M. Kaleo Manuel, who was deputy director of the Hawaii Commission on Water Resource Management, has been under scrutiny since local media reported that he delayed releasing water to firefighters who were battling last week's wildfires, which killed at least 111 people.

The West Maui Land Company alleged in an Aug. 10 letter to Manuel that his commission declined its request to divert streams to fill reservoirs until the wildfires worsened and caused significant "devastation." According to Honolulu Civil Beat, sources said Manuel was responsible for the delay. They said Manuel asked the company to consult with a local farmer about the impacts of diverting water before he would approve the request.

Manuel only released the water five hours after the request was made, wrote the West Maui Land Company, which operates three water providers on the island.

"We watched the devastation around us without the ability to help," the company said in the letter. "We anxiously awaited the morning knowing that we could have made more water available to MFD if our request had been immediately approved."

Hawaii's Department of Land and Natural Resources said Wednesday that Manuel was transferred to another position within the department. The department urged the public to reserve judgment on Manuel "until all the facts are known."

Critics of Manuel's handling of the wildfires have drawn attention to a November 2022 livestream hosted by the University of Hawaii in which he described water as a sacred tool for social justice.

"My motto is always like, 'Let water connect us and not divide us,'" Manuel said in a resurfaced clip. "We can share it, but it requires true conversations about equity."

"We've become used to looking at water as something which we use and not necessarily something that we revere," Manuel added.

Manuel was a 2019 "leader" at the Obama Foundation. His bio on the foundation's website says he believes "ancient wisdom and traditional ecological knowledge of native peoples will help save the Earth."

Other Hawaii officials and agencies have also faced scrutiny over the wildfires. Herman Andaya, the chief of the Maui Emergency Management Agency, had no background in disaster response, CBS News reported. Hawaii's electricity provider, Hawaiian Electric, has been sued over allegations that its power lines started the inferno. According to the Wall Street Journal, the company years ago committed to invest in reducing the fire risk posed by its power lines, but made little progress. Instead, the Journal reported, Hawaiian Electric was focused on its goal of "procuring renewable energy."

The post FLASHBACK: Hawaii Official Who Allegedly Withheld Water From Firefighters Says ‘Equity’ Comes First appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

• The Washington Free Beacon reported in October 2022 that your wife was begging Rick Wilson to come over and pleasure her.

What he's saying: Wilson, 59, spends nearly every minute of every day on the social networking website formerly known as Twitter. He continues to respond to his male critics, usually to inform them he is sleeping with their wives.

Crucial context: The Lincoln Project is a liberal super PAC best known for losing elections and sheltering a sex predator.

Bottom line: If you have ever criticized Rick Wilson or the Lincoln Project, chances are Rick Wilson is banging your wife. Sorry.

Generational Wealth: Lincoln Project Hires Cofounder's Son

The post UPDATE: We Regret To Inform You That Lincoln Project Founder Rick Wilson Is Still Banging Your Wife appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

TikTok, owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance and used by tens of millions of Americans, has faced calls from U.S. lawmakers for a nationwide ban over concerns about possible Chinese government influence.

Some 47 percent of respondents to the two-day poll, which concluded on Tuesday, said they at least somewhat supported "banning the social media application, TikTok, from use in the United States," while 36 percent opposed a ban and 17 percent said they didn't know.

Fifty-eight percent of Republicans favored a ban, compared to 47 percent of Democrats, the poll showed.

The news comes as New York City on Wednesday banned TikTok from government devices over security concerns.

The survey also revealed deep worries among Americans about China's global influence at a time when U.S.-China relations have fallen to their lowest point in decades.

The online Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted nationwide, collecting responses from 1,005 adults, including 443 Democrats and 346 Republicans. It had a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of about 4 percentage points in either direction.

FBI director Christopher Wray said in March that China's government could use TikTok to control software on millions of devices and drive narratives to divide Americans, adding that the app "screams" of national security concerns.

Other top U.S. intelligence officials, including CIA director William Burns, also have said TikTok poses a threat.

TikTok said in a statement that more than 150 million Americans, including 5 million U.S. businesses, actively use TikTok to earn a living, engage in the classroom, and find community.

"We've taken unprecedented actions to safeguard protected U.S. user data, and we will continue working to build a safe, secure, and inclusive platform to ensure the positive experience of our users in every corner of the country," a TikTok spokesperson said.

Efforts to give the Biden administration new powers to ban TikTok have stalled in Congress. Last month U.S. lawmakers said they were considering changes to address concerns about the bill.

Still, the issue could become a focus for Republicans in the 2024 U.S. presidential campaign, with some candidates backing a TikTok ban.

Former president Donald Trump in 2020 sought to bar new downloads of TikTok but a series of court decisions blocked the ban from taking effect.

Florida governor and presidential candidate Ron DeSantis has said he favors some form of national ban on the app.

(Reporting by Michael Martina, David Shephardson and Jason Lange; Editing by Don Durfee, Sharon Singleton and David Gregorio)

The post Nearly Half of Americans Want TikTok Banned, Poll Shows appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

The Suez Rajan has been stuck near Galveston about 50 miles from Houston since May 30, as shipping companies fear any vessel unloading it would lead other oil buyers to shun their ships on future voyages. The United States seized the tanker in a sanctions enforcement operation.

The delay in discharging the cargo is also partly out of fear of repercussions from Iran. A senior commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards' navy said last month Iran would retaliate against any oil company unloading Iranian oil from a seized tanker.

Senators Joni Ernst, a Republican, and Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, and other lawmakers in the Senate and U.S. House said in the letter to Biden and senior administration officials that enforcement of petroleum sanctions will become irrelevant if American citizens and companies involved constantly live in fear of Iranian retaliation.

"It is imperative that the Administration make clear that Iran and designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations cannot prevent our government from carrying out legitimate law enforcement operations," the lawmakers said in the letter sent late on Tuesday and seen by Reuters.

They asked the administration for a briefing on the progress of the transfer of the seized oil from the Suez Rajan to U.S. custody.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The saga of the tanker is occurring as Washington and Tehran seek a deal to free five detained U.S. citizens in exchange for releasing $6 billion in Iranian funds frozen in South Korea. A deal would remove a major irritant between Washington and Tehran, which are at odds on issues from the Iranian nuclear program to Tehran's support for regional Shi'ite militias.

The lawmakers estimated the value of the oil on the 800,000 barrel tanker to be $56 million. U.S. seizures of Iranian oil contribute money to the U.S. Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund, which compensates victims of attacks. A fund official has determined there are insufficient assets for a round of payments next year to the nearly 16,000 Americans.

(Reporting by Timothy Gardner; editing by Grant McCool)

The post Lawmakers Urge Biden To End Delay in Offloading Seized Iranian Oil appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

"We’re at grave risk of another Trump presidency," Rep. Dean Phillips (D., Minn.) told the Washington Post in an interview this week, saying Biden should "pass the torch, open the stage."

Phillips has been vocal for months about what most Democrats have hesitated to say publicly: Biden's age and poor polling suggest he should not seek reelection. Phillips has said Biden shouldn't run since last year.

"I’m doing this to prevent a return of Donald Trump to the White House," Phillips said this week.

Phillips suggested in July that he is considering a run against Biden for the nomination.

He told the New York Times that he has "been overwhelmed with outreach and encouragement" and was going to make a decision.

While Phillips has made no announcement regarding his plans for 2024, he is sticking to his call for Biden to stand down.

"I just felt compelled to raise my voice in the face of what I consider to be an unwillingness to confront the truth right now," Phillips told the Post. 

Phillips pointed to Biden's age, the highest of any president in history, as a concern.

"God forbid the president has a health episode or something happens in the middle of a primary," Phillips said.

A Reuters poll this month showed many voters who chose Biden in 2020 might not vote for him again.

Nineteen percent of Biden's 2020 voters who answered the poll said they weren't sure who they would select or they would pick someone other than Biden or Trump. Six percent of Biden 2020 supporters said they will pick Trump.

The Biden campaign has spent months focusing on the president's economic policies, or as the White House calls them, "Bidenomics," to sway voters. But the number of Americans who approve of Biden's handling of the economy isn't shifting. Just 36 percent of voters approve of Biden's handling of the economy, lower than the 42 percent who approve of his overall job performance, according to new polling from the Associated Press.

The post House Dem Says Biden Running in 2024 Would Mean a 'Return of Donald Trump to the White House' appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

"Mike, I just want you to be encouraged," Pence said in a Southern drawl reminiscent of former president George W. Bush. "I'd like you to see me as an encourager."

Pence spoke Wednesday to a Republican group at the National Conference of State Legislatures summit where he told the story of meeting with Bush in the Oval Office when he was a U.S. congressman.

"I'd like you to leave here with some encouragement," Pence said, in an impression of Bush during the meeting, to the audience's laughs.

Also at the event Pence answered a question on how he will face off against former president Donald Trump, who shared the ticket with Pence in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.

"I’ve debated Donald Trump a thousand times," Pence said. "Just not in front of the cameras."

Staffers for Pence said they have been "waiting for this for a while," referring to Pence directly debating Trump on stage. It is unclear whether Trump plans to attend Wednesday's GOP debate in Milwaukee.

The post WATCH: Mike Pence Does a George W. Bush Impression appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

The Assembly's Appropriations Committee on Wednesday moved the bill to "the suspense file," which Sacramento's CapRadio describes as a parliamentary procedure that allows some bills to "be killed without public debate."

Former state senator Melissa Melendez (R.) had an even starker definition, describing the procedure as "legislative purgatory."

To get out of the suspense file, the bill will have to pass a closed-door hearing with high-ranking legislators. "Behind closed doors … the appropriations chair—and, to some extent, the top leaders in each legislative chamber—have final say on which bills pass and which ones are held," according to a former lawmaker who spoke to CapRadio.

The bill, which Republican state senator Shannon Grove introduced last year, would "classify trafficking of children and teenagers younger than 18 years old as a serious felony on par with murder, arson, and rape," the Washington Free Beacon reported. While a bipartisan Senate majority passed the bill, six Democrats in July blocked it from advancing in the Assembly.

Facing intense political pushback, including from local media, those Democrats abruptly reversed their position two days later.

Now, the Appropriations Committee is saying the bill has a fiscal impact of over $150,000, prompting the suspense file process.

Grove had harsh words for those who would put a "price tag" on "a victim of human trafficking, especially a child."

"Selling a child to be raped over and over again is a crime so grotesque, immoral, and barbaric it should be prevented and stopped at any cost," she wrote in a press release.

California, Grove noted, "has the unfortunate distinction of being one of the top states for human trafficking in the United States. Thousands of people, many of them minors, are forced into sexual and labor exploitation each year."

The post California Democrats Fail To Advance Bill That Would Make Child Trafficking a Serious Crime appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stopped short of ruling that the drug must be pulled off the market altogether, as a lower court had done.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice said that the Biden administration will appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, supports abortion rights and last year ordered the federal health agency to expand access to mifepristone.

The ruling will not take effect until the Supreme Court reviews it, which could occur in its upcoming term from October to June.

The three-judge 5th Circuit panel was reviewing an order in April by U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo, Texas. While it was a preliminary ruling that applied while the case was pending, Kacsmaryk said he was ultimately likely to make it permanent.

The ruling stems from a lawsuit brought by four anti-abortion groups headed by the recently formed Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine and four anti-abortion doctors who sued in November.

They contend the FDA used an improper process when it approved mifepristone in 2000 and did not adequately consider the drug's safety when used by minors.

"The 5th Circuit rightly required the FDA to do its job and restore crucial safeguards for women and girls, including ending illegal mail-order abortions," Erin Hawley of Alliance Defending Freedom, a lawyer for the anti-abortion groups challenging the pill's approval, said in a statement.

That view was echoed by Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, which said in a statement the FDA had been "reckless."

Alexis McGill Johnson, president of abortion rights group Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said the decision "makes it clear that mifepristone's approval is very much still at risk, as is the FDA's independence."

GenBioPro Inc, which sells a generic version of mifepristone, said in a statement from CEO Evan Masingill: "We remain concerned about extremists and special interests using the courts in an attempt to undermine science and access to evidence-based medication, as well as attempts to undermine the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s regulatory authority."

CONSERVATIVE JUDGES

All three judges on the panel are staunchly conservative, with a history of opposing abortion rights. One of them, Circuit Judge James Ho, said he would have gone further and pulled mifepristone off the market, but the other two judges said the lawsuit came too late to challenge the original 2000 approval.

Instead, the majority of the panel rolled back FDA actions that had made the drug easier to access in recent years.

Those included its decision in 2021 to allow the drug to be prescribed by telemedicine and sent by mail, instead of requiring an in-person doctor visit. The court also reversed the agency's 2016 decision to allow mifepristone to be used to 10 weeks of pregnancy, up from seven.

Circuit Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod wrote in the majority opinion that those steps "were taken without sufficient consideration of the effects those changes would have on patients."

The U.S. Supreme Court last year overturned its landmark Roe v. Wade ruling that had legalized abortion nationwide.

Since then, at least 15 of the 50 states have banned abortion outright while many others prohibit it after a certain length of pregnancy, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights.

Mifepristone is part of a two-drug regimen with misoprostol for medication abortions, which account for more than half of U.S. abortions.

Numerous medical studies and many years of real-world use have concluded that the drug is safe and effective.

Major medical associations, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Medical Association, have said that pulling mifepristone off the market would harm patients by forcing them to undergo more invasive surgical abortions.

(Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York; Additional reporting by Patrick Wingrove in New York, Nate Raymond in Boston, Sharon Bernstein in Sacramento, California and Trevor Hunnicutt in Washington; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

The post Court Strikes Down FDA Approval of Mail-Order Abortion Pills appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

• Trump was charged with violating Georgia's version of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statute.

• The federal RICO statute has been used to convict mafia bosses and other organized crime figures. Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani utilized the tactic while serving as a federal prosecutor in the 1980s.

• Georgia's RICO statute is not the same as the federal statute. In 2015, for example, it was used to convict three court reporters for altering the margins on court transcripts to increase the number of pages—and the fees they charged attorneys and taxpayers for copies.

What happened next: The mainstream media wet themselves. Liberal journalists seized on the RICO indictment in Georgia, enthusiastically comparing Trump to the "mobsters and gangsters" previously convicted under the federal statute.

• They keep repeatedly making the false claim that Trump, if convicted under RICO, would have to serve a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison. Georgia state law gives judges broad discretion to impose a sentence of probation rather than prison time.

• The lib journos were blindly repeating a false assertion (regarding the minimum five-year sentence) made by Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis, the ambitious politician who unveiled the sprawling indictment against Trump.

• Willis was being either incompetent or dishonest.

The post WATCH: Media Give Donald Trump the Tony Soprano Treatment appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

"I think, you know, the truth matters," Clinton said.

The failed presidential candidate's show of concern about the questioning of election outcomes marks a departure from her past remarks about Republican electoral victories.

A Washington Free Beacon review of the historical record reveals Clinton and other prominent Democrats have questioned the legitimacy of nearly every significant Republican win in the past two decades.

"If she had a fair election, she already would have won," Clinton said in 2018 after Democrat Stacey Abrams lost the Georgia gubernatorial race to Republican Brian Kemp.

After her 2016 loss to Donald Trump in the presidential election, Clinton repeatedly called Trump an "illegitimate president."

Democrats' questioning of elections goes as far back as the 2000 presidential election, which Clinton, along with Joe Biden and Terry McAuliffe, painted as stolen by the Supreme Court.

The post FLASHBACK: When Democrats Were Cool With Calling Elections 'Stolen' appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

• Tara Setmayer, the Lincoln Project senior adviser who previously worked for a notorious Putin apologist, promoted the absurdly expensive products on social media.

• Indictmints boast fun catch phrases such as "Seditiously Delicious," "Arrestingly Refreshing," and "Freshen Your Breath With Justice." How humorous!

What they're saying: "Today is a great day to try my new 'Georgia Griftmints' ," Setmayer wrote on Tuesday.

• "Whaaat???? Lemme order some of these!!!" wrote @PoliticalDIVA25 on the social networking website formerly known as Twitter.

• "Brilliant!" observed @sports4mom2.

• "," wrote @MB7735124373790.

• "Make them for the Lincoln Project site. I bet they would sell out in a hot minute," @plzgetvaxed suggested.

By the numbers: Indictmints come in six flavors—"Icy Insurrectmint," "Stolen Documints," "Georgia Griftmints," "Stormy Hushmints," "Settlemints," and "Stormy Peppermint."

• Most flavors cost $5.99 per tin, while some are on "sale" for $5.29. The tins appear to be slightly smaller than a tin of Altoids, according to a Washington Free Beacon analysis.

• Indictmints customers can get free shipping on orders of $75 or more. What a bargain!

Crucial context: A tin of Altoids costs $2.89 at Target.

Bottom line: Grifters are going to grift.

The post Grifters Gonna Grift: Lincoln Project Adviser Sells Overpriced Trump-Themed Mints to Depressed Liberal Wine Moms appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

The group’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, which accredits all law schools in the United States, proposed the rule after hundreds of students at Stanford Law School shouted down a sitting federal judge in March, prompting House Republicans to call on the bar association to investigate the school. Those events were "in the background" of the draft requirement, according to an August 2 memo from the bar association. Yale Law School and the University of California Hastings Law School experienced similar disruptions in 2022, each instigated by progressive students upset about a conservative speaker.

The accreditation standard reads as a direct response to those incidents. Law schools must "protect the rights of faculty, students, and staff to communicate ideas that may be controversial or unpopular," the draft requirement states, including through public demonstrations. At the same time, the standard would prohibit protests that stifle "free expression by preventing or substantially interfering with the carrying out of law school functions or approved activities."

The proposal comes amid accusations that the bar association has stifled free speech through its accreditation process. The group drew criticism last year when it required all law schools to instruct students that they have a duty to eliminate racism, a move that many law professors, including 10 at Yale, said would imperil academic freedom and result in compelled speech. It also considered requiring law schools to "diversify" their student bodies—only to axe the proposal a month before the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the case that outlawed race-based college admissions.

The American Bar Association declined to comment.

Though the group has long required law schools to have policies protecting academic freedom, it has offered few specifics on what those policies should entail. As disruptive protests become increasingly common on law school campuses, experts say the proposal would fill an important gap.

"The current standard doesn’t provide any substance," Paul Lannon, an attorney at Holland & Knight who specializes in education law, told ABA Journal, which is published by the American Bar Association. "This kind of guidance from the ABA is long overdue."

The post American Bar Association Considers Crackdown On ‘Disruptive Conduct’ In Wake of Stanford Shout Down appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Just 36 percent of voters approve of Biden's handling of the economy, lower than the 42 percent who approve of his overall job performance, according to new polling from the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Those numbers have changed little in the last year and a half, the AP reported. Two months ago, when Biden first outlined his "Bidenomics" vision, 34 percent of voters said they approve of his economic record.

Another poll conducted in recent weeks by CNN found that half of all voters believe the economy is going to get worse.

Fifty-one percent of voters believe the economy is in a downturn and will get worse, according to the poll. Just 20 percent say the economy is improving, and 28 percent say it has stabilized.

The same poll found that voters trust congressional Republicans more than Biden to handle the important issues of the day, 54 percent to 45 percent.

The continued poor polling on the economy comes despite Biden's frequent messaging on his policies.

"Today, the U.S. has had the highest economic growth among the world's leading economies since the pandemic," Biden said during a June speech on his economic policies. "We've added over 13 million jobs, more jobs in two years than any president has added in a four-year term.​ And, folks, that's no accident. That's Bidenomics in action."

Biden said "Bidenomics," which he hopes will resonate with voters ahead of his reelection bid next year, is about building "the economy from the middle out and the bottom up."

The White House released a fact sheet after the speech that said "Bidenomics" is "already delivering for the American people."

Fifty-five percent of experts still expect the United States will undergo a recession, and officials in a recent Federal Reserve meeting said there are "significant upside risks to inflation," which lessens hopes that interest rates will come down in the near future.

U.S. gas prices are at their highest in the last 10 months.

The post ‘Bidenomics’ Fails: No Change in Americans’ Disapproval of Biden Economic Policy, Poll Finds appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Democratic opposition researchers? Not so much. They have hit the ground running in an effort to collect damaging information on the would-be GOP candidate in what is certain to be one of the most competitive Senate races of the 2024 cycle.

One of those researchers, former 60 Minutes producer Marley Klaus Dowling, has set off both confusion and alarm bells among McCormick acquaintances, including current and former Bridgewater employees, leaving some with the false impression that she is a working journalist.

Klaus Dowling, herself a Democratic donor and the founder of TBD Research, which raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in the 2022 election cycle for research and strategic consulting, has appeared on these people's doorsteps—presenting herself, at various points, as a "fact-checker," according to one; as a researcher, according to another; and as a reporter, according to a third.

The DSCC has already shelled out $80,000 to the firm this year, indicating that the committee's opposition research efforts are well underway—and clearly focused on McCormick's candidacy, with researchers popping up in several different cities.

Bridgewater, the world's largest hedge fund, makes headlines on a daily basis. It is not unusual for the firm's employees to receive media inquiries, and at least one of the people contacted was left with the impression that Klaus Dowling was working on a story or book about the firm. More unusual, however, is for a researcher or reporter to materialize unannounced on employees' doorsteps.

"She identified herself as a fact-checker but was evasive on who she was fact-checking for," said one former Bridgewater employee. "She said she was just trying to get to know David McCormick." The former employee, who said she rarely worked directly with McCormick and never worked for him, told the Washington Free Beacon that she "made it clear to [Klaus Dowling] that I don't know David that well and I don't want to talk to anybody."

Klaus Dowling persisted in a manner that the former employee described as "aggressive."

"She tried to pick up packages on my doorstep and bring them in my house," this person said. "She started asking me questions: What was David like as a manager? Was I surprised he ran for office? Was I surprised he became so right-wing extremist [sic] and started kissing Trump's ass? She started asking about the culture at Bridgewater: 'Sounds like it was an abusive culture…'"

Though the mechanics of the business are rarely visible to the public, opposition research is a standard feature of political campaigns. In every campaign cycle, both major parties employ researchers to dig into the background of the opposing party's candidates, looking for potentially damaging information that can be pitched to the media, used in campaign advertisements, or deployed in debates.

But political operatives say misrepresentation is not just unethical but ultimately harmful to the achievement of the party's objectives.

"An operative should either enhance the committee's ability to elect 'our' candidates or they should be terminated," said Rob Collins, the former executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. "This is unethical behavior at best."

In another instance, Klaus Dowling appeared three times at the home of a second former Bridgewater employee, according to a source familiar with the situation, though the homeowner said on the first occasion that she was not interested in speaking with Klaus Dowling. A third said Klaus Dowling identified herself as a researcher and declined to leave a business card.

Neither Klaus Dowling nor the DSCC responded to a request for comment.

McCormick declined to comment.

The Democrats' embrace of aggressive tactics to extract compromising information on their political opponents comes at a time when the methods employed by opposition researchers are in the spotlight. A Puck News report in mid-July revealed the lengths to which Democratic operatives went to use opposition research to drive Peter Thiel—who had bankrolled the Republican Senate campaigns of Ohio's J.D. Vance and Arizona's Blake Masters—out of politics.

Like the effort to collect information on McCormick, reporter Theodore Schleifer detailed Democratic operative Jack Bury's efforts to "conduct dozens of interviews with people who might know Thiel" and to pay millions for dirt on him. At times, Schleifer wrote, people felt "cornered or misled" about the contours of the project.

Bury had extensive conversations with Thiel's ex-boyfriend, Jeff Thomas, who reportedly became so torn about participating in the project that he emotionally unraveled and in March jumped to his death from an apartment in a Miami high-rise.

Prior to founding TBD Research, Klaus Dowling served as director of communications and media for the nonprofit California Endowment and founded her own production company, Ghost Productions. She said on Twitter in February 2022 that she was changing career paths to "do what I can with the skills I have to protect democracy."

Should McCormick enter the race, the matchup will be expensive and closely watched, as Republicans look to take back the Senate majority. The Cook Political Report right now places the race in its "Lean Democrat" column, but with Democrats defending far more competitive seats than Republicans, the party is likely to face tough questions about where to spend money and where to pull back.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) has made clear that the Pennsylvania race is a priority, headlining a fundraiser for Casey earlier this year at the Harvard Club in New York City.

The post Democratic Opposition Researcher, a Former '60 Minutes' Producer, Masquerades as Journalist While Digging Dirt on Pennsylvania's David McCormick appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

The media have hardly questioned the reversal.

Then: Attorney General Merrick Garland in June scoffed at the idea that the lead prosecutor in the Biden probe needed special counsel powers, saying, "Weiss had, in fact, more authority than a special counsel would have had." The prosecutor, David Weiss, quickly agreed with Garland and denied whistleblowers' testimony that he had asked to be made a special counsel in the face of internal resistance to his probe of the president's son. That seemed to be good enough for the press.

CNN: "US Attorney Leading Hunter Biden Probe Refutes Whistleblowers’ Politicization Claims":

US Attorney David Weiss, who is overseeing the Hunter Biden criminal probe, says in a letter obtained by CNN that he did not ask to be named as a special counsel and was never refused authority to bring charges anywhere in the country, refuting two key allegations from IRS whistleblowers.

New York Times: "Prosecutor Rebuts IRS Official’s Account of Request in Hunter Biden Case":

In Monday’s letter—a follow-up to a less detailed response he sent to House Republicans in late June—Mr. Weiss backed up an earlier statement by Mr. Garland that he had been given full authority in the case.

Hill: "Hunter Biden Prosecutor Disputes GOP, IRS Whistleblower Claim":

Echoing earlier statements that he had total control over the investigation, Weiss’s Monday letter is his clearest language yet in pushing back on [IRS whistleblower Gary] Shapley’s testimony.

ABC News: "US Attorney David Weiss Says He Has Not Asked For Special Counsel Status in Hunter Biden Investigation":

The letter appears to bolster Garland's repeated assurances that he did not improperly seek to interfere in the Hunter Biden investigation, despite assertions from House Republicans who have taken steps toward initiating impeachment proceedings against Garland in recent weeks.

NBC News: "Prosecutor Who Made Hunter Biden Plea Deal Contradicts IRS Whistleblower, Says He Had OK to Bring Charges Anywhere in US":

Weiss’s new statement adds context to an assertion by whistleblower Gary Shapley, a former IRS criminal investigator, who told Republicans that Weiss spoke to the U.S. attorney’s offices in the District of Columbia and California about bringing charges, and that those offices were not supportive. Weiss and the Justice Department have not denied those discussions took place—but Weiss is now essentially saying that, if he believed those charges were warranted, he could have brought them.

MSNBC: "Trump-Appointed Prosecutor Contradicts GOP in Hunter Biden Case":

The more the U.S. attorney in the Hunter Biden case sets the record straight about his investigation, the more he tells Republicans what they don’t want to hear.

Now: Garland announced on Friday that he had elevated Weiss to special counsel after the prosecutor told him the powers were necessary to continue the Biden investigation. The media have sounded curiously incurious about the two men's apparent reversals of their earlier positions.

As special counsel, [Weiss] has authority to bring criminal charges related to his probe in any part of the country he wishes. Garland had said previously that Weiss already enjoyed that authority, but two IRS agents told Congress that Weiss was blocked from bringing charges in different judicial districts. Weiss has disputed the agents’ accounts and promised to testify to Congress himself.

So, exactly what changed is unclear. But we do know that the attorney general, Merrick Garland, said, David Weiss came to him, called him on the phone on Tuesday, and said he had entered a new stage of this investigation, and he believed it was important to appoint him as special counsel.

But so far, even the most dramatic contradictions in the case—like Weiss trying and failing to give Biden a sweetheart plea deal while the investigation was supposedly ongoing—have not been enough for the media to demand answers.

The post After DOJ's Reversal on Hunter Biden Special Counsel, the Media Still Suspect Nothing appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Princeton and Yale universities both announced Tuesday that Malley will join their staff while he is on extended leave from the State Department after his security clearance was yanked under mysterious circumstances. Neither school mentioned in their announcements that Malley is currently the focus of an FBI investigation.

At Princeton, Malley will work alongside former Iranian official Seyed Mousavian, a nuclear policy specialist at the school who came under fire last year for bragging about the Islamic Republic’s efforts to assassinate former Trump administration official, Brian Hook, Malley’s predecessor at the State Department.

Malley’s entry into the Ivy League is already raising eyebrows within Congress and Washington, D.C.’s foreign policy community, particularly since the sidelined diplomat is still entangled in an unresolved FBI probe. Neither school responded to a Washington Free Beacon request for comment on whether Malley's alleged security lapses gave them pause.

Malley will lend both schools his expertise after spending the past two years in the Biden administration working to secure a revamped version of the 2015 nuclear deal, efforts that included waiving sanctions on Tehran to give it access to potentially billions in frozen funds.

In its announcement, Yale touted Malley as one of the "leading practitioners" in the field of foreign affairs. While at Yale, Malley will teach courses and mentor students as a senior fellow.

Princeton said that Malley will "teach a graduate course this fall on foreign policy decision-making, and one to two undergraduate courses in the spring focused on some combination of diplomacy, negotiation, and foreign policy."

Malley is just the latest Princeton scholar to come under fire for friendly ties to Iran’s hardline regime.

Former Iranian official Mousavian has been employed by the school for years, and has survived several pressure campaigns to see him fired over his continued support for the hardline regime’s pro-terrorism policies. Princeton is also facing a lawsuit from former graduate student Xiyue Wang, who alleges the school engaged in gross misconduct when it pushed him to study in Iran, where he ended up being unjustly arrested and detained for three years.

Amaney Jamal, the dean of Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs, where Malley will be hosted, also has drawn scrutiny in recent months over her role as an adviser to student Elizabeth Tsurkov, an Israeli researcher who was abducted earlier this year by an Iraqi militia group linked to Iran.

"I think Malley will fit in really well at Princeton—it's a top notch program with other Iran experts like Seyed Mousavian, who oversaw assassinations of Iranian dissidents while the Islamic Republic's Ambassador to Germany and who gloated on Iranian state TV about death threats to Malley's predecessor, former Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook," said Gabriel Noronha, a senior Iran adviser at the State Department in the Trump administration.

Malley, Noronha added, "will have a strong ally in Dean Amaney Jamal, who refused to respond to multiple inquiries or take any corrective action when Mousavian broke Princeton's code of conduct by laughing about these death threats."

Republican lawmakers—who have already launched multiple investigations into the Biden administration’s efforts to stonewall probes into Malley’s conduct—expressed shock that a prominent school would hire a diplomat enmeshed in controversy.

"Apparently, the reward for selling out our nation to Iran and losing your security clearance is a cushy gig in the Ivy League," Rep. Jim Banks (R., Ind.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, told the Free Beacon on Wednesday.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), a Princeton alumni, called the decision "pitiful" in a Tuesday tweet.

The post Biden's Scandal-Plagued Iran Envoy Lands Ivy League Gigs Amid FBI Investigation appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

The city included the Mayfair Hotel in Project Roomkey, a federal initiative to turn California hotels into temporary homeless shelters.  At the end of the hotel's time in the program, the city quietly paid the hotel's owner to cover damages from residents. Social workers assigned to the hotel lamented its condition in emails obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

"Participant in 1516 Threatened staff, Security, destroyed property. Screamed. Yelled cursed. Everything went wrong with her. Inside and outside the building," one social worker wrote. Another recounted how "a male in 1526 assaulted another resident in Room 726."

The Mayfair represents the latest instance in which state and local governments have paid a huge price to address the homelessness crisis in California.

San Diego in April requested state funds to buy three hotels at $383,000 per room to house its homeless population. The city saw homelessness hit record highs in the months leading up to the purchase.

Between September 2021 and June 2022, the city of Berkeley alone removed 75 tons of garbage, drug paraphernalia, and human feces from homeless encampments. With an estimated 535 people living on the street at the time, the city removed roughly 500 pounds of waste per homeless person per year.

Experts have attributed the state's struggles with homelessness to the so-called Housing First principle, which became the state's law of the land for homelessness policy in 2016. The practice focuses almost exclusively on providing subsidized housing to the homeless without requiring them to undergo treatment for substance abuse or mental illness.

In July, President Joe Biden's Department of Housing and Urban Development announced its investment of $3 billion into Housing First programs across the country.

The post LA Hotel Converted to Homeless Housing Suffers $11.5 Million in Damages appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

In a Tuesday letter, lawyers representing Gov. Kathy Hochul criticized Adams, a fellow Democrat, for his handling of the migrant crisis in his city. The letter argues the city's missteps led to a crisis-level shortage of housing for illegal immigrants.

"In particular, the City chose to send migrants to counties and localities outside of the City with-little-or-no [sic] notice to or coordination with the State or those counties and localities," the state’s counsel, Faith Gay, said in the letter, referencing Adams's practice of busing of migrants out of his city into surrounding municipalities, which local officials have resisted.

Hochul's administration also said Adams failed to take up its offers to assist earlier in the crisis, the New York Times reported:

In an apparent attempt to fend off even costlier new requests from the Adams administration, the letter criticizes the city for failing to accept numerous state offers of assistance over the last year, including the use of more than a dozen state-controlled sites that it said could be converted into shelters to house more than 3,000 migrants.

It blames the city for being slow to act, saying the Adams administration ignored a suggestion to begin setting up large "tent-based or base camp sites" for single adult men beginning in June 2022, waiting months to do so. (A spokesman for the governor later clarified that state officials pushed for congregate shelters in July, and tent camps in the fall.)

The letter also says the city did not prioritize helping migrants fill out paperwork to start getting their work permits, meaning thousands who could now be working are not.

New York City Democrats have largely focused their frustrations over the migrant surge at the White House instead of Albany. Democratic politicians rallied outside City Hall this month and called on the federal government for more help.

Adams this week called it "unacceptable" that the Biden administration has not expedited work permits for migrants.

The mayor's push to move migrants out of the city comes after Adams promised on the campaign trail that New York would "remain a sanctuary city under an Adams administration." Yet Adams has repeatedly said the city has "no room" for migrants.

New York City claims it has take in around 100,000 migrants since last spring. The United States has brought in more than half a million migrants since President Joe Biden took office.

The post Dems Turn on Each Other Over New York Migrant Crisis appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Biden on Tuesday broke four days of silence on the crisis and promised Hawaii "every asset they need" from the federal government.

While vacationing in Delaware over the weekend, Biden ignored questions about the wildfires and on Sunday offered "no comment."

The post WATCH: White House Hypes Biden’s Empathy After He Vacations Through Maui Wildfires appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

What happened: Conservatives pounced on reports that an upcoming "trauma studies" course at Princeton will feature a controversial book accusing Israel's "settler colonial regime" of deliberately maiming Palestinians for profit, and suggesting black people be considered "disabled" due to systemic racism.

Why it matters: The course, "The Healing Humanities: Decolonizing Trauma Studies from the Global South," is taught by Satyel Larson, assistant professor of Near Eastern studies at Princeton.

• The Ivy League university deserves credit for promoting inclusivity. Most of the Israel-haters Princeton hosts on campus—Zaid Chaudhary, Mohammed El-Kurd, and Hossein Mousavian, among others—are men of color. Professor Larson, a white female redhead, brings a valuable diverse perspective to the university's stable of anti-Semites, as will Robert Malley, the disgraced former Biden envoy to Iran who had his security clearance revoked.

• An expert on numerous subjects including colonialism, postcolonialism, resistance, social marginalization, gender, sexuality, and science, Larson is writing a book about "how European secular colonial ideas of calculability underlie the postcolonial governance of reproduction and reproductive female bodies in contemporary Morocco." Interesting!

• Conservative critics may scoff at Larson's résumé. They may snicker at the content of her courses. We believe this rush to judgment is regrettable, a symptom of the increasingly toxic discourse that pervades our polarized society.

Counterpoint: We reject this groupthink. Professor Larson has talent, and we at the Washington Free Beacon would be lying if we did not acknowledge it.

Five things we love about Professor Satyel Larson:

1) She has a beautiful mind.

2) She's resourceful.

3) She doesn't judge.

4) She respects the First Amendment. 

5) She's just as comfortable chilling on the back porch as she is teaching in the classroom.

What she said: We reached out to Professor Larson seeking answers to the following questions, but have yet to hear back. Stay tuned for updates.

• Are you single?

• Ready to mingle?

• Which dating apps do you prefer?

• How tall are you?

• What are your interests/hobbies?

• Do you have any (female) siblings?

• Are you a dog person or a cat person?

• Have you ever dated a Jewish man (or woman)?

• Would you be open to dating a Jewish man (or woman)?

• Would you be open to co-teaching a class with incoming professor Robert Malley?

• Do you accept follow requests on Instagram?

The post 5 Things We Absolutely Love About Princeton Professor Satyel Larson appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.