Important Takeaways:
- President Biden has made his “biggest blunder” yet by driving China and Russia into a closer strategic partnership through his faulty foreign policy
- Heritage Foundation senior fellow Michael Pillsbury argued on “Fox & Friends” that the “shocking” relationship the two nuclear world powers have fostered never would have happened under the Trump administration
- Putin visited Xi in Beijing to strengthen bilateral relations and garner additional support for the war in Ukraine
- China has vowed “resolute measures” against the U.S. in retaliation for Biden’s newly announced tariffs on $18 billion worth of Chinese imports
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Important Takeaways:
- Biden signs Russian uranium ban
- Why it matters: The U.S. spends an estimated $1 billion per year on nuclear fuel from Russia, so the new law cuts off a key source of revenue as Putin’s forces escalate their war on Ukraine and drive military spending to levels not seen since the Soviet Union in the mid-1980s.
- Congress moved to ban Russian oil, gas and coal soon after the full-scale Russian military invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, but Russia supplies about 20% of its enriched uranium for U.S. nuclear fuel.
- The legislation could shake up the industry’s supply and initiating nuclear fuel supply programs will be crucial for the Biden administration to avoid industry disruptions and obstacles for the next generation of reactors, Axios’ Nick Sobczyk reports.
- Zoom in: The measure, dubbed the Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act, unlocks $2.7 billion in new funding for nuclear fuel supply programs at the Department of Energy.
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Important Takeaways:
- A majority of Americans think that the U.S. economy is heading in the wrong direction, according to an exclusive poll for Newsweek, with many blaming Joe Biden’s economic agenda—Bidenomics—for it.
- But experts told Newsweek that the U.S. economy is doing relatively well, especially when compared to most other Western economies. The negative outlook on the economy that many Americans hold is likely linked to the fact that the economic picture is objectively complicated and hard to understand right now.
- Their widespread pessimism is reflected in the results of a Redfield & Wilton Strategies poll conducted on behalf of Newsweek on April 11. According to the survey, some 50 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. economy is heading in the wrong direction, while only 25 percent said it is going in the right direction.
- Americans are also negative about their own financial situation. Some 42 percent of respondents said their financial situation has worsened in the last year. Only 26 percent said it has improved, while 32 percent said it has stayed the same.
- Some 47 percent of Americans said they were now financially worse off than they were three years before, against 26 percent who said they were better off and 27 percent who said they were about the same. Some 45 percent said they were now worse off than before the pandemic, while 28 percent said they were better off and 27 percent were about the same.
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Important Takeaways:
- Joe Biden has been hiding intelligence on the whereabouts of Hamas leaders and their command tunnels, depriving Israel of vital information that could lead to an end to the war. That revelation came in a report on Saturday and was framed as the administration offering that information now if the ongoing operation in Rafah is canceled.
- The story first broke in The Washington Post , with the paper describing the offer as follows.
- The Biden administration, working urgently to stave off a full-scale Israeli invasion of Rafah, is offering Israel valuable assistance if it holds back, including sensitive intelligence to help the Israeli military pinpoint the location of Hamas leaders and find the group’s hidden tunnels, according to four people familiar with the U.S. offers.
- There’s no other way to read this except that the Biden administration has been protecting Hamas. If intelligence exists that can help “pinpoint the location of Hamas leaders,” it should have been given to Israel the moment it was produced. The same goes for any information about the terror tunnels.
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Important Takeaways:
- Final proof Biden’s America is utterly adrift, ignored – and barreling toward disaster: ANDREW NEIL’s expert analysis of an infirm, incoherent President… now losing all control
- The words were forceful enough on Tuesday when President Joe Biden rightly condemned the current ‘ferocious surge of anti-Semitism in America and around the world.’
- He was speaking, appropriately enough, at a Holocaust memorial ceremony in the US Capitol on May 7 – seven months to the day of Hamas’s unprovoked and barbarous attack on Israel.
- Biden was even explicit about Hamas’s crimes and its responsibility for the war that inevitably followed October 7.
- ‘I have not forgotten,’ averred the President.
- But the most remarkable feature of his speech was how little his words seemed to matter. They disappeared in the wind almost as soon as they were uttered.
- There was a time when America — indeed the world — took serious notice of what a US president said. Biden, it appears, can be safely ignored.
- Certainly, few seem to heed his warnings these days.
- He told Iran ‘don’t’ when it threatened to retaliate for Israel’s fatal attack on its Revolutionary Guard HQ in Damascus, Syria. Tehran proceeded to launch over 300 missiles and drones at Israel, nearly all of them thankfully taken out before reaching their targets.
- He informed Israel that rooting out what’s left of Hamas in the southern Gaza city of Rafah was a ‘red line’ the Jewish State must not cross because of the potential for more civilian casualties. This week Israel started rooting out Hamas in Rafah.
- He informed Israel that rooting out what’s left of Hamas in the southern Gaza city of Rafah was a ‘red line’ the Jewish State must not cross because of the potential for more civilian casualties. This week Israel started rooting out Hamas in Rafah.
- On Tuesday, he addressed the poisonous anti-Semitism now rampant on university campuses.
- He highlighted ‘vicious propaganda on social media … Jews forced to hide kippahs under baseball caps, tuck Jewish stars into their shirts … Jewish students blocked, harassed, attacked while walking to class .. anti-Semitic posters, slogans calling for the annihilation of Israel … too many people denying, rationalizing, ignoring the horrors of the Holocaust and October 7th … it’s absolutely despicable — and it must stop.’
- He is, of course, absolutely right to call this out. The pity is that it’s taken him so long to do so.
- The so-called National Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), instigators of many of the encampments, has called October 7th ‘a historic win for the Palestinian resistance.’
- New York’s Columbia University SJP has declared ‘full solidarity with Palestinian resistance,’ praising the ‘historic’ attack ‘despite the odds.’
- These are not protestors pleading for peace to be given a chance. They want to see Israel destroyed and Hamas victorious.
- Biden’s own campaign supporters are funding this pro-war rabble.
- Money from Democratic megadonor George Soros has gone to a group called Jewish Voice for Peace which immediately after October 7 blamed, ‘Israeli apartheid and occupation — and United States complicity,’ for the slaughter.
- Yet as President, Biden couldn’t even bring himself to condemn the notorious anti-Semitic ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ chant so beloved of the protestors.
- As Biden claimed his support for Israel is ‘ironclad even when we disagree’ we learned that his administration was holding up shipments of precision bombs to Israel to signal to the Israeli government that Washington really doesn’t want it to pursue the all-out defeat of Hamas.
- To be fair, Biden’s intervention, well-meant and heartfelt – as it no doubt was despite all its inadequacies – was over-shadowed by Stormy Daniels testimony in the Donald Trump hush-money trial in New York.
- The media was more obsessed with that than Biden’s important words about anti-Semitism, which is not the President’s fault.
- But you can’t help feeling that a President with more authority and respect would also have commanded more attention.
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Important Takeaways:
- Israeli Leaders Could Face War Crimes Charges as White House Pushes Hostage-Ceasefire Deal
- President Biden has again told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the White House opposes Israel’s planned invasion of the Gazan city of Rafah.
- Meanwhile, Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Saudi Arabia for the first leg of a Mideast tour to lobby for a ceasefire in exchange for the release of hostages in Gaza.
- White House National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby told ABC, “That’s going to be right at the top of the list for Secretary Blinken to keep pushing for this temporary ceasefire. We want it to last for about six weeks. It would allow for all those hostages to get out, and of course to allow for easier aid access to places in Gaza, particularly up in the north.”
- The website Axios reports the Israeli government has proposed a possible hostage deal with Hamas that includes discussing an end to fighting in exchange for the hostages.
- Hamas reportedly has no objections to the deal and is sending a delegation to Cairo.
- While ending the war has been a key Hamas demand, right-wing party members of Israel’s governing coalition have threatened to leave if it agrees to what they call a “reckless deal.”
- Today Hamas took credit for launching about 20 rockets from southern Lebanon into northern Israel. The IDF says they were all intercepted.
- Thousands demonstrated in Tel Aviv on Saturday, demanding the release of the hostages and the resignation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government, after a Hamas propaganda video showed two Israeli hostages in captivity: 47-year-old Israeli Omri Miran and Israeli American Keith Siegel, who said, “I want to tell my family that I love you very much.” He then begins to weep during his message.
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Important Takeaways:
- US reveals it quietly sent Ukraine missile systems that could hit Russia as Pentagon announces $1B aid package
- Minutes after signing a long-delayed $95 billion foreign assistance supplemental bill into law, President Biden promised that aid would begin rolling to Ukraine within “a few hours.”
- Moments later, the Pentagon released an announcement detailing the critical weapons and military equipment it was sending to the besieged country.
- While most of the equipment in the initial package fulfills basic military needs — and includes anti-aircraft missiles, small arms, artillery rounds, and night vision gear — national security adviser Jake Sullivan revealed that the US had quietly sent Ukraine Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) weeks ago, despite the White House saying there was no funding left for such assistance.
- GOP leaders had successfully advocated for ATACMS to be included in future packages if the supplemental passed, senior House Republican staff told The Post last week.
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Important Takeaways:
- The Supreme Court on Wednesday grappled with whether provisions of Idaho’s near-total abortion ban unlawfully conflict with a federal law aimed at ensuring certain standards for emergency medical care for patients, including pregnant women.
- The justices are weighing an appeal brought by Idaho officials who are contesting a lawsuit filed by the Biden administration over abortion access in emergency situations.
- The state law says that anyone who performs an abortion is subject to criminal penalties, including up to five years in prison.
- The Biden administration argues that care should include abortions in certain situations. The law applies to any hospital that receives federal funding under the Medicare program.
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Important Takeaways:
- Florida is set to become one of the most restrictive states in the nation to get an abortion next week.
- President Joe Biden visited Tampa Tuesday, calling Florida’s six-week abortion ban “one of the nation’s most extreme anti-abortion laws.”
- “It’s very dangerous situation,” Heidi Davis, a volunteer with the St. Petersburg League of Women Voters, agreed. “It’s as my shirt says, ‘Abortion is healthcare.’”
- “We need to make sure that we don’t have politicians interfering with the women’s medical decisions,” she continued.
- “It is pro-abortion through nine months, most people even if they’re pro-choice don’t agree with abortion through nine months.”
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Important Takeaways:
- The Biden administration wants to train at least 200 activists to advocate for transgender rights in India as part of a program ostensibly designed to advance America’s “national interests,” according to a federal grant posting.
- President Joe Biden’s State Department plans to “train at least 200 LGBTQI+ community leaders … with preference given to trans and intersex community leaders”
- The grant opportunity argues that “improved health, education, economic strength, justice and equality” for transgender people in India will ultimately benefit the United States.
- The proposed program, titled “Empowering LGBTQI+ Community Leadership Across India,” (https://www.grants.gov/search-results-detail/353437) focuses on transgender and intersex Indians because, according to the State Department, they face both “more severe discrimination and social stigma compared to other groups within the LGBTQI+ spectrum” as well as “unique challenges” when it comes to “accessing education, healthcare, employment and legal recourse against discrimination.”
- To accomplish its goals, the program will utilize a “train the trainer” approach, using the 200 people it trains directly to reach a further 2,000 activists within one year.
- The State Department hopes to set off a “ripple effect” across India through this strategy.
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