We have another successful “deplatforming” of a speaker at a university this week after Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA) had to be removed from an event at the University of Georgia.
This follows incidents discussed this week involving student protests at Tulane and Maryland.
Rep. Collins was invited to speak on campus by the University of Georgia Turning Point USA chapter and College Republicans. His remarks, however, were drowned out by protesters screaming profanities and insults.
Collins attempted to discuss the recent death of Laken Riley, who was allegedly murdered by an illegal immigrant while jogging at the University of Georgia.
One student yelled “How dare you come on this campus and exploit Laken Riley’s death to push your xenophobic, fascist, racist, agenda…people are in this country legally and your f–king cops are gonna get them arrested and deported.”
Others just shouted profanities like “F**k you, you’re a b***h” or told the congressman to “take your white supremacist rhetoric elsewhere, your neo-nationalist rhetoric elsewhere.” Others attacked him for his support of Israel.
Some were led out of the event by police, but the coordinated interruptions succeeded and the congressman was reportedly escorted off campus.
Some groups like the College Democrats had called for protests but it is not clear whether these groups participated in the disruptions during the events.
Once again, this was done by students who were shown on videotape preventing opposing views from being spoken or heard on campus. The question is whether the University of Georgia will take steps to discipline the students and any groups who coordinated this effort. As discussed in a column this morning in the Hill, preventing free speech is not an act of free speech.
The argument that stopping free speech is free speech is nothing more than a twisted rationalization. Protesting outside of an event is an act of free speech. Entering an event to shout down or “deplatform” speakers is the denial of free speech. It is also the death knell for higher education in the United States.
The motto of the University of Georgia is Et docere et rerum exquirere causas, or “To teach, to serve, and to inquire into the nature of things.”
That inquiry cannot occur through a filter of screaming profanities and abuse. It is good that the university had security to remove disrupters but that is not enough. These coordinated efforts often involve students who stand up in succession to keep an event from being held.
If these “deplatformings” are to end, the university has to suspend or expel those responsible for such actions.
Georgia must choose whether it will stand with free inquiry and free speech or whether it will yield to this entitled mob of speech-phobic students.
The Iranian government is apparently seeking to capitalize on the Israeli public and leadership being on edge due to continuing fears that an Iranian retaliation attack is imminent after last week’s Israeli airstrike on Iran’s embassy complex in Damascus.
An adviser to Iran’s supreme leader on Sunday has threatened to attack Iran’s embassies, or at least strongly suggested it could happen. “The embassies of the Zionist regime are no longer safe,” Yahya Rahim Safavi, senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said according to ISNA news agency.
He added that the Islamic Republic views confrontation with Israel as a “legitimate and legal right” — given that Israel has just escalated through an unprecedented attack on a sovereign country’s diplomatic facilities.
Iranian state media in conveying Safavi’s words also featured graphics showing nine types of Iranian missiles that possess ranges capable of hitting Israel (see below).
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on the same day announced that Israel is prepared and is ready to respond. Israel has “completed preparations for a response against any scenario that would develop against Iran,” he said. Israel’s embassies and consulates around the world continue to be on a high state of alert.
Meanwhile, an analyst from the Middle East Institute, Jason Brodsky, observed on Friday:
There are reports Iran’s regime may be eyeing hitting an Israel diplomatic compound in a third country via drones & missiles. Israel maintains embassies in Bahrain; UAE; Jordan; Egypt; Azerbaijan; & Turkey. I would keep an eye on Jordan.
Currently, Israel is bracing for an inevitable response, and is reportedly calling up extra reserve forces. Hezbollah could also open up a bigger war front:
The leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement said on Friday that Iran would inevitably retaliate after a strike — widely blamed on Israel — destroyed its consulate in Damascus this week, killing two generals. “Be certain that Iran’s response to the targeting of its Damascus consulate is inevitable,” Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised speech marking Quds (Jerusalem) Day — an annual day of pro-Palestinian rallies held by Iran and its allies.
At least so far, the daily tit-for-tat fighting along Israel’s northern border has remained contained, but perhaps just barely. Israeli leaders have warned that all of Lebanon could be bombed back to the ‘stone age’ if Hezbollah starts a full war. Prime Minister Netanyahu earlier spelled out that if a retaliation attack should be launched on Israel from Iranian soil, then Israel would hit back directly at Iran with a “stronger” response. This scenario would likely spiral into a major regional war, something the Biden administration says it is seeking to prevent.
ISNA has published an infographic of 9 Iranian-made missiles that it says are capable of hitting Israel. pic.twitter.com/EK1IjNaUJA
Meanwhile, in Gaza there’s been a surprise development Sunday. “The Israeli military says it has withdrawn its ground troops from the southern Gaza Strip, including Khan Younis, amid conflicting reports about the scale and duration of the disengagement,” writes Al Jazeera.
“Today, Sunday April 7th, the IDF’s 98th commando division has concluded its mission in Khan Younis. The division left the Gaza Strip in order to recuperate and prepare for future operations,” the army said. One brigade has remained, and it’s unclear precisely what this means related to the planned Rafah assault.
Owner of X Corp. Elon Musk said on the platform Saturday evening that the company had decided to lift all restrictions on Brazilian accounts targeted by an order from the nation’s Supreme Court.
“We are lifting all restrictions. This judge has applied massive fines, threatened to arrest our employees and cut off access to 𝕏 in Brazil. As a result, we will probably lose all revenue in Brazil and have to shut down our office there. But principles matter more than profit,” Mr. Musk posted, notifying of X’s decision.
The announcement came in response to reporting by investigative journalist Michael Shellenberger, and colleagues David Ágape and Eli Vieira, titled, “TWITTER FILES BRAZIL.”
In his reporting, Mr. Shellenberger cites records released by X, formerly Twitter, during Mr. Musk’s 2022 takeover that allegedly show that “Brazil is engaged in a sweeping crackdown on free speech led by a Supreme Court justice.”
Sitting members of Brazil’s Congress and journalists were among those named by Brazil’s highest court for censoring, Mr. Shellenberger said of his findings, which he has shared on X.
He named lower house members Carla Zambelli of former President Jair Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party and Marcel van Hattem of the NOVO party as targets of orders targeting posts the court deemed misinformation.
According to the internal files Mr. Shellenberger shared, Twitter in Brazil was threatened with a $30,000 fine. The company had one hour to remove the Congress members’ posts or pay the court for noncompliance.
The article reports that the justice had even been jailing individuals without trial for things posted on social media.
According to Mr. Shellenberger, Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes allegedly made demands to Twitter to allow access to its internal data, in violation of Twitter’s own policies on the handling of user data.
He also allegedly ordered that Twitter deplatform the individuals responsible for the specific posts that he wanted censored, “without giving users any right of appeal or even the right to see the evidence presented against them.”
Coming shortly, 𝕏 will publish everything demanded by @Alexandre and how those requests violate Brazilian law.
This judge has brazenly and repeatedly betrayed the constitution and people of Brazil. He should resign or be impeached.
Brazil’s “Twitter Files” also show that the justice “sought to weaponize Twitter’s content moderation policies against supporters of then-president @jairbolsonaro,” Mr. Shellenberger said—a similar trend to what the “Twitter files” revealed was happening to former President Donald Trump and conservative voices in the United States.
The origin of the order to censor Brazilians’ posts was also revealed in the internal Twitter files, Mr. Shellenberger said.
Mr. Shellenberger said Justice de Moraes, Brazil’s Supreme Court (Supreme Federal Court), and Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court (TSE) declined to respond to the report.
Last year, Justice de Moraes also ordered an investigation into executives at social messaging platform Telegram and Alphabet’s Google, who were in charge of a campaign criticizing a proposed internet regulation bill.
The bill put the onus on internet companies, search engines, and social messaging services to find and report illegal material, instead of leaving it to the courts, and charged hefty fines for failures to do so.
‘Aggressive Censorship’
Mr. Musk said of Brazil’s Twitter Files, which he released to Mr. Shellenberger, “This aggressive censorship appears to violate the law & will of the people of Brazil.”
Journalist Paulo Figueiredo, who is a contributor to The Epoch Times and censored by the court order, replied, “You’re going to save my country. We could never repay you.”
He had replied to an earlier post urging X not to comply with the court order, saying that the independent platforms Rumble and Locals did not comply.
“You’re powerful enough to make a difference,” he said.
Mr. Musk describes himself as a free speech absolutist. He said at the time when he bought Twitter that it was to create a platform where “a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner.”
Shortly after telling Brazil’s Supreme Court that his company would not comply with its order, he posted to X an image “For the people of Earth” of an X comprising of “FREE SPEECH.”
Economists are expressing concern over the increasing number of illegal immigrants in the United States, who they believe are obscuring the actual condition of the jobs market and the U.S. economy.
For the last few years, the headline employment figure has been impressive. The country has recovered the lost jobs from the government-imposed shutdowns during the pandemic and added a few million more, despite a climate of high inflation and rising interest rates.
In 2023, the economy added approximately 3 million new positions. To kick off 2024, more than 800,000 new jobs have been added.
The labor market data is critical as it helps determine the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policy.
Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell said on March 20 that the central bank is monitoring the labor market “very carefully” and isn’t observing any “cracks.”
“We follow all the possible stories that are out there about there being cracks, but the overall picture, really, is a strong labor market,” he noted. “Things are returning more to their state in 2019.”
However, a closer look at the household survey of the employment report reveals a more gloomy picture. Employment for native-born Americans has been in decline over the past four years. This means that all of the job gains have gone to foreign-born workers, including both legal and illegal immigrants.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the number of immigrants—legal and illegal—working in the United States grew by 3.4 million between February 2020, shortly before the onset of COVID-19, and February 2024. The number of U.S.-born workers, however, declined by 78,000 during the same period.
In addition, during the Biden administration, there have been approximately twice as many illegal immigrants as legal immigrants entering the country, according to a study by the Brookings Institution.
“That’s a big problem,” says economist Stephen Moore.
“What we’re interested in is how the economy is working for American citizens. So, we’re distorting the jobs market with all of the illegal immigrants,” he told The Epoch Times.
Mr. Moore, who served as an economic adviser to former President Donald Trump, criticized the Biden administration for turning the U.S. immigration system “upside down.”
He argued that the U.S. economy “desperately needs” more legal immigrants, who possess high skill levels or special talents, rather than illegal immigrants, who tend to be less educated.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the number of immigrants—legal and illegal—working in the United States grew by 3.4 million between February 2020, shortly before the onset of COVID-19, and February 2024. The number of US-born workers, however, declined by 78,000 during the same period.
The BLS includes illegal immigrants in the labor statistics, identifying them as “undocumented workers.” However, the agency doesn’t disclose the data publicly and instead groups legal and illegal immigrant job data together.
Many economists have been surprised by the growing employment gap between native- and foreign-born workers since October 2019.
The contrast in the past year is even more striking. According to the BLS, native-born employment fell by 651,000 in March 2024 from the same period last year, while foreign-born employment climbed by nearly 1.3 million.
According to Steven Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), it is hard to know the exact number of illegal immigrants who have recently entered the country and found employment.
However, he estimates roughly half of the job gains among foreign-born workers have gone to illegal immigrants over the last year.
Mr. Camarota notes that the government should know all economic activity and job creation in America, so counting illegal immigrants is not a problem.
“What I do think is problematic is that you can see a low unemployment rate and more importantly, lots of job growth, but almost all the job growth is going to the immigrants. That’s the distortion,” he told The Epoch Times.
There were a total of 31 million immigrant workers as of March 2024, constituting nearly 20 percent of the U.S. labor force. Mr. Camarota estimates that at the beginning of this year, roughly 9 million of these workers were illegally present.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the number of “immigrants with a nonlegal or pending status” increased by 2.4 million in 2023.
This group includes individuals who have been apprehended and released into the country, individuals who have managed to evade the Border Patrol, officially known as “gotaways,” and individuals who have overstayed their visas. The figure is modified to account for deaths, legalizations, and departures.
According to Mr. Camarota, the rise in illegal employment conceals the true state of the U.S. jobs market. There has been a concerning decline in the labor force participation of U.S.-born working-age men from the 1960s to the present. And this decline is more pronounced among the less educated.
Globalization, outsourcing of jobs overseas, generous welfare and disability policies, and wage stagnation are among the factors that have contributed to this drop over the years, Mr. Camarota said.
“That decline in labor force participation, particularly among U.S.-born men, is linked to many social problems, from overdose deaths to crime,” he said.
Hence, he argued that the government is missing the overall picture by focusing on headline data and reporting strong job growth, and not saying it’s fueled primarily by low-wage illegal immigrants.
“That’s very troubling,” he said.
Another issue with more illegal immigration is that it drives down wages for American workers.
According to EJ Antoni, an economist and research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, one of the key reasons President Joe Biden is polling so poorly among voters is “because they are not the ones getting the jobs.”
As a result of the flood of cheap labor, American workers also earn less than they would otherwise, he told The Epoch Times.
The Economic Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank, rejects the notion that illegal immigrants are hurting U.S.-born workers.
Experts Heidi Shierholz and Daniel Costa at the Institute wrote in a recent report that “the idea that immigrants are making things worse for U.S.-born workers is wrong.”
“The reality is that the labor market is absorbing immigrants at a rapid pace, while simultaneously maintaining record-low unemployment for U.S.-born workers,” they stated.
Goldman Offers “Burst Of Bullish Coverage” On Soaring Uranium Stocks
As we have been harping on for the last couple of years, uranium stocks – at the center of the thesis for the very common sense solution of nuclear power – are continuing their long awaited ascent.
As Bloomberg noted last week, the sector has experienced a significant boost, with spot prices surging 40% over the past year due to production challenges faced by Kazatomprom, the world’s largest miner, and potential U.S. restrictions on Russian supplies.
The price soaring has come on the back of a “burst of bullish coverage from banks including Goldman Sachs”, Bloomberg writes.
The rise comes as nations increasingly embrace nuclear power to reduce emissions, as we have been saying would happen here on Zero Hedge every time we got the chance.
Recently, the sector witnessed further demand, evidenced by the Global X Uranium ETF, which jumped 6% for its best performance since early February, driven by advances in companies like NuScale Power Corp. and Mega Uranium Ltd. Cameco Corp., the largest uranium miner in North America, saw a 14% increase after receiving a buy rating from Goldman.
Michael Alkin, chief investment officer at Sachem Cove Partners said: “Goldman’s initiation opens the whole universe up.”
Alkin launched his fund focusing on uranium miners and physical uranium in 2018, a period when the sector was largely overlooked. Alkin notes that interest has since expanded beyond the major miners to include mid-sized and exploratory firms.
Sachem Cove, holding stakes in Cameco and Denison Mines, also supported Premier American Uranium’s IPO in 2023, with the stock surging nearly 70% this year. Moreover, analysts are broadening their coverage to encompass a wider array of uranium stocks, even those yet to establish their first mines.
For instance, Scotia Capital initiated coverage of NexGen Energy Ltd. with an outperform rating on April 1, as the company advances towards developing Canada’s forthcoming uranium mine, the report says.
Recall we noted just days ago that uranium projects were jumping back online and that uranium’s price was set to soar. Jonathan Hinze, president of UxC, a nuclear industry research firm told Bloomberg on March 22: “We have reached a bottom. The fundamentals are still strong, with increased demand and supply that hasn’t fully responded.”
According to Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Mike Kozak, there’s evidence to suggest that uranium prices have stabilized. Kozak forecasts a resurgence of fundamental buyers in the market, which is expected to propel prices upwards once more, Bloomberg wrote this week.
Optimistic investors are focusing on uranium’s future, driven by an increasing supply shortage and higher demand, as nations (finally pull their heads out from their a** and) seek nuclear energy solutions for climate change.
In the wake of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, uranium mining in the United States, particularly in Wyoming, Texas, Arizona, and Utah, experienced a significant downturn.
This decline wasn’t helped by uranium prices plummeting and nations such as Germany and Japan moving away from nuclear energy. However, as global efforts to reduce emissions renew interest in nuclear power, and as leading uranium producers face challenges in meeting demand, prices for the metal have risen sharply, a new Bloomberg report says.
This resurgence in prices is offering previously unprofitable American uranium mines an opportunity to re-enter the market and address the supply shortfall.
According to the report, as the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada’s annual meeting takes place in Toronto, attracting thousands from the mining industry, uranium will be a key focus.
There’s something about employed intellectuals. When they are trashing popular wisdom and perceptions of regular people, they are truly in their element.
They love nothing better. It’s a way for them to show off their superior understanding, flash their credentials, and dazzle others with the merit of their time and expense in schooling. It justifies their social standing and income. And it assures their jobs.
Where would we be without them? Wallowing in ignorance, no doubt.
The trouble is that very often the popular wisdom is correct whereas the intellectuals are wrong.
We’ve seen many examples of this recently with regard to inflation. It seems that most people think it is getting worse and going in the wrong direction. A recent poll of swing-state voters shows that 74 percent of people say exactly this.
By wrong direction, plain English means: prices are not going down but rather still going up faster than one would desire.
In fact, the commodities markets seem to agree. Look at the record gold and Bitcoin prices. Even the Federal Reserve is worried.
But the Wall Street Journal’s (WSJ) Greg Ip explains that the notion that inflation is still bad and even worsening is “simply not true. I’m not stating an opinion. This isn’t something on which reasonable people can disagree. If hard economic data count for anything, we can say unambiguously that inflation has moved in the right direction in the past year.”
He goes on to explain that over 12 months, the pace at which inflation is worsening is getting worse at a slower pace than previously. This is what Ip calls moving in the right direction. You can tell yourself that as you put on less weight this month than last, but it would not be a good idea to confuse this with losing weight.
As for prices going down, Ip sniffly dismisses that idea: the price level “rarely goes down.”
Oh.
And if someone asks how your diet is going, you can do the same and tell them with absolute certainty that actually losing weight is out of the question.
Mr. Ip is certain that a move from 6 percent to 3 percent inflation is a fall, even though it is really only a slower pace of rising and therefore not really an improvement. He would see this if the numbers were different. What if inflation were running at 40 percent and then rising only 35 percent? Would Ip dare go to print with an article claiming that inflation is improving? Not likely.
Sorry but most people think that an improved and even repaired inflation would restore prices to their 2020 level. That’s not going to happen but that’s actually what most people would like. And I agree. My own sense is that many people are only coming around now to the realization that what happened to us has done permanent damage to purchasing power.
It’s not a good sign that the Biden administration seems to think that the solution is jawboning package sizing back up!
In any case, it’s not even necessarily true that the pace of increase is improving. The latest read of the official CPI (consumer price index) shows that it is going up higher than it did in June 2023. So even by that standard, the popular wisdom is more correct than the experts. By some measures, inflation is worsening at a faster pace.
Also, we are all a bit gun-shy. Who is to say that the next round of brutal inflation is not waiting just around the corner, in a repeat of the 1970s?
And have a look at food prices, up 35–50 percent since 2019 and still rising. It’s not even of this world to tut-tutting people for feeling that this much of an increase in 5 years amounts to getting worse.
Or just have a broad look at prices generally. No matter what the experts say, we are daily slammed with sticker shock. Remember that people do not buy all the products and services in the CPI daily. They encounter each price increase only in the course of their usual buying habits. It it has been nothing but bad news every time you take out your wallet.
When major journalistic venues come out and say “Oh it’s not that bad, so stop complaining,” it only discredits them.
In addition, Ip complains as follows: “By more than 2-to-1 (56 percent to 25 percent), respondents said the economy had gotten worse rather than gotten better over the past two years. That is difficult to square with robust employment growth, unemployment near its lowest in half a century, or growth in gross domestic product, which actually accelerated last year.”
Here again, the popular wisdom is smarter than the experts.
The jobs data has already experienced a major debunking. Full-time positions are giving way to part-time positions, mostly held by immigrant populations. This is a major factor as to why the establishment and household surveys have diverged so much over the last several years. The job market is not healthy. It is sick, with a continued lack of labor participation and worsening conditions for professional workers.
It’s not obvious from a superficial look at the data but it is clear from a deeper look.
Even the WSJ admits this in a separate piece: “the household employment figures haven’t just shown slowing job growth in recent months, but outright deterioration.”
Oh!
Another corrective comes from the Philadelphia Fed: “In the aggregate, 10,500 net new jobs were added during the period rather than the 1,121,500 jobs estimated by the sum of the states; the U.S. CES estimated net growth of 1,047,000 jobs for the period.”
By now, you surely also know that the GDP data cannot be trusted. It is ginned up by government debt and spending, without which the United States would likely already be in recession. This little tool of analysis was invented in the 1940s and heavily informed by bad economic theory but it somehow survives as a credible estimate of output. It absolutely is not.
Let’s return to inflation now.
It’s not just that rising prices are bad and eat into the standard of living. It’s also the case that the current CPI is wildly underestimated. Adding in the interest-based cost of borrowing puts last year’s inflation rate at 18 percent, which is far worse than we ever saw in the late 1970s. If we add to that the way inflation used to be calculated complete with a correct estimate of health-insurance costs, we are going further still. We could be looking at 20-plus percent on an annualized basis.
All the assurances we get from official economists that life is great achieve absolutely nothing in terms of convincing the public that what they are seeing all around them is not true. The instincts of the public are absolutely correct, contrary to the one thousand articles pouring out of the legacy media that say otherwise.
I’ve always enjoyed Greg Ip’s writing simply because he is a trained economist and speaks the language well. It’s sad (to me) to see his writing go the direction of becoming straight-up Biden administration propaganda.
Remember that line about how inflation was merely “transitional?” They are still saying that after three years.
Let’s face it: many such voices have disappointed us over these past few years, as many journalists and intellectuals have put career over integrity in their jobs.
We know this and see this every day. Still, it never stops disappointing me. Regardless, the public is not listening. Indeed, they have stopped reading, which is why the payrolls of mainstream venues keep shrinking more and more.
Meanwhile, as the intellectuals scribble their excuses, public fury is on the rise.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.
Intel Community Warns Of “Possible Threats To Public Gatherings” Across US
In early March, FBI Director Chris Wray warned a Senate panel that dangerous individuals had entered the United States illegally at the southern border.
“We have had dangerous individuals entering the United States have a variety of sources,” Wray said at the annual “Worldwide Threats” congressional hearings.
Fast forward to Friday, an ABC News report citing a US intelligence bulletin warns that “radicals in the US might respond to ISIS calls for similar attacks in the wake of last month’s deadly terrorist attack at a concert hall in Moscow.”
The bulletin said “lone wolves” might be compelled to attack public venues following the attack at a popular concert hall complex near Moscow last month. It warned that individuals who are not members of ISIS could also unleash attacks.
In a bulletin to law enforcement obtained by @ABC News, the FBI, DHS and National Counterterrorism Center warned of “possible threats to public gatherings” in the U.S. from “threat actors” inspired by the ISIS attack in Moscow. @PierreTABC has details. https://t.co/wIixdvC4aqpic.twitter.com/0Oej1GoRQ2
Given this new warning, and what has the national intelligence community up at night, is President Biden and Democrat’s disastrous open southern borders that flooded the nation with millions of unvetted migrants – some of whom are military-aged men from countries that deeply hate America.
The hearing last month with Wray emphasized how the nation is more vulnerable than ever because open southern borders have allowed bad actors to infiltrate deep within the borders under the guise of ‘migrants.’
In late March, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, warned ABC’s “This Week” that human smuggling group with reported ties to ISIS will “most certainly use [their network] to move operatives into the United States.”
Just days ago, a US counter-terrorism official told the New York Post that ISIS-K terrorists are growing “bolder,” and its members could be preparing to flood the nation through the southern border.
The source warned: “An attack on US soil is definitely a possibility.”
Meanwhile, a rogue Iranian assassin is already roaming the US, hunting for current and former government officials.
And, remember last month when New York Governor Kathy Hochul mobilized 1,000 National Guard troops and State Police officers, some of whom were armed with machine guns, to patrol NYC’s subway system. This kind of response by the government wasn’t due to migrants but likely terror threats.
All of this is happening right before the elections…
Tony Bobulinski, a former Biden family business associate and witness in an ongoing Republican-led impeachment investigation, has filed a lawsuit against Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) accusing the lawmaker of defamation.
The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Washington and first reported by The Daily Caller on Friday, accuses Mr. Goldman of repeatedly lying about Mr. Bobulinski following a heated exchange at a recent congressional hearing. According to Mr. Bobulinski’s complaint, Mr. Goldman defamed the former Biden business associate in a series of posts on social media by alleging Mr. Bobulinski “has used a Trump campaign-paid lawyer to make false allegations” and that his testimony before Congress was “Russian disinformation.”
Mr. Bobulinski’s complaint says he has spent over $500,000 of his own money on legal fees and neither former President Donald Trump nor any Trump-affiliated entities “have ever paid” for any of those legal fees, contradicting Mr. Goldman’s assertion. The complaint also insists Mr. Bobulinski has not made any false allegations before Congress, as claimed by Mr. Goldman, nor have his claims originated from Russian disinformation.
The lawsuit follows through on a threat Mr. Bobulinski made last week that he would seek recourse through the courts if Mr. Goldman didn’t delete his offending social media posts and publicly retract his statements about Mr. Bobulinski. The legal filing on Friday states Mr. Goldman neither responded to, nor complied with the request for a retraction.
Mr. Bobulinski worked with President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden on a business venture involving a Chinese energy firm called China Energy Company Limited. He has alleged the elder Biden was aware of his son’s foreign business dealings and even personally benefited from those dealings, despite the elder Biden’s repeated public statements to the contrary. Mr. Bobulinski has shared these allegations with House Republicans leading an impeachment inquiry into whether President Biden had engaged in influence peddling to advance his family’s business dealings.
The lawsuit alleges that Mr. Goldman made the contentious claims about Mr. Bobulinski to discredit him and the impeachment inquiry. Mr. Bobulinski’s legal team argues the lawmaker’s statements constituted defamation per se for falsely claiming Mr. Bobulinski lied before Congress, and defamation by implication for suggesting President Trump has paid for Mr. Bobulinski to bring claims about the Biden family before Congress.
Mr. Bobulinski’s lawsuit alleges he has suffered personally from mental anguish and has endured reputational harm impacting his business ventures and professional work as a result of Mr. Goldman’s claims. He is seeking an award of compensatory, special, and punitive damages totaling $20 million.
NTD News reached out to Mr. Goldman about the lawsuit but did not receive a response by press time.
Bobulinski Goes on Legal Offense
The lawsuit against the New York congressman is just one of three defamation claims Mr. Bobulinski is advancing.
Mr. Bobulinski filed a lawsuit on March 4 against former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, alleging she had defamed him by claiming former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows had handed him a folded-up note or envelope at a secretive meeting outside a Trump campaign rally in Georgia in 2020.
Mr. Bobulinski has denied claims that Mr. Meadows had handed him anything during the 2020 encounter and argued Ms. Hutchinson’s claims were meant to cast “an innocuous interaction” between the two men as an illicit, immoral, or even illegal encounter.
The businessman also filed a defamation complaint against liberal political strategist and Fox News commentator Jessica Tarlov last week. That complaint alleges Ms. Tarlov, who works as a rotating co-host on Fox News’ “The Five” program, defamed Mr. Bobulinski during a March 20 episode by saying a Trump Super PAC had played a role in covering Mr. Bobulinski’s legal fees.
Ms. Tarlov modified her original claim in a March 21 follow-up.
“During an exchange with my colleagues about the hearing, I said that Mr. Bobulinski’s lawyers’ fees have been paid by a Trump super PAC as recently as January. What was actually said during the hearing was that the law firm representing Mr. Bobulinski was paid by a Trump PAC,” she began. “I have seen no indication those payments were made in connection with Mr. Bobulinski’s legal fees and he denies that they were.”
Mr. Bobulinski’s lawsuit argues Ms. Tarlov’s March 21 clarification was “half-hearted, incomplete, and unacceptable” and called on her to issue a more clear-cut apology but that she refused.
Today, states across the country are beginning to actively embrace pro-sound-money legislation, inviting a critical examination of how America abandoned the gold standard of money and racked up $34.5 trillion in debt. To understand how we got here, it’s important to understand the policy that initiated our monetary decline.
More than ninety years ago today, April 5, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 6102, forever reshaping America’s monetary system.
This controversial order marked a pivotal moment in the nation’s financial history. Executive Order 6102 banned private ownership of gold coins, bullion, and gold certificates with the penalty for noncompliance being up to ten years in prison, a fine of $10,000, or both. This draconian edict also signaled the effective end of the gold standard.
America did not always have unbacked paper money. In fact, America’s founders spilled a lot of ink warning against the risks and ravages of fiat currencies.
In 1786, George Washington wrote to Thomas Jefferson: “Paper money has had the effect in your state that it will ever have, to ruin commerce, oppress the honest, and open the door to every species of fraud and injustice.”
James Madison wrote that “paper money is unjust” and “unconstitutional.”
To enshrine honest money, they considered gold and silver to be the foundation. Gold and silver are notably the only form of money mentioned in the United States Constitution (Article I, Section 10): “No State shall . . . make any Thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts.”
The Coinage Act of 1792 established the US Mint and regulated the coinage of gold, silver, and copper coins. The dollar was defined in terms of a specific weight of silver or gold, providing a tangible link between the currency and precious metals.
Under the gold standard, the US dollar was directly convertible to a fixed amount of gold. This system provided stability and confidence in the currency, as the value of money could not be printed ad nauseam but was tied to a tangible and finite resource.
As the nation expanded and industrialized, the gold standard emerged as a cornerstone of America’s economic might, and the gold-backed US dollar would eventually become the world’s reserve currency. The gold standard buttressed the Gilded Age of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, providing a necessary, if not sufficient, condition to unseen leaps forward in economic stability, international trade, and human prosperity.
In response to the economic turmoil of the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt banned private ownership of gold with Executive Order 6102, marking an important nail in the coffin of the gold standard in the United States.
In 1933, Congress passed the Gold Reserve Act, which granted the president the power to further manipulate America’s currency by adjusting the gold content of the dollar.
Subsequently, President Roosevelt devalued the US dollar by increasing the price of gold.
In 1934, the Gold Reserve Act allowed the government to hold gold at a higher price, effectively devaluing the dollar and further detaching it from its gold-backed origins.
Toward the end of World War II, a new international monetary system was created at an international conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944, pegging major currencies to the US dollar, which remained convertible to gold. However, mounting economic pressures and trade imbalances eventually led to the “temporary” abandonment of the gold standard in 1971 under President Richard Nixon.
Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.
Today’s Federal Reserve note is printed endlessly and spent haphazardly, unshackled from any restraint. As a consequence, the national debt is now growing at a rate of $1 trillion about every 100 days.
According to economist Michael Bordo, the gold standard provided long-term stability, evidenced by an average annual inflation rate of 0.1 percent between 1880 and 1914 as compared to the average inflation rate of 4.1 percent from 1946 to 2003.
The abandonment of sound money principles allowed for unprecedented government spending, particularly during times of war. With the ability to print fiat currency unconstrained by the discipline of a gold standard, the government financed World War II and subsequent conflicts through inflationary measures.
The government’s ability to print endlessly has enabled endless war. This unchecked power to create currency out of nothing has not only led to an expansion of the national debt but also facilitated increased expansion of controversial and fiscally unsustainable policies, such as the literal Ponzi scheme that is America’s entitlement programs.
Restoring sound money is an uphill battle, but significant victories are being won across the country. In 2023, the Sound Money Defense League effectively helped pass sound money legislation in Tennessee, Mississippi, Oregon, Arkansas, and Florida.
April 5, 1933, may be a somber chapter in American history, but one hopes for a brighter future ahead.
Today, states themselves are actively engaged in the pursuit of sound money and its underlying principles of freedom, stability, and fiscal responsibility for a more prosperous tomorrow.
Trump Rakes In $50 Million In One Night, But Israel-Advocate Adelson Still Holding Out
Less than a week after President Biden raised $25 million at a celebrity-studded New York City event, Donald Trump doubled him up, raking in a whopping $50.5 million at a billionaire’s mansion on Saturday. However, Biden still has a big financial edge, as Trump’s biggest 2020 donor — Israel-booster Miriam Adelson — has yet to give a single dollar.
“This is likely to be the biggest and one of the most successful fundraising events in political history,” GOP rainmaker Brian Ballard told the Wall Street Journal about the Florida event. The gigantic cash haul came at a gathering of 120 guests who paid between $250,000 and $814,000 to attend and hear Trump speak for 45 minutes. Hedge fund billionaire John Paulson, who famously bet big against the housing market before its 2008 collapse, hosted the shindig at his $110 million Palm Beach mansion.
Despite Trump winning this recent financial shootout, Biden’s cash hoard stands at $192 million, about double what Trump has. The Biden campaign says its war chest is the biggest ever for a Democrat at this spot in the political calendar.
A few of Trump’s largest donors from the 2020 election are holding out, including Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman and Elliott Management co-CEO Paul Singer. However, the biggest purse waiting in the wings belongs to Miriam Adelson, widow of Vegas casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who died in 2021.
The Adelsons’ foremost policy concern has been ensuring steady financial, military and political support for the State of Israel and aligning Washington with the agenda of Israel’s right wing.The Adelsons have been closely allied with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, even publishing a free Israeli newspaper that boosts Netanyahu and his Likud party.
The couple donated a jaw-dropping $90 million to Trump’s 2020 campaign, rewarding him for his Israel-catering policies, including relocating the US embassy from Tel Aviv to contested Jerusalem, exiting the Iran nuclear deal and recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which Israel captured in 1967’s Six-Day War. Trump also awarded Miriam Adelson the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
While observers and campaign sources say Miriam Adelson is expected to open her checkbook, some recent Trump comments have rankled supporters of the State of Israel.
Trump raised eyebrows in recent weeks by chiding Israel for its handling of the Gaza war, telling Paul Hewitt the country’s government is “absolutely losing the PR war” and must “finish [the war] fast.” When Hewitt twice threw him a softball by asking if he was “still standing 100% with Israel,” Trump chose not to directly answer.
In an interview with the Adelson-backed Israeli newspaper, Trump said Israel made a “very big mistake” by sharing violent video imagery of its attacks on civilian infrastructure. However, he also touted his record on backing Israel. “In Israel, they say if I ran for office in Israel I’d get 98% of the vote,” he said, later adding, “I’m not Jewish. And yet Israel for me is very important.”
In the immediate wake of the Oct 7 Hamas invasion of southern Israel, Trump criticized Netanyahu, who’d angered Trump in 2020 by rushing to congratulate Biden on winning the election while Trump was still contesting the outcome. “Bibi could have stayed quiet,” Trump told an Israeli journalist. “He has made a terrible mistake.”
Meanwhile, via X, Biden took a shot at the company Trump was keeping at his weekend fundraiser, deriding them as a “bunch of hedge fund billionaires who want him to cut Social Securityand Medicare and their taxes.” He also said “this campaign is Scranton versus Palm Beach.”
While Trump is raising money from a bunch of hedge fund billionaires, our grassroots campaign raised $187M this quarter because of folks like you.
And hours before the big announcement, the Biden-Harris campaign team on X published a terrible leftwing meme about Biden having more cash than Trump. What’s hilarious is that it took three presidents – Clinton – Obama – Biden – and an obese female rapper to raise $25mln.
“Fascism is when the ruling party brags about forcing you to spend money fighting its attempt to jail the opposition leader for life,” one X user said.
Fascism is when the ruling party brags about forcing you to spend money fighting its attempt to jail the opposition leader for life. https://t.co/j95F9lGZxD
Biden talked like his fundraiser was held at a fire hall in Scranton rather than at New York City’s Radio City Music Hall. Headlined by musical and literal heavyweight Lizzo and hosted by Stephen Colbert, the top ticket cost $500,000, so it’s safe to say there were plenty of wealthy people in attendance.
