Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

The Treasury Department has admitted that it helped law enforcement catch people involved in the Jan. 6 Capitol breach by urging banks to comb through the private transactions of customers using terms like “MAGA” and “Trump” as part of a surveillance scheme intended to fight money launderers but used to hunt Jan. 6-ers.

In January, The Epoch Times reported on allegations that the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN)—the U.S. Treasury Department’s financial crime-fighting unit—was accused of engaging in “pervasive financial surveillance” by circulating materials to banks that listed keywords that could be used to flag private financial transactions of potential Jan. 6 suspects for law enforcement.

The materials also allegedly included instructions to banks to use indicators that could include “the purchase of books (including religious texts)” and subscriptions to media containing “extremist views.”

The explosive allegations that FinCEN pushed banks to surveil the private transactions of their customers for suspicious charges based in part on political and religious expression prompted Republican lawmakers to demand answers.

Among these was Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), the top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, who pressed Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and FinCEN director Andrea Gacki for answers in a Jan. 19 letter, in which the lawmaker alleged that, if true, the allegations “represent a flagrant violation of Americans’ privacy and the improper targeting of U.S. citizens for exercising their constitutional rights without due process.”

Mr. Scott received a response letter on Feb. 9, in which Office of Legislative Affairs acting assistant secretary Corey Tellez confirmed that keywords like “MAGA,” “Trump,” or “storm the Capitol” were included in materials FinCEN provided to banks to help the feds track down Jan. 6 protesters.

Mr. Tellez wrote that, following the Jan. 6 incident, FinCEN shared information with banks that included typologies that were based on previous efforts to develop robust anti-money laundering programs that could identify specific types of illegal activity, such as that related to active shooters or violent extremists.

“For example, a document distributed on January 15, 2021, suggested that banks could review payment messages for indications that an individual participated in the assault on the Capitol and included terms such as ”Antifa,“ ”MAGA,“ ”Trump,“ ”Biden,“ ”Kamala,“ ”Schumer,“ and ”Pelosi,“ along with terms indicating an intent to do violence, such as ”shoot,“ ”kill,“ ”murder,“ and ”storm the Capitol.”

FinCEN shared such documents with banks and law enforcement agencies via a series of events on FinCEN Exchange. This is a public-private information exchange platform established by Congress in 2020 for the purpose of disrupting money laundering, terrorism financing, and other crime

“FinCEN’s primary role through these Exchange events was to support law enforcement efforts,” Mr. Tellez wrote, adding that these FinCEN Exchange events lasted until around mid-February 2021, so about a month-and-a-half after the Jan. 6 incident.

Financial Surveillance of ‘MAGA’

Confirmation that the Biden administration used what Mr. Scott called “politically charged search terms” to flag customers for the benefit of law enforcement stems from the work of the House Judiciary Committee and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, which are conducting oversight of law enforcement activity against U.S. citizens that may skirt the legal process.

On Jan. 17, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who also heads the weaponization subcommittee, revealed that the two committees were in possession of documents indicating that FinCEN sent out materials to banks on behalf of law enforcement that outlined the typologies of persons of interest linked to the Jan. 6 incident.

“We now know the federal government flagged terms like ‘MAGA’ and ‘TRUMP’ to financial institutions if Americans completed transactions using those terms,” Mr. Jordan said in a post on X.

“What was also flagged? If you bought a religious text, like a BIBLE, or shopped at Bass Pro Shop.”

In a letter to former FinCEN division director Noah Bishoff, Mr. Jordan accused the agency of engaging in “pervasive financial surveillance” carried out at the request of law enforcement, with the lawmaker claiming this raised doubts about the Treasury Department’s “respect for fundamental civil liberties.”

Several days after Mr. Jordan made his allegations, Mr. Scott wrote to Ms. Yellen and the FinCEN chief demanding explanations for what he described as reports of “unwarranted financial surveillance.”

“These allegations are particularly concerning given past efforts to weaponize the financial system and payment activity against politically disfavored, lawful activity,” he wrote.

As an example of such weaponization, Mr. Scott singled out the Obama-era “Operation Choke Point” initiative, which involved the Justice Department coordinating with financial regulators to push banks to deny services to legitimate businesses that the administration was ideologically opposed to, such as gun retailers.

Mr. Scott’s demand for answers led to the Feb. 9 letter from the Biden administration and admission of financial surveillance—which Treasury insists was both legal and legitimate.

“FinCEN is deeply committed to fulfilling this important national security and criminal justice mission in accordance with the law,” Mr. Tellez wrote, suggesting in the letter that, thanks in part to FinCEN, “more than 1,200 people have been charged with crimes in connection with the Capitol attack and nearly 900 have been convicted.”

Among those convicted of crimes related to the Jan. 6 incident, roughly 750 have been sentenced, with nearly two-thirds receiving some time in prison.

The longest prison sentence—22 years—was handed down to Enrique Tarrio, the former Proud Boys national chairman who was convicted of seditious conspiracy for what prosecutors alleged was a plot to stop the transfer of power from then-President Donald Trump to President-elect Joe Biden during the certification of electoral votes in Congress on Jan. 6, 2021.

Dozens of Jan. 6 detainees are still languishing in jail awaiting trial three years after the Capitol incident.

Authored by Bill King via RealClear Wire,

A poll by the University of Houston was released last week on the prospects for the March primary elections and the November general election in Texas. The poll unsurprisingly projected that Biden and Trump were headed to another showdown in November, and that Trump was leading Biden in that rematch by 9% in Texas. However, what I suspect the Biden campaign team found shocking was that Biden was losing to Trump with Latino voters by a 47-41 margin. Only 55% of Latino Democratic primary voters said they were committed to vote for Biden. The other 45% were undecided.

I have watched for years as pundits and political consultants from both parties, who were mostly white, have made assumptions about how Latino voters felt about issues and how they would likely vote. The near universal mistake these consultants and pundits have made for years was that immigration was the paramount issue for the Latino community and that they wanted more liberal immigration laws. Both assumptions were wrong.

First, there is no monolithic “Latino community.” Those of Mexican American heritage are the predominant group but there are also Americans from every other country in Central and South America. And they all have very different perspectives on just about every aspect of life, and especially on politics.

Even among those whose families originally immigrated from Mexico there are vast differences. I have a Latino friend who is a sixth-generation Texan. He joked with me one day that he didn’t know he was a “minority” until he went to college. I can assure you that his views on immigration are very different than a recent immigrant from Mexico who is trying to get the other family members into the country.

Also, immigration is hardly the only issue that Latinos are concerned about. I had dinner with some members of the Texas House of Representatives a couple of years ago about the prospect of starting a new party in Texas. The group was evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. All but one of the Democrat members were Latino.

I went around the room asking each one why they were dissatisfied with their existing party affiliation. One of the Latino members told me that his family were devout Catholics and opposed to abortion. He was tired of his party “looking down” on him because of his faith. Another said, “Defund the police my a#$, half my family works in law enforcement.” Another shared that his family was in the oilfield service business, and he was worried that Biden’s green energy agenda was going to hurt their family’s business and the economy of the area he represented. Immigration never came up during the dinner.

In a recent UT poll, 71% of Latinos supported “tightening U.S. border security and providing Border Patrol with increased technology, infrastructure, and personnel.” That was not far behind whites at 85% and African Americans at 81%. It seems clear that Biden’s lax border policies are hurting him in Texas across every demographic group, including Latinos.

But there is nuance in the polling. While Latinos generally feel about the same as their non-Latino neighbors regarding the state of the border, their views on other immigration issues vary significantly. For example, only 29% support the immediate deportation of immigrants here illegally, with 41% strongly opposed. That compares to 51% of whites who support immediate deportation. Similarly, 68% of Latinos support a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants compared to 56% of whites. 61% of Latinos support harsher penalties for employers who hire workers here illegally compared to 82% of whites. Latinos also support a continuation of DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, often referred to as Dreamers) at significantly higher levels than whites.

All of this suggests that a majority of Latinos, and at least a significant plurality of the rest of Americans, want the government to control the border but at the same time want a more rational system to process new immigrants and those who are already here. Biden could thread the needle on immigration but for some inexplicable reason has persisted in his lax border policies.

I do not subscribe to the theory that the president’s intention was to bring new Democratic voters into the country or the even nuttier “white replacement” conspiracy theories. Those of us who have worked in elections know that trying to register and get non-citizens to the polls is virtually impossible, at least at any scale that could affect the outcome of an election. When a third of American citizens are still not voting in presidential elections, it is much easier to get qualified voters to the polls. By the way, most of those who do not vote would likely favor Democratic candidates. Also, many of the Latino immigrants coming into the country have views on many issues, such as abortion, that are at odds with the Democratic platform.

This New York Times story attempted to put a noble face on Biden’s immigration political disaster. But even these Biden-friendly reporters struggled to concoct a rational explanation for his border policies. I think the simpler explanation is that every time party control of the White House changes, the new president feels the need to reverse all of his predecessor’s policies, whether they were working or not. Which is why we get little to nothing done. Trump was obsessed with repealing Obamacare, notwithstanding that it was supported by a growing majority of Americans throughout his presidency and most analyses showed that it slowed the increase in healthcare costs.

Biden came to the White House with the same mindset. Had he simply admitted that some of Trump’s border policies were working and then pressed to pass some badly needed reforms to the immigration system, he would not be in the mess he is now. But as Thomas Paine insightfully observed, “A man under the tyranny of party spirit is the greatest slave upon the earth, for none but himself can deprive him of the freedom of thought.”

Where is Thomas Paine when we need him?

Bill King is a businessman and lawyer, and is a former opinion columnist and editorial board member at the Houston Chronicle. He has served in a number of appointed and elected positions, including mayor of his hometown. He writes on a wide range of public policy and political issues. Bill is the author of “Unapologetically Moderate.” 

With any hopes for a Israel-Hamas ceasefire now dead, overnight Israeli air strikes killed 17 people in Rafah on the Gaza border medics said on Saturday, as over a million Palestinians crammed into the city await a full-scale offensive with the rest of the enclave in ruins and nowhere left to run.

As reported yesterday, four months into the war in Gaza, Israeli PM Netanyahu’s office said it ordered the army to prepare to evacuate civilians from Rafah – a city in Gaza’s far south where more than one million displaced Palestinians have taken refuge, many sheltering in tents pushed up against the border with Egypt and the sea – ahead of a planned ground operation against four Hamas batallions it says are deployed in the city; on Saturday, the Israeli military said the air force killed two Hamas operatives in Rafah. The assault is set to escalate substantially, with Israeli Channel 13 news reporting that Netanyahu has requested the remobilization of reserve soldiers for the military operation.

Israeli Channel 13: Netanyahu requested the remobilization of reserve soldiers in preparation for the military operation in Rafah. https://t.co/DIcPxziAkA

— EndGameWW3 🇺🇸 (@EndGameWW3) February 10, 2024

Gaza’s Hamas rulers warned on Saturday that Israeli operations in Rafah could cause “tens of thousands” of casualties in the city. The office of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said the move “threatens security and peace in the region in the world” and is “a blatant violation of all red lines”.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military has been dropping leaflets over Rafah advising the civilians of the upcoming military operation and advising them to move safe locations, although it isn’t clear where the Palestinians can move to.

Today Israel dropped new leaflets over Rafah warning civilians of the forthcoming military operation in the area and advising civilians to move to safe locations. #Gaza pic.twitter.com/rH9OMu9VAW

— FJ (@Natsecjeff) February 10, 2024

While in prior Israeli assaults on Gaza’s cities the military ordered civilians to flee south, now that they are effectively pressing against the border with Egypt, there is no obvious place for them to go and aid agencies have said large numbers could die.

“Any Israeli incursion in Rafah means massacres, means destruction. People are filling every inch of the city and we have nowhere to go,” said Rezik Salah, 35, who fled his Gaza City home with his wife and two children for Rafah early in the war.

Meanwhile, the world is warning Israel that any incursion into Rafah will have dire consequences. On Saturday, Saudi Arabia said that Israel’s planned army operation in overcrowded Rafah would cause a “humanitarian catastrophe” and called for the United Nations Security Council to intervene.

The kingdom “warned of the extremely dangerous repercussions of storming and targeting” Rafah and affirmed its “categorical rejection and strong condemnation of their forced deportation”, in a foreign ministry statement carried by state media.

#Statement | The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia warns of the very serious repercussions of storming and targeting the city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip. pic.twitter.com/JrdfxLnxaA

— Foreign Ministry 🇸🇦 (@KSAmofaEN) February 10, 2024

“This continued violation of international law and international humanitarian law confirms the necessity of convening the Security Council urgently to prevent Israel from causing an imminent humanitarian catastrophe,” the statement added.

While US President Joe Biden’s administration has voiced optimism that Saudi-Israeli normalisation can be revived, Saudi Arabia said this week it had told Washington it would not establish ties with Israel until an independent Palestinian state is “recognised” and Israeli forces leave Gaza. Saudi Arabia, home to the holiest sites in Islam, has never recognised Israel but had been considering to do so before the Israel-Hamas war broke out in October.

Meanwhile, Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian warned Israel against taking any steps towards a broader war against its proxy, the Hezbollah terror group in Lebanon, saying that would be Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “last day.”

At a news conference with his Lebanese counterpart Abdallah Bou Habib in Beirut, he also said Iran saw a political solution as the only way to end the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. “Iran and Lebanon confirm that war is not the solution and that we absolutely never sought to expand it,” Amir-Abdollahian said. He also said Tehran was in talks with Saudi Arabia on a political solution to hostilities in Gaza.

Hamas this week proposed a ceasefire of four and a half months, during which remaining hostages held by Hamas would go free, Israel would withdraw its troops from Gaza, and an agreement would be reached on an end to the war. It also demands the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences in Israeli jails for terror attacks.

Netanyahu called the Hamas terms “delusional” and vowed to fight on. But Amir-Abdollahian said Hamas was presenting ideas based on a “realistic view,” and that they should be widely backed to end the war.

Authored by Susan Crabtree via RealClear Wire,

Thursday’s news crescendo ending in a calamitous presidential press conference carried hidden lessons for both parties: Be careful what you wish on your political enemies. It could monumentally backfire.

The Democrats’ continuous calls during his four years in office to use the 25th Amendment to remove President Trump from office on the presumed grounds of mental instability took a disastrous turn this week, as the effort self-combusted in a Hindenburg-sized blowback.

In October 2020, before Joe Biden was elected president and three months before Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi held a press conference. She was touting a bill to create a bipartisan commission that could determine a sitting president’s ability to carry out the duties of the office.

The original bill’s author was Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat and former constitutional lawyer who would go on to lead the second Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump. In Pelosi’s eerily portentous remarks, she said the measure wasn’t explicitly aimed at Trump, but his mental health “reminded” Democrats of why such a commission was needed.

“This is not about President Trump. He will face the judgment of the voters, but he knows the need for us to create a process for future presidents,” she said. “This legislation applies to future presidents, but we are reminded of the necessity of action by the health of the current president.”

The measure would have augmented the 25th Amendment, which provides procedures for transferring power to the vice president in case of the president’s death, incapacitation, removal, or resignation. It would set up a commission of 16 members chosen by Democrats and Republicans, who are medical experts or former high-ranking executive branch officials such as former members of a president’s Cabinet. The commission’s members would then select a 17th member, who would serve as chairperson.

Pelosi and many Democrats regularly raised the issue of the 25th Amendment during Trump’s tenure as president, more as a way to question his judgment and mental acuity amid the 45th U.S. president’s furious Twitter rants and frequent acts of retribution and name-calling.

Many Democrats have long questioned whether Trump suffers from cognitive decline, and recently, the former president provided more fodder by confusing Nikki Haley with Pelosi herself in accusing the former ambassador to the United Nations of being responsible for security at the Capitol during the pro-Trump riots.

But the Democratic digs at Trump’s mental health were far trickier after the party’s leaders coalesced around Joe Biden as the Democratic 2020 presidential nominee and suddenly were forced to fend off far worse public perceptions of Biden. Once elected, his stairway falls, mangled words, and misidentified world leaders made the task all the more difficult.

Now the tables have decisively turned. Republicans are now beating the drum for invoking the 25th Amendment after Special Counsel Robert Hur released a damning report. The findings accused Biden of “willfully” keeping classified documents in his Delaware home but declined to charge the president because his deteriorated mental state made him impossible to prosecute. Jurors would view him only as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” Hur asserted in his report.

Legal experts and hardline Republicans erupted with calls for Biden’s removal from office, citing Hur’s claims that Biden struggled to remember events such as when his term began and ended as vice president and when, within several years, his son Beau died.

“The Special Counsel’s report exposing that Joe Biden’s mental decline is so severe that he can not stand trial means he is unfit for office,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, posted on X.com. “We must demand either the 25th amendment be invoked or impeachment.”

Several other members of the House Freedom Caucus, a conservative group that helped remove House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in December, quickly amplified the calls. Rep. Mary Miller, an Indiana Republican, painted a dire situation, deeming Biden’s removal from office a matter of national security.

“For the safety of our nation, Joe Biden must resign,” Miller wrote. “He could not remember basic facts about his life. He is not competent to remain as Commander-in-Chief & every day that he remains, he puts America at risk.”

Speaker Mike Johnson and the entire House GOP leadership also waded in, issuing a joint statement that concluded: “A man too incapable of being held accountable for mishandling classified information is certainly unfit for the Oval Office.”

Johnson then doubled down after Biden decided to take the questions head-on at a hastily assembled press conference in which he angrily sparred with reporters questioning his mental abilities and mistakenly called Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi the “president of Mexico.”

“The President’s press conference this evening further confirmed on live television what the Special Counsel outlined,” the Speaker said on X. “He is not fit to be President.” Two conservative GOP senators, Mike Lee of Utah and Rick Scott of Florida, joined the chorus. “It’s time for his cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment,” Scott tweeted.

Scott acknowledged just how unlikely such an outcome would be, considering the rules for removing a president outlined in the constitutional amendment and the politics of doing so in an election year. A president can only be removed if he agrees to resign or if the vice president and a majority of presidential Cabinet members agree that he must leave office. And that’s just the first step.

Under such a scenario, the president can still resist and insist he’s competent to lead the nation. If the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet still disagree, they must wait four days before the 25th Amendment faces further nearly insurmountable hurdles. Successfully removing a president requires the support of two-thirds of the House and the Senate. 

Why does the process give the president so much control over his ability to remain in office? The 25th Amendment’s authors crafted the process to maintain the power of the presidency and to prevent partisan political forces from manipulating it as an end-run around impeachment.

“It reflects a preference for giving the president the ability to be the main decision-maker here,” explained Brian Kalt, a professor of Michigan State University College of Law and the author of “Unable: The Law, Politics, and Limits of Section 4 of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment.”

“Not only do you need the president’s own party to vote in significant numbers against him in the House and Senate, you need his own team, basically to say, ‘Look, this is not okay,’” Kalt told RealClearPolitics. “It’s supposed to be hard. It’s supposed to be for extreme situations.”

The 25th Amendment was ratified and approved after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy as a more explicit mechanism for transferring power from the president. It had previously been understood that the vice president could step in if the president was disabled, but until that time, the Constitution didn’t provide the requisite standards or procedures.

“So, we never used it, even when presidents were clearly incapacitated,” Kalt said.

Several times before Kennedy’s assassination, the country’s continuity of government was endangered when presidents became incapacitated. President Garfield was incoherent for two and a half months after he was shot in 1881 before he eventually died. Vice President Chester Arthur didn’t take over despite Garfield’s inability to perform his official duties.

In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke that severely affected his physical and mental health for the remainder of his term. But he refused to resign, and Vice President Thomas Marshall declined to serve as acting president.

During President Dwight Eisenhower’s years in office, he suffered a heart attack and underwent surgery for Crohn’s disease. Eisenhower wrote a confidential letter to his vice president, Richard Nixon, naming him responsible for determining whether he could perform his presidential duties. The letter’s legal authority was never adjudicated, and in any event, Nixon took over the duties of president only for a few hours two times, in 1955 after Eisenhower’s heart attack and again during the president’s 1956 surgery.

“It’s not supposed to be another way for the president’s opponents to get rid of him,” Kalt said. “We really do stack the deck in favor of the president but in a way that allows power to transfer when it’s an undeniable case.”

After Hur released his devastating report Thursday, Biden’s personal and White House lawyers showed no willingness to concede that Biden’s mental capacity is in any way diminished. The vast majority of Americans do not seem to agree. Even before the special counsel’s conclusions, a January NBC News poll found that 76% of voters have major or moderate concerns about Biden’s cognitive and physical health.

In reacting to Hur’s report, Biden’s lawyers strongly objected to its characterizations and accused the special counsel of engaging in partisan politics. Bob Bauer, Biden’s personal attorney, who previously served as the general counsel to the Democratic National Committee and President Obama’s presidential campaign, accused Hur of “trashing” Biden.

“The special counsel could not refrain from investigative excess, perhaps unsurprisingly given the intense pressures of the current political environment,” he said in a statement. “Whatever the impact of those pressures on the final report, it flouts department regulations and norms.”

But other prominent legal analysts argued that Hur’s decision not to hold Biden responsible for years of violating the Presidential Records Act was far too lenient. Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law professor at George Washington University, said the depiction of Biden as too feeble to stand trial reminded him of the defense of mob leader Vincent Gigante, who often showed up in court in robes and pajamas. His lawyers successfully delayed his prosecution for years through arguments that he was mentally unfit to stand trial. Gigante was eventually convicted and sentenced to 12 years.

“Here the special counsel is saying, ‘You know what? It’s just going to break the jury’s heart to see an elderly man with such a faulty memory and diminished faculties being charged,’” Turley said on Fox News after the report’s release. “There’s going to be a lot of questions about that.”

When it comes to Trump, Turley argued, it seems prosecutors “hit him with any possible crimes stretching every possible definition.” But when they’re dealing with figures like President Biden, they are “far more cautious and resistant to charges,” he added.

Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Andy McCarthy, a conservative commentator and regular contributor to Fox News, said the report’s conclusions about Biden’s mental health are far more damning than the determination that Biden willfully stored classified documents in his Delaware home.

“Well, my first impression was that this is supposed to be about whether there’s enough evidence to indict, and as you read the report, I can’t help but say it sure looks like there’s enough here to invoke the 25th Amendment,” McCarthy said on Fox News. “And I know that’s not what he’s looking at, what his purpose is, but [Biden’s] fitness for office is a major issue here.” 

The White House and Democrats on Thursday immediately pushed back at the report’s conclusions about the president’s mental fitness even as other Democratic members privately acknowledged the grim political reality – that the report confirmed what many Americans had suspected for months, making it far more difficult for Biden to remain the nominee in November.

Before the report was released, top White House aides were already struggling to defend Biden’s decision to skip the traditional pre-Superbowl presidential interview and explain away his gaffes from earlier this week. Biden, during a fundraiser, wrongly identified dead European leaders as having expressed concern to him about the events of the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The politics of the situation are daunting for both major political parties. It seems increasingly clear that the Republicans are stuck with Donald Trump as their nominee whether they like it or not – and most rank-and-file voters seem fine with it even though Trump doesn’t poll as well against Biden as challenger Nikki Haley. On the Democrats’ side, if Vice President Kamala Harris becomes the president under the 25th Amendment, she would choose her own running mate. Under such a scenario, it would be far more difficult for the party to dump Harris, who is even less popular than the president, as the presumptive nominee during the remaining primaries or at the convention. There has been talk of Biden trying to replace Harris as his No. 2 since early last year. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren endorsed Biden in February, but equivocated when it came to whether or not he should boot Harris from the ticket. 

“I really want to defer to what makes Biden comfortable on his team,” said Warren, who shortly afterward tried to undo the damage by issuing a statement “fully” supporting the reelection of Biden and Harris “together.” 

That hasn’t stopped the speculation about other would-be presidential contenders. There are plenty of Biden alternatives already waiting in the wings, including such possibilities as former first lady Michelle Obama, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

“Republicans should be careful what they wish for when talking about the 25th Amendment,” Kalt warned. “It could mean they won’t have Biden to run against in November.”

Susan Crabtree is RealClearPolitics’ national political correspondent.

One month ago we asked a simple question: at a time when the Biden admin is breathlessly taking credit for a quote-unquote “strong” job market, how is it not the biggest political talking point right now that since October 2019, native-born US workers have lost 1.4 million jobs; while over the same period foreign-born workers have gained 3 million jobs.

How is this not the biggest political talking point right now: since October 2019, native-born US workers have lost 1.4 million jobs; over the same period foreign-born workers have gained 3 million jobs. pic.twitter.com/Z5HVWmQ24C

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 15, 2024

A few weeks later, when the grotesque and ridiculous January jobs report hit, we reran the analysis to find something even more jarring. Not only were all job gains in the past year entirely thanks to part-time workers, but native-born workers plunged by a another whopping 560 thousand, bringing the two-month total drop to just under 2 million. This meant that not only has all job creation in the past 4 years been exclusively for foreign-born workers, but there has been zero job-creation for native-born American workers since July 2018 (don’t believe us? go ahead and check the data directly from the Fed).

Well, little by little our observations went viral, and soon the fact that immigration has been the only source of growth in the US was picked up by everyone from unimportant people such as fake (or is it fax) economists such as Paul Krugman, all the way to the most important person in the world, (with all due respect to Dementia Joe), the Fed chair Jerome Powell, and even the Congressional Budget Office. And that required an immediate propaganda response.

So what does the propaganda blowback against this “biggest political talking point” look like?

Well, let’s start with the NY Times’ pet Goebbels, Paul Krugman, who just happens to be the world’s most overrated economist who in 1998 said that “by 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s”, concedes that “all of the increase in employment since the eve of the Covid-19 pandemic has involved foreign-born workers” (but because facts are “political” he mocks that “Trump and those around him clearly believe that immigrants take jobs away from native-born Americans”), and then he proceeds to lose any last trace of credibility liberals may still have in him – since anyone who knows how to click on a hyperlink such as this one can figure it out on their own – when he claims that immigrants “haven’t been taking jobs from the native-born, who are more likely to be employed in their prime working years than they were before the pandemic.” Great, the only problem with that is if one also looks at the quality of jobs instead of just quantity, and finds that all jobs in the past year have been part-time jobs.

Is that the quality of jobs Krugman believes native-born Americans are entitled to? Don’t answer that: it’s rhetorical. As we showed repeatedly, non-immigrant Americans have not gained any jobs in 6 years, so Krugman’s whole argument is one giant strawman.

As for the employment rate among prime-aged native Americans being flat, all Krugman is confirming is that the population of native born Americans is falling just as fast as their employment, which in turn is keeping the numerator and the denominator more or less unchanged. At the same time not only are all new jobs going to immigrants (whether legal or illegal), all of the US population growth is also due to immigrants (whether legal or illegal), which last time we checked, is precisely what the Replacement Theory is all about.

Perhaps for his next propaganda exercise, the Democrats’ favorite economist can answer this question: why are so many native-born Americans so terrified of having families and raising children in this Bidenomical nirvana where everything is so wonderful, and why is all growth, in both the labor force and population, left to immigrants (whether legal or illegal).

Of course, he won’t do that, as that requires figuring out the true nature of the problem which would go against his ideology; and instead he will jump right to the propaganda conclusion which is what one would expect from a professional liar, namely that “Immigrants are really good for the U.S. economy — and nativists really bad.“

All this is short-run; add in huge long-run benefits from immigration in helping us pay for Social Security, Medicare and so on. Immigrants are really good for the U.S. economy — and nativists really bad 6/

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) February 2, 2024

* *  *

Of course, if it was just Krugman doing the full court propaganda press we wouldn’t even bother with this response, but we were rather amazed to hear none other than the Fed chair bring the topic of immigration up in his 60 Minutes interview. Luckily, unlike the NYT ecomedist, Powell’s take was far more accurate, if much more sinister. For those who missed it, here is what Powell said when host Scott Pelley asked him why the return of immigration to the US after the Pandemic (when Trump locked down all the borders) was so important:

PELLEY: Why was immigration important?

POWELL: Because, you know, immigrants come in, and they tend to work at a rate that is at or above that for non-immigrants. Immigrants who come to the country tend to be in the workforce at a slightly higher level than native Americans do. But that’s largely because of the age difference. They tend to skew younger.

PELLEY: Why is immigration so important to the economy?

POWELL: Well, first of all, immigration policy is not the Fed’s job. The immigration policy of the United States is really important and really much under discussion right now, and that’s none of our business. We don’t set immigration policy. We don’t comment on it.

I will say, over time, though, the U.S. economy has benefited from immigration. And, frankly, just in the last, year a big part of the story of the labor market coming back into better balance is immigration returning to levels that were more typical of the pre-pandemic era.

PELLEY: The country needed the workers.

POWELL: It did. And so, that’s what’s been happening.

Two points here: first, whether he meant to or not, Powell just insulted a few hundred million native-born Americans who reportedly do not work at a “rate that is above that for non-immigrants”, i.e., they are plain old lazy, and then there is the far more ominous insinuation: when Powell says that a “big part of the story of the labor market coming back into better balance is immigration returning to levels that were more typical of the pre-pandemic era,” what he really means is that the reason why inflation has fallen so fast since peaking in June 2022 (at 9.1% YoY) without a corresponding surge in the unemployment rate, is because immigrants (whether legal or illegal) were replacing the jobs of those native American workers who were leaving the labor force! Or said otherwise, you have Replacement Theory to thank for the drop in inflation (i.e., wages) which would not have been possible without the surge in immigration, which in turn is why native-American workers haven’t seen any job gains in 6 years!

Which also explains why private worker wages have indeed tumbled in the past two years, even as government wage growth has exploded to an all time high. That’s right, Replacement Theory for thee… just not for the Deep State, which is taking all the benefits of sliding wages (thanks to Paco mowing your lawn again), and pushing wages of government workers (i.e., the Deep State) to an all time high!

But while Powell’s attempt at spinning immigration (almost entirely of the illegal sort since that’s where the bulk of workers came from in the past two years) was at least grounded in truth – and is why the ominous conclusion of why all this is taking place emerged – the third and final propaganda shocker came from none other than the “bipartisan” Congressional Budget Office, which this week published its latest “Budget and Economic Outlook: 2024 to 2034“, and which not surprisingly for an election year, came out decidedly more optimistic than last year’s edition, largely due to a handful of ridiculous assumptions about the future US budget and deficit, which we will discuss in a subsequent post – some of the “highlights” are i) no recession for a decade, ii) unemployment rates peaks just over 4%, iii) inflation peaks at 2%, iv) discretionary spending declines drastically largely due to a big drop in Medicaid spending – yet even with all these ludicrous cherry-picked assumptions, US debt/GDP still rises to catastrophic, hyperinflationary 172% by 2054.

Anyway, since it is an election year, the CBO – whose forecasts have been dead wrong and overly optimistic every single year this century – was tasked with coming up with some optimistic talking points for the Biden admin, like how many trillions in nominal GDP growth the US economy will add if it maintains the current course over the next decade, and it did as ordered. In fact, it did so well, that the WaPo’s favorite economic columnist and spin master, Catherine Rampell, was effusive in her praise of the CBO forecast on X (formerly twitter). To be sure, not even she could mask the fact that the US is on an unsustainable fiscal course, pointing out that “Thanks largely to those higher-than-previously-expected interest rates, CBO raised its estimate of net outlays for interest over the next decade by $1.2 trillion (or 11%)” (spoiler alert: outlays due to the soaring interest will be orders of magnitude greater).

But what matters for this analysis is the CBO’s punchline, and what one item they goalseeked to get to their mandated economic increase. Can you guess where the bulk of economic growth comes from?

Why, that’s right: immigration!

Here is how the CBO’s labor force forecast looks like today vs a year ago. Why the surge? Well, as the CBO explains, higher population growth through 2026 is “mainly from increased immigration”, which “more than offset a decline in labor force participation due to slowing demand for workers and the rising average age of the population” – translation: more immigrant workers, fewer native-American workers. And that’s not all: according to the CBO, “a large proportion of recent and projected immigrants are expected to be 25 to 54 years old – adults in their prime working years.“

And there’s your Replacement Theory again, only this time with a beautiful spin, one which as the WaPo columnist was delivered by none other than CBO Director Phill Swagel, who writes that “as a result of those changes in the labor force, we estimate that from 2023 to 2034, GDP will be greater by about $7 trillion and revenue will be greater by about $1 trillion than they would have been otherwise.”

From CBO Director Phill Swagel: “As a result of those changes in the labor force, we estimate that, from 2023 to 2034, GDP will be greater by about $7 trillion and revenues will be greater by about $1 trillion than they would have been otherwise.”https://t.co/751mWoOqNL pic.twitter.com/xsJS0ROpPc

— Catherine Rampell (@crampell) February 8, 2024

And so there you have it. One month ago we wondered how the surge in immigrant workers is “not the biggest political talking point right now.”

Well, just a few weeks later, it is emerging as just that, and the propaganda response has been staggering, with establishment figures such as Krugman, who accuses anyone that believes immigration is bad as being part of the lumpenproletariat, which ironically is a Marxist term…

“No, A.I. and automation, for all the changes they may bring, won’t ultimately take away jobs, and neither will immigrants. Don’t join the lumpencommentariat” – source

… Powell, who accuses native-born workers of being lazy and claims that immigration is helping defeat the inflation that his policies unleashed…

“… a big part of the story of the labor market coming back into better balance is immigration returning to levels that were more typical of the pre-pandemic era.” – source

… and finally the CBO…

“The labor force in 2033 is larger by 5.2 million people, mostly because of higher net immigration. As a result of those changes in the labor force we estimate that from 2023 to 2034, GDP will be greater by about $7 trillion and revenue will be greater by about $1 trillion than they would have been otherwise.” – source

… all coming out in full-throated support of immigration (mostly of the illegal, inflation-crushing because wage-hammering variety).

To be sure, many rational voices – even those of conventional economists – have come out to challenge these ludicrous assumptions and conclusions, but none of them will be heard because as it should be abundantly clear by now, immigration will be the decisive factor of the November election, and if the Biden propaganda machine can kill two birds with one stone, namely that (illegal) immigration is actually great for the US and will end up boosting the economy by trillions, all the better.

And so, with the election still nine months ago, expect the topic of how illegal immigration is the greatest thing imaginable for the US, to dominate the airwaves of the liberal mainstream media which is also the most vocal propaganda channel available to the establishment, whose fate is now contingent on convincing hundreds of millions of Americans that all those tens of thousands of illegals entering the country every day thanks to Biden’s open-border policies are actually the best thing that could happen to them.

In a banner year, U.S. automakers sold 15.5 million cars in 2023, driven by pent-up demand. Overall, sales jumped 12.4%, with many car manufacturers seeing double-digit sales increases.

Higher dealership inventory and moderating car prices were two reasons for this growth, helping make up for a tough 2022 which was the worst year in a decade due to supply chain disruptions and production snags.

Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu created this graphic to show the best-selling vehicles in America in 2023, with data from Motor1.

Trucks and SUVs See Highest Sales

As the table below shows, nine out of America’s top 10 selling cars were trucks or SUVS:

*Tesla does not break out sales by region. Figures are based on estimates by EVadoption.com.

The Ford F-Series maintained its spot as the best-selling vehicle in America for over four decades straight.

Of the two million cars that Ford sold last year, nearly 40% were of the F-Series. While the automaker has cut back electric vehicle (EV) plans for 2024, sales of EV models increased 18% over the year. Meanwhile, hybrid sales climbed 25%, with 133,743 hybrid models sold.

The Chevrolet Silverado fell next in line—the full-size pickup truck has been a long-standing number two seller to the F-Series. In 2023, the most affordable model had a manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP) of $38,195 while the least expensive Ford F-150’s MSRP was $34,445. Overall, sales of the Silverado grew by 6.1% annually.

Coming in fifth was Tesla’s Model Y. In efforts to reach sales targets, Tesla cut prices on the Model Y SUV amid competition from Ford and BYD, a leading Chinese EV company. While the company doesn’t report regional figures, EVadoption.com estimates U.S. sales to be 403,897.

Surprisingly, the only sedan in the top 10 is the Toyota Camry. The cheaper Corolla ranked 12th, with 232,370 units sold.

Via Middle East Eye

Israel has not even come close to defeating Hamas through its military offensive on the Gaza Strip, US intelligence officials have said. According to the New York Times, the officials told members of Congress earlier this week that while Israel had managed to degrade Hamas’s fighting capabilities, they were still very far from crushing the organization itself.

Officials also said that given the nature of Hamas’ military wing as a fundamentally “guerilla” force, defeating the group might not even be possible and that simply weakening their combat strength might be a more realistic goal.

Their comments come despite repeated insistence from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the defeat of the Palestinian group was the ultimate goal of his country’s ongoing attack on Gaza.

In a press conference late on Wednesday, Netanyahu vowed to continue Israel’s military offensive until “total victory” was secured, saying his country would achieve this “within months”.

“We won’t settle for less,” he said, as he rejected a ceasefire plan proposed by Hamas.

Earlier on Wednesday, several news agencies, including Middle East Eye, said they had seen the Palestinian group’s proposed three-stage ceasefire plan.

Among the proposals was for all Israeli women, children under 19, the elderly, and the sick to be released from Gaza during the first 45-day phase in exchange for the release of all Palestinian female, children, sick, and elderly prisoners over 50 years old from Israeli jails. 

The Palestinian death toll in four months has risen reportedly to more than 27,900, with over 67,400 wounded and at least 7,000 missing, who are believed to be dead and buried under rubble. Over 70 percent of the victims are children and women, according to health officials.

The air war has also continued…

⚡️Sky over the north moments ago pic.twitter.com/iyxNnY7SZy

— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) February 9, 2024

While Netanyahu claimed last month that Israel had killed two-thirds of Hamas’ fighting force, American officials say privately that their estimates are considerably lower, saying maybe only a third of Hamas’s estimated 20,000 to 25,000 fighters had been killed.

“The closed-door intelligence briefing to members of Congress did not include a discussion of how many Hamas fighters may have been killed, nor did it contain refined estimates of civilian casualties,” NYT writes. 

“American intelligence officials have refrained from offering specific estimates of how many Hamas fighters have been killed, arguing that such estimates are neither accurate nor meaningful,” the report continues.

Joe Biden is fuming mad, and has told aides and outside advisers that Attorney General Merrick Garland didn’t do enough to sanitize a special counsel’s report which concluded that Biden is too cognitively diminished to face prosecution for mishandling classified documents.

As Politico reports;

Biden and his closest advisers believe Hur went well beyond his purview and was gratuitous and misleading in his descriptions, according to those two people, who were granted anonymity to speak freely. And they put part of the blame on Garland, who they say should have demanded edits to Hur’s report, including around the descriptions of Biden’s faltering memory.

The import of Hur’s report, of course, is being seized and pounced upon by conservatives, as the obvious conclusion is that if Biden is too senile to face prosecution, he’s too senile to be the president.

According to the report, Garland is finished – and wouldn’t remain in his post for a possible second term.

“This has been building for a while,” said an anonymous insider. “No one is happy.”

And while the White House insists the DOJ isn’t ‘weaponized,’ Biden in recent weeks has apparently grumbled to aides and advisers that had Garland simply moved sooner in his investigation into Donald Trump for election interference, a trial might already be underway – or even have concluded.

“I think Garland will be criticized by historians. We’ve had some terrific attorneys general and some not so good attorneys general. And I think he’s going to rank in the not so good,” said Robert Shrum, a longtime consultant in the Democratic Party.

“Garland is far and away Biden’s worst appointee by an order of magnitude,” Robert Kuttner, co-founder of the liberal American Prospect. “And we all pay the price. If Biden goes down the drain because Garland has mishandled the investigation of Trump and gave Republicans a weapon … then the country pays the price. It’s not just that Biden gets punished for the stupidity of appointing Garland.” -Politico

That said, one former DOJ official suggested that frustrations at Garland are better directed at the White House – where the president’s team could have asserted executive privilege over elements of Hur’s report. Had Garland done so, he would have had to explain those redactions to Congress.

“The way in which the White House story kept changing at the outset made it much more difficult for the Justice Department to resist having a special counsel,” said the former official, referring to the classified documents case. “Had there been a very clear story at the beginning, it would have been easier.”

Mental competency?

Meanwhile, following the report, medical professionals stepped up calls for Biden to take a mental competency test.

“The horse is out of the barn. Not only does [Biden] have an infirmity of some degree, but he has delayed producing objective evidence,” said Dr. Stuart Fischer, a primary care physician at a nursing home in the Bronx, in a statement to the NY Post.

[A]ccording to Fischer, Biden has “signs of symptoms” that could indicate he suffers from “infectious disease or fatigue,” though the physician stressed that he is not Biden’s doctor and his statements did not constitute a diagnosis.

“I don’t know how this man can have anything more than a mild schedule,” added the doc, “because the more he pushes himself, the more difficult it is for an 81-year-old body to respond.”

Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), a physician to both former Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump and a member of the White House Medical Unit under President George W. Bush, told The Post that if Biden clinches the Democratic presidential nomination, he should “100%” have to submit to a mental competency test before the general election. -NY Post

Leading Democrats, meanwhile, are encouraging Biden to ‘get out there’ and show he’s ok upstairs, Politico reports, writing that top party operatives are warning that he cannot retreat – and “want to see him engage with the press and voters in the off-script and punchy exchanges he’s been known for in the past, which they believe will help chip away at concerns about the president’s mental acuity.”

Hiding the evidence

Following the Thursday release of Hur’s report, Biden stormed out and gave an angry press conference denouncing its findings and insisting that he’s got all his marbles – before mistakenly referring to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as the President of Mexico, while trying to convey a story about Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu.

In response, the White House unlisted the video from its YouTube feed for anyone who doesn’t have a direct link.

🚨 BREAKING: The White House has now UNLISTED Joe Biden’s humiliating press conference from Thursday night, effectively hiding it from their page unless you have the direct link. pic.twitter.com/0EnxDXnmAS

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) February 10, 2024

So, here it is:

This is fine…

…Of course, the various experts and pundits who called for Trump’s removal under the 25th Amendment are notably silent this week, even after his own Justice Department cited his diminished faculties as a reason for not charging him.

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) February 10, 2024

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A new study examining the likely impact that fraudulent mail-in ballots had in the 2020 election concludes that the outcome would “almost certainly” have been different without the massive expansion of voting by mail.

The Heartland Institute study tried to gauge the probable impact that fraudulent mail-in ballots cast for both then-candidate Joe Biden and his opponent, President Donald Trump, would have had on the overall 2020 election results.

The study was based on data obtained from a Heartland/Rasmussen survey in December that revealed that roughly one in five mail-in voters admitted to potentially fraudulent actions in the presidential election.

After the researchers carried out additional analyses of the data, they concluded that mail-in ballot fraud “significantly” impacted the 2020 presidential election.

They also found that, absent the huge expansion of mail-in ballots during the pandemic, which was often done without legislative approval, President Trump would most likely have won.

“Had the 2020 election been conducted like every national election has been over the past two centuries, wherein the vast majority of voters cast ballots in-person rather than by mail, Donald Trump would have almost certainly been re-elected,” the report’s authors wrote.

Over 43 percent of 2020 votes were cast by mail, the highest percentage in U.S. history.

‘Biggest Story of the Year’

The new study examined raw data from the December survey carried out jointly between Heartland Institute and Rasmussen Reports, which tried to assess the level of fraudulent voting that took place in 2020.

The December survey, which President Trump called “the biggest story of the year,” suggested that roughly 20 percent of mail-in voters engaged in at least one potentially fraudulent action in the 2020 election, such as voting in a state where they’re no longer permanent residents.

In the new study, Heartland analysts say that, after reviewing the raw survey data, subjecting it to additional statistical treatment and more thorough analysis, they now believe they can conclude that 28.2 percent of respondents who voted by mail committed at least one type of behavior that is “under most circumstances, illegal” and so potentially amounts to voter fraud.

“This means that more than one-in-four ballots cast by mail in 2020 were likely cast fraudulently, and thus should not have been counted,” the researchers wrote.

A Heartland Institute research editor and research fellow who was involved in the study explained to The Epoch Times in a telephone interview that there are narrow exceptions where a surveyed behavior may be legal, like filling out a mail-in ballot on behalf of another voter if that person is blind, illiterate, or disabled, and requests assistance.

However, the research fellow, Jack McPherrin, said such cases were within the margin of error and not statistically significant.

What Are the Implications?

In addition to reassessing the likely overall degree of fraudulent mail-in ballots in the 2020 election, Heartland analysts calculated the potential impact that fraudulent mail-in ballots might have produced in the six key swing states that President Trump officially lost.

This, then, was used to determine the impact of potentially fraudulent mail-in ballots on the overall 2020 election result.

First, the researchers analyzed the electoral results for the six swing states—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—under the 28.2 percent fraudulent mail-in ballot scenario that they estimated based on the raw survey data.

Then they calculated the electoral results in the six states under the different scenarios, each with a lower assumed percentage of fraudulent ballots, ranging from 28.2 percent all the way down to 1 percent.

For each of the 29 scenarios that they assesses, the researchers calculated the estimated number of fraudulent ballots, which were then subtracted from overall 2020 vote totals to generate a new estimate for vote totals.

Overall, of the 29 different scenarios presented in the study, the researchers concluded that President Trump would have won the 2020 election in all but three.

Specifically, they calculated that the only scenarios that would affirm the official 2020 election result, namely that candidate Biden won, were mail-in ballot fraud levels between 1 and 3 percent of ballots cast.

Mail-in ballot fraud rates higher than 3 percent would, according to the study, mean more fraudulent Biden votes that should be subtracted from the total, putting President Trump ahead.

For example, the adjustment to the vote tallies under fraud percentage rates between 13 and 6 percent would mean President Trump would have won Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, though he would have still lost in Michigan and Nevada.

Under such a scenario, President Trump would have won 289 Electoral College votes compared to candidate Biden’s 249.

In scenarios of 5–4 percent fraud, each candidate would have received 269 Electoral College votes, but President Trump would likely still have won because Republicans controlled more state delegations and, under a tie scenario, Congress would have voted based on the number of delegates.

However, the researchers expressed confidence in their overall assessment that the level of mail-in ballot fraud was over 25 percent, indicative of an actual Trump win.

“We have no reason to believe that our survey overstated voter fraud by more than 25 percentage points, and thus, we must conclude that the best available evidence suggests that mail-in ballot fraud significantly impacted the 2020 presidential election, in favor of Joe Biden,” the paper’s authors wrote.

Survey Criticism

Jim Womack, president of the North Carolina Election Integrity Team, told The Epoch Times in an earlier interview and in additional written comments in response to the new study, that he believes the survey questions were flawed and make the survey statistically meaningless, though not without value.

“We know there was fraud in the 2020 election, but you can’t conclude that it was 20 percent or 10 percent or even 5 percent based on the survey because the questions that could lead to such conclusions were unclear,” Mr. Womack said.

However, he said that the survey questions on which Heartland based its research were unclear. He argued that the questions comingled legal and illegal activity and that this made it impossible to conclude specific percentages of mail-in ballot fraud with certainty.

For instance, Mr. Womack pointed out that it’s legal and permissible in all states for people who by reason of blindness, disability, or illiteracy request or require assistance in filling out mail-in ballots to get such assistance.

However, the wording of one of the survey questions—“During the 2020 election, did you fill out a ballot, in part or in full, on behalf of a friend or family member, such as a spouse or child?”—did not differentiate between legal and illegal forms of filling out a mail ballot on behalf of someone.

Therefore, 21 percent of people responding “yes” to this question does not necessarily mean that this percentage of people actually committed voter fraud, Mr. Womack argued.

Mr. Womack also said that another survey question–“During the 2020 election, did you cast a mail-in ballot in a state where you were no longer a permanent resident?”—to which 17 percent replied yes—also does not support the conclusion that all such cases were illegal. That’s because, as Mr. Womack pointed out, federal and state laws allow some voters (such as UOCAVA registered citizens) to cast a ballot in a state where they are no longer permanent residents under certain circumstances.

“We’d need to dive deeper into these responses to determine if these were fraudulent or not,” Mr. Womack said.

Regardless, he praised the Heartland Institute for engaging with the topic of mail-in ballot fraud and raising public awareness about what he said is an important problem.

Response to Criticism

When asked to comment on Mr. Womack’s objections, Mr. McPherrin, of the Heartland Institute, told The Epoch Times that he stands by the findings.

For instance, Mr. McPherrin acknowledged that it’s legal for people who are blind, disabled, or illiterate to get help from someone in filling out a ballot.

However, he argued that the number of such individuals responding to the Heartland/Rasmussen survey (which was based on a representative sample of 1,085 likely voters) would likely have been tiny.

“It would be difficult to imagine that dozens of blind people or those that are illiterate or disabled are answering this poll,” he said, adding that the presumably tiny fraction of survey respondents who fall into this category would be statistically insignificant and not impact the overall survey results.

But even if that particular question is left out due to concerns about its clarity, the percentage of people who admitted to potentially fraudulent voter activity would still be about one in five, he said.

Mr. McPherrin said he and his team have received and reviewed Mr. Womack’s criticism and they believe the points he makes have some validity but not enough to affect their findings in a meaningful way.

He maintains the study clearly shows that if the 2020 election had been as fair and secure as prior elections, President Trump would “almost certainly” have been re-elected to a second term.

Mr. Womack continues to stand by his criticism of the survey question design, providing The Epoch Times with a written statement on Feb. 8 that calls the survey “very poorly constructed, failing to capture even a single instance of probable voter fraud.”

He argued that the survey questions were “vague and ambiguous, commingling permissible with impermissible behaviors, thus diminishing the quality and usefulness of responses.”

Further, Mr. Womack argued that propagating the contents of the survey does more harm than good and potentially undermines the work and reputation of “legitimate election integrity organizations like EIN,” referring to the Election Integrity Network, a project of the Conservative Partnership Institute.

Meanwhile, the authors of the Heartland study call for state legislatures to do all in their power to ensure the 2024 presidential election is as secure as possible, mostly by severely limiting mail-in voting and adopting other commonsense policies to prevent mail-in voter fraud.