Tag: China

Hunter Biden Reportedly Wanted Government to Help with Burisma Project While Joe Was VP

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Hunter Biden reportedly asked U.S. officials to help him in connection to an energy deal in Italy while his father was vice president and he worked for the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, according to The New York Times.

Records not released by the Biden administration until after President Joe Biden quit the 2024 presidential race reportedly show that Hunter Biden wrote a 2016 letter to the American ambassador in Italy in which he sought U.S. government assistance related to a project being planned by Burisma, according to the NYT. Specifically, Hunter Biden reportedly wanted the ambassador’s help to set up a meeting between Burisma and the president of Tuscany, a region of Italy where the company was hoping to develop a geothermal energy project.

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House Investigating Whether Foreign Money Flowing into Democrat Coffers

Just the News
Bryan Steil

The chairman of the powerful House Administration Committee says his investigation into one of the Democrats’ most successful political action committees has pivoted to whether foreigners may be laundering money into the 2024 election.

Rep. Bryan Steil, W-Wis., said his committee has identified individuals who claim they did not make the donations attributed to them in Federal Election Commission (FEC) reports filed by ActBlue. His committee, which oversees election integrity issues, has “activated a full investigation.”

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Commentary: Let’s Leave the Marxism on the Capitol Steps

RealClearWire
Elizabeth Warren

The United States has become the largest market in the world, and at the same time it delivers the highest standard of living to its citizens compared to the world’s other major economies. Contrast this success with other large economies such as China, where despite being the world’s second-largest economy, its citizens have a standard of living that has more in common with the developing world than a global powerhouse. Now China is facing demographic challenges that raise the prospect that as a nation, it may get old before it gets rich. Layer its long-standing repression and authoritarianism on to its economic challenges, and one is hard-pressed to see a domestic policy regime worthy of emulation.

Likewise looking to America’s south, and one is struck by the generations of squandered opportunities for prosperity in South America. As a region, South America has been buffeted by financial collapses, runaway inflation, and geopolitical instability. For nations digging out from a legacy of ruinous fiscal and economic policies, there is no easy route forward, only difficult tradeoffs. Argentina has certainly charted a new course and there is hope that near-term pain may pave a path forward to stability and long-term growth. But the present pain is very real.

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Commentary: Gain of Function, Loss of Everything Else

RealClearWire
Dr. Fauci, Dr. Grady, and Joe Biden

It did not have to be this way. The COVID-19 pandemic cost American citizens their lives, their livelihoods, education, mental health, reputations and, ultimately, civil and religious freedoms. “The U.S. accounts for less than 5 percent of the world’s population, but more than 25 percent of total COVID-19 cases reported across the globe, and it currently ranks among the top 10 countries in COVID-19-related deaths per capita,” wrote the authors of  2023 commentary in the Journal of the American Medical Association. And for all that, we have government to thank.

For years leading up to the pandemic, the nation had spent billions on preparation and planning for a biohazard attack or event. Whatever we learned was quickly discarded or undone by a lack of accountability, transparency, and humility. Decades of planning and untold man hours of research and training were rendered ineffective by a corrupt culture of greed, self-importance, scientific misconduct, and outright fraud. Because, while the government worked to prevent the worst, it was also helping to create chaos and contagion by funding and facilitating gain of function (GOF) research.

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Commentary: The Culprits Responsible for This Mess

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Donald Trump Joe Biden

Now that Biden is toast, Trump has a real fight on his hands. Who’s to blame? Clearly, there are incompetents in both campaigns—which doesn’t bode well for America’s fight against an insurgent Russia and Communist China (and Iran and North Korea), possibly in World War III.

One asks in amazement, whose crazy, unbelievably stupid idea was it to have Biden and Trump debate in June? In time, we may find out. But for now, we can only speculate.

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Vance Channels ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ with RNC Speech, Giving Voice to Small Town America

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JD Vance

Ohio GOP Sen. JD Vance on Wednesday recalled his childhood and the downturn of small town America as he grew up, pointing the finger at President Joe Biden and other career politicians in Washington.

Speaking at the Republican National Convention, the Hillbilly Elegy author spoke to the fading prospects for pursuing the American Dream and insisted that former President Donald Trump would give voice to American workers whom he said Washington had neglected.

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Former U.S. Ambassador Carla Sands Discusses Trump Era Talks on Greenland Acquisition

Kaitlin Housler
Carla Sands

Carla Sands, former U.S. ambassador to Denmark during the Trump administration, confirmed during an exclusive interview with The Tennessee Star’s CEO and Editor-in-Chief Michael Patrick Leahy that she was involved in the talks during the Trump administration for the U.S. to purchase the territory of Greenland, explaining how such a move would be a valuable American security interest.

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Commentary: The Biden Titanic

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Joe Biden

Joe Biden’s escalating dementia and the long media-political conspiracy to hide his senility from the public are the least of the Democrats’ current problems.

Biden’s track record as president may be more concerning than his cognitive decline. He has literally destroyed the U.S. border, deliberately allowing the entry of more than 10 million illegal aliens. His callous handlers’ agenda was to import abjectly poor constituencies in need of vast government services without regard for the current struggles of a battered American middle class and poor.

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Commentary: The Emerging Trump Coalition

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Donald J. Trump

Will Hispanics and young voters help propel former President Donald Trump to a second term in the White House? New polling suggests so, strongly.

But first some background on the larger macro shifts in the electorate and party identification: Bigger picture, the populist-nationalist revolt continues to reshape politics in America in ways that are systemic and, likely, generational. This political tectonic shift is transforming the Republican Party into a party of workers, claiming whole demographic groups that were formerly considered the political provenance of the Democrats.

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Four Years Later, CDC Documents on COVID-19’s Origin in China Emerge as Oversight Wanes

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Newly released documents from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reveal early evidence and analysis four years ago in which U.S. government officials indicated that COVID-19 originated in Wuhan, China.

These findings in the CDC documents obtained by The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, dating from about six months after the disease’s initial outbreak, are coming to light only now because of the government’s repeated delays in releasing relevant documents through the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

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‘There Is Always a Way’: Black Market Network Evading Biden Admin Sanctions to Deliver High-Tech Chips to China

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High tech computer processing chip

A black market network is evading Biden administration sanctions and delivering high-tech chips to China, according to a Wall Street Journal investigation released Wednesday.

Advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip systems are highly prized by China in the country’s ongoing race to rival the American technology industry, and the Biden administration has imposed sanctions and export controls to prevent Beijing from getting its hands on them. Chinese companies and organizations are still obtaining these chips — specifically Nvidia AI chips — through a black market network made up of buyers and sellers spanning multiple countries, according to a WSJ investigation of records of the distributors involved.

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China Expands Its Surveillance Capabilities in America’s Backyard, Report Finds

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Xi Jinping

China’s surveillance efforts off the coast of America’s shores are expanding, according to a new report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on Monday.

China has been closely collaborating with Cuba — located just about 200 miles off the coast of Florida — to expand its military and intelligence presence on the island since at least 2019. Satellite imagery reviewed by CSIS appears to show that Cuba is building on its existing infrastructure in the region and now has multiple signal intelligence (SIGINT) facilities on the island, furthering concerns that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is attempting surveillance efforts inside the U.S., according to The Wall Street Journal.

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Pentagon Doesn’t Know If It Funds Dangerous Biological Research in China, New Audit Reveals

Just the News
Medical research lab

Despite years of warnings that China operates an illicit biological weapons program, the U.S. military remains unable to determine whether it sends American tax dollars to Beijing for research that could make pathogens more dangerous or deadly, the Pentagon’s chief watchdog declared in a stunning new warning to policymakers.

“The DoD did not track funding at the level of detail necessary to determine whether the DoD provided funding to Chinese research laboratories or other foreign countries for research related to enhancement of pathogens of pandemic potential,” the Pentagon inspector general concluded in a report released this month.

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‘Incompetence’: Pentagon Doesn’t Know How Much Money It Sent to Chinese Entities for Risky Virus Research

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Science Lab

The Department of Defense (DOD) does not know how much money it directly or indirectly sent to Chinese entities to conduct research on viruses with pandemic potential, according to a new report by the DOD’s Office of Inspector General (OIG).

The OIG’s report found that DOD has supplied Chinese entities — whether directly or indirectly via subgrants — with taxpayer cash to research pathogens and the enhancement thereof, but the exact figure is unknown because of “limitations” in the DOD’s internal tracking system. Government funding for such research in China has come under scrutiny since the coronavirus pandemic, which multiple government entities believe started when an engineered virus leaked from a Chinese laboratory that was hosting U.S. government-backed gain-of-function research.

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China Lands on the Far Side of the Moon in Historic Mission

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China Moon Landing

by Madeleine Hubbard   China on Sunday landed an unmanned spacecraft on the far side of the moon in a landmark mission to retrieve what is expected to be the first ever rock and soil samples from the dark lunar hemisphere. The Chang’e-6 craft, which is equipped with its own launcher, landed in a large impact crater before 6:30 a.m. Beijing time, China’s state-run Xinhua news agency reported. The mission “involves many engineering innovations, high risks and great difficulty,” the China National Space Administration said, as translated. The craft will collect samples by drilling into rocks and soil on the moon and taking samples from the lunar surface. “Landing on the far side of the moon is very difficult because you don’t have line-of-sight communications, you’re relying on a lot of links in the chain to control what is going on, or you have to automate what is going on,” said Neil Melville-Kenney, according to Reuters. Melville-Kenney, a technical officer at the European Space Agency, is working with China on one of the Chang’e-6 payloads. The accomplishment is a leap for China in the lunar space race as many countries, including the United States, are hoping to use lunar minerals for long-term astronaut missions within…

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Commentary: It Seems That No One Wants to End the Ukraine War Except for Trump

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Ukraine Army

Next month, on June 15 and 16, a high-level peace conference will be held in Bürgenstock, Switzerland, at the request of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on achieving peace in Ukraine. 70 to 90 countries reportedly will be represented. Some heads of state will attend, including French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

However, there will be some notable absences—Russia and China. President Biden does not plan to attend and will send junior officials to the conference.

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Commentary: China’s Land Purchases in U.S. Spark Outcry for Federal Solution

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Smithfield Foods factory farm

Over the past two years, nearly half the states in America acted to scrutinize purchases of land linked to China and other foreign adversaries. Concerns focus primarily on national security threats from China, and they’re well-founded.

The federal government has no idea how much real estate Chinese entities own in the United States. The U.S. Department of Agriculture legally is required to track foreign ownership of agricultural land, but underestimates Chinese ownership by at least 50 percent.

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Commentary: Building the Global Nuclear Energy Order Book

RealClearWire
Power Plant

The outlook for nuclear power is bright on the world stage. Global demand for clean nuclear energy is higher than we have ever seen. The U.S. and 20 allied nations pledged to triple global nuclear energy capacity by 2050 at COP28, and a multinational survey reaffirmed last year — the world wants new nuclear. 

In Washington, D.C., bipartisan support for nuclear energy has never been greater. Propelled by the House passing the ADVANCE Act 393-13 this month and momentum for passage in the Senate, Congress deserves some credit this year for working to help speed up the deployment of next-generation reactors, fueling hope for an American future powered by clean energy. 

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Tariff Proponents Say U.S. Needs Trade Fairness, but Critics Warn Costs of American Goods Will Rise

Just the News
Construction site

President Joe Biden held a press conference Tuesday extolling the tariffs on Chinese products — including steel, aluminum, electric vehicles, solar panels and semiconductors — he is rolling out. The president argued that China aggressively subsidizes the products America imports, which makes it difficult for U.S. businesses to compete.

“Back in 2000, when cheap steel from China began to flood the market, U.S. steel towns across Pennsylvania and Ohio were hit hard,” Biden said.

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Biden Jacks Up Tariffs on Chinese Electric Vehicles, Critical Minerals

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BYD Chinese electric car

The Biden administration on Tuesday formally announced significant increases in tariffs targeting imports of electric vehicles (EVs) and other green energy technology from China.

The strengthened tariffs are designed to make it harder for cheaper Chinese green products, like electric vehicles, to flood the U.S. market and displace American companies, the White House said in its official announcement. Beyond EVs and critical minerals, the administration is also increasing tariffs on Chinese steel, computer chips, EV batteries and certain solar components.

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Former DEA Official Warns China is Bringing Its Own Pesticides into U.S. and has Moved Past Fentanyl

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Derek Maltz Sr

Former DEA Special Operations Director Derek Maltz highlighted how strategic China is when it comes to attacking other countries, and claimed that the opioid crisis facing the U.S. is largely because of China and its connections with Mexican drug cartels that sneak it across the U.S. border.

A former Drug Enforcement Administration official warned about the dangers of China on Monday, claiming the foreign country is bringing its own pesticides into the United States, and that it has expanded past the fentanyl, to a new opioid called “nitazenes.”

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Commentary: China’s Land Grab

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Farmland

At both the federal and state levels, elected leaders are paying more attention to national security threats stemming from Chinese-owned real estate in the United States.

The totality of Chinese-owned real estate in the United States remains unknown and, under current law, is unknowable. For agricultural land, Chinese-owned acreage reportedly only constitutes a small share of the United States’ total, but has increased rapidly in recent years, suggesting a growing threat that would best be managed now before it turns into a significant problem.

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U.S. Fails to Counter Threat of Chinese Land Ownership, Report Finds

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Tractor towing hay on a farm

The United States government is not appropriately addressing the threat posed by growing Chinese ownership of American land, according to a report released by the Heritage Foundation Thursday.

The federal government is woefully ill-equipped to track Chinese-owned real estate in the country, despite the serious threat these Chinese Communist Party-affiliated entities can pose to critical U.S. infrastructure, according to the report. The report calls on federal and state leaders to take action, such as increasing transparency and conducting more critical reviews of land purchases.

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Emails Show Facebook Chafed at Biden White House Pressure to Suppress COVID-19 Lab Leak Story

Just the News
Facebook on a smartphone

The preliminary staff report is the result of a months-long investigation into the alleged coercion, where President Joe Biden’s White House reportedly pushed social media platforms such as Facebook, Amazon, and YouTube, to censor books, videos, and posts.

Emails released Wednesday show Facebook officials chafed at the Biden White House pressure campaign to censor reports that the COVID-19 pandemic came from a lab leak in China.

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Fresh Revelations About TikTok Come as Senate Considers the Divestment Bill

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TikTok app in front of Chinese flag

Pressure is mounting in Washington to finally pass a bill requiring TikTok’s China-based parent company to divest of the popular social media app amid new revelations that the company is much closer to the Chinese government than it has previously claimed.

Now, the House has passed a comprehensive foreign aid package which included a revised TikTok divestment bill. This makes it more likely to become law sooner rather than later as the Senate is set to consider the legislation.

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Apple Cooperates with Chinese Censorship Demands, Removes Popular Messaging Apps from Store

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App Store

Tech behemoth Apple complied with an order from the Chinese government to remove popular messaging apps from the company’s app store in the country, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

Apple removed messaging platforms WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram, as well as social media app Threads, from its Chinese App Store in compliance with an order from the Cyberspace Administration of China, which cited national security concerns as the reason for the restrictions, according to the WSJ. China’s order follows a heated debate among U.S. lawmakers over whether to place restrictions on the Chinese Communist Party-linked app TikTok, with some parties calling for the app to either be sold to a non-Chinese entity or be banned in the U.S.

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Chinese Military Companies Have Spent over $24 Million Lobbying the U.S. Government in Recent Years

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Chinese Military

Entities the Pentagon classifies as “Chinese military companies” have spent more than $24 million lobbying the U.S. government since 2020, a Daily Caller News Foundation review of lobbying disclosures found.

Some of the biggest spenders on lobbying included corporations directly tied to human rights abuses and Chinese military research, like telecom giant Huawei, facial recognition software developer Megvii and genomics company BGI Shenzhen. Chinese military corporations cast a wide net across the American government, lobbying the House, Senate and various parts of the executive branch, including the office of the president, often setting their sights on proposed policies that would impact their U.S. operations, according to a DCNF review of congressional disclosures and legislative records.

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Commentary: Free Traders Are Wrong – It’s Time to Try Trade a New Way

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A recent Daily Mail poll showed 54 percent of voters support Trump’s proposal to put 10 percent tariffs on most imports, from China or not. This is sacrilege to American free traders.

The free-trade globalization crowd – who saw the 80s up to early 2000s as their heyday– believe in a world that does not exist the way they say it does on paper. Do you think Germany allows Ford Mustang’s into their country tariff free? EU charges Ford a 10 percent tariff, four times what we charge their automakers.

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House Republicans Raise Alarm over China’s Potential Use of U.S. Funds in Military Research

Just the News
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers

House Republicans are urging the Government Accountability Office, Congress’s nonpartisan watchdog, to investigate what safeguards the National Institutes of Health has in place to ensure China does not use research funds to bolster its military or unethically use humans in research studies.

“Recent reports have raised concerns about the NIH’s ability to screen for national security issues,” the Republicans, led by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Wa., wrote in a letter Tuesday to Government Accountability Office Comptroller Gene Dodaro.

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Commentary: With ‘Friends’ Like Obrador, Enemies Like Putin, Xi, Kim Jong are Old News

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President AMLO of Mexico

In a recent 60 Minutes interview, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador—who prefers to be known as AMLO for short—issued to the Biden administration blackmail demands that sounded more like existential threats.

AMLO warned the U.S. that the current influx of some 10 million illegal aliens through the southern border will most certainly continue—unless America agrees to his ultimatums.

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Commentary: The Biden EV Plan Needs American Mining

RealClearWire
Mining Work

The Biden administration has just supercharged the electric vehicle (EV) revolution. With its finalized tailpipe emissions rule, the administration expects that by 2032 70% of new U.S. car sales will be electric.

This lightning-fast transformation of the nation’s car fleet faces myriad challenges but perhaps none are greater than sourcing the minerals needed for millions of EVs and addressing the nation’s alarming reliance on Chinese-controlled mineral supply chains.  

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Kansas Lawmakers Pass Bill Banning Chinese Land Purchases Near Military Sites After DCNF Investigation

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Jake LaTurner in front of farm land (composite image)

The Kansas House of Representatives passed a bill Wednesday preventing foreign adversaries from buying up land near sensitive military sites following a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation.

In an 84-39 vote, the Kansas House passed SB172, which prevents firms and entities linked to China and other countries identified as foreign adversaries from purchasing agricultural land within 150 miles of a military installation. The bill’s passage follows on the heels of a DCNF investigation that discovered the parent company of a firm that planned to buy land in Kansas is extensively tied to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The DCNF’s investigation was based on research conducted by The Heritage Foundation Oversight Project and Heritage Action.

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U.S. to Announce Major Shakeup in Military Ties with Japan as China Threat Looms

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Navy Ships

The U.S. and Japan will announce a historic upgrade to security ties, including a collaborative military command, next month as the two former adversaries move closer together in determination to counter China, according to media reports published Monday.

Chief among the changes under consideration involves sending a four-star general, the highest peacetime rank, to head U.S. Forces Japan (USFJ) and jointly oversee a military command with Japan for planning and exercises, Reuters reported, citing two sources familiar with the discussions. Tokyo also hopes to establish a new Japanese Self Defense Forces (SDF) headquarters, whose head will serve as the Japanese counterpart to the American four-star, by March of 2025, the sources said.

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Impeachment Probe Dramatically Pivots to Questions of CIA, DOJ Coverup in Hunter Biden Case

Just the News

After a bombastic hearing with Hunter Biden’s business partners, House impeachment investigators are dramatically pivoting to allegations of a possible coverup in the first son’s criminal tax case as the inquiry transitions to a new phase.

On Thursday, the House Judiciary Committee sued the Justice Department seeking to force two attorneys there to comply with subpoenas and testify about whether there was any political interference in Hunter Biden’s tax prosecution.

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Safeguarding Food and National Security, Georgia Advances Bill to Ban Foreign Adversaries from Purchasing Land

Debra McClure
Georgia Farmland Bill

A bill placing sharp limits on the foreign ownership of Georgia farmland passed the State House by a vote of 97-67 Thursday. SB 420 would restrict certain nonresidents and business entities from purchasing farmland or land near military bases in Georgia. The bill now goes back to the Stae Senate for further consideration.

The bill specifies that certain individuals and business entities from a country “designated as a foreign adversary by the United States” would not be permitted to acquire “agricultural land or land within a ten-mile radius of any military base, military installation, or military airport.”

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Firm Tied to China’s Military Industrial Complex Plans to Roll Out Massive Battery Chemical Plants in U.S.

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Shenzhen Capchem Technology plant floor

The Chinese manufacturer of chemicals for electric vehicle batteries planning to build two U.S. factories has long-standing ties to China’s military industrial complex, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation found.

Capchem Technology USA, the wholly-owned subsidiary of China-based Shenzhen Capchem Technology (Capchem), plans to build factories in both Ohio and Louisiana that would produce components for electric vehicle batteries. Chinese government documents reveal the Chinese chemical giant was selected over a decade ago to conduct aerospace research for China’s military industrial complex as part of a program overseen by a blacklisted Chinese government agency.

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Commentary: If H.R. 7521 Was Only About TikTok, the Bill Would Only Apply to TikTok

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TikTok Social Media

“The TikTok bill gives Biden the power to ban websites & apps run by ‘a person subject to the direction or control of a foreign person or entity.’ Given that Biden routinely smears political opponents as being under the control of Putin, the danger should be obvious.”

That was entrepreneur David Sacks on X (formerly Twitter) on March 13 noting the fact that H.R. 7521, which has easily passed the House and is now on a fast track in the U.S Senate will give the President, right now it’s Joe Biden but also future presidents, can force divestiture of any website or application or else have it removed from hosting services if the President determines it is run by “a person subject to the direction or control of a foreign person or entity” including Russia, China, North Korea or Iran.

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Commentary: Biden Administration Abuses U.S. Intelligence Community to Undermine Netanyahu’s Leadership

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President Joe Biden and Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Something reprehensible happened this week during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s annual worldwide threats report. In addition to discussing threats to our country from China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and terrorist groups, the report questioned the leadership of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and said large protests in Israel demanding his resignation could drive him from power.

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Elon Musk Defends Trump and Slams Establishment Media for Taking Quote Out of Context

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Donald Trump hold a rally in Ohio

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is defending former President Donald Trump on Sunday after multiple establishment media outlets ran headlines stating that the former president warned the U.S. would see a “bloodbath” if he is not reelected. 

Although Trump did use the word “bloodbath” during a speech in Ohio on Saturday, outlets such as NPR, Politico, The Hill, NBC News, The New York Times and others used the term in headlines without context. Musk said the headlines were “legacy media lies” and he made multiple posts Sunday criticizing their use of the term and stressing the need for context.  

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