Wicked witch of the woke Nina Jankowicz resigns as Disinformation Governance Board is put on ‘pause’
Just when I thought the Biden administration was beyond shame, they (at least temporarily) pulled the plug on the Disinformation Governance Board, causing the buffoonish Nina Jankowicz to resign. I can’t recall a speedier and more embarrassing belly flop of a government initiative than the announcement of this transparently Orwellian state organ headed by cringeworthy exhibitionist besotted with her own musical talent and purported wisdom.
The astonishing lack of forethought in choosing Jankowicz as the arbiter of truth, when she is on the record affirming that Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation (even the Washington Post and New York Times have given up the ghost on that fraud) betrays an administration with no leadership at all. As the old saying goes, “A’s hire A’s; B’s hire C’s,” and when you have a D at the top, they really have the scrape the bottom of the barrel to find subordinates that do not threaten the apex of the authority structure.
Naturally, the news of the “pause” and of Jankowicz’s departure were leaked to none other than Taylor Lorenz of the Washington Post, another left winger crybully with no self-awareness, a classic mean girl who outs the identity of anonymous internet posters but who self-righteously denounces any inquiry into her own transgressions. Lorenz’s Washington Post article is behind a paywall, but the Ace of Spades and Robby Soave of Reason have delightful takedowns of its utter fatuousness. It is as ludicrous as Jankowicz, whihc s saying a lot.
The question that immediately concerns me is whether the “pause” is merely a face-saving way to shut it down without admitting the a swift death, or whether it is itself a matter of disinformation, intended to lull critics into the assumption that it is gone for good, only to awaken in some new, less Orwellian guise with a less comical head. Lorenz tweets out a statement from DHS that suggest it may be reborn after a decent interval of 75 days as “experts” cogitate.
Photo credit: Twitter video screengrab (cropped)
Cotton: Disinfo. Board Was Only Paused Because People Found out, Congress Needs to Ensure Nothing Like It Can Ever Exist
On Wednesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “America Reports,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) celebrated the pausing of plans for the Department of Homeland Security’s Disinformation Governance Board but noted that the pause isn’t permanent and argued that the board “only paused because the American people found out” and Congress should pass legislation “to ensure that it and nothing like it can ever be created again in the future.”
Cotton stated, “I’m glad to know that this Orwellian Ministry of Truth is at least paused for the moment, but I think it’s important to realize that it’s only paused because the American people found out about it. The government has no business refereeing disputes engaged in political campaigns or public debates. If you don’t like someone else’s speech, the solution is more speech. It’s not to use the Department of Homeland Security, for goodness sakes, to try to censor or label someone’s arguments in the public sphere. I think the Democrats often believe that disinformation and misinformation are simply facts that reflect poorly on Joe Biden and the Democratic Party. So, again, it’s good that they finally came to their senses and paused this board, but Congress needs to act in the weeks ahead to ensure that it and nothing like it can ever be created again in the future.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
MAYORKAS IS A FUKING LIAR!
SW Border Encounters: Cubans Up 939% Over Last April; Nicaraguans +308%; Colombians + 4,837%
(CNSNews.com) – With five months of the fiscal year yet to go, the number of migrants encountered at the southwest border from countries other than Mexico and the “northern triangle” is already 33 percent higher than the number encountered in the entire fiscal year 2021.
The number of all migrants trying to cross the border from Mexico into the United States, is expected to rise even more – and significantly so – if Title 42 is terminated, according to Republican critics.
The public health authority, which since 2020 has allowed the expulsion of illegal migrants without a court hearing due to concerns about the spread of COVID-19, is set to expire on May 23, unless federal court action delays or prevents the move.
Overall, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) recorded a new record-high 234,088 encounters in April with migrants of all nationalities trying to enter the U.S. illegally on the southwest border, stopped either by U.S. Border Patrol agents or by the Office of Field Operations officers at a port of entry. That’s 30.9 percent more than in April 2021, when a total of 178,795 encounters were reported.
Leaving aside encounters with migrants from Mexico and the northern triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, the CBP recorded 108,555 encounters in April with individuals from the rest of the world.
That figure is also a new record-high, an increase of 23 percent from the 88,327 reported one month earlier, and a jump of 220 percent from April 2021, when 33,897 encounters were recorded.
The April figure for this cohort – everyone not from Mexico and the northern triangle – brings the year-to-date total for FY 2022 to 502,743, compared to 378,043 for all of FY 2021.
Migrants originating from Cuba, Nicaragua, and Colombia have accounted for especially large increases in the number of encounters over the past year.
--34,821 encounters with Cubans were reported in April, compared to 3,288 in April 2021, an increase of 939 percent.
--12,563 encounters with Nicaraguans were reported in April, compared to 3,074 in April last year, up by 308 percent.
--12,837 encounters with migrants from Colombia were reported in April, compared to just 260 in April 2021, an increase of 4,837 percent.
Mexico accounted for the largest number of encounters along the southwest border last month – 81,784, up from 65,597 in April 2021.
For each of the three northern triangle countries of Central America, however, the April figures were down from the same month last year: Guatemala 19,841 (down from 30,053 in April 2021), El Salvador 8,327 (down from 11,043 a year earlier), and Honduras 15,581 (down from 38,205 a year earlier).
The CBP tallies “encounters” with illegal migrants since it says many individuals are stopped more than once. Of the total of 234,088 southwest border migrant encounters in April, it said 28 percent were with people who had been involved in at least one previous encounter over the past 12 months.
Of the total 234,088 encounters in April, 96,908 (41 percent) of the individuals stopped were processed for expulsion under the pandemic-related Title 42, and 137,180 were processed under the traditional Title 8 authority.
Title 8 allows for the speedy removal of anyone who attempts to enter without authorization, and who are unable to establish a legal basis to remain, such as a valid asylum claim.
Joe Biden Tosses Cuba Regime a Financial Lifeline After Mass Jailing of Child Political Prisoners
The administration of leftist President Joe Biden announced late on Monday that it would undo measures implemented under his predecessor Donald Trump to keep American money from enriching Cuba’s communist regime and would expand travel to the country and remove limits on cash flows to the regime in the form of remittances.
The move came on the same day that the Communist Party implemented a new penal code that allows the state to imprison a Cuban national for three years for the crime of “insulting” a regime official. The Castro regime previously imprisoned Cubans for insulting officials but typically had to resort to imprisoning citizens on shaky legal grounds, accusing them of “crimes” like “desacato” (“disrespect”) or public disorder. The new penal code, which created 37 new “crimes,” eliminates the need for the regime to attempt to justify or whitewash its political repression.
The Biden administration’s move also follows a brutal crackdown on pro-democracy dissidents – some of whom protested the Castro regime by waving American flags – who participated in the mass national protests on July 11, 2021.
An estimated 187,000 people took to the streets of nearly every municipality on the island of Cuba that day to demand an end to communism, resulting in widespread arrests and human rights abuses such as violent door-to-door raids on suspected protesters. In one case, Cuban regime agents shot a man suspected of having protested in his own living room – in front of his toddler twin sons.
Following the protests and door-to-door raids against peaceful protesters, Cuba’s legal system conducted mass trials of up to 30 people at once, often sentencing them to decades in prison for “vandalism,” “sedition,” and other crimes like “disrespect.” Many of those sentenced are children. In March, the Castro regime sentenced two 16-year-old boys to ten years in prison and a 17-year-old boy to 19 years in prison for opposing communism.
Despite the repression, protests have continued consistently on the island, now far from the spotlight of American corporate media.
Cuba is a U.S.-designated state sponsor of terrorism. For its egregious human rights violations, the State Department announced a series of rewards to the Castro regime on Monday that it masked as “measures to support the Cuban people.”
“We will authorize scheduled and charter flights to locations beyond Havana. We also will implement regulatory changes to reinstate group people-to-people and other categories of group educational travel, as well as certain travel related to professional meetings and professional research,” the State Department announced, “including to support expanded Internet access and remittance processing companies and to provide additional support to Cuban entrepreneurs.”
“Group people-to-people” is an exemption to travel restrictions – allegedly in place to prohibit Americans from engaging in tourism in Cuba – that essentially allows tourism but is defined as “education” for authorized organizations with the White House’s blessing, like universities. The most egregious abuse of “group people-to-people” to allow tourism by Americans was the granting of licenses under that exemption to luxury cruise lines to access Cuban ports.
President Trump eliminated the “group people-to-people” exception in 2019. An analog created by President Barack Obama – “individual people-to-people,” which essentially legalized tourism and made it possible for a parade of Hollywood celebrities to flood Havana and enrich the regime during the Obama era – also disappeared under Trump.
The State Department also announced it would “ensure that remittances flow more freely to the Cuban people while not enriching those who perpetrate human rights abuses. Specifically, we will remove the current limit on family remittances of $1,000 per quarter per sender-receiver pair and will authorize donative (i.e., non-family) remittances, which will support independent Cuban entrepreneurs.”
The State Department did not explain how it would ensure that lifting limits on remittances – a core source of revenue for the Castro regime – would not enrich “those who perpetrate human rights abuses” or if it had implemented any measures to fulfill that promise.
“We will make it easier for families to visit their relatives in Cuba and for authorized U.S. travelers to engage with the Cuban people, attend meetings, and conduct research,” State Department spokesman Ned Price claimed. “We will encourage the growth of Cuba’s private sector by supporting greater access to U.S. Internet services, applications, and e-commerce platforms.”
As a communist country, Cuba does not have a legal “private sector.”
Cuba’s Foreign Relations Ministry (Minrex) celebrated the measures in a statement late Tuesday, calling them “positive but of very limited reach.” Minrex applauded Biden for “alleviating [the effects] of inhuman decisions taken by the government of President Trump.”
Minrex helped sell the Biden administration’s spin that the new measures, which will aid the Castro regime tremendously, “do not modify the blockade in any way absolutely, or the principal economic measures taken by Trump,” but conceded that Biden had taken “a limited step in the right direction” in the eyes of the communists.
“The government of Cuba reiterates its disposition to initiate a respectful dialogue on equal footing with the government of the United States,” the regime agency said.
Cuba regularly interrupts international diplomatic events with mob attacks and interrupts discussion panels featuring political dissidents with disruptive shouting until event organizers give up and cancel the event.
The Biden team had campaigned on reversing Trump’s Cuba policies – a move that likely contributed to Democrats’ catastrophic collapse in support among Hispanic Americans – but officials admitted that rewarding the Castro regime after the repression of July 11 protesters was too politically toxic, so they “hit the pause button” last year.
WH: DHS Disinformation Board Paused for Assessment, But Work Will Continue
(CNSNews.com) - White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Wednesday that DHS is pausing its Disinformation Governance Board so that there can be an “assessment” by former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff and former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, but “DHS is still going to continue the work.”
“DHS said today that they’ll be pausing the Disinformation Governance Board. Did the White House play a role at all in perhaps expressing frustration in how it was rolled out or express any involvement in how, whether or not it should be paused, and then also some experts have said that it was set up to fail the way it was rolled out. Do you have a response to that?” a reporter asked.
“So the board has never convened,” the press secretary said.
“It never convened, and the board is, yes, the board is pausing in the sense that it will not convene while former Secretary Chertoff and former Deputy AG Gorelick do their assessment, but the department’s work across several administrations to address disinformation that threatens the security of our country is critical, and that will indeed continue, and neither Nina Jankowicz or the board have anything to do with the censorship or with removing content from anywhere,” she said.
“Their role is to ensure that national security officials are updated on how misinformation is affecting the threat environment. She has strong credentials and a history of calling out misinformation from both the left and the right, and that’s our focus,” Jean-Pierre added.
When asked whether the White House played a role in whether the board should be paused or what should happen with the board, Jean-Pierre said, “No, at first, well like I said, this is what’s happening. There is a pause. We did not have an involvement in this at all.”
Fox News White House Correspondent Peter Doocy asked, “Follow-up to the disinformation board, last week, you guys said that you needed this Disinformation Governance Board at DHS to make sure that freedom of speech is protected across the country and that these platforms are not used for forums of information. So what changed?”
“Look, the Department of Homeland Security, they began their statement repeating that the board had been intentionally mischaracterized, which is a little bit of what you were asking me, and they were explicit about what it does and does not do,” Jean-Pierre said.
“It was never about censorship, policing speech, or removing content from anywhere. Its function was to keep homeland security officials aware of how bad actors, including human smugglers, transnational criminal organizations and foreign adversaries could use disinformation to advance their goals,” she said.
“As Secretary Mayorkas said, he has asked former DHS Secretary Michael Chernoff and former DAG Jamie Gorelick to lead a thorough review. This is the pause that I was talking about, an assessment as members of the bipartisan security council advisory council,” the press secretary said.
“The board will not convene during that period. The department’s work across several administrations to address disinformation that threatens the security for our country is critical and will continue, so that work will continue,” Jean-Pierre said.
“So pausing because you think the board was mischaracterized, then the disinformation board is being shut down because of disinformation? Is that what’s happening here?” Doocy asked.
“Look, the board was put forth for a purpose, right, to make sure that we really did address what was happening across the country when it came to disinformation. It’s going to pause,” Jean-Pierre said.
“There’s been mischaracterizations from outside forces, and so now what we’re going to do is, we’re going to pause it, and we’re going to do an assessment, but the work doesn’t stop. We’re still going to continue the work. DHS is still going to continue the work,” the press secretary said.
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