A WordPress Blog-THE CHURCH MILITANT Ephesians 5:11-"And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them". This Christian News Blog maintains a one stop resource of current news and reports of its own related to church, moral, spiritual, and related political issues, plus articles, and postings from other online discernment ministries, and media which share the aims to obey the biblical commands to shed light on and refute error, heresy, apostasy, cults, and spiritual abuse. ALL CONTENT FROM HTTPS://RATHEREXPOSETHEM.BLOGSPOT.COM MOVED TO THIS NEW BLOG, MAY 2020
A left-winged dark money organization supporting anti-Israel protests throughout the United States has received large quantities in taxpayer-backed money and agreements in recent years.
According to a report of federal spending records, a powerful liberal dark money organization that supports anti-Israel activism nationwide has amassed enormous profits in recent years using taxpayer-funded grants and contracts.
The Tides Center, which provides funding to groups that support Hamas-related demonstrations following their lethal attack against Israel on October 7th, has long supported the progressive agenda financially, collaborating with billionaires like George Soros and Bill Gates.
However, documents state that with assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars, the Democrat-allied charity still has a major partner in the federal government, which between 2006 and 2023 gave the Tides Center more than $81.2 million either directly or through sub awards.
Adalah Justice Project, Palestine Legal, and the Catalyst Project are among the pro-Palestinian projects that profit from the Tides Center’s tax-exempt status. These organizations have frequently defended and minimized the Hamas-led attack on October 7th, which killed over 1,200 people in the Jewish state.
Over the years, the Tides Center and its sister organization, the Tides Foundation, have also contributed millions of dollars to organizations that have honored convicted terrorists from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, such as the Alliance for Global Justice, an Arizona charity that an investigation revealed had ties to Palestinian terrorism.
Benjamin Baird, director of Middle East Forum Action, which is a watchdog monitoring organization linked to terrorism, stated that the groups have even been spotting on university campuses “chanting for the destruction of Israel.”
“The Tides Center is a clearinghouse for funding far-left causes, including radical anti-Israel ‘resistance’ groups that have been spotted on college campuses chanting for the destruction of Israel,” Baird said. “It does not need any help from the federal government, which is only subsidizing extremism by bankrolling a Marxist-Islamist piggy bank like Tides.”
The Tides Center received nearly half of the $81.2 million through a subcontract or sub grant, meaning that the money was awarded to the organization after the federal government had first given a prime award to another organization, such as entities including City and County of San Francisco and the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.
The U.S. Departments of Agriculture, State, Education, the Interior, and the U.S. Agency for International Development are just a few of the numerous agencies that provided awards to the Tides Center, which have a extensive policy focuses.
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The Catholic Church is funding the demise of what is left of Catholic Europe. Interesting times we live in.
“‘The Catholic Church is becoming our Soros’ – Growing scandal around Italian Catholic Church funding illegal immigration, pro-refugee activists brag about not having to work due to Church donations,” by Grzegorz Adamczyk, Remix News, December 18, 2023:
A significant scandal has recently shaken the Catholic Church in Italy, as reported by La Verita Italian paper. Investigations by the city of Ragusa prosecutor’s office have exposed the involvement of certain Italian dioceses in funding Mediterranea, an organization responsible for the illegal migration of African immigrants to Europe.
These dioceses have allegedly contributed at least €2 million, with some of the Church’s payments ending up in the personal accounts of pro-immigration activists, according to Polish newspaper wPolityce.
Key figures in this informal network of bishops include Cardinal Matteo Zuppi of Bologna, Archbishop Corrado Lorefice of Palermo and several others, with Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich of Luxembourg also implicated for donating €25,000.
The scandal’s central figure is Luca Casarini, a leftist activist known for his role in the 2001 G8 summit protests in Genoa. He later became involved in transporting illegal immigrants to Lampedusa. Casarini’s relationship with Pope Francis, beginning in December 2019, has raised eyebrows, especially after Francis invited Casarini to participate in the Vatican Synod of Bishops, despite his lack of active involvement in Church life….
The chaplain of the Mare Jonio, Fr. Mattia Ferrari, a priest known for working in pro-refugee circles, said with astonishment: “The Catholic Church is becoming our Soros,” in reference to the funding they were receiving.
Commentators are debating whether these bishops acted independently or under Pope Francis’ direction, with most leaning towards the former. Their actions, aimed at aligning with the pope’s perceived interests, might result in decreased donations from parishioners and damage the bishops’ credibility….
In Old Joe Biden’s America, those who hate the country and want to see it radically “transformed” into a state without borders, the freedom of speech, the right to bear arms and other annoying obstacles to socialist internationalism, are in the driver’s seat. And they’re raking in millions. This includes the left’s pro-Hamas allies, most notably the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
NihadAwad, CAIR’s cofounder and longtime executive director, recently came under fire for saying of the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre of 1,200 Israeli civilians: “And yes, I was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land, and walk free into their land, which they were not allowed to walk in.” This was too much even for the Biden regime, which removed CAIR from its campaign to combat antisemitism.CAIR, loaded as it is with jihad supporters and Jew-haters, never should have been part of that initiative in the first place, but was likely included because it enjoys so much favor among those who make up the Biden regime’s hard-left base. And that favor has translated into millions of dollars in donations for this sinister, unsavory group.
The Jewish News Syndicate reported Wednesday that some of the nation’s most prominent and well-heeled leftist philanthrophic groups shoveled massive amounts of cash to CAIR, despite its lengthy record of smearing foes of jihad violence, justifying that violence, and engaging in jaw-dropping antisemitism. The chief offenders were the American Online Giving Foundation, which gave Awad and his henchmen $1,637,087, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, which was close behind with $1,499,447, and Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund, which forked over $1,474,868.
Then there was California Endowment, which contributed $785,604 for CAIR’s victim-blaming and jihad-enabling;Schwab Charitable Fund, which added $782,178; California Community Foundation which kicked in $781,065; and many others: Sierra Health Foundation gave $637,558; Tides Foundation $631,300;Weingart Foundation $602,950; and K. Kellogg Foundation $500,000. JNS adds: “The remaining 10 organizations each provided more than $300,000. These include the San Francisco Foundation ($494,000); Network for Good ($489,800); MarJac Foundation, which Mauro [Ryan Mauro, author of the original study] describes as a group linked to the Muslim Brotherhood ($450,000); Charities Aid Foundation ($406,000); California Wellness Foundation ($350,000); Movement Voter Project ($348,240); Columbus Foundation ($336,250); American Endowment Foundation ($315,600); Levi Strauss Foundation ($310,000); and the Orange County Community Federation ($301,255).”
This adds up to some very serious money for Hamas-linked CAIR, and doesn’t even represent its entire donor base. CAIR reportedly took in $7.78 million in 2021, and had assets as of that year of $15.6 million. And all that was for a group about which federal prosecutors saidthis in 2007: “From its founding by Muslim Brotherhood leaders, CAIR conspired with other affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood to support terrorists…the conspirators agreed to use deception to conceal from the American public their connections to terrorists.”
Meanwhile, organizations that speak honestly about the nature and magnitude of the jihad threat, including Jihad Watch, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, and others continue with a small fraction of that funding, and are generally struggling financially. Most would-be donors have been scared away by smears and defamation from the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League; others have been lulled into complacency by lies about how much these organizations actually receive in donations.
It is a symptom of the insanity of our times that groups dedicated to the defense of the United States and Western civilization are shunned, marginalized, and deplatformed, while those dedicated to the destruction of both are prospering and getting richer by the day.CAIR has temporarily lost favor with the Biden regime, but the money will keep rolling in from leftist foundations and other fellow travelers and dupes, and the establishment media will continue to treat this group as if it really were simply a civil rights organization. We are not free of its baneful influence by a long shot.
William Butler Yeats said it in his apocalyptic poem “The Second Coming”: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” In the age of absurdity, we can go Yeats one better, and observe that the best lack all funding, while the worst are full of donations from witless, deluded leftists who think they’re contributing to “diversity” while all they’re really doing is providing the funding for their own eventual ruin.
Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-N.J., discusses Congress grappling with the ongoing border crisis, NYC Mayor Adams wanting to spread migrants across the U.S. and Ashley Biden owing thousands in taxes.
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
Of course. To do anything else would be “Islamophobic.”
“Gavin Newsom Gave Millions to Mosques that Cheer the Annihilation of Jews,” by Chuck Ross, Washington Free Beacon, November 16, 2023:
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D.) has awarded millions of dollars in taxpayer funds to mosques whose leaders have preached anti-Semitic hate and called for violence against Israel.
Newsom’s administration awarded $200,000 this year to the Sajjadia Islamic Society as part of its Nonprofit Security Grant program, which aims to help nonprofits protect against terrorist attacks. In a sermon at the mosque this month, the pro-Iran cleric Hamza Sodagar touted Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and said that Allah sent “the rockets from Hamas or Hezbollah” to strike Israel. Newsom has also awarded grants to mosques like the Islamic Center of Hawthorne and Islamic Center of Riverside, whose imams have decried the “malevolence of the Jews” and prayed for Allah to “destroy them.”
All told, the Newsom administration has given $40 million to California mosques whose leaders cheer the annihilation of Jews and Israel. Such rhetoric could fuel precisely the kind of violence the grants are meant to prevent. Newsom, considered a future Democratic presidential contender, said last month he will double funding in his state for its nonprofit security program, citing the “unconscionable terrorist attacks in Israel.” Funds will be awarded to both synagogues and mosques, Newsom’s office said.
A spokesman for California’s Office of Emergency Services, which administers the grants, said after a Washington Free Beacon inquiry that it is investigating whether any of the mosques have breached their grant requirements by facilitating hate speech.
“If it is determined they have, their funding will be immediately revoked,” said Brian Ferguson. “As a matter of principle, the State of California rejects hate speech and discrimination in all of its forms. Such speech is a menace to democratic values, social stability and peace.”
Newsom gave $200,000 last year to the Islamic Society of Corona-Norco, where preacher Hussam Ayloush asserted in a Nov. 3 sermon that it is a “lie” that Hamas’s invasion of Israel last month was an “unprovoked attack.”
“If I hear that term again, I’ll go crazy,” he said. “Unprovoked in what dictionary?”
At the Islamic Center of San Gabriel Valley, which received $200,000 this year, preacher Amir Mertaban expressed support for Iraqis who fought American forces and Palestinians currently fighting Israel.
“The Palestinian brothers and sisters that are fighting resistance, shame on you if you label them terrorists,” Mertaban said. He also disputed that Hamas fighters murdered innocent Israelis during the Oct. 7 invasion. “If you’re going to make a claim that Muslims killed innocent civilians, you better be able to prove it.”
Other grant recipients have served as breeding grounds for Islamist terrorists. Newsom’s office awarded $200,000 to the Islamic Center of San Diego, which served as the home mosque for two 9/11 hijackers. Its imam, Taha Hassane, said last month that “resistance [against Israel] is justified.”
“We cannot accuse somebody who is fighting for his life to be a terrorist. The terrorist is the one who started the occupation, not the one who is defending himself,” he said in an Oct. 20 sermon….
Old Joe Biden couldn’t make it clearer where he stands on the Hamas-Israel war if he screamed “Allahu akbar” and blew himself up in a crowd of Jews.
The alleged president demonstrated, for anyone who was paying attention, which side he is really on in the Hamas-Israel conflict when he went over to Israel in late October and met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He took the opportunity to announce that he was giving $100 million to Gaza, which means, despite his denials, $100 million to Hamas, as there is no entity in Gaza that is not controlled by Hamas and could both receive this money and keep it out of the hands of the terror group. As if that weren’t bad enough, now Old Joe and his henchmen are considering sending $10 billion to the Islamic Republic of Iran, the chief funder of Hamas. Yes, it’s so far beyond outrageous that it is coming up on outrageous from the other side, but it’s true nevertheless.
The Washington Free Beacon reported Monday that “the Biden administration may approve a sanctions waiver on Tuesday that will allow Iran to access at least $10 billion in previously frozen funds held in Iraq.” Displaying an admirable talent for understatement, the Free Beacon noted that this is “driving concerns that the Biden administration is maintaining financial avenues for Tehran as the country’s terrorist proxies foment chaos across the Middle East.”
Now, why would the Biden regime even consider freeing up billions for Iran while the “Death to America, Death to Israel” regime is bankrolling not only Hamas, but Hizballah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in their jihad war against the Jewish state? There are three possibilities: the regime is either stupid, or evil, or both. In this case, the most likely answer is the third: the sinister, senescent, faux-folksy corruptocrat and his cronies are as clueless as they are immoral. Oh, and wrongheaded, and a hundred other things.
Biden and his team are stupid insofar as they apparently still believe that showering money upon the Islamic Republic will lead that rogue, terror-supporting regime to moderate its practices and possibly even grow friendly toward America and possibly even Israel. This is a ridiculous idea for the State Department wonks and foreign policy “experts” to have, but they have it nonetheless; in fact, American diplomacy has largely consisted of efforts to buy friends internationally for many decades now.
This seldom works with anyone, but it is particularly doomed to fail when tried in the Islamic Republic of Iran, where the rulers believe the Qur’an when it says: “And the Jews will not be pleased with you, neither will the Christians until you follow their religion.” (2:120) Efforts at winning hearts and minds are often seen through this prism, as cynical attempts to begin to lure pious Muslims away from Islam. But of course they have no idea of this in Foggy Bottom, where they’re all bound to believe the iron dogma that Islam is a religion of peace that not only has nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism, but nothing whatsoever to do with contemporary geopolitics.
The evil part of this bargain comes from the fact that if the regime really does manage to send $10 billion to the mullahs, a large part of it, if not all of it, will go for the jihad against Israel. When Barack Obama sent pallets of unmarked bills to Tehran in the dark of night, much of it ended up going to jihad terror groups. What are the chances that at least some of Old Joe’s $10 billion would end up with Hamas, Hizballah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad? Oh, about one hundred percent.
In response to such concerns, the Biden regime is pretending yet again that the American people have no idea of the most basic principles of economics. It insists that if it does send this $10 billion, it will be earmarked only for humanitarian purposes. The basic lesson of economics here is that getting $10 billion from the United States will free up $10 billion that the Iranian regime would have spent on food for its people, but which can now go to kill Israelis.
The new speaker of the House, in a classic example of failing to notice about fifty elephants in the room, just said that there wasn’t enough evidence to impeach Joe Biden. Well, the fact that the regime is even thinking about sending money to an avowed enemy ought to get Old Joe not only impeached but tried for treason. But for that, we’d need some genuine opposition that had some guts.
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
A left-wing dark money charity funneled at least $150 million in secret contributions into progressive groups and causes in 2022.
According to tax records released by media, the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a financial powerhouse for leftist political action in Washington and across the country, spent at least $150 million last year supporting state ballot measures on abortion rights and assisting Democrats in outperforming expectations in the 2022 midterm elections, among other things.
Reports state that the non-profit hauled in $189.9 million in contributions from anonymous donors last year, according to their most recent tax filings.
Reportedly, the Sixteen Thirty Fund had passed $148 million in grants to different Democrat-aligned groups, which include organizations that work to push abortion rights and environmental initiatives.
According to the Sixteen Thirty Fund’s tax returns, the nonprofit collected more than $10 million from at least five distinct donors, with one individual contributing a whopping $34.5 million.
The Sixteen Thirty Fund, in turn, took the anonymous funds and distributed large sums to organizations across the country. One of its largest contributions, for $20 million, went to America Votes, which bills itself as “the coordination hub for the progressive community.”
The organization’s mission is to provide “voter education, vote by mail programs to defend our democracy and build on high levels of energy and engagement, especially in communities of color and among young people,” according to the organization’s website.
The Sixteen Thirty Fund also handed out millions of dollars to groups such as the Run for Something Action Fund, which recruits young progressives to run for office; the Reproductive Freedom for All Committee, which opposes restrictions on abortion; Every Eligible American, a voter turnout organization; and the Secure Elections Project.
According to tax documents, the Sixteen Thirty Fund paid $750,000 to House Majority Forward, a dark money charity linked with then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in 2020. The Sixteen Thirty Fund also gave $500,000 to the Senate Majority PAC, which is affiliated with Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).
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Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
No surprise here. In the past, there might have been some perfunctory attempt to ensure that the recipients of this cash were “moderate,” but now any such inquiry would be “Islamophobic.”
“These Mosques Pray for the Annihilation of Jews. They Also Receive Money From the Biden Administration.,” by Chuck Ross, Washington Free Beacon, November 13, 2023:
A federal program to help nonprofit groups protect against terrorist attacks has given millions of dollars to mosques and Islamic groups that have praised terrorists and called for the destruction of Israel, according to a Washington Free Beacon review.
The Department of Homeland Security awarded the California-based Masjid al-Ansar mosque $100,000 on March 9 under the Nonprofit Security Grants Program. Moustafa Kamel, the imam at Masjid al-Ansar, earlier this year called Jews a “bigoted and arrogant breed of people” and prayed they “will be annihilated” in a war over the Holy Land, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute.
Then there is the Islamic Center of Detroit, which received $150,000 on Oct. 12, 2022.Its head imam, Imran Salha, said at a pro-Palestinian rally days after Hamas’s invasion of Israel that Muslims have a “fire in our hearts that will burn that state until its demise.” During a sermon in March, he referred to the “sick, disgusting Zionist regime” and prayed: “May Allah eradicate them from existence.”
The rhetoric could fuel the sorts of hate and terrorist attacks that the Homeland Security grants aim to prevent.Anti-Semitic hate crimes have surged 400 percent since Hamas’s attack, in which 1,400 Israelis were slaughtered. A bipartisan group of senators called for additional funding under the program last month to protect against “a potential rise in anti-Semitic threats.”
There is little oversight over which organizations receive funding under the program, which is administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and state agencies. A majority of the grants have gone to synagogues, churches, mosques, and temples that do not support violence or promote terrorist organizations.
But there are also grants to outfits like the Islamic Center of San Diego, a mosque best known as the home to two 9/11 hijackers. Days after the Hamas attack, Imam Taha Hassane defended the attack on Israel as an act of self-defense.
“When people are occupied, then the resistance is justified,” he said in an Oct. 20 sermon. “We cannot accuse somebody who is fighting for his life to be a terrorist. The terrorist is the one who started the occupation, not the one who is defending himself.”
The mosque received $150,000 under the grant program on Aug. 15, according to federal spending records.
At the Flint Islamic Center, which received $300,000 in grants on Oct. 12, 2022, an Islamic scholar asserted in a sermon last month that Jews “literally live for the purpose of genocide” of Palestinians.
“These people … their businesses have foundations just to serve their objectives. They literally live for a purpose of genocide in an occupation like this,” said Shaykh Adbullah Waheed.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an advocacy group identified as a co-conspirator of Hamas, has mounted a public awareness campaign to urge mosques and Islamic nonprofits to apply for Homeland Security grants. CAIR noted that fewer than 50 Islamic organizations had received funding under the program, largely due to “concerns about the potential strings attached” to accepting the federal funds….
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
We are literally funding the Muslim Brotherhood.
In the last 15 years, Islamic political interests have dug deep into New York City politics. What does that mean? Beyond the obvious, political power, money. That’s what the currency of power comes down to anyway. And that means government contracts going to so-called community groups. More Muslims living in NYC meant more money was going into Islamist organizations. And much like funding Hamas, that adds up to pro-Hamas rallies.
Big Apple taxpayers have shelled out nearly $9 million since 2010 — including $3.3 million the past two years — to four nonprofits that helped spearhead anti-Israel protests where demonstrators openly cheered Hamas’ terrorist attacks on the Jewish State.
…The biggest winner: The Arab American Association of New York, a Brooklyn-based group that helped plan a hate-filled “Flood Brooklyn for Palestine” protest in Bay Ridge on Oct. 21, where protestors called for the eradication of Israel and held a sign of the Israeli flag in a trash basket that read “Please keep the world clean!”
It’s received $6.8 million in Council pork and city contracts – including $3 million-plus the past two years – for criminal justice services, adult literacy programs, mental health aid through ex-First Lady Chirlane McCray’s failed ThriveNYC initiative and other services, records show.
The Muslim American Society of New York, another southern Brooklyn-based group that co-sponsored the Bay Ridge rally. It’s received more than $260,000 in city contracts and Council funding.
MAS, like the Muslim Brotherhood, wishes to see the United States governed by sharia or Islamic law. “The message that all countries should be ruled by Islamic law,” writes Gartenstein-Ross, “is echoed throughout MAS’s membership curriculum. For example, MAS requires all its adjunct members to read Fathi Yakun’s book To Be a Muslim. In that volume, Yakun spells out his expansive agenda: ‘Until the nations of the world have functionally Islamic governments, every individual who is careless or lazy in working for Islam is sinful.’”
Hamas is an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood and taxpayer money is being directed to Brotherhood organizations. Who’s funding the pro-Hamas rallies? We are.
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
Which side are Old Joe and his henchmen really on? That’s obvious.
“Palestinian group accused of harboring terrorists received $1B from Biden admin: report,” by Edward Lawrence, Andrew Miller, and Lauren Shank, Fox Business, October 18, 2023:
FIRST ON FOX:The Biden administration has sent more than $1 billion in taxpayer dollars to a Palestinian relief organization that has previously been accused of providing safe harbor to terrorists in Gaza, drawing increased scrutiny amid Hamas’ attacks on Israel.
In a report exclusively obtained by FOX Business, watchdog OpenTheBooks.com found that the taxpayer money was sent to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), whose schools were accused in a recent report of being complicit in teaching children to hate Jewish people and praising terrorism.
Critics and watchdog groups also say UNRWA resources may help Hamas with recruitment and storage for weapons, along with other support.
According to the UNRWA’s website, the group works with Palestinians doing “human development and humanitarian services, encompass primary and vocational education, primary health care, relief, and social services, infrastructure and camp improvement, microfinance and emergency response, including in situations of armed conflict.”
However, U.N. Watch and IMPACT released a report in March, uncovering 100 pages of evidence that schools built and run by the UNRWA taught hate toward the Jewish people and glorified terrorism.
The UNRWA Islamic education exam asks students whether “Liberating the Al-Aqsa Mosque and making sacrifices for it is an obligation for all Muslims” is true or false. The exam cited the statement as true and noted that violence and martyrdom to free Al-Aqsa are obligations for Palestinians and “all Muslims.”
In 2014, the left-leaning New Republic described UNRWA as “effectively a branch of Hamas.”
UNRWA acknowledged in 2014, and condemned, Hamas missiles that were found at one of its schools in Gaza twice in one week….
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
President Joe Biden asked Congress for supplemental funding that totals $105 billion, which includes $60 billion to Ukraine and $14 billion to Israel.
The Biden administration made the request on Friday morning, a day after the president gave his second prime-time Oval Office address explaining why the aid was in the best interest of the United States.
“Over the coming weeks, the administration looks forward to continued engagement with members of both parties to reach a comprehensive, bipartisan agreement to fund the Government and invest in critical national priorities,” director of OMB Shalanda Young said in the letter to Congress. “As part of that process, the Congress has an opportunity and obligation to advance our national security by addressing critical needs that should earn Bipartisan support.”
The funding for Israel will be used to strengthen its air and missile defense systems such as the Iron Dome and Iron Beam, an energy laser weapon used in air defense.
Additionally, the money would also be used to help make “cutting-edge” detection technology at the Southern Border and “investigative capabilities to prevent cartels from trafficking fentanyl into the United States.”
The Biden administration also said some of the aid will go to Palestinian refugees in the West Bank and surrounding areas.
“At the same time, we are also requesting support to provide lifesaving humanitarian assistance for civilians impacted by the war in Gaza, who have nothing to do with Hamas and are suffering greatly as well,” National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said on a press call Friday morning. “This budget request will also help the administration enhance embassy security in Israel and for neighboring embassies as we stay vigilant against threats to our personnel who serve our country every day overseas.”
However, the request will not be voted on by Congress anytime soon because of the vacancy of a Speaker of the House.
Jim Jordan failed for a third time on Friday to be elected after only receiving 194 votes, which falls short of the required 217 votes for the majority.
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Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
Meanwhile, the Taliban arrest an American woman for “promoting Christianity”
What was the purpose of Biden’s pullout from Afghanistan again? So we could send them money without any inconvenient terrorist attacks getting in the way? I’ve spent a lot of time reporting on Biden’s betrayal but these numbers are still staggering.
After the latest earthquake, the Biden administration is sending another $12 million in aid.
The money, like much of our aid, is going through “USAID humanitarian partners”, which is to say NGOs that the Taliban allow operating, which either pay money to the Taliban or are the Taliban.
Samantha Power’s USAID boasts that “the United States is the single largest humanitarian donor in Afghanistan, providing nearly $2 billion in humanitarian assistance for Afghans since mid-August 2021, including more than $1.46 billion from USAID.”
Abolishing USAID would be a fantastic way to defund terrorists and save a lot of money.
$2 billion. To a terrorist-controlled entity. It’s incredible.
In August 2021, I predicted that, “Biden Will Fund Taliban Through ‘Humanitarian Aid’”, but even I’m blown away by the sheer scope of this.
Meanwhile, the Taliban are doing things like this to American aid workers.
Almost 20 staff members of a charity organization operating in central Afghanistan, including one U.S. national, have been arrested by regional officials in the Taliban-controlled nation, a spokesman for the provincial government in Ghor province told CBS News. The 18 detained aid workers were arrested for “propagating and promoting Christianity,” a violation of the Taliban’s strict regulations on all non-governmental groups, according to Abdul Wahid Hamas, the spokesman for the regional administration in Ghor province.
A local employee of The International Assistance Mission (IAM) in Ghor province also told CBS News, on the condition that he not be named, that the detained foreign employee was a U.S. woman who works at the office.
Has she been released? Did the Biden admin even threaten to hold up its latest cash infusion until she is? Don’t bet on it.
A migrant couple from Venezuela and their 15-month-old son rest in the lobby of a police station where they have been staying with other migrant families since their arrival in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
Chicago is providing an additional $9,000 in rental assistance to immigrants in need of housing accommodations, having just paid a medical company an astounding $7.2 million for staffing local shelters for just one week, according to official documents released to the press.
The city has already spent $60 million overall on staffing for a plethora of housing shelters.
After more than 18,000 illegal immigrants traveled to the state in recent months in order to find their new homes, the Windy City is now trying to house over 11,000 illegals in shelters and 4,000 who are currently sleeping at police stations and the O’Hare International Airport.
Chicago Deputy Chief of Staff Cristina Pacione-Zayas said that the state of Illinois will continue assisting with paying costs for temporary housing for migrants, including the additional $9,000 in rental aid over a six-month period to free up much-needed space.
She claims that the money will help with moving expenses and help immigrants receive government-funded apartment “starter kits,” which would contain furnishing supplies and more.
In order to assist immigrants in finding temporary lodging, the city has also allocated up to $4 million, while the state of Illinois has allotted an additional $38 million.
“That rent lasts for six months, and ideally people would have started their legal process, secured legal work authorization, and be able to sustain that apartment,” said Pacione-Zayas. “I guess the payment toward the landlord is based on market rate, it’s based on the configuration of the apartment. And so it varies from place to place.”
Meanwhile, according to NBC 5, a recent investigation found that Kansas-based “Favorite Healthcare Staffing” charged the city more than $7.2 million to provide additional staff to immigrant shelters for only four weeks.
After hearing about the staff’s high-paying invoices in December, the city seemed to lower hourly rates. However, the lowest staff rates remained at $50 per hour, while the highest was $156 per hour before overtime.
$1.4 million was allotted for the old Wadsworth School, $1.6 million for the Inn of Chicago, and $1.2 million for the Social Club shelter.
Furthermore, more buses from Texas were reported to be arriving carrying more asylum seekers, and the situation is not getting any better, local Chicagoans say.
41 more buses carrying asylum seekers arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border only last week.
This week, a border visit by Mayor Johnson (D-Ill.) and other city council members is already scheduled.
“We need to go assess the situation,” Johnson said. “This is serious. And I’ve been saying it. I mean this ain’t the first time you’ve heard me say how serious this dynamic is.”
Texas has been the primary source of immigrants arriving in Chicago over the past year, mostly at the command of Governor Greg Abbott (R-Texas). The city’s current services were strained as more immigrants from a number of countries entered the U.S.
Officials acknowledged that the city needed greater assistance from the state and federal governments but failed to identify longer-term housing solutions.
Many immigrants come from Venezuela, where millions of people have fallen into poverty as a result of a political social, and economic disaster over the previous ten years. At least 7.3 million people have emigrated, braving a perilous journey to the U.S., Chicago officials said.
However, the influx of immigrants and the temporary shelters set up have angered many Chicago locals.
Following complaints and protests from Chicagoans who said that the facility had originally offered a safe area for the city’s youth, officials abruptly abandoned plans last week to convert a park’s football fieldhouse into an additional immigrant shelter.
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker (D-Ill.) has now pleaded with President Joe Biden to steer foreign asylum seekers away from his state. Ironically, just two years earlier, Pritzker had referred to his state as the “Most Welcoming State in the Nation” and maintained that he would advance immigration rights.
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We’re two years removed from the passage of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), the $2 trillion “stimulus” measure that Congress passed in March of 2021, and the verdict on much of that spending can now be delivered.
The biggest line item in the bill was the $350 billion given to state and local governments to deal with revenue shortfalls and other pandemic-related expenditures —like golf courses.
But here we are two years later, and, astonishingly, only 45% of the $350 billion in funds to bail out states has been spent. Local governments had reported to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) that they spent just 38% of their funds received through ARPA.
“The new GAO study confirms that the ARPA spending was not needed,” Chris Edwards, chair of fiscal studies at the Cato Institute, tells Reason. “By the fall of 2020, it was clear that the states were in good fiscal shape and not facing Armageddon as many policymakers were claiming. They did not need federal handouts.”
It would be more accurate to say that most states did not need federal handouts. That was one of the primary objections to the bill. By March 2021, there may have been a dozen states — most of them blue states — whose finances were so mismanaged that it was possible that they would have to declare bankruptcy. Many states like Illinois, used the ARPA money to rescue their failing pension systems. Others spent the cash on frivolous extras.
The effectiveness of that spending has been repeatedly called into question. In a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper published in June 2022, a trio of researchers found that pandemic-era aid distributed to state and local governments had cost taxpayers about $855,000 per job saved. The stimulus spending had only “a modest impact on government employment and has not translated into detectable gains for private businesses or for states’ overall economic recoveries,” concluded University of California, San Diego economists Jeffrey Clemens and Philip Hoxie and American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Stan Veuger, the paper’s three authors.
“Even the unstated assumption behind these handouts — that Washington should step in if there are dips in state revenue — is badly flawed,” wrote David Ditch and Richard Stern, policy analysts at the Heritage Foundation. “Many states are fiscally mismanaged, and federal bailouts enable them to avoid much-needed discipline.”
Tourism is nice and roads are in some ways an essential government function, but the emergency COVID spending was meant to help states address an immediate public health crisis—or to offset the costs of it. It’s not at all clear how highway construction was a victim of the pandemic, and “travel marketing” is something that shouldn’t be funded with taxpayer dollars no matter where they come from.
If there ever was a need for emergency aid to states and localities, it has obviously long since passed. Edwards points out that state and local tax revenue in the first quarter of 2023 was up 25 percent over the first quarter of 2020—which immediately preceded the onset of the pandemic.
Perhaps a lot of those states should give the unspent money back to the U.S. treasury.
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
Who paid for the murders of 600 Israelis and the new jihad war against Israel? You did. I did. The Biden regime did, with American taxpayer dollars.
“Under the radar, US approves release of $75m aid to Palestine,” Middle East Monitor, October 6, 2023:
In a quiet move bypassing Republican obstructionism, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has approved the release of $75 million in crucial food assistance for Palestinians just hours before the funds were set to be redistributed elsewhere.
Blinken’s decision came after months of pressure from Democratic lawmakers and dozens of civil society groups, who warned that blocking the aid would create a humanitarian disaster for over one million Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank….
UNRWA thanked Blinken for the funds that will sustain its food distribution through early 2024. “Thank you [Blinken] for providing $75 million in food assistance to Palestine refugees in Gaza! This generous support from the American people will allow UNRWA to continue this critical aspect of its humanitarian and human development work through the end of Q1 2024,” said UNRWA….
Blinken’s approval of the funds came after US Ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, announced an additional $73 million in funding to support UNRWA’s core and emergency services….
It took little time for people to connect the dots between Joe Biden’s unfreezing of $6 billion in Iranian assets last month — part of a prisoner swap — and the Hamas attack on Israel. Hamas gets funding from Iran, and all the restrictions on how Iran can spend their money are meaningless. In fact, Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad told the BBC that Iran did give financial support to Hamas for its surprise attack on Israel, and a senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, confirmed this.
That hasn’t stopped the Biden administration from desperately trying to absolve itself of responsibility for the deadly attack, which has set off yet another war in the region.
“Let’s be clear,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller wrote on X. “The deal to bring U.S. citizens home from Iran has nothing to do with the horrific attack on Israel. Not a penny has been spent, and when it is, it can only go for humanitarian needs like food and medicine. Anything to the contrary is false.”
Variations of this talking point have been repeated ad nauseam by various members of the Biden administration. One of them was Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who did the rounds on the Sunday morning talk shows to defend the Biden administration. He claimed on ABC’s “This Week” that “not a single dollar from that account has actually been spent to date, and in any event, it’s very carefully and closely regulated by the Treasury Department to make sure that it’s only used for food, for medicine, for medical equipment.”
Cute story, right? Well, that may be the line the administration is pushing, but when Blinken appeared on “Meet The Press,” he let slip some actual truth.
“What do you say about the argument that money is fungible — so Iran may have known this money was coming and used other funds to help fund this attack?” asked host Kristen Welker.
“Iran has unfortunately always used and focused its funds on supporting terrorism, on supporting groups like Hamas,” Blinken replied. “And it’s done that when there have been sanctions, it’s done that when there haven’t been sanctions, and it’s always prioritized that.”
That admission completely undermines the talking points that the Biden administration has been pushing. They unfroze $6 billion for Iran, and Iran funded the Hamas attack. It’s that simple. Per Blinken’s own words, the condition of the money only being used for humanitarian purposes is meaningless. Iran will always use money to fund terrorism.
So if the Biden administration knows Iran funds terrorism, why did it unfreeze $6 billion as part of the prisoner exchange last month? There’s no good answer to that — or to the question of why the Obama administration and now the Biden administration are so intent on giving the Iranian regime a pathway to nuclear weapons.
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
Former President Donald Trump not only condemned Hamas for the terrorist attacks on Israel, but he also reminded Americans that President Joe Biden's $6 billion payment to Iran ultimately "helped fund these attacks."
"These Hamas attacks are a disgrace and Israel has every right to defend itself with overwhelming force," Trump wrote in a statement Saturday morning. "Sadly, American taxpayer dollars helped fund these attacks, which many reports are saying came from the Biden Administration."
Trump has long hailed himself as a pro-Israel president and added the Abraham Accords made progress for peace in the Middle East, but have been "whittled away" by the Biden administration's Iran appeasement policies.
"We brought so much peace to the Middle East through the Abraham Accords, only to see Biden whittle it away at a far more rapid pace than anyone thought possible," Trump's statement, also posted to Truth Social, continued. "Here we go again."
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
