedly gave the order to carry out Tuesday’s preemptive strikes. In response, the Houthi rebels fired a ballistic missile at a Maltese-flagged and Greek-owned commercial vessel in the Red Sea. While damaged, the ship did not sink.

In Washington, some Republicans cheered the continuation of escalatory strikes against the Houthi rebels, currently being used by the war party as a proxy for attacking Iran. How long attacking the Houthis will scratch that itch, only time will tell.

“From day one, the Biden Administration met Iranian aggression with accommodation and squandered the credibility of American deterrence,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell tweeted. “It’s time for [President Biden] to explain how exactly he intends to compel Iran and its proxies to change their behavior.”

Senator Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, piled on. “Removing [the Houthis] from the list of terror organizations was a deadly mistake and another failed attempt to appease the Ayatollah,” he said in a statement. “Joe Biden’s weakness and poor judgement [sic] continues to put our security at risk.”

Senator Deb Fischer concurred. “Now, the administration needs to take the next step and formally designate the Houthis as a Foreign Terrorist Organization,” the Nebraska Republican tweeted.

Other Republicans were not so enthusiastic. “It’s in Congress’s constitutional purview to declare war—meaning Biden needs to make the case to this body so we’re not haphazardly drawn into another forever war,” Rep. Eli Crane of Arizona told The American Conservative via email. “Considering this admin’s short but plentiful history of screwing up every foreign policy decision, Congress’s check on this power is even more dire.”

“I am concerned that U.S. action, like the recent airstrikes on Houthi targets, is starting to blur the line between defense of U.S. forces in the region and unauthorized escalatory offense,” claimed Senator Mike Lee in an email to TAC.

“Eroding this distinction is dangerous for two reasons,” the Utah senator explained. “First, it allows the Biden administration to hide behind the standard lines of ‘defense of forces in the region’ or ‘freedom of navigation’ while at the same time increasing U.S. engagement in the region without specified strategic ends. We’ve been down this road before and we know it costs the U.S. blood and treasure for little gain. Second, justifying the President’s offensive actions under the guise of defensive aims erases any Constitutional check on the Commander-in-Chief’s power. Congress, the only branch of our government empowered to declare war, surrenders a vital enumerated power if it allows any president of any party to proceed like this unchecked.”

As McConnell and company suggested, the administration is working quickly to list the Houthi rebels as “specially designated global terrorists.” In the early days of the Biden administration, Secretary of State Antony Blinken reversed a late-Trump administration decision to list the Houthis as both a foreign terrorist organization and specially designated global terrorists. Choosing to re-list the Houthis as the latter but not the former provides a carve out to parties that provide “material support” to the Houthi rebels and does not impose the same travel bans. Given the Houthi rebel movement is broad, and the administration wants to see a continuation of providing Yemen humanitarian assistance, the administration’s choice to list the Houthis as specifically designated global terrorists is attempting to chart a middle course.

Beyond the wide-ranging nature of the Houthi movement, the Houthi rebel movement’s place in the dynamic Middle East landscape with a bevy of non-state actors isn’t so simple as establishment hawks let on.

“The Houthis do receive military assistance from Iran, but they are not Tehran’s lapdog. They often act independently and have displayed strategic agency,” Arta Moeini, the research director for the Institute for Peace & Diplomacy, told TAC. “They are a deeply ideological and revolutionary movement that feel a sense of solidarity with the Palestinians. They are doing what they can to raise the cost of the Gaza war for Israel and the United States.”

As for the Biden administration, the goal posts for what these strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen are meant to accomplish are already shifting. “We did not say when we launched our attacks, they’re gonna end once and for all,” claimed national security adviser Jake Sullivan at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday. 

Yet, according to a statement signed by the U.S., U.K., Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, and South Korea, the intention of the Jan. 12 strikes were to de-escalate the situation in the Red Sea. If proclaimed acts of deterrence don’t deter, then what’s the point?

Sullivan appears to be waking up to that reality. “We have to guard against and be vigilant against the possibility that in fact, rather than heading towards de-escalation, we are on a path of escalation that we have to manage,” Sullivan said in his Davos remarks.

“Using the past two years as evidence, any foreign action the Biden admin engages in endangers the U.S. in some way or another. What should have been a clean withdrawal from Afghanistan turned into a massive windfall for the Taliban and a stain on America,” Crane told TAC. “Could our national security benefit from strikes on Houthis in Yemen? Sure. Is it likely this administration will execute these strikes in a manner that strengthens the U.S. and keeps us out of another forever war? I’m pretty doubtful.”

“It is highly doubtful that these strikes will change Houthi behavior or establish deterrence,” Moeini told TAC prior to Tuesday’s tit-for-tat. “The attacks were meant to establish US credibility and deterrence, but they risk further entangling the US in the middle east and fueling a regional war, endangering American military personnel to protect foreign ships moving foreign goods and peoples in distant waters.”

What that entanglement looks like is frightening: “The United States and its handful of allies are now party to a war in Yemen whose real causes lie in the Israeli-palestinian conflict,” Moeini explained. “If Biden doubles down and commits more forces to fight the Houthis, then it will be open season on thousands of US troops stretched across the Middle East from Bahrain to Iraq to Syria.”

The post Biden Admin Shifts the Goal Posts on Yemen Strikes appeared first on The American Conservative.

In a Rare Move, Singapore Charges Official With Corruption

Accused of accepting tickets to “Hamilton,” air travel and soccer games in Britain, the transport official resigned before he pleaded not guilty in court.

S. Iswaran, center, Singapore’s former transport minister, arriving at a court with his legal team in Singapore on Thursday.
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