Aspen, Colorado’s luxury real estate market has cooled after a surge of wealthy folks fled US cities during Covid to the mountain resort town 8,000 feet above sea level. Bloomberg states year-to-date dollar volume for mansion contracts is down a whopping 40% compared to the same period last year as real estate faces a headwind thanks to a series of interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve. 

Tim Estin, a broker with Aspen Snowmass Sotheby’s International Realty, wrote in a new report that Aspen real estate has dramatically slowed in the first half of 2023. 

“The market has returned to pre-pandemic “normalcy” of the 2016-2019 years, a theme mentioned throughout the year so far,” Estin wrote, adding “normalcy” means an “active market but not the explosive ‘urban exodus’ market of 2020-2022.” 

Jennifer Banner, a Christie’s International Real Estate Aspen Snowmass broker, said, “Inventory is still historically low.” 

Estin said there were 175 property listings as of June, an increase from record lows in 2022, yet still significantly below the June 2019 average of 318 listings.

“Aspen is unique. We have very limited supply and great demand. So when we don’t have a lot of inventory to sell, our sales decrease. It’s not necessarily the lack of interest in being here; it’s the lack of options for potential buyers,” Steven Shane, a broker with Compass Inc., who, at the end of May, sold a $65 million mansion in downtown Aspen.

Low inventory is the reason why prices have remained stable. Bloomberg said, “As of June 31, the average price per square foot of a single-family home in Aspen was $3,150, more than three times the figure in 2019: $1,048 per square foot. Between Q2 of 2022 and Q2 of 2023, the average home sale price per square foot was up 6%.” 

Jonathan Miller, president and chief executive officer of appraiser Miller Samuel Inc., said, “Even though the majority of buyers pay in cash, Fed policy is reflective of not just mortgage rates, but also the financial markets. And this is a very affluent market. They watch the market, and it just adds a layer of uncertainty. As a result—whatever housing market you’re looking at in the US—nearly all of them have seen fairly large declines from unusually elevated levels in the past couple of years.”

Brokers said high-end homes over $10 million should experience continued strength this year. Some expect prices to cool but will never return to a pre-pandemic level. “I believe there’ll be an adjustment, but certainly not to pre-Covid levels,” Shane said. 

So a combination of tighter financial conditions and mounting macroeconomic uncertainty has sent a deep freeze through Aspen’s mansion market. 

Authored by Eva Fu via The Epoch Times,

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is perfecting a techno-totalitarian regime for export to the rest of the world, Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) has warned.

Chairman of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, Rep. Michael Gallagher (R-Wis.), speaks during an interfaith roundtable on the CCP’s threat to religious freedom in Washington on July 12, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

The regime’s worsening repression of faith was in the spotlight at a roundtable hearing that the lawmaker hosted on July 12. One key takeaway, the chairman and other panelists of the House Select Committee on the CCP said, is that such abuses do not stop at Chinese borders.

“Across the board, we’ve seen the Chinese Communist Party leverage access to their market and their economic power in order to coerce American companies, international companies,” Mr. Gallagher told The Epoch Times’ sister outlet NTD.

The lawmaker made the comment in response to a question regarding a lawsuit against Cisco, accusing the California tech giant of aiding Beijing’s persecution of the spiritual group Falun Gong—which encourages people to live by the universal principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. Cisco allegedly gave the regime U.S. technology and components that allowed it to build a vast surveillance network. Over a dozen adherents, including one U.S. citizen, alleged that the resulting system tracked their Falun Gong-related activities online, leading to their arrest and torture in China.

Surveillance cameras in Hangzhou, in east China’s Zhejiang Province on May 29, 2019. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

“The techno-totalitarian regime that the CCP is perfecting in China will not stay there. It’s a model increasingly they want to export around the world. And so we’re considering a variety of pieces of legislation to counter that,” Mr. Gallagher said.

At the roundtable, representatives for Chinese Christians, Tibetans, and Uyghurs also spoke about their suffering at the hands of China’s communist party officials, with some, in the case of house church pastor Pan Yongguang, continuing even after they fled China.

Pastor Pan Yongguang at Mayflower Church of China, who was granted asylum by the U.S. in April 2023, speaks during an interfaith roundtable on the Chinese Communist Party’s threat to religious freedom in Washington on July 12, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

Mr. Pan and members of Mayflower Church in China’s Shenzhen city left China in October 2019. After arriving in South Korea, many from the group received threatening phone calls from CCP officials demanding they they return to China. Members were also followed in Thailand by suspected CCP agents, while their relatives in China faced harassment and interrogation, Mr. Pan said at the hearing. In February this year, he said that Chinese police officers visited his wife’s parents in central Chinese province Hunan in order to pressure her to urge Mr. Pan to return. The stress of the blackmail and concern for her elderly parent’s welfare caused Mrs. Pan to suffer a partial heart attack.

“The Chinese Communist Party wants to dominate the world. If they achieved their goals, then what you see happening in China is going to happen around the world,” Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-Fla.), a member of the House China Committee, told The Epoch Times.

Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-Fla.) speaks during an interfaith roundtable on the Chinese Communist Party’s threat to religious freedom in Washington on July 12, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

He pointed to Hong Kong, where authorities arrested and later fined Cardinal Joseph Zen, 91, over a support fund for pro-democracy protesters. Incidents like this speak to the importance of speaking up about the regime’s abuses, Mr. Gimenez said, because what is happening in China right now could one day “be happening to you.”

“You have to be subservient to the Chinese Communist Party” and if “you pose a threat to the Chinese Communist Party in any way, you’ll be persecuted, you’ll be in prison, and sometimes, you may even lose your life.”

Multiple current and former U.S. religious freedom officials have already called attention to lobbying efforts on behalf of China that reach Washington, such as reports of big firms like Nike and Coca-Cola trying to weaken legislation banning imports from Xinjiang over forced labor concerns.

The U.S. government needs to pay closer attention to such lobbying activities and stop multinational corporations from assisting the regime’s oppression, said Frederick Davie, vice chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

Oncologist Dr. Weldon Gilcrease at the University of Utah previously told The Epoch Times that the leaders of his school’s health care system had intentionally refrained from speaking out on forced organ harvesting out of fear of economic retribution by Beijing.

Frederick Davie, Vice Chair of U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom and Strategic Advisor to the President at Union Theological Seminary (NYC), speaks during an interfaith roundtable on the Chinese Communist Party’s threat to religious freedom in Washington on July 12, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

To Davie, who earlier at the panel voiced concerns about the CCP using bilateral academic partnerships to make U.S. institutions “immune to the atrocities,” the incident was a case in point.

“It just proves the point of the level of influence that the Chinese economic reach has around the world and in the United States,” he told The Epoch Times.

American consumers have a part to play as well, noted Tony Perkins, former chair of the bipartisan religious freedom commission and president of the Family Research Council.

“China is actually more repressive today than they were two decades ago, and the reason is they can afford to be as American consumers fund their repression,” Mr. Perkins said at the panel.

Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council, speaks during an interfaith roundtable on the Chinese Communist Party’s threat to religious freedom in Washington on July 12, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

In his mind, the United States should have “no further economic transactions” with China until the human rights situation changes.

“Americans have become addicted to cheap goods—a very materialistic society—but they need to understand that the profits from that are coming back to influence policy, both here and abroad,” he told The Epoch Times.

“For our family, we read the label of where things are manufactured. And we do everything possible to keep from buying products from China, and we encourage others to do the same.”

Transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney claimed to have fled the US earlier this week for a third-world South American country because ‘she’ no longer “feels safe” in a first-world country amid the demise of Bud Light following her disastrous TikTok advertising partnership in April.

Just for the sake of the ‘fact-checkers’ Peru is the 59th ‘safest’ country in the world for LGBTQ+ people, while USA is ranked 6th…

Source: EqualDex

However, Mulvaney has since made her way back to the US.

The 26-year-old TikTok influencer who gets paid by ‘woke’ mega-corporations to promote their products while mocking women revealed Monday on TikTok she was at Machu Picchu. 

Mulvaney said she is “solo traveling” in Peru to “feel something” — as to what that means, we have no clue. She said she left the US because she does not currently feel safe.  

“I feel very safe here. It’s a little sad that I had to leave my country to feel safe, but that will get better eventually,” Mulvaney told millions of followers on the Chinese-owned social media platform. 

“I came here to feel something. And I definitely have. I have done shaman ceremonies that were like 10 years worth of therapy, it was wild,” Mulvaney continued, adding, “I’ve seen a lot of llamas. The people here are so kind. I feel very safe here.”

And only days later, Mulvaney returned Stateside to attend a Thursday red carpet for Outfest in Los Angeles. 

Days ago Dylan Mulvaney claimed to have fled the U.S. because he didn’t ‘feel safe.’

Yet last night he appeared at an LGBT event red carpet in Los Angeles showing off his ‘breasts’ and nipples. pic.twitter.com/aq2Vp39eLl

— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) July 14, 2023

Remember all those celebrities who have said they’re fleeing America for good for whatever reason — but never do. Add Mulvaney to that list. As to the hype she was promoting about ‘not feeling safe’ — seems like the transgender influencer might have been peddling misinformation considering her return to the States was only days later. 

Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rurtherford Institute,

“There is now the capacity to make tyranny total in America.”

– James Bamford, journalist

We’re all being targeted now.

We’re all guilty until proven innocent now.

And thanks to the 24/7 surveillance being carried out by the government’s spy network of fusion centers, we are all now sitting ducks, just waiting to be tagged, flagged, targeted, monitored, manipulated, investigated, interrogated, heckled and generally harassed by agents of the American police state.

Although these precrime programs are popping up all across the country, in small towns and big cities, they are not making us any safer but they are endangering individual freedoms.

Nationwide, there are upwards of 123 real-time crime centers (a.k.a. fusion centers), which allow local police agencies to upload and share massive amounts of surveillance data and intelligence with state and federal agencies culled from surveillance cameras, facial recognition technology, gunshot sensors, social media monitoring, drones and body cameras, and artificial intelligence-driven predictive policing algorithms.

These data fusion centers, which effectively create an electronic prison—a digital police state—from which there is no escape, are being built in partnership with big tech companies such as Microsoft, Google and Amazon, which helped to fuel the rise of police militarization and domestic surveillance.

While these latest expansions of the surveillance state are part of the Biden Administration’s efforts to combat domestic extremism through the creation of a “precrime” crime prevention agency, they have long been a pivotal part of the government’s plans for total control and dominion.

Yet this crime prevention campaign is not so much about making America safer as it is about ensuring that the government has the wherewithal to muzzle anti-government discontent, penalize anyone expressing anti-government sentiments, and preemptively nip in the bud any attempts by the populace to challenge the government’s authority or question its propaganda.

As J.D. Tuccille writes for Reason, “[A]t a time when government officials rage against ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’ that is often just disagreement with whatever opinions are currently popular among the political class, fusion centers frequently scrutinize peaceful dissenting speech.”

Indeed, while the Biden Administration was recently dealt a legal blow over its attempts to urge social media companies to do more to combat so-called dis- and mis-information, these fusion centers are the unacknowledged powerhouses behind the government’s campaign to censors and retaliate against those who vocalize their disagreement and discontent with government policies.

Already, the powers-that-be are mobilizing to ensure that fusion centers have the ability to monitor and lockdown sectors of a community at a moment’s notice.

For instance, a 42,000-square-foot behemoth of a fusion center in downtown Washington is reportedly designed to “better prepare law enforcement for the next public health emergency or Jan. 6-style attack.” According to an agency spokeswoman, “Screens covering the walls of the new facility will show surveillance cameras around the city as well as social media accounts that may be monitored for threatening speech.”

It’s like a scene straight out of Steven Spielberg’s dystopian film Minority Report, set in 2054, where police agencies harvest intelligence from widespread surveillance, behavior prediction technologies, data mining, precognitive technology, and neighborhood and family snitch programs in order to capture would-be criminals before they can do any damage.

Incredibly, as the various nascent technologies employed and shared by the government and corporations alike—facial recognition, iris scanners, massive databases, behavior prediction software, and so on—are incorporated into a complex, interwoven cyber network aimed at tracking our movements, predicting our thoughts and controlling our behavior, the dystopian visions of past writers is fast becoming our reality.

Our world is now characterized by widespread surveillance, behavior prediction technologies, data mining, fusion centers, driverless cars, voice-controlled homes, facial recognition systems, cybugs and drones, and predictive policing (pre-crime) aimed at capturing would-be criminals before they can do any damage.

What once seemed futuristic no longer occupies the realm of science fiction.

The American police state’s take on the dystopian terrors foreshadowed by George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Phillip K. Dick have all been rolled up into one oppressive pre-crime and pre-thought crime package.

In this way, the novel 1984 has become an operation manual for an omnipresent, modern-day surveillance state in which ordinary Americans find themselves labeled domestic extremists for engaging in lawful behavior that triggers the government’s precrime sensors.

The technocrats who run the surveillance state don’t even have to break a sweat while monitoring what you say, what you read, what you write, where you go, how much you spend, whom you support, and with whom you communicate and then classifying you as a danger.

Computers now do the tedious work of trolling social media, the internet, text messages and phone calls for potentially anti-government remarks, all of which is carefully recorded, documented, and stored to be used against you someday at a time and place of the government’s choosing.

In this way, with the help of automated eyes and ears, a growing arsenal of high-tech software, hardware and techniques, government propaganda urging Americans to turn into spies and snitches, as well as social media and behavior sensing software, government agents are spinning a sticky spider-web of threat assessments, behavioral sensing warnings, flagged “words,” and “suspicious” activity reports aimed at snaring potential enemies of the state.

It’s also a setup ripe for abuse.

For instance, an investigative report by the Brennan Center found that “Over the last two decades, leaked materials have shown fusion centers tracking protestors and casting peaceful activities as potential threats. Their targets have included racial justice and environmental advocates, right-wing activists, and third-party political candidates.”

One fusion center in Maine was found to have been “illegally collecting and sharing information about Maine residents who weren’t suspected of criminal activity. They included gun purchasers, people protesting the construction of a new power transmission line, the employees of a peacebuilding summer camp for teenagers, and even people who travelled to New York City frequently.”

In one Florida county, police have been using their precrime program to generate “lists of people it considers likely to break the law, based on arrest histories, unspecified intelligence and arbitrary decisions by police analysts.” Then, according to the Tampa Bay Times, deputies are deployed “to find and interrogate anyone whose name appears, often without probable cause, a search warrant or evidence of a specific crime. They swarm homes in the middle of the night, waking families and embarrassing people in front of their neighbors. They write tickets for missing mailbox numbers and overgrown grass, saddling residents with court dates and fines. They come again and again, making arrests for any reason they can.”

The goal? “Make their lives miserable until they move or sue.”

This is how the government is turning a nation of citizens into suspects and would-be criminals.

This transformation is being driven by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the agency notorious for militarizing the police and SWAT teams; spying on activists, dissidents and veterans; stockpiling ammunition; distributing license plate readers; contracting to build detention camps; tracking cell-phones with Stingray devices; carrying out military drills and lockdowns in American cities; using the TSA as an advance guard; conducting virtual strip searches with full-body scanners; carrying out soft target checkpoints; directing government workers to spy on Americans; conducting widespread spying networks using fusion centers; carrying out Constitution-free border control searches; funding city-wide surveillance cameras; and utilizing drones and other spybots.

Twenty years after being formed in the wake of 9/11, the DHS is a massive, costly, power-hungry bureaucracy working hard to ensure that the government is all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful.

Yet here’s the thing: you don’t have to do anything illegal or challenge the government’s authority in order to be flagged as a suspicious character, labeled an enemy of the state and locked up like a dangerous criminal.

In fact, all you need to do is use certain trigger words, surf the internet, communicate using a cell phone, drive a car, stay at a hotel, purchase materials at a hardware store, take flying or boating lessons, appear suspicious to a neighbor, question government authority, or generally live in the United States.

The following activities are guaranteed to get you censored, surveilled, eventually placed on a government watch list, possibly detained and potentially killed.

Use harmless trigger words like cloud, pork and pirates. Use a cell phone. Drive a car. Attend a political rally. Express yourself on social media. Serve in the military. Disagree with a law enforcement official. Call in sick to work. Limp or stutter. Appear confused or nervous, fidget, whistle or smell bad. Allow yourself to be seen in public waving a toy gun or anything remotely resembling a gun, such as a water nozzle or a remote control or a walking cane, for instance. Stare at a police officer. Appear to be pro-gun, pro-freedom or anti-government. Attend a public school. Speak truth to power.

It’s just a matter of time before you find yourself wrongly accused, investigated and confronted by police based on a data-driven algorithm or risk assessment culled together by a computer program run by artificial intelligence.

Before long, every household in America will be flagged as a threat and assigned a threat score.

Without having ever knowingly committed a crime or been convicted of one, you and your fellow citizens have likely been assessed for behaviors the government might consider devious, dangerous or concerning; assigned a threat score based on your associations, activities and viewpoints; and catalogued in a government database according to how you should be approached by police and other government agencies based on your particular threat level.

Combine predictive policing with surveillance, overcriminalization and precrime programs, then add in militarized police trained to shoot first and ask questions later, and as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, you’ll be lucky to escape with your life.

If you’re not scared yet, you should be.

Authored by David Attlee via CoinTelegraph.com,

According to a survey by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), 93% of central banks are already researching central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), and there could be up to 15 retail and nine wholesale CBDCs in circulation by 2030.

Published earlier this week, the survey of 86 central banks was conducted from October to December 2022. It asked central banks whether they were working on a retail, wholesale or both types of CBDC, how advanced the work was, and their motivations.

There could be as many as 24 live CBDCs by 2030. Source: BIS

According to a survey, over half of the world’s central banks are conducting experiments or working on a CBDC pilot. Almost a quarter of all central banks are already piloting their retail CBDC projects, and the number of wholesale CBDCs in the works is much lower.

Geoeconomically, nations within emerging markets and developing economies are leading CBDC adoption.

Their share in piloting the retail (29%) and wholesale (16%) CBDCs almost doubles that of advanced economies, which stands at 18% and 10%, respectively.

Both developing and advanced economies mostly share the motivation behind their CBDC projects — financial stability and cross-border payments efficiency. However, developing countries are more often driven by financial inclusion reasons.

The share of central banks likely to issue a retail CBDC within the next three years grew from 15% to 18% in 2022. At the same time, 68% of central banks still state their unreadiness to issue a retail CBDC “any time soon.”

To date, there are still only four CBDCs in circulation: in the Bahamas, the Eastern Caribbean, Jamaica and Nigeria. Yet, based on the central bankers’ answers, the survey predicts 15 retail and 9 wholesale CBDCs will be live by the end of this decade.

At the end of June, the Reserve Bank of India reported ongoing negotiations with at least 18 central banks worldwide regarding the possibility of cross-border payments via its CBDC, the “digital rupee.”

In July, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Innovation Center completed its proof-of-concept of a regulated liability network for a CBDC.

Authored by Steve Miller via RealClear Wire,

“I can’t begin to understand what ballot harvesting is,” Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the former Republican House Speaker, said in an interview in the wake of a 2018 political upset in Orange County, California. Democrats had swept the congressional seats in one of California’s few Republican strongholds, largely due to a well-executed strategy of harvesting, or the collection and submission of ballots by someone other than the voter.    

Three election cycles later, Republicans are still on the backfoot when it comes to the nation’s recent embrace of absentee, mail, and early voting. But what critics call “election month” looks likely to endure indefinitely after taking hold in pandemic-prompted voting procedures widely adopted in 2020, ostensibly as a health precaution to promote social distancing.   

After President Trump’s defeat in 2020, Republican-led legislatures worked to turn back the emergency voting measures in many states, to mixed success, and – after an expected GOP wave fizzled in 2022 – the Republican Party has turned away from Trump’s vilification of absentee voting to essentially say, “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”   

“We don’t want to wait till the fourth quarter to start scoring touchdowns when you have four quarters to put points on the board,” Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said last month in promoting the new strategy. “We have to change the culture among Republican voters.”   

But a range of factors suggest that Republicans are a long way from implementing that change. This impression emerges from interviews with election veterans from both parties in a number of pivotal states; disclosures about the left’s prodigious fundraising for private assistance to local election offices; and Democrats’ reinvigorated focus on community organizing in dense urban areas. The latter is a tradition reaching back more than a century but exploited in recent cycles to overwhelm the GOP’s onetime edge in collecting absentee ballots from the elderly and members of the armed forces.  

“The left is about 20 years ahead on getting these votes,” said Michael Bars, executive director of the conservative Election Transparency Initiative. “You can say it’s an absentee, get-out-the-vote model, an absentee ballot chase or ballot harvesting. But they’re ahead.”  

And catching up isn’t easy, an RNC official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity in giving a grim assessment of a ground game still unfamiliar to the GOP.  

“Strangers going door-to-door met with a ton of resistance from Republican voters,” the official said. He was referring to a strategy shift in 2016 when “the RNC changed its field structure to resemble the work that the Obama campaign did in 2008 and 2012 by focusing on training people to be organizers, to put together teams that were part of the community.” It turned out that, with Republicans tending to live in suburban developments, soliciting was frowned upon, and even prohibited, while the Democrats were, as ever, more welcome in urban settings, visiting apartment buildings, public libraries, and residential centers.  

With even McDaniel still saying she doesn’t like absentee voting, not every Republican official is embracing the message.   

“We promote in-person voting and we promote a message around in-person voting,” said Marci McCarthy, chairman of the DeKalb County (Georgia) Republican Party, in a jurisdiction that contains part of Atlanta and where President Biden won 83% of the vote in 2020. Nationally, 65% of the roughly 65 million absentee and mail-in voters said they voted for Biden in 2020.  

The Golden State Lesson  

After enacting new voting rules in 2016 that allowed harvesting, California Democrats in the 2018 midterms dispatched volunteers and paid staffers to neighborhoods rich in registered Democrats who had received an absentee ballot but had not returned it. Some of the agents collected up to 200 ballots at a time and turned them in for counting.   

Results were delayed as the ballots trickled in – a harbinger of today’s prolonged ballot counts as more states rely on mail voting. But the result was eventually clear: a GOP drubbing in Orange County.  

“We got our asses handed to us,” said Jessica Millan Patterson, chair of California’s Republican Party, whose 2019 election to office was in part based on her vow to embrace harvesting for the party and avenge the Orange County defeat. “Democrats in California have normalized what would be considered voter fraud in the rest of the country. If I had my way, harvesting would be illegal, but we have to win more elections if we want to change laws.”  

After taking over the party’s ground game, she coordinated each county party’s street teams, assembling paid staffers and volunteers to knock on doors of registered Republicans or those who have not registered but may be open to voting.   

By 2020, local Republicans were holding “ballot parties” as part of campaign events, where people could hand over their ballots, specified in social media invitations as a “secure location, “ to be delivered to the election office.    

The Opposition  

Progressives defended their advantage. They followed their California triumph in 2018 with widespread ballot collection efforts in 2020’s presidential election and the 2022 midterms, where they largely thumped Republicans nationally, including holding the Senate despite widespread predictions that Republicans would sweep both houses of Congress.   

Conservative critics contend that illegal harvesting was behind Democrat wins in Georgia and Arizona in 2020, although investigations failed to find illicit activity.   

What they did find, though, was a well-oiled progressive machine with roots in community organizing, working with like-minded state administrations on ballot design, drop-box placement, and deploying lobbyists to push progressive voting strategies.  

These are funded in part by $1 billion from nonprofits and individuals, the most influential of which is the Center for Technology and Civic Life, led by Tiana Epps-Johnson, a former fellow at the Obama Foundation who is joined at the center by staffers who learned their politics in progressive advocacy groups.  

The voting strategy network is complemented by an impressive cadre of social media influencers. What was termed a “block by block street fight” by former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe in a 2020 book became a crusade for urban votes. Private funding distributed by the CTCL helped get-out-the-vote efforts in those areas by disproportionately allocating per-vote money to Democratic areas.   

Ballot collectors go door-to-door in their targeted areas, working from a daily roadmap of “match backs,” or a list of voters who have received a mail ballot but have not yet cast it.  

“In Washington, Republicans start each election at zero and Democrats at 90,” said Don Skillman, co-founder of Voter Science, a voter data group based in Bellevue, Washington. “Democrats know who donors and voters are and where they are. They have an eco-system with this non-profit outreach and know who they are talking to.”  

Washington’s state Republican party did not respond to an interview request. 

The New Order  

The evolving hybrid voting procedures vary widely from state to state and, depending on the ways they came about, may or may not reflect the state autonomy envisioned in the U.S. Constitution’s stipulation that “the Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof.”  

Ballot harvesting is explicitly illegal in Mississippi,  while 11 other states have no law addressing the practice. Some states permit designated people, such as a relative or housemate, to turn in ballots, while 19 states allow a broader form of collection where voters can choose the person they want to act as their agent.  

Republican lawmakers around the country have enacted numerous state and local laws since the pandemic-panicked 2020 national election in efforts to curb mail ballots and undo rules that allowed unpoliced mail ballot drop boxes, mass mailing of ballots and applications, and private grants to elections offices that helped progressives get out the vote.   

Recent GOP forays into ballot collection include public embarrassments, such as 2018’s debacle in North Carolina, where Republican U.S. house candidate Mark Harris enlisted a Democratic operative with ballot harvesting skills. The caper ended up in voter fraud convictions against the harvester and the election results being tossed out.   

Last year, a Republican ward leader in Philadelphia was ousted after it was alleged his campaign went door-to-door signing up mail-in voters, then having their ballots sent to the campaign headquarters.  

Colorado and Wisconsin  

Other states are just starting to embrace the collection strategy. In Colorado, where lawmakers last year sought to return the all-mail voting state to traditional, voting day elections, Republicans are trying to incorporate ballot collection into their ground game.    

“The 2024 election will be our first foray into ballot harvesting,” Colorado GOP party chairman Dave Williams told RealClearInvestigations. Williams is one of several state GOP leaders to confirm that voting mechanisms Republican voters were told just four years ago would ruin the integrity of voting will be embraced by conservative parties and candidates in 2024.  

“It’s going to come down to getting enough money to ensure we can implement a [ballot collection] operation,” he said, adding that it will take “thousands” of volunteers to match the Democrats.  

In Wisconsin, the Republican Party now sends mail ballot applications to its base voters as soon as early voting begins, encouraging them to cast their ballots from home. Harvesting in Wisconsin has been part of a legal back-and-forth and the courts will eventually determine its legality in the state, which has moved from swing state to reliably Democratic since 2018.  

“If it is permitted, we will incorporate that into our ground game,” said Wisconsin state Republican Party executive director Mark Jefferson. “As much as we may not like the expansion of absentee and early voting, we have to use it.”  

In a test for 2024, Jefferson said, the party used harvesting in the 2022 state Supreme Court race.  

“We turned out our base effectively,” he said. But the party lost both the race and its majority on the court in a progressive voter backlash to the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, which had asserted a constitutional right to abortion.  

“Over the course of several cycles, I think we can get there,” Jefferson said, optimistic that the party can use collection and other progressive tactics to win elections. “In the meantime, I think we have to push it, but we also need to look for any opportunity to ensure that ballot integrity is still protected.”   

The Costly ‘Match Back’ Game  

A well-funded harvesting operation has the money to obtain updated “match back” files almost daily during a voting period. These updated voter lists are available to anyone, although a connection or relationship with the election administration office helps pry them loose. The money to pay for them comes from parties and candidates, or in some cases the activist nonprofits deploying ballot collectors.  

“Some groups can afford to buy that file every day, especially in the urban areas,” said Michael Der Manouel Jr., former vice chairman of the California Republican Party. “And they can do it from election administrators who care about the outcome of the election, and most of them are Democrats.”  

Obtaining the files is eased by a good relationship with the local election administrator, he added. In Wisconsin in 2020, the quest by progressive agents to retrieve the voter file daily was chronicled in a report generated during the state’s legislative inquiry into the November election.  

Progressive groups have gained influence over election administrations through private grants, conferences and the designing of election materials including ballot applications and election department websites, all with an emphasis on voter recruitment and repeating Democratic talking points, such as purported “misinformation” and alleged “threats to democracy.”  

Speakers at the conferences include representatives from the American Civil Liberties Union and representatives from the progressive group Democracy Now.   

Most recently, four progressive nonprofit foundations have pledged to distribute $125 million in grants as The Election Trust Initiative, a subsidiary of the Pew Charitable Trusts, to provide private funding to elections offices over the next five years.   

Their mission is to “strengthen the nonpartisan evidence, organizations, and systems that help local and state officials operate secure, transparent, accurate and convenient elections,” according to a press release.   

The Biden Administration Wades In  

The federal government is bolstering its newly created Election Community Liaison office, an arm of the U.S. Department of Justice, offering a salary of up to $183,000 for hires to, in part, pursue “election offenses.”    

A member of President Biden’s cabinet also has connections to the move to change voting. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm in 2020 was on the board of the National Vote at Home Institute, a progressive nonprofit that has successfully pressured states through lobbying and funding to adopt more permissive mail voting. The group has also privately funded public elections departments through its grant program. Her one year on the board coincided with an increase in the institute’s revenue from $1.1 million in 2019 to $8 million during Granholm’s tenure.   

Several other Biden administration appointees worked for progressive elections operations including Michelle Obama’s When We All Vote and the Voter Registration Project.  

These groups have been part of a push toward mail voting and looser rules regarding ballot collection, combating Republican efforts to limit or regulate those practices.   

“Republicans used to own absentee voting,” said Paul Bentz, a political consultant in Arizona, referring to traditional GOP efforts to collect the ballots of the elderly and military service members. “But they’ve given up that advantage.”  

Critics of the GOP’s newfound strategy of ballot collection contend that it may be too late, at least to win in 2024.   

“The nature of the left is to never stop fighting and usually their fight is smart,” said Scott Walter, president of the conservative Capital Research Center, which studies the influence of nonprofits on politics. “They have multiple think tanks dedicated to nothing but winning elections. And there are no Republican counterparts.”  

While Republicans will engage in the same practices as their foes, “harvesting for Republicans won’t work,” said Der Manouel, the former vice chair of the California GOP.   

“Republican voters don’t need to have their vote harvested. The only reason it works for Democrats is because they could never turn out their voters. What’s going to happen is Republicans are going to start doing this and find that they don’t have nearly enough ballots to harvest to make a difference.”   

Contact Steve Miller at smiller@realclearinvestigations.com  

Tucker Carlson utterly dismantled the necon talking points of Trump’s former Vice President Mike Pence, during an on-stage interview before a large audience of the FAMiLY Leadership Summit in Iowa on Friday.

Rather than respond to Carlson’s criticisms about why tens of billions of taxpayer dollars are being spent on far-away Ukraine (which Carlson note is a country “most people can’t find on a map”) rather than focusing on protecting and restoring American cities in decline, a visibly irritated Pence instead vaguely said he could “do both”. Watch Pence squirm below, as the crowd loudly cheered Carlson’s question…

Tucker Carlson asks Pence why he is more concerned with supplying Ukraine with tanks than the wellbeing of American cities…

Pence’s response? “American cities aren’t my concern.” pic.twitter.com/8uRE1Bnz8B

— Jackson Hinkle 🇺🇸 (@jacksonhinklle) July 14, 2023

Pence certainly didn’t bring the crown over to his side, which didn’t so much as clap during his pat, scripted answer.

He also didn’t win any friends in bluntly stating (revealingly) that “American cities aren’t my concern.” Reporters with The National Review even noticed audible boos during Pence’s attempt at a response…

“I believe that it is in the interests of the United States of America to continue to give the Ukrainian military the resources they need to repel the Russian invasion and restore their sovereignty,” Pence said as several members of the crowd booed.

Pence then tried to turn it around on Tucker, taking a swipe a the former Fox host:

“Anybody that says that we can’t be the leader of the free world and solve our problems at home has a pretty small view of the greatest nation on earth. We can do both,” Pence said. “And as president of the United States we will secure our border we will support our military we will revive our economy and stand by our values and we will also lead the world for freedom under my administration.”

Carlson was undeterred in demolishing what has come to be the obvious establishment stance (one of escalation in Ukraine), whether on the Republican or Democrat side. 

Heated Exchange Between Tucker Carlson And Mike Pence On Religious Liberty In Ukraine

Tucker: “I would think that you would have greater concern for religious liberty in Ukraine, and I’m surprised by your answer.”

Pence: “I told you I raised the issue of religious liberty.”… pic.twitter.com/MIQckt2jm4

— The Columbia Bugle 🇺🇸 (@ColumbiaBugle) July 14, 2023

He took Pence to task on the Zelensky government’s crackdown on religious freedom in the wake of monks and priests being booted from their monasteries and churches for maintaining communion with the Russian Orthodox Church based in Moscow. 

Apart from Ukraine, there were plenty of other moments where Carlson went gloves off, at one point laughing with scorn at the former vice president’s reluctance to deal with concerns of voter fraud.

JUST IN: Tucker Carlson laughs in Mike Pence’s face for being reluctant to agree that the U.S. should get rid of electronic voting machines.

Pence: “We do everything in our power to restore public confidence in the one person one vote principle.”

Tucker: “Why not just get rid… pic.twitter.com/LbpvRNTfYM

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) July 14, 2023

Watch: Below is the full clip from the back-and-forth on Ukraine… 

Absolutely incredible. Here is the entire Ukraine discussion between @TuckerCarlson and Mike Pence.

Tucker asks Pence about religious persecution in Ukraine, and he completely denies it. Tucker follows up, and Pence gets flustered. Pence then tells the ridiculous lie that Putin… pic.twitter.com/KA5FjqSKUM

— Liam McCollum (@MLiamMcCollum) July 14, 2023

Kim Dotcom observed the following of the interview, specifically related to the moment Pence said coldly “That’s not my concern” when Carlson confronted him on most Americans wanting to solve serious problems at home first…

“Pence just committed political suicide.”

Authored by Elijah Cohen via TheMindUnleashed.com,

In an unprecedented discovery, scientists have unearthed a colossal granite mass that has been gradually emitting heat, hidden beneath a lunar crater. This discovery is not a figment of science fiction, but a testament to the Moon’s volcanic past. While the Moon’s history of lava fields and eruptions is well-documented, the discovery of a more Earth-like volcano was a first, found beneath the Compton and Belkovich craters on the Moon’s far side.

Granite, a rock type rarely found outside of Earth, has sparked excitement among the scientific community. On Earth, granite forms deep beneath the surface, typically under a volcano, where magma cools down and crystallizes. The formation of granite is significantly aided by the presence of water and plate tectonics.

The research team utilized data from both Chinese and American lunar orbiters to uncover this heat-emitting mass beneath the lunar surface, revealing a volcanic process previously unseen on the Moon. “We used an instrument that observes microwave wavelengths, longer than infrared, sent to the Moon on both the Chinese Chang’E 1 and 2 orbiters. We found that one of these suspected volcanoes, known as Compton-Belkovich, was absolutely glowing at microwave wavelengths,” explained co-lead researcher Dr. Matt Siegler, of the Planetary Science Institute.

The data revealed a 20-kilometer-wide silicon-rich surface feature, believed to be the caldera of this ancient volcano.

The temperature in this area is 10°C warmer than its surroundings. However, this heat is not from magma beneath the surface, as the volcano’s last eruption was 3.5 billion years ago. Instead, the heat comes from radioactive elements trapped in the rocks.

“We interpret this heat flux as resulting from a radiogenic-rich granite body below the caldera,” Dr. Siegler said.

“We were a bit puzzled when we found it. Fortunately, my wife, Dr. Rita Economos, is the geochemist in the family, so with her guidance, we were able to piece together the probable geologic cause of the heat anomaly.”

Dr. Economos further explained, “This find is a 50km wide batholith; a batholith is a type of volcanic rock that forms when lava rises into the earth’s crust but does not erupt onto the surface. El Capitan and Half Dome, in Yosemite in California, are examples of similar granite rocks which have risen to the surface.”

The discovery of such a large granite deposit in an unexpected location suggests that there could be other areas of the Moon where granite can be found, and possibly in other parts of the Solar System as well.

The Moon’s volcanic activity is a fascinating topic that has intrigued scientists for decades. The Moon’s volcanic history extends back nearly 3 billion years, much longer than most planets in our solar system. The lunar volcanoes are not like the ones we have on Earth. They do not spew out a significant amount of lava, but instead, they release gases like radon and argon.

The Moon’s volcanic activity is believed to have played a crucial role in shaping its surface. The lunar maria, the dark plains seen on the Moon’s surface, are vast basaltic plains formed by ancient volcanic eruptions. These maria cover about 16% of the lunar surface, mainly on the near-side visible from Earth.

The discovery of the heat-emitting granite mass adds a new dimension to our understanding of the Moon’s volcanic activity. It provides a glimpse into the Moon’s dynamic past and opens up new avenues for exploring lunar geology. This discovery also raises the possibility of finding similar geological features on other celestial bodies, further expanding our knowledge of the universe.

The exploration of lunar volcanism also has implications for future lunar missions. Understanding the Moon’s geology can help in identifying suitable landing sites for spacecraft and potential resources for lunar bases. As we continue to explore the Moon and beyond, each discovery brings us one step closer to unraveling the mysteries of our solar system.

Study

*  *  *

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The Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), the governing body of sports cycling, announced on Friday that transgender female cyclists will not be allowed to compete in international women’s eventsif they have “transitioned after puberty.”

“From now on, female transgender athletes who have transitioned after (male) puberty will be prohibited from participating in women’s events on the UCI International Calendar – in all categories – in the various disciplines,” the statement reads, according to Fox News. 

According to a press release published Friday, the UCI decided to adapt the rule during a July 5th meeting with athletes and other experts, including human rights, scientific, and legal experts.

“First of all, the UCI would like to reaffirm that cycling – as a competitive sport, leisure activity or means of transport – is open to everyone, including transgender people, whom we encourage like everyone else to take part in our sport,” UCI President David Lappartient said in the release.

“I would also like to reaffirm that the UCI fully respects and supports the right of individuals to choose the sex that corresponds to their gender identity, whatever sex they were assigned at birth.”

“However,” Lappartient noted – having got the politically-sensitive comment out of the way – The UCI “has a duty to guarantee, above all, equal opportunities for all competitors in cycling competitions.”

 “It is this imperative that led the UCI to conclude that, given the current state of scientific knowledge does not guarantee such equality of opportunity between transgender female athletes and cisgender female participants, it was not possible, as a precautionary measure, to authorize the former to race in the female categories,” Lappartient said.

Common sense rules once again…

The UCI’s decision comes just a day after a South Korean man who identifies as a transgender female has competed and won a cycling race to make a point that trans athletes are physically stronger, deeming them “selfish.”

As The Epoch Times reports, Na Hwa-rin, 37, has undertaken gender reassignment surgery and was officially recognized as a woman in Seoul last year, including a reissue of his birth certificate in April. He competed and won a cycling competition at this year’s Gangwon Sports Festival in eastern Gangwon Province in the female category to prove a point, reported The Korea Times.

“I have no unresolved feelings over winning because that’s no longer what I want. My goal was to stir controversy and get my story heard by competing,” Mr. Na told the outlet on June 23.

In seeking to prove a point, Mr. Na described feeling “more relieved than triumphant” when he crossed the finish line of the race. He set out to demonstrate that biological men are physically superior when it comes to transgender athletes competing in female categories.

Mr. Na outstrips his female competitors with his physicality, standing at about 5.9 feet tall and weighing roughly 158 lbs, with a skeletal muscle mass of 72 lbs, the outlet reported.

Feeling embarrassed about his win, he told the outlet that he offered the female cyclists who lost to him energy drinks by way of an apology for stealing their glory. Mr. Na, who comes from a Christian family, noted that he chose that competition because it was a provincial event, not a professional race that could harm the career of a professional female athlete.

“I am not honored. I am not proud of myself at all. I believe other transgender athletes would feel the same way,” he said. “They may not want to admit it,” he added, referring to international trans athletes, “but they’re being selfish. There is no honor as an athlete in that.”

Mr. Na’s win drew support from LGBT advocates but sparked debate in South Korea about the fairness of men who identify as women competing against females in sports. His desire for fairness held him back from trying to qualify for the National Sports Festival.

“I don’t want to make an issue to the point where I harm other people,” he said.

Advocating for a ‘3rd Gender’ Sports Category

Mr. Na developed a love for cycling by riding his bike around nine miles to school every day. He later competed professionally as a cyclist, winning competitions in the men’s categories.

“The sport gave me a sense of thrill and accomplishment and the catharsis of overcoming my limitations,” he said.

He now advocates for a “third gender” category in sports competitions, believing that trans athletes should not compete alongside men and women.

“It could be like how we have many weight divisions in some sports,” Mr. Na said. “Under the current binary system, women athletes will be discouraged and their hard work might not be recognized due to the participation of transgender athletes.

“At the same time, trans woman athletes, no matter how hard they worked, will never be truly honored for their wins,” he continued. “Honor is the goal that all athletes aspire to attain, but this is a situation where nobody will be honored. I think that shouldn’t happen.”

Owing to the lack of gender-specific regulations for athlete qualification by both the Gangwon State Sports Council and the Korean Sports and Olympic Committee, Mr. Na was eligible to participate in the provincial competition, The Korea Times reported.

Mr. Na now works as an asparagus farmer in his hometown, Cheorwon, located roughly 43 miles northeast of Seoul, bordering North Korea.

He said that he began to experience symptoms of gender dysphoria at the age of 7. He would later, as a middle school student, be influenced by the country’s first transgender television celebrity to solidify his ideas of who he was and how he wanted to live.

The controversy surrounding transgender athletes led the U.S. House of Representatives in April to pass legislation to prohibit taxpayer-funded institutions from allowing transgender athletes to compete in women’s and girls’ sports in schools. The bill was considered dead-on-arrival in the Senate and was expected to be vetoed by President Joe Biden if it managed to receive final approval from Congress.

The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act sought to modify Title IX by defining sex as determined solely by an individual’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth. The bill bans federal funding recipients from allowing males to participate in women’s athletic programs or activities designated for females, to prevent sex-based discrimination in education.

Supporters of the bill, and similar state-level legislation, frame the issue as protecting the integrity of female sports competition. Opponents frame it as bullying the transgender community.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration has said that it will propose a regulation to largely prohibit bans on transgender sports participation. This came after around 20 states moved to ban transgender athletes from female sports.

Authored by Zach Kennedy via RealClear Wire,

A political powerhouse now rivaling Philadelphia as the bedrock of Democratic electoral strength in Pennsylvania, Allegheny County has been consistently trending more progressive. This past May’s primaries in Pennsylvania’s second-largest county added another layer of icing on a cake that’s been baking for nearly a decade: in Allegheny County, progressives are the new establishment.

The seeds of progressive ascendance were planted in 2018’s Democratic primary, when Summer Lee toppled 20-year incumbent state Rep. Paul Costa, the brother of longtime state Senate Democratic leader Jay Costa. It was the first major win for Allegheny County progressives. In that same primary, Sara Innamorato bested ten-year incumbent state Rep. Dom Costa, a former Pittsburgh police chief and another member of the Costa political family. Both Lee and Innamorato were endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America.

The following year, 2019, saw state Rep. Adam Ravenstahl, a four-term incumbent and brother of former Pittsburgh mayor Luke Ravenstahl, fall in the Democratic primary to 32-year-old challenger Emily Kinkead, while 20-year incumbent county councilman at-large John DeFazio lost his primary to Bethany Hallam, who campaigned on fracking bans and reforming the Allegheny County jail.

These progressive victories put the “establishment” on notice. In Pittsburgh, Ed Gainey’s 2021 mayoral primary win over two-term incumbent Bill Peduto solidified the rise of the party’s left flank, which was further bolstered by Lee’s 2022 primary victory to succeed 28-year incumbent U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle. Lee was quickly anointed to “The Squad” in Congress, joining the ranks of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib.

The progressive trend continued in May of this year, when Innamorato defeated longtime county treasurer and darling of the blue-collar trade unions John Weinstein, as well as 15-year incumbent city controller Michael Lamb (uncle of former U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb) for the Democratic nomination for county executive, the most powerful job in Western Pennsylvania. Innamorato cruised to victory on the back of endorsements from progressive politicians and labor groups such as U.S. Bernie Sanders and the SEIU.

The primary also saw public defender Matt Dugan defeat longtime district attorney Stephen Zappala Jr., propelled by nearly seven-figure support from progressive billionaire George Soros. Erica Brusselars defeated two-term city councilman and longtime ward leader Anthony Coghill for the Democratic nomination for county treasurer, scoring endorsements from left-leaning organizations such as the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers and the Young Democrats of Allegheny County.

And last summer saw establishment stalwart and chair of the county Democratic Party, Eileen Kelly, replaced as chair by Sam Hens-Greco, former chair of the powerful 14th Ward, the largest ward in the county and one of the most progressive. Hens-Greco’s running mate and now vice chair of the county Democratic Party, Morgan Overton, was the first black woman to chair the Young Democrats of Allegheny County.

Allegheny County progressives now hold the mayor’s office, the 12th District congressional seat encompassing the city of Pittsburgh, and the power structure of the county Democratic Party – and they are heavily favored to win the county executive and district attorney positions this fall. Taken together, these holdings constitute control over the region’s most influential elected positions.

Since 2018, we have seen a complete paradigm shift in Allegheny County politics, with progressives notching win after win and consistently taking more power from the party’s onetime establishment. After years of political organizing, the progressive wing has turned itself into the new establishment in Allegheny County government and politics.

Time will tell how long the progressive trend continues, but one thing is certain: as they struggle with problems ranging from a declining population to rising crime, homelessness to food insecurity, Allegheny County residents are in desperate need of strong leadership from their elected officials. The new progressive establishment will be expected to deliver results.

Zach Kennedy, a former Democratic operative, is a Pittsburgh native and has worked on high-level judicial, state, and federal campaigns in Pennsylvania.