U.S. Navy Corpsman Disciplined Last Year After Trying To Access Joe Biden's Health Records

 A U.S. Navy corpsman was administratively reprimanded last year after he attempted to access President Biden's medical records, according to a new report from CBS.

On Feb. 22, at the Naval Medical Readiness and Training Center at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, a Navy corpsman sat at his desk amidst the hum of computers and quiet chatter. Nearby, a licensed civilian nurse and an Army soldier worked.

The routine setting took a turn when a colleague left her workstation, her Common Access Card (CAC) still logged in. This smart card, about the size of a credit card, grants access to secure military networks and facilities.

The group began discussing the security risk of unattended CACs, with one person noting the potential for misuse: "Someone could maliciously use your CAC when you walk away."

Spurred by "curiosity" and this conversation, the corpsman accessed restricted files. According to a Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) report obtained by CBS News through a Freedom of Information Act request, the low-ranking sailor attempted to access the president's medical records.

The investigation led to a nonjudicial punishment for dereliction of duty under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The corpsman, whose identity was withheld, was demoted from E-3 to E-2, given 20 days of extra duty, and had pay reduced by half for six months. An E-2 with two to three years of service earns about $2,260 monthly.

The CBS report says that during a discussion about the risks of unattended CAC accounts, someone suggested such access could be used to view the president's medical records. Curious, the Navy corpsman tested this by searching "Joseph Biden" in the Genesis Medical Health System. A single record appeared, with a matching birthdate verified via Google. The file was accessed for about 20 seconds, revealing minimal information, including a doctor's name, which didn’t match publicly available details.

Realizing the seriousness of his actions, the corpsman closed the file. A female colleague advised him to self-report, but he delayed. Another coworker reported the violation first. The corpsman later confessed, citing curiosity and denying any intent to save, share, or document the record.

NCIS launched an investigation, discovering no link between the corpsman and political motives or hacktivist groups, though a reverse image search on his Instagram profile hinted at potential Anonymous imagery. Searches on his laptop included terms like "Biden" and "Anonymous." His devices, seized and analyzed, were eventually returned.

The accessed record was later confirmed to be non-legitimate. The president was informed quickly, undergoing an unrelated physical two days after the investigation began, where he was deemed "fit for duty." The corpsman faced disciplinary action but cooperated fully throughout the inquiry.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/us-navy-corpsman-disciplined-last-year-after-trying-access-president-bidens-health-records

Trump Pardons Approximately 1,500 Jan. 6 Political 'Hostages'

 President Trump on Monday gave a 'full pardon' to over 1,500 political prisoners who were involved in the Jan. 6 riot.

🚨 President Trump has pardoned approximately 1500 January 6th political prisoners of the Biden era pic.twitter.com/LwL2S7l5Ft

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) January 21, 2025

Developing...

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/trump-pardons-approximately-1500-jan-6-political-hostages

Even Hollywood is turning on LA Mayor Karen Bass

After her election as mayor of Los Angeles in 2022, Karen Bass was a heroine of California’s Left. A former backer of Fidel Castro, she decisively defeated billionaire businessman Rick Caruso, who spent more than $100 million to try and defeat her. With a struggling economy, rising crime, and a high cost of living, Bass’s election seemed to confirm LA’s final transition from a place of political diversity to a single-party city dominated by a well-organised Left and funders from the public unions.


Now, though, Bass “is a dead woman walking”, as a union organiser friend told me this week. The revelations of incompetence, poor planning, and awful communication, combined with the fact that the LA mayor was partying in Ghana when wildfires started in her city, have worked against her, and yesterday angry protestors gathered outside her home. Some charges made by Donald Trump and Elon Musk tying the disaster to DEI and climate policies are exaggerated. But Bass’s lack of interest in public safety mirrors the new progressive script which prioritises “social justice” over actual justice, racial quotas over merit, and climate alarmism over common sense.

Naturally, Bass, Governor Gavin Newsom and their media supporters reject conservatives’ accusations of incompetence. They say opponents are using the fires as a political “piñata”, and blame the damage on climate change. Yet Steven Koonin, a respected physicist and advisor in the Obama administration, has argued that the real responsibility lies with a slew of bad policies which left the city unprepared for the scale of the disaster. Fires have been a regular feature of life here in Southern California for at least 20 million years. Given recent weather conditions, the city should have known what was coming.

Rather than help save our piece of the planet, proponents of the green movement have been consistent barriers to effective fire management. As far back as 2018, the Little Hoover Commission found that controlled burns and brush clearance were necessary to avoid catastrophic wildfires, yet not enough was done. Even as the state reacted to major fires in 2020, attempts at controlled fires have been hampered by environmental lawsuits that delay implementation, as well as fire management budget cuts. Bass also cut the fire budget.


California has been running huge deficits in recent years, but not enough of those funds have gone towards fire preparedness. Those in charge never made sure that fire engines were in place beforehand, that there was sufficient water pressure in hydrants, and that reservoirs were filled. To her credit, the LA council member who represents the Palisades, Traci Park, has consistently made these arguments.

Unsurprisingly, there has been a groundswell against Bass and the city’s bureaucrats. Some Hollywood stars — a group which has historically been the bulwark of the progressive movement — have even joined in. Celebrities including Maria Shriver, Justine Bateman and Dennis Quaid have now called on Bass to resign, as have the 150,000 signatories of a petition launched last week. As the journalist Michael Shellenberger notes: “They didn’t imagine their vote would result in their homes burning down.”

Whether Bass is kicked out in 2026 or sooner may not matter much, unless a new reform-minded mayor — as opposed to just a younger progressive — enters office. In 1993, following the LA riots, the city was fortunate to elect the late Richard Riordan, a Republican businessman, who also steered the city through the aftermath of a 1994 earthquake. Although the council was mostly Democratic, Riordan did much to fix the city and attracted capital to rebuild large swathes of the devastated areas. Much of northern LA now requires similar reconstruction.


All hope is not lost, though. Despite the obsessive pounding about climate change, less than one in three Californians approve of Newsom’s handling of the fires. Demands from Republicans in Congress could force the city and state to reverse the policies that exacerbated the fires. Perhaps the worst thing that could happen would be to follow a Bidenesque approach of handing out billions without reforming anything or imposing performance benchmarks.

But ultimately — and particularly in Trump’s second term — cities will have to save themselves. The fact that LA last year removed its Soros-financed District Attorney by a wide margin, replacing him with a moderate Republican, marks something of a departure from the current course. Progressives will push for rebuilding to focus on racial concerns, fearing the imposition of “apartheid”. If people truly begin to see how destructive the progressive agenda is, there may be an opportunity, as in San Francisco recently, to elect a moderate, practical, business-oriented mayor. But even with the city up in flames, that will still be a major political challenge.


Joel Kotkin is a Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and a Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute, the University of Texas at Austin.

https://unherd.com/newsroom/even-hollywood-is-turning-on-la-mayor-karen-bass/

Donald Trump needs to mind the gaps

 In his journey to reclaim the White House, president-elect Donald Trump benefited politically from a dispersion of domestic economic outcomes. 

 Left to fester, the forces behind this, as well as those driving the divergence between overall US economic performance and its global peers, are set to strengthen. This risks economic, financial and social breakages in the next few years. 

Resolving them in an orderly and consistent fashion could well have a material impact on how the president’s second term is remembered. 

 The US has maintained an enviable growth and employment record in recent years. But this “economic exceptionalism” was not widely appreciated by the American electorate. 

The benefits were seen to accrue to just a narrow segment of society, with too little appreciation for the pain of the more vulnerable, many of whom felt that they weren’t being heard.

 This undermined overall household confidence in the Democrats’ ability to manage the economy and, thus, contrasted strongly with the positive sentiment about economic developments during Trump’s first term. 

The resulting “K shaped” economy of differing outcomes for the richer and poorer ends of the demographic spectrum also means that the incoming president inherits significant vulnerabilities at the lower end of the household income distribution.

 The financial insecurity — amplified by the evaporation of pandemic savings, higher debt and maxed-out credit cards — will take time to overcome through the current growth rate in wages and job opportunities. And if it worsens, it does more than undermine the social fabric. 

It risks endangering consumption, the most important driver of US growth at a time when the country is best placed to unleash a significant improvement in productivity and growth potential. The dispersion phenomenon has not been limited to domestic developments, given how much the US has outperformed. 

As noted recently by Goldman Sachs, the gain in the Eurozone’s nominal GDP since the last quarter of 2019 — that is, just before the pandemic — was only 39 per cent that of the US. The UK’s stands at a measly 10 per cent and, in the emerging economies, China’s amounts to 55 per cent.

 Looking forward, the IMF has just revised up its US growth projections for 2025 by a considerable 0.5 percentage points to 2.7 per cent, while lowering that for Europe. The outperformance of the US has resulted in financial market developments that can aggravate the challenges facing countries with lagging growth, investment and productivity. 

US bond yields have surged higher because of the country’s stronger than expected growth, sticky inflation, and greater market sensitivity to debt and deficits. This has caused other countries’ yields to also increase given that they compete with the US for funding. The negative spillovers have been particularly consequential in countries with structural vulnerabilities and cyclical headwinds. 

 The UK is a case in point. Not only did it see the yield on its 10-year government bonds rise faster than America and to a higher absolute level, it also suffered a material depreciation in its currency. The resulting stagflationary winds complicate an already difficult economic outlook while limiting the room for manoeuvre for both fiscal and monetary policies. While not as pronounced as the UK, the spillovers in the Eurozone go in the same direction. 

The same is true for emerging economies where some, particularly China, are excessively inclined to offset domestic weaknesses by devaluing their currency and pushing exports even harder. Like its domestic counterpart, a widening of this external dispersion risks complicating the economic management challenges facing the new Trump administration. 

After all, it is hard to remain the good house in a continuously deteriorating neighbourhood. The more the rest of the world lags behind the US, the higher the value of the dollar. Given the structural problems in China and Europe, this will not allow for a global adjustment in which slower growth countries converge up to the US. 

Instead, it risks undermining America where, according to Apollo’s Torsten Slok, 41 per cent of revenues in the S&P 500 come from abroad. It also raises the risk of greater protectionism, given the impact on US competitiveness. 

 While economic dispersion helped Trump return to the White House, he now faces the task of reorienting this phenomenon to lower the risk to the wellbeing of the US economy. From tax policy to tariff implementation, the incoming president should bear that in mind during what promises to be a flurry of policy announcements in the next few weeks and months. Otherwise, promising initiatives risk being derailed.

 Mohammed El-Erian is president of Queens’ College, Cambridge, and an adviser to Allianz and Gramercy

https://www.ft.com/content/9fcf7dcb-2fad-4dfd-941e-7d6c94d3090d

Trump says he will revoke nearly 80 executive actions of last government

  U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday he will revoke nearly 80 executive actions of the previous administration, with the Republican adding he also will implement an immediate regulation freeze and a hiring freeze.

"I'll revoke nearly 80 destructive and radical executive actions of the previous administration," Trump said.

https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2025-01-20/trump-says-he-will-revoke-nearly-80-executive-actions-of-last-government

Biden FTC chair Khan to resign from commission in coming weeks

 Lina Khan, who headed the U.S. Federal Trade Commission under former President Joe Biden until Monday, will resign from the commission in the coming weeks, she told staff in a memo.

Khan was an aggressive enforcer of antitrust law, challenging numerous mergers and working to ensure consumers and workers were not disadvantaged by powerful corporations.

Under Biden, Khan's FTC sued Amazon, opened an investigation into Microsoft, and won court rulings that blocked Kroger's $25-billion acquisition of rival grocery chain Albertsons and the $8.5 billion merger of handbag makers Tapestry and Capri.

Khan gained attention in 2017 when she wrote a paper arguing that Amazon had amassed monopoly power by undercutting competitor prices and harvesting consumer data.

Republican Commissioner Andrew Ferguson is now the agency's chair after President Donald Trump took office. A source told Reuters on Monday that Khan plans to use her remaining time as a commissioner to complete document retention and records management as required by law, as well as other administrative tasks.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/biden-ftc-chair-khan-resign-232913899.html

Asylum Seekers Caught With 30,000 High-Caliber Rifle Rounds In Arizona

 President Donald Trump's imminent executive orders addressing the illegal alien invasion, border crisis, and cartel violence could not come soon enough, as a new report out of Arizona says a multi-agency investigation led to the arrest of several asylum seekers and a US citizen in possession of 30,000 rounds of ammunition. 

Sheriff Mark Dannels of Cochise County, Arizona, revealed Sunday in a Facebook post that in mid-January, Cochise County Counter Narcotics, Trafficking Alliance assisted Homeland Security Investigations and Burau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives seized 10,000 rounds of .50 caliber ammunition and 19,640 rounds of 7.62x39 ammunition from multiple vehicles, operated by several asylum seekers and one US citizen from Texas.

Dannels' Facebook post read:

Multi-agency investigation results in ammunition seizure

In mid-January of 2025, the Cochise County Counter Narcotics and Trafficking Alliance (CNTA) assisted Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and the Burau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) with an investigation leading to the seizure of 10,000 rounds of .50 caliber ammunition and 19,640 rounds of 7.62x39 ammunition.

The .50 caliber and 7.62x39 rounds were separated within two vehicles traveling east on Interstate 10 from the Phoenix area. The vehicle containing the 7.62x39 ammunition was interdicted by the Pinal County Sheriff's office. Still, the second vehicle containing the .50 caliber ammunition was located by CNTA investigators at Motel 6 in Benson.

CNTA, HSI, and USBP contacted the vehicle's two occupants at the motel. One of the occupants was found to be an asylum seeker out of Cuba and the second individual was identified as a US citizen out of Texas. The second vehicle was occupied by two asylum seekers. This investigation is ongoing and led by HSI and ATF.

Images of the seizure: 

Facebook users responded to the sheriff's post with disgust: 

"This isn't even the tip of the iceberg of what has traveled from this country. Smh Hope they never see American soil again!" one Facebook user said. 

Another person said the ammo was mostly likely destined for cartels. 

"Bet it was heading to the border or worse, heading to all the illegals who are planning an attack on US soil! So many people from different countries came here and we know nothing of their past or their true intentions," someone else said. 

"Deportation for all. Go, Trump," someone else said. 

Local law enforcement and federal agencies have yet to disclose the buyer or final destination of the ammo. Speculation points to cartels as the likely customer, but the billion-dollar question remains: for cartel operations in the US or in Mexico? Or worse, terror organizations within the US could've outsourced ammunition and weapons procurement to migrants.

The good news, according to President Trump earlier today, is that the era of open southern borders under globalist Democrats, which has threatened national security to unprecedented levels, is coming to an end. After being sworn in, Trump assured Americans that he would designate drug cartels as terrorist organizations.

Law and order must be restored. That's the mandate the American people have given Trump. 

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/wtf-asylum-seekers-caught-30000-high-caliber-rifle-rounds-arizona