The Biden administration has used an emergency authority to allow the sale of about 14,000 tank shells to Israel without congressional review, the Pentagon said on Saturday.
The State Department on Friday used an Arms Export Control Act emergency declaration for the tank rounds worth $106.5 million for immediate delivery to Israel, the Pentagon said in a statement.
The shells are part of a bigger sale that was first reported by Reuters on Friday that the Biden administration is asking the U.S. Congress to approve. The larger package is worth more than $500 million and includes 45,000 shells for Israel's Merkava tanks, regularly deployed in its offensive in Gaza, which has killed thousands of civilians.
As the war intensified, how and where exactly the U.S. weapons are used in the conflict has come under more scrutiny, even though U.S. officials say there are no plans to put conditions on military aid to Israel or to consider withholding some of it.
Rights advocates expressed concern over the sale, saying it doesn't align with Washington's effort to press Israel to minimize civilian casualties.
A State Department official said on Saturday that Washington continues to be clear with the Israeli government that it must comply with international humanitarian law and take every feasible step to avoid harm to civilians.
The proposed sale conveys U.S. commitment to Israel's security and it will bolster Israel's defensive capabilities, the official said.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken determined and provided detailed justification to Congress that the tank shells must immediately be provided to Israel in the national security interests of the United States, according to the Pentagon statement.
The sale will be from U.S. Army inventory and consist of 120mm M830A1 High Explosive Anti-Tank Multi-Purpose with Tracer (MPAT) tank cartridges and related equipment.
"Israel will use the enhanced capability as a deterrent to regional threats and to strengthen its homeland defense," the Pentagon said, adding that there will be no adverse impact on U.S. defense readiness as a result of the sale.
Israel's Merkava tanks, which uses 120mm shells, are also linked to incidents that involved the death of journalists.
On Thursday, a Reuters investigation revealed that an Israeli tank crew killed Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah and wounded six reporters by firing two shells in quick succession from Israel while the journalists were filming cross-border shelling.
When laws are debated in Congress that are too controversial to pass on their own, oftentimes sneaky politicians will attempt to place similar language into must-pass bills.
One of those must-pass bills is the National Defense Authorization Act, also known as the NDAA. The annual NDAA creates new programs, strategies, and authorizes the Department of Defense to procure new technologies.
This year, thanks to Gun Owners of America and the support of our grassroots members, we are happy to report that the proposed gun control amendments to the NDAA have been defeated.
So, you might ask, what gun control did the anti-gun politicians in Congress try to sneak into this year's bill?
The answer is a permanent reauthorization of the Undetectable Firearms Act.
Gun Owners of America is the only pro-gun lobbying organization to historically oppose the Undetectable Firearms Act since its passage into law in 1988.
The act itself began as an attempt to ban handguns like the Glock 17 when they were first introduced to the market in the mid-80s. At this time, polymer-framed handguns were a very new idea, and a misunderstanding about the Glock's polymer frame prompted an idea that even though the Glock had a metal slide, its polymer frame would somehow make it undetectable to metal detectors and, therefore, be the weapon of choice for criminals.
When the act was finally passed through Congress, a compromise was made - so it did not affect any existing handguns.
Nowadays, with the advent of 3D printing, the Undetectable Firearms Act stifles manufacturers from producing smaller, lighter, and higher-performing handguns because they must meet the UFA's weight requirement. This issue is compounded for the consumer handgun market because of the massive demand for concealed carry firearms, especially in light of the recent landmark NYSRPA v. Bruen decision.
In addition, security measures have come a long way since the 1980s. Metal detectors are quickly being replaced by AI detection technology and less invasive sensor-based body scanning. The Undetectable Firearms Act nowadays only serves as an arbitrary and capricious gun control statute masquerading as public safety.
The UFA has been reauthorized four times. The original act had a ten-year sunset clause. It was renewed in 1988 for five years, in 2003 for ten years, and finally in 2013 for another ten years.
Over these past 40 years, much has changed. More and more gun owners are starting to embrace the no-compromise mindset. As such, renewals of bills like the Undetectable Firearms Act will be harder and harder to pass. Because of the work of grassroots GOA members, members of Congress are starting to oppose gun control like the UFA, removing it from must-pass bills like the NDAA.
While gun owners should enjoy the victory, we must remain vigilant until the UFA is laid to rest permanently.
Gun Owners of America is urging our members to continue to call their elected representatives and let them know that they do not support the Undetectable Firearms Act.
Tuesday’s House hearing on campus antisemitism ratcheted up the pressure on American universities: counter the anti-Israel vitriol that exploded in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack or risk losing philanthropic and government support. The leading approach is sure to fail: doubling down on the ideologies and practices that led to the pro-Hamas fever in the first place.
Bill Ackman, the hedge-fund manager leading a Harvard donor revolt, told CNBC on Nov. 6 that he hadn’t previously read Harvard’s DEI statement. Though he had assumed DEI was “for all marginalized groups,” once he read the statement, he realized that “the DEI program at Harvard is limited to specific groups and exploits others.” Instead, Mr. Ackman suggested, DEI should cover all minorities, including Jews and Asians.
Jon Huntsman Jr. halted his contributions to the University of Pennsylvania on Oct. 15 to protest its leaders’ silence in the face of “hate,” which higher ed was “built to obviate.” An open letter to Penn President Liz Magill initiated by alumnus Marc Rowan called for mandatory antisemitism awareness training across the university. The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law has demanded that Penn add modules on antisemitism to the school’s diversity, equity and inclusion trainings.
College leaders are happy to oblige. As Ms. Magill told lawmakers Tuesday, Penn has created an Action Plan to Combat Antisemitism and a University Task Force on Antisemitism. Since antisemitism is “interconnected” to “other forms of hate,” Ms. Magill explained in a Nov. 1 message, Penn is also rolling out a presidential commission on Islamophobia. The university must do better to “reject hate in all its forms,” she said on Nov. 1.
Northwestern University President Michael Schill is establishing a committee to prevent antisemitism and “other forms of hate.” The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is creating a Standing Together Against Hate council. The University of Maryland, a self-described “proud multicultural community,” launched a task force to eliminate “antisemitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of hate.” DEI bureaucrats are well-represented on all these commissions and task forces.
But a university has no capacity to eliminate “hate,” nor should that be its mission. In the name of rejecting hate, colleges built their DEI bureaucracies in the first place and allowed bureaucrats and their faculty sympathizers to put certain facts and ideas off-limits. In the name of rejecting hate, colleges started requiring faculty—even in the hard sciences—to justify their research in the name of “inclusion” and “belonging.” Protected identity categories have constantly expanded while the haters shrank to an ever smaller subset of white males.
The real issue on campuses isn’t antisemitism but the anti-Western ethos that has colonized large swaths of the curriculum. Elite schools once disdained Jews because they were seen as outsiders to Western civilization. Now they are reviled as that civilization’s very embodiment. Students explain that their hatreds come from what they learn in class—that the West is built on white supremacism and oppression. Israel is cast as the Western settler-colonialist oppressor par excellence.
The Columbia University chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine explained that “our classes regularly discuss the inevitability of resistance as part of the struggle for decolonization. We study under renowned scholars who denounce the fact that the media requires oppressed peoples to be ‘perfect victims’ ”—that is, not to commit acts of terrorism—“in order to deserve sympathy.” During a sit-in, a law student at Penn announced: “It was here where I read texts about the history of colonial regimes and the importance of decolonization. . . . I just want the university to try to do part of what it tries to teach us in the classrooms.”
A Harvard student posted on social media: “how have i read frantz fanon in no less than four classes here (writing on the violent algerian decolonial movement!!!) and yet you all side with the colonizer?” Another Harvard student: “what is WRONG with EVERYONE! This is literally a decolonization struggle before our eyes. like all of those places we learn about and have historicized and sympathize with now—algeria, south africa, haiti, more.”
Gerrymandering Jews into an “oppressed” class for DEI purposes wouldn’t do anything to prevent this classroom propaganda—which college leaders are at pains not to address. Since Oct. 7, presidents and faculty have routinely spoken of the “interconnectedness” of antisemitism and Islamophobia. A Nov. 16 lecture at Cornell University by Ross Brann, a professor of Judeo-Islamic studies, was titled “The Intersectionality of Antisemitism, Islamophobia and Racism.”
Who is found at that intersection? White supremacists, former Trump administration officials, evangelical Christians and white opponents of mass immigration from Muslim countries, to judge by Mr. Brann’s PowerPoint slides. None of these supposed oppressors play a significant role in pro-Hamas campus protests. The actual protesters—Muslims, Black Lives Matter activists, Queers for Palestine, socialist groups and proponents of the anti-Israel boycott, divest and sanctions movement—went unmentioned in the lecture. (Mr. Brann did briefly mention Louis Farrakhan as an antisemite.)
Mr. Ackman seems to be learning. In a Dec. 3 letter to Harvard President Claudine Gay, he described his conversations with faculty, who were willing to speak only confidentially. “The problems at Harvard are clearly not just about Jews and Israel,” Mr. Ackman wrote. Harvard also discriminates against Asians and “straight white males.” Harvard’s diversity office “is an important culprit in this discrimination on campus as it sees the world in a framework of oppressors and the oppressed, where the oppressor class includes white males, Asians, Jews and other people perceived to be successful and powerful.”
Solving the problems of higher ed requires rejecting this victim ideology wholesale. “Universities need to abandon the concept that they have a central role in moral education,” Lawrence Summers, a former Harvard president, told me. Donors and alumni should demand changes in governance and curricula to counterbalance the anti-Western ideology that undergirds the anti-Israel coalition. Every identity-based bureaucratic sinecure should be eliminated. Trustees and presidents should be chosen based on their determination to support humanistic learning and academic excellence, not “inclusion.”
Efforts to impose such changes will be fought tooth and nail. On their success hangs a civilization.
Ms. Mac Donald is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of “When Race Trumps Merit.”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR, masquerades as a civil rights organization and is taken seriously as such by the liberal press. In fact, however, it is a front for jihadists. CAIR was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism case. It has a long history of anti-Semitic agitation and propaganda. It added to that ignominious history on November 24, at the16th Annual Convention for Palestine in the U.S..
CAIR’s Executive Director, Nihad Awad, expressed glee at the Gazans’ mass murders and gang rapes of October 7:
“The people of Gaza only decided to break the siege — the walls of the concentration camp — on Oct. 7,” said Awad. “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 that they were not free to walk in.”
He continued, “And yes, the people of Gaza have the right to self-defense — have the right to defend themselves. And yes, Israel as an occupying power does not have that right to self-defense.”
This is the idiotic formula that the global Left has been parroting ever since October 7. Awad went on to complain about the Jews’ control over the U.S. Congress:
AIPAC and its affiliates have been controlling the United States government and the United States Congress,” Awad said. “And if someone says, ‘Oh, Nihad Awad said this about the Congress,’ I tell you, ‘Yes, I say it today, and I will say it tomorrow — unless we free Congress, we will not be able to free Palestine.’”
So first Congress, then the Middle East can be judenrein.
Awad identifies closely with the younger generation of Democrats who have generally supported Hamas:
The CAIR director also lauded the efforts of younger Democrats dissatisfied with President Biden’s continued support of Israel over Hamas.
“Brothers and sisters, young people in the Democratic Party have sent a clear message to this administration and to the Democratic Party,” Awad told the audience. “That you have betrayed our votes, you have betrayed our support, and you have betrayed young people who aspire for the United States of America to reposition itself as a moral leader in the world. They have betrayed us.”
Like Yasir Arafat and many other predecessors in the jihadist movement, Awad says one thing when he is among friends, and something else when speaking for mainstream consumption. He apparently didn’t expect his remarks to the Convention for Palestine to be reported, so he claimed to have been “taken out of context.”
Deputy Executive Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell provided a statement attributed to Awad.
“…[A]n anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian hate website selected remarks from my speech out of context and spliced them together to create a completely false meaning.”
Maybe Awad should apply to be President of Harvard. He, like current President Claudine Gay, believes that context is everything.
In March 2020, Dr. Robert Kadlecaddressed a House committeeto confirm his role and responsibilities as the federal government’s top preparedness official coordinating the government’sCOVID-19response.
As assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the Department of Health and Human Services , Kadlec offered a lengthy statement to lawmakers on the “four principal functions” of his role.
None of those functions involved downplaying without scientific evidence a theory that the virus emerged from a laboratory in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. But that’s what Kadlec now says he did by assisting Dr. Anthony Fauci, America’s former top infectious diseases adviser, in his effort to suppress the lab leak theory.
Kadlec says it’s a decision that keeps him up at night. Literally.
“I wake up at usually about 2 or 3 a.m. and think about it honestly, because it’s something that we all played a role in,” Kadlec told Sky News in an exclusive interview.
For much of 2020 and 2021, anyone who brought up the possibility that COVID-19 emerged from Wuhan risked being labeled a conspiracy theorist by legacy media and “fact-checkers.”
It started in February 2020 when Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) appeared on TV and raised questions about the Chinese government’s “duplicity and dishonesty” on the matter.
Though Cotton explicitly stated that “we don’t have evidence that this disease originated there,” he was promptly accused of spreading “a conspiracy theory” by the New York Times and the Washington Post . (The latter eventually issued a correction . The former has not.)
Big Tech also got in on the action, including Facebook. The social media giant began banning content that suggested COVID-19 might have been man-made.
Even after Facebook lifted its ban in May 2021 , many remained afraid to speak publicly about the lab leak theory until a left-leaning comedian appeared on Stephen Colbert’s show and broke the spell.
“There’s a respiratory coronavirus overtaking Wuhan, China. What do we do?” Jon Stewart said mockingly to Colbert. “Oh, you know who we could ask? The Wuhan respiratory coronavirus lab. The disease is the same name as the lab! That’s just a little too weird, don’t ya think?”
It turns out that Stewart had good reason to be suspicious.
The FBI and various other agencies now believe it’s likely COVID-19 emerged from the Wuhan lab. What’s more, details have emerged to support Kadlec’s claim that government officials tried to suppress the lab leak theory.
In September, the chairman of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic revealed that Fauci was secretly admitted to CIA headquarters while the agency conducted its analysis of the virus’s origins, allegedly to “‘influence’ the Agency’s review.” A senior-level CIA whistleblower claims the agency attempted to bribe six analysts tasked with assessing the origin of the virus.
Fauci has yet to respond publicly to the accusation (though on Thursday, he finally agreed to testify under oath before Congress on the origins of COVID).
Why Fauci might wish to suppress the idea that COVID was man-made is something Kadlec discussed in his interview with Sky News.
Kadlec told reporter Sharri Markson that Fauci was likely concerned that his reputation, as well as that of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, would be damaged if it was learned that COVID-19 emerged from Wuhan, especially since the lab was conducting high-risk gain-of-function research on bats — research that was being funded through NIAID grants.
“That would be a natural reaction of him or anybody, particularly, I think, for him,” Kadlec said. “What could this do to me and to our institute as a consequence if we were found to have some culpability or some involvement in this?”
Neither Kadlec’s claims nor Fauci’s machinations prove COVID came from the Wuhan lab. But we have plenty of proof that the Chinese government and Fauci worked to deflect and even conceal evidence that suggested the virus may have originated in Wuhan. The people deserve answers on a virus that claimed 7 million lives, but there has been a conspicuous lack of effort to get them.
“Unfortunately, there has been no international inquiry,” Markson said. “It shouldn’t be left up to journalists to investigate this.”
The absence of a federal or international commission to investigate COVID’s origins is a reminder of a fundamental problem with government: Those in power are rarely held to account for the mistakes they make or the atrocities they commit. This is why America’s Founding Fathers viewed the concentration of power with suspicion.
“A body of men, holding themselves accountable to nobody, ought not to be trusted by anybody,” Thomas Paine observed .
Truer words have never been spoken.
Jonathan Miltimore is the Editor at Large of FEE.org at the Foundation for Economic Education.
President Joe Biden said Friday’s jobs report shows the labor market remains resilient as inflation continues to ease, an economic “sweet spot” that he said shouldn’t prompt the Federal Reserve to raise rates further.
The comments marked a rare example of Biden weighing in on central bank policy making. They came as the president gears up for a reelection campaign that will be decided in part on his stewardship of the US economy, which voters have rated poorly, polls show.
The US labor market unexpectedly strengthened in November, adding 199,000 jobs and showing wage growth that tempered bets the Fed would cut rates early next year. That should be considered a “solid, steady” increase, Biden said Friday.
The president called the figure “a sweet spot that’s needed for stable growth and lower inflation, not encouraging the Fed to raise interest rates,” during a speech in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Recent presidents have refrained from routinely commenting on the Fed, wary of eroding the bank’s traditional independence to set monetary policy and giving the impression that decisions are driven by politics.
Electioneering, Gee Who Coudda Thunk?
Trump did the same thing of course. Presidents always want an independent Fed except when they don’t.
Q: When is that? A: When they are running for reelection. Q: But when is that? A: Arguably always, but definitely more pronounced starting a year before before an election
Biden’s pressure led to some interesting Tweets on X.
Judy Shelton, Fed Candidate Under Trump, Chimes In
Shelton: Hey, I thought Biden always said he respected the Fed’s independence. What gives?
Mish: Judy, it is so sad that you are not on the Fed. The Fed prides itself on “diversity” but there is no diversity at the Fed where it matters, diversity in thought. They are pack of group-think clowns believing in theories that don’t work.
Living Hell in 2024
“The Fed is looking at a living hell in 2024. Trump will make compromising their independence a cornerstone of his campaign the minute they even try to cut rates. If he is elected, he will instantly “pivot” to demands for ZIRP and more QE. The Fed (as we know it) may not survive.”
I have stated many times the Fed is walking a tightrope with no winning actions. Stimpyz more accurately calls it a “Living Hell”.
The Big Tease: Will the Fed Enter the Fray as the 2024 Election Draws Near?
By one reckoning there’s a 99 percent probability that the Fed will lower the federal-funds rate by September [2024] —its last meeting before Americans go to the polls.
Based on futures pricing data, there is an 86 percent probability the Fed will implement a lower federal-funds rate by its May meeting and a 99 percent probability by its September meeting—the last meeting before Election Day. In remarks Friday, the central bank’s chairman, Jerome Powell, appeared to leave the door open to lower rates in the latter half of 2024.
The presumption of independence between the actions of the nation’s central bank and the economic agenda of the White House renders it crude to ask but still: When does the grumbling begin that Mr. Powell could end up choreographing an economic boost that serves to help the incumbent presidential candidate?
No doubt mindful as well that the Fed’s about-face on interest rates might be seen as having succumbed to Mr. Trump’s jawboning, Mr. Powell carried out a formal review of the Fed’s monetary policy framework that included a series of Fed Listens public engagement events held around the country with various community groups “to hear about how our policies affect peoples’ daily lives and livelihoods.”
If the Fed has as much impact over economic performance as its own pronouncements suggest, the real error is that the purchasing power of the dollars earned by American workers—along with their prospects for owning a home and building a secure financial future—are so dependent on the discretionary judgment of Fed officials who have proven so fallible.
Damningly Accurate Assessment
Whether or not the Fed is independent, the last paragraph is a damningly accurate assessment of the Fed’s performance for decades.
Since 2018 the Fed has blown three spectacular bubbles via QE and by acting on economic models that do not work and never did.
How the Fed Destroyed the Housing Market and Created Inflation in Pictures
@SanFranciscoFed @stlouisfed @NewYorkFed. Hey Fed presidents, please comment on this: The Fed erroneously does not consider rising home prices as inflation. Here’s the result in pictures.
See the above link for discussion.
Case-Shiller national and 10-city home prices vs CPI, Rent, and Owners’ Equivalent Rent
That is a more recent chart than the one posted in October.
Here is a pertinent comment I made then.
The longer the Fed holds rates high, the longer the housing transaction crash lasts. But cutting rates will further expand the housing bubble, asset bubbles in general. And bubbles are destabilizing.
This is the Fed’s tightrope dilemma, of its own making, foolishly hoping to make up for lack of enough inflation, calculated by not factoring in home prices or asset bubbles.
Tightrope or Hell?
In deference to Stimpyz, today I ask “Tightrope or Hell?”
Fed Groupthink
Fed groupthink on the Phillips Curve, QE, and Inflation Expectations are three prime examples of Fed belief in ridiculous models led to the Fed’s current hellish dilemma.
New data confirm findings consistent with interim analysis, reaffirming superior efficacy and significantly longer durability of response with Reblozyl® (luspatercept-aamt) compared to epoetin alfa
Bristol Myers Squibb (NYSE: BMY) announced updated results from the primary analysis of the Phase 3 COMMANDS trial, comparing Reblozyl® (luspatercept-aamt) versus epoetin alfa for the treatment of anemia in erythropoiesis stimulating agent (ESA)-naïve patients with lower-risk myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) (Oral Presentation #193) who may require red blood cell (RBC) transfusions. These data are being presented in an oral presentation at the 2023 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting, from December 9-12.
