JOHN CARNEY
Biden’s FTC Moves to Protect Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft with a Ban on Noncompetes
The Biden administration’s declaration that it will treat almost all noncompete provisions in employment agreements as illegal should be seen for what it is: sectional warfare and a giveaway to his wealthy supporters in Silicon Valley.
The Biden appointees Federal Trade Commission voted Tuesday to ban noncompete agreements for virtually all employees, from the hourly wage workers to the most senior company executives. The vote was strictly partisan, with the commission’s three Democrats favoring the ban and the two Republicans opposing it.
When the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) first began mulling a rule against noncompetes, many expected that it would be structured to cover only lower paid workers or at least stop at the c-suite.
Most of the political rhetoric against the provisions has been directed at the fact that in recent years they’ve been sometimes applied to some people who work as custodial staff, or sandwich shop workers, or security guards. For these workers, noncompetes are basically irrational products of over-lawyering—even if they are rarely enforced and possibly unenforceable in most circumstances. If the FTC banned only these noncompetes, there would likely be few objections and no negative economic impact.
But Biden’s FTC decided to adopt a maximalist stance on noncompetes, barring them even for senior executives. You might not think that Tim Cook needs protection from the FTC against Apple unfairly asking him to wait several months before leaving to run a different tech giant, but the FTC does.
Actually, Cook was already protected from the burden of a noncompete provision in his employment agreement by a law that has been on the books in California for 150 years. The Golden State has long had one of the strictest rules against the provisions, and last year Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a pair of additional laws further cracking down on noncompetes.
This is one reason that Silicon Valley is not up in arms about the FTC rule. It has been operating under a bar on noncompete agreements from the start. Microsoft, although based in Washington, said last year that it would voluntarily stop enforcing noncompete agreements. Which means that by adopting the rule, the FTC was not risking politically alienating the big Biden tech sector donors.
Californication of Noncompetes Is a War on Texas, Michigan, and Pennsylvania
To the contrary, the FTC is delivering a huge gift to Silicon Valley and Microsoft because the rule amounts to a Californication of the rest of the country. States hoping to attract innovative companies with laws that are more permissive when it comes to contractual noncompetes will now be barred from doing so by the power of the federal government.
Texas is probably the most prominent victim of the FTC’s Californication rule. Noncompetes are generally enforceable under Texas law, so companies that consider the provisions important had reason to locate there instead of neighboring California. The same is true for Pennsylvania and Michigan, states that also would very much like to break California’s hold on tech start-ups and have the higher education firepower to make that a realistic goal. Wisconsin is slightly stricter about noncompetes, but it too is far more permissive than California—or it was until the FTC declared this week that this is now illegal.
In other words, the FTC’s new rule against noncompetes is itself anticompetitive. Its effect—a cynic could even say its goal—is to make it harder for the 47 states that allow contractual noncompetes to compete with California for jobs, investment, and innovation. It also makes it harder for smaller tech companies to protect themselves and their intellectual property from predation by Apple, Meta, Google, and Microsoft.
The Vaporware of a Noncompete Ban
The fact that California has long banned noncompetes is also a reason why the alleged benefits—thousands of more patents, an explosion of innovation, lots and lots of jobs—of a nationwide ban touted by the FTC are likely to turn out to be vaporware. Employees seeking to escape the grip of a noncompete to found their own companies already had the option of moving to a state that would not enforce the provision. And states that believed they were losing out on innovative companies could change their laws.
The nationwide ban is more likely to stymie innovation and investment by preventing states from experimenting with different legal treatments of noncompetes and banning companies from seeking the right legal regime for their business. We’ve had terrific success in developing technology in this country with a federalist approach to contractual noncompetes. Adopting a one-size-fits all model is a risky experiment, at best.
The silver lining here is that the FTC’s rule is held up by the slimmest legal thread. It’s very likely that the federal courts will put the rule on hold and eventually strike it down as overreaching the commission’s statutory authority. If the federal government is going to ban noncompetes, it likely requires actual legislation rather than agency fiat.
That likely does not matter to Biden and his apparatchiks in the federal regulatory bureaucracy. The goal of keeping Donald Trump out of the White House overrides any concerns about the long-term economic effects of their policies or their legality. They think the noncompete ban is a political winner—and that’s all that counts for this administration.
Conclusion
There you have it – the Democratic Party in all its totalitarian glory. Whatever obstacles its members may face, their instinctive response is always the same: iron-fisted thuggery. (BELOW)
Has Our Government Erased the First Amendment?
By Clarice Feldman
The most important thing you will see this week is this interview of Mike Benz by Tucker Carlson: Benz is with the Foundation for Freedom, which tracks government censorship. In this interview he explains how our government rigged elections abroad and has now, through DHS (Department of Homeland Security) and CISA (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency), censored online communications, noting that its most substantial censorship involved blocking and limiting any critiques online respecting the government’s responses to COVID-19 and the security of the 2020 election.
Rep. Andy Ogles Introduces Articles of Impeachment Against Biden, Harris: ‘They Have Mired Office in Criminal Activity, Political Weaponization’
AMY FURR
Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) introduced articles of impeachment Monday against President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, accusing them of poorly handling their leadership roles.
The articles accuse Biden of “weaponizing” the presidency in an effort to “shield the business and influence peddling schemes of his family from congressional oversight and public accountability,” Fox News reported Monday.
In a social media post on Monday, Ogles said Biden and Harris have “refused to protect and defend the Constitution.”
“They have mired their office in criminal activity and political weaponization. It is time their corruption be brought to task with the full force of the law,” he added:
The documents also claim the president has acted in a “manner contrary to the public trust and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States” in regard to how he has dealt with the crisis at the southern border.
In February, Ogles yelled, “It’s your fault,” at Biden during the State of the Union Address when he was speaking about fentanyl deaths, according to Breitbart News.
Ogles later said he was one of those who shouted at Biden regarding the issue.
“He has left our border wide open and allowed our streets to be flooded with drugs; meanwhile, 60% of women and children are raped trying to cross. Yes, it’s his fault,” he stated.
According to WKRN, Ogles said in a statement Monday, “Joe Biden hasn’t just failed the American people with his abysmal excuse for ‘leadership,’ he’s violated his sworn oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
“Joe Biden has repeatedly abused his position of power, both as vice president and president, to cover up his illicit family business dealings and exploitation of taxpayer resources,” he concluded:
Punishments attached to an official impeachment are removal from office and a possible ban from serving in the government, the WKRN report said.
The impeachment articles regarding Harris target her performance as vice president and how she has dealt with issues at the nation’s southern border, per the Fox report.
The documents accuse her of exhibiting “extraordinary incompetence” regarding her responsibilities at the border.
After Biden named Harris the “Border Czar” in 2021, she faced mounting criticism from Republicans due to her lack of effort and hesitancy in visiting the border to assess the situation, Breitbart News reported in May.
Related — Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene Finishes Her “Impeachment Week” by Announcing She’s Filing Articles to Impeach Biden
video: mayorkas urges illegals to vote for biden
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxfjL3BkYes
Established by the White House in 1987, the Hispanic Heritage Foundation (HHF) is an award-winning nonprofit that identifies, inspires, prepares and positions Latino leaders in the classroom, community and workforce to meet America's priorities.
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was grilled by Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC) during a hearing over an alleged flyer that the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project claims asks migrants to vote for President Joe Biden in November.
Elon Musk’s Twitter Censors ALIPAC Ad on Documentation of Noncitizen Voters Citing ‘Hate Speech’
13Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images
25 Apr 2024
3:26
Americans For Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC) has withdrawn support for Elon Musk’s X/Twitter after the platform censored its ad promoting a new website and forum section aimed at documenting noncitizen and illegal migrant voters.
On April 17, ALIPAC launched a press release announcing the creation of NonCitizenVoters.com, a website dedicated to collecting documentation of noncitizen and illegal migrant voters. The purpose of the site is to assist media, lawmakers, candidates, and voters in addressing this acknowledged national issue. However, the X/Twitter ad promoting the press release and information, which quickly gained 44,000 views, was censored and halted by Elon Musk’s company.
LUKEVILLE, ARIZONA – DECEMBER 07: Immigrants from the west African nation of Guinea strike a celebratory pose after successfully crossing the U.S.-Mexico border on December 07, 2023 in Lukeville, Arizona. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)
Elon Musk (Slaven Vlasic /Getty)
William Gheen, spokesman for ALIPAC, said in a post: “Today we are releasing Twitter’s emails to us declaring that felony-committing noncitizen and illegal migrant voters are a ‘protected group’ on X and promoting documentation and sources proving we have a system-wide problem with this form of election fraud is considered ‘hate speech / hateful content’ which they will block!”
The release and post was flooded by comments on both X/Twitter and Facebook, claiming that anyone concerned about the issue of illegal migrant voters was lying and a racist. ALIPAC notified a national network of activists and encouraged them to respond to the trolls with links and source citations.
ALIPAC believes that many of the commenters are online trolls, referring to them as “China Trolls” or “Laughing Trolls.” According to ALIPAC, these trolls are hired by unknown paymasters and attack people in groups, use the same language, and target accounts that have low visibility and are shadowbanned, such as @ALIPAC. These trolls also appear to have a poor understanding of basic English and the issues at hand, according to ALIPAC. They respond very quickly to certain content, which suggests that they are searching platforms to find targeted content about immigration, Ukraine, and other related topics.
When ALIPAC contested the censorship of their ad by X/Twitter and inquired why it was censored, Twitter initially stated: “Our team manually reviewed your content and confirmed that it violates our Hateful Content policy…Hate speech or advocacy against a protected group, individual, or organization.” However, when asked where it was written that people of many races violating American election laws and committing felonies by voting as noncitizens are a protected group, Twitter changed its stance and claimed that the ad was targeting countries not permitted for advertising Political Content.
ALIPAC, a registered Political Action Committee, responded by citing a recent article in the Guardian stating that Twitter allows U.S. political candidates and parties to advertise. They asked for clarification on whether the current Twitter / X Political Content Policy prohibits their political advertising in the United States or if a change needs to be made to allow their ads to run only in the United States.
Twitter did not respond and instead reiterated their claim that the ad violates their “Hate Speech” rules.
Read more at ALIPAC here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
DEMOCRAT PARTY NEO-FASCISM: FIRST BLOCK FREE SPEECH UNDER THE GUISE OF 'MISINFORMATION'
Here is the problem in a nutshell. Most Democrat voters don't realize that leftist idealogues have hijacked the Democrat party, actively pushing traditional Democrat politicians out. They don't yet understand that the Democrat party they knew doesn't exist anymore. Almost all of the major news organizations work together to lie to Democrat voters and feed them misinformation constantly. Corrupted government entities like the FBI and the DOJ, and the leftists running all social media, have worked together to censor and silence any dissenting voices. The goal is to create a false reality in the eyes of Democrat voters and shield them from the truth. This is vital to ensure their continued support on Election Day. IAN MacCONNELL
Mayorkas TORCHED by Marjorie Taylor Greene for TREASON!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJWPI8vuMq4
Maxine Waters opposes voter ID laws; she thinks that they are racist. You need to have a photo ID to attend her town hall meetings.
👉 Join 10,000+ others for the top newsletter on CA's biggest issues: https://bit.ly/Cainsidernews Get balanced California news: https://californiainsider.com/ For more important California issues, subscribe to @CaliforniaInsider-com #California #californiainsider 0:00 - California Sues Huntington Beach to Remove Voter ID Rule 1:48 - Why Is Huntington Beach Asking for Voter ID in Elections? 4:06 - Huntington Beach Challenges the State's Motives in Voter ID Legal Battle 4:50 - Responses From Other Local Cities and the State California has sued Huntington Beach to block its new local voter ID requirement, set to begin in 2026, arguing it conflicts with state law. The city's Measure A, which passed with 53% support, mandates voter ID for local elections, but state officials claim it disenfranchises vulnerable groups and contradicts California's election laws. Huntington Beach argues the measure is legal under its charter city status and aligns with the will of its voters. The state is also considering a bill that would prevent cities from creating local voter ID laws Huntington Beach Mayor Gracey Van Der Mar defended the city's decision to implement voter identification requirements for local elections during a recent interview. Van Der Mar cited concerns from constituents about election integrity and unverified reports of some voters being told they had already voted. While a majority of Huntington Beach voters approved a ballot measure requiring photo IDs to vote in person, the state of California is suing to block the measure. Mrs. Van Der Mar questioned why the state is fighting so aggressively against a policy supported by residents. She argued that IDs are required for many other activities and questioned if opposing voter ID implies a lack of respect for voters. Supporters argue voter ID increases security and participation by instilling faith in the election process. However, others argue such policies can disproportionately impact certain groups' ability to vote. As a former resident of a low-income minority community, Mrs. Van Der Mar found suggestions that such communities cannot obtain IDs to be offensive. Going forward, Mrs. Van Der Mar pledged to honor voters' wishes while continuing to advocate for election security and integrity. However, the legal battle highlights ongoing debates around balancing access, security and citizens' confidence in the democratic process. Reasonable people of good faith disagree on these complex issues *Views expressed in this video/article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of California Insider.
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California Sues Huntington Beach to Remove Voter ID Rule
0:00
Why Is Huntington Beach Asking for Voter ID in Elections?
1:48
Huntington Beach Challenges the State's Motives in Voter ID Legal Battle
4:06
Responses From Other Local Cities and the State
4:50
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California Insider Opinion
California Sues Huntington Beach Over Voter ID Requirement | Gracey Van Der
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCzx1yjzs60
Insights to Consider Before November
Read this like your future depends upon it.
August 4, 2020
Anonymous
Here are some interesting points to think about prior to the November election, especially for my friends on the fence, like moderate Democrats, Libertarians and Independents, Never-Trump Republicans, and those thinking of "walking away" from the Democrat party.
Women are upset at Trump’s naughty words. They also bought 80 million copies of 50 Shades of Gray.
Not one feminist has defended Sarah Sanders. It seems women’s rights only matter if those women are liberal.
No border wall. No voter ID laws. Did you figure it out yet? But wait... there's more.
Chelsea Clinton got out of college and got a job at NBC that paid $900,000 per year. Her mom flies around the country speaking out about white privilege.
And just like that, they went from being against foreign interference in our elections to allowing non-citizens to vote in our elections.
President Trump’s wall costs less than the Obamacare website. Let that sink in, America.
We are one election away from open borders, socialism, gun confiscation, and full-term abortion nationally. We are fighting evil.
They sent more troops and armament to arrest Roger Stone than they sent to defend Benghazi.
Sixty years ago, Venezuela was 4th on the world economic freedom index. Today, they are 179th and their citizens are dying of starvation. In only 10 years, Venezuela was destroyed by "democratic socialism".
Russia donated $0.00 to the Trump campaign. Russia donated $145,600,000 to the Clinton Foundation. But Trump was the one investigated.
Nancy Pelosi invited illegal aliens to the State of the Union. President Trump invited victims of illegal aliens to the State of the Union. Let that sink in.
A socialist is basically a communist who doesn’t have the power to take everything from their citizens at gunpoint... yet.
How do you walk 3000 miles across Mexico without food or support and show up at our border 100 pounds overweight and with a cellphone?
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wants to ban cars, ban planes, give out universal income and she thinks socialism works. She calls Donald Trump crazy.
Bill Clinton paid $850,000 to Paula Jones to get her to go away. I don’t remember the FBI raiding his lawyer’s office.
I wake up every day and I am grateful that Hillary Clinton is not the president of the United States of America.
The same media that told me Hillary Clinton had a 95% chance of winning now tells me Trump’s approval ratings are low.
“The problem with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people’s money”— Margaret Thatcher
Maxine Waters opposes voter ID laws; she thinks that they are racist. You need to have a photo ID to attend her town hall meetings.
President Trump said, "They’re not after me. They’re after you. I’m just in their way."
Now, go back and read this again like your future depends upon it. Because it does.
Perhaps even more, it matters because Mexico's politics seems to be the model for Democratic Party politics these days as rage over Trump dominates. In California, ballot-harvesting has been adopted as a legal practice, in what's a straight-out cultural appropriation of Mexican politics. If the Democrats are planning to make themselves the "perfect dictatorship" along the PRI model of one-party rule, starting in California and taking that style national, well, the unhappy question is, what else are they borrowing from Mexican politics as they (without saying so, of course) borrow from the Mexican Model? Yes, it sounds far-fetched. But we also know how implacably angry the Democrats still are at the election of Donald Trump and how they like to get away with things.
As in 2016, Democrats advance a corrupt ruling-class candidate. Like the dead man Gary Ernst, Democrats want people to vote for Joe Biden so they can swap him out for Kamala Harris, already a beneficiary of voter fraud and with the exception of Xavier Becerra possibly the worst attorney general in California history.
Kamala Harris Urges Illegal Migrants to Help Elect Joe Biden
NEIL MUNRO
Sen. Kamala Harris promised Sunday to reduce detention space for migrants as she asked an illegal immigrant activist to help Joe Biden win the election.
BLOG EDITOR: WHY DIDN’T LAWYER KAMALA HARRIS TELL THE ILLEGAL TO GO HOME??? SHE’S THE ONE WHO AS ATTORNEY GENERAL OF CA DECLARED THAT NEARLY HALF THE MURDERS IN MEXIFORNIA ARE BY MEX GANGS!
“I’m undocumented … I can’t vote …What can we do during this election to help make sure that we get you elected?” asked Astrid Silva, who was brought into the United States as a child by her illegal migrant parents.
“You can tell people who can vote what life is like for you now, and what life can be like,” Vice President nominee Harris told the Nevada-based political organizer who runs the pro-amnesty Dream Big Nevada group, adding that:
We are committed to shutting down private detention centers and ending policies that have been about separating children from their parents at the border.
Harris’s comments may be a coded message to would-be illegal migrants and their supportive legal-immigrant relatives.
For example, if implemented, Harris’s promise to start “shutting down private detention centers” could cripple border enforcement. If the enforcement agency does not have commercial prisons to hold detainees prior to their asylum hearings, the agency would be forced to release waves of job-seeking migrants into the U.S. labor market.
Similarly, Harris’s promise to end “policies … about separating children” echoes the media-magnified demand by pro-migration activists that officials release migrant mothers and children when they cross the border. That demand would let migrant families freely travel to relatives — including their illegal migrant husbands and fathers — who are working illegally in the United States.
Last week in Nevada, I caught up with my friend @Astrid_NV, to discuss the Biden-Harris plan for immigration reform and how Dreamers can make a difference in this election.
If you're eligible to vote, show up at the ballot box for those who can't: https://t.co/VbrfuqVy9P. pic.twitter.com/knU2qFSYmn
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) November 1, 2020
Like Biden, Harris pushed the Cold War “Nation of Immigrants” claim, even though only about 10 percent of people in the United States are legal immigrants:
We want to have a president who understands we are a nation of immigrants. This is a country that was built and that has derived its strength from immigrants coming here over the generations.
Harris also tried to blur the legal and civic differences between illegal migrants, legal immigrants, and American citizens. For example, she told Silva:
Define who you are, and you tell the world who you are. Don’t let anybody ever put you in a box because they have a limited perspective on who can do what and who can be one.
[…]
We are all in this together. And so, chin up, shoulders back, right? We speak our truth and know that there will always be people applauding and supporting that even if you can’t see them at that one moment, know that there are so many of us who are supporting your leadership and the power of your voice. It’s really important.
Harris also claimed President Donald Trump vilified immigrants: “We’ve seen under the current president the kind of vitriol, the kind of hate, the vilification of immigrants in such a horrible way.”
But a Washington Post poll showed in April that Latinos are the strongest advocates for a near-total halt to legal immigration during the coronavirus epidemic and economic crash.
Biden’s 2020 plan promises to “reassert America’s commitment to asylum-seekers and refugees,” wipe out Trump’s asylum reforms, bar any deportations for 100 days, and end migration enforcement against illegal aliens unless they commit a felony.
Joe Biden’s asylum and open-border policies will destroy the American middle class by releasing millions of foreign migrants into the United States, Stephen Miller told reporters October 28. https://t.co/BaeLSIud7y
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) October 28, 2020
Biden also wants to let companies import more visa workers, let mayors import temporary workers, and allow an unlimited flow of foreign graduates through U.S. universities into white-collar jobs. Biden would “exempt from any cap [the] recent graduates of Ph.D. programs in STEM fields.”
Biden also wants to accelerate the inflow of chain migration migrants and dramatically accelerate the inflow of poor refugees to at least 125,000 per year.
“The influx of low wage workers from all across the world will drive down incomes, drive down wages, deplete the middle class, bankrupt Social Security, bankrupt Medicare, bankrupt Medicaid, bankrupt federal entitlements, overcrowd schools, and overcrowd every hospital in the middle of a pandemic,” White House aide Stephen Miller told reporters on October 28.
“It is an assault on reason, it is an assault on law enforcement, and it’s an assault on the very idea of having a country, having a Republic,” Miller added. “This is not about left or right or Center. This is about between having a country, or not even having a country.”
ZUCKERBERG IS A MAJOR FUNDER OF LA RAZA, AND AN ADVOCATE FOR OPEN BORDERS.
Most of Biden’s 221,000 Vote Margin Gain in Georgia in 3 Counties that Received $15 Million from Zuckerberg-Funded ‘Safe Elections’ Project
MICHAEL PATRICK LEAHY
Most of Joe Biden’s 221,751 vote margin gain in Georgia, compared to Hillary Clinton’s performance in 2016, came from three metropolitan Atlanta counties that received more than $15 million from the Mark Zuckerberg-funded Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL) “safe elections” project.
Those three counties — Cobb, Fulton, and Gwinnett–accounted for 168,703 of Biden’s 221,751 vote margin gain, or 76 percent.
In 2016, Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in Georgia by 211,141 votes, 2,089,104 to 1,877,963, according to the Georgia Secretary of State’s election website.
With 99 percent of precincts reporting as of 2:00 p.m. Eastern time on Monday, November 9, Democratic nominee Joe Biden was leading Donald Trump by 10,610 votes, 2,466,540 to 2,455,930, according to Real Clear Politics.
This currently represents a 221,751 vote gain in margin of votes cast for Joe Biden over Donald Trump in 2020 compared to the margin of votes cast for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton in 2016.
The $15.8 million in “safe elections” grants these three counties in the Metropolitan Atlanta area–Fulton, Cobb, and Gwinnett- received from CTCL are a little more than four percent of the funding provided by Zuckerberg through CTCL to county and city election departments around the country in 2020.
“Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Tuesday that he and his wife have donated an additional $100 million to a “safe elections” project run by the non-profit Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL), bringing their total contributions to that project to $350 million since September 1,” Breitbart News reported in October.
“Critics say the CTCL project’s grants look a lot more like Democratic “Get-out-the-Vote” (GOTV) efforts in major cities around the country than good government efforts to protect the integrity of the electoral process of all Americans, regardless of their party affiliation,” Breitbart News reported:
An analysis by the Amistad Project of the Thomas More Society suggests a [partisan element to the CTCL project]. Since September 1, 2020, the CTCL has made at least $63.7 million in grants to election commissions in 18 counties and two cities for what the CTCL calls the coronavirus “safe elections” project.
More than 99.5 percent of this funding — $63.4 million — went to election commissions in 17 counties and two cities won by Hillary Clinton in 2016. Less than one half of one percent of the funding — a mere $289,000 — went to a county Donald Trump won in 2016, Hays County, Texas, which the president barely won by a margin of 50.4 percent to 49.6 percent.
A significant portion of these grants — more than $13.9 million — went to election commissions in areas Hillary Clinton won with more than 80 percent of the vote. Ten million dollars went to the city of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, which Clinton won with 84 percent of the vote, $3.5 million went to Wayne County, Michigan, which Clinton won with 96 percent of the vote, and $467,000 went to the election commission in the city of Flint, Michigan, which Clinton won with 84 percent of the vote.
In September, the Rome News-Tribune reported that Cobb County’s Election Department “was recently awarded a $5.6 million grant from a national nonprofit, the Center for Tech and Civic Life.”
The Center for Tech and Civic Life grant will help pay for:
♦ Almost 700 partitioned, secure voting system carriers to house the 2,258 ballot marking devices and optical scanners at all polling locations
♦ Hazard pay for roughly 2,300 workers at a rate of $100 per worker, per election.
♦ Additional temporary employees who will help prepare, process and tabulate absentee-by-mail ballots.
♦ Ballot mailing
♦ Advertising to promote absentee and early voting. (emphasis added)
Also in September, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported Fulton County’s Election Department received “$6 million in a grant from the Center for Tech and Civic Life.”
In October, the Journal Constitution reported that Gwinnett County commissioners accepted a $4.1 million grant from CTCL “intended to be used for elections security.”
The grant is intended to be used for elections security and also allows the county to use some of the funds to cover costs from the June primary, county spokesman Joe Sorenson said.
“We are currently evaluating where the funds will be sourced to,” Sorenson said.
In the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton received 297,051 votes in Fulton County, compared to 117,783 for Donald Trump, a net vote margin of 179, 268 for Hillary Clinton.
In Cobb County, Hillary Clinton received 160,121 votes compared to 152, 912 for Donald Trump, a net vote margin of 7,209 for Hillary Clinton.
In Gwinnett County, Hillary Clinton received 166,153 votes compared to 146, 989 for Donald Trump, a net vote margin of 19,164 for Hillary Clinton.
In those three counties combined, Hillary Clinton’s net vote margin over Donald Trump was 205,641. (Notably, in the rest of the state of Georgia, Donald Trump’s net vote margin over Hillary Clinton was 416,782.)
In the 2020 presidential election, Joe Biden received 379,095 votes in Fulton County, compared to 136,716 for Donald Trump, a net vote margin of 242,379 votes for Joe Biden.
In Cobb County, Biden received 221,746 votes, compared to 165,195 for Donald Trump, a net vote margin of 56,551 votes for Biden.
In Gwinnett County, Biden received 241,827 votes, compared to 166,413 votes for Donald Trump, a net vote margin of 75,414 votes for Biden.
In those three counties combined, Joe Biden’s net vote margin in 2020 over Donald Trump was 374,344, an increase of 168,703 over Hillary Clinton’s net vote margin of 205,641.
That 168,703 vote net margin increase for Biden in 2020 in the three counties that received $15.8 million in grants from the Zuckerberg-funded CTCL was 76 percent of the 221,751 net vote margin improvement for Biden that powered him to a 10,610 vote lead in Georgia with 99 percent of precincts reporting.
Between September 1, 2020 and October 30, 2020, the CTCL contributed more than $16.6 million for “safe elections” in six Georgia counties, as Ballotpedia reported.
All six counties voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Based on currently available public reports, it appears that no Georgia county that voted for Donald Trump in 2106 received a CTCL grant in 2020.
Breitbart News contacted CTCL and requested a list of all the counties in Georgia that received grants from CTCL in 2020, and specifically asked if CTCL provided grants to any county in the state that Donald Trump won in 2016, but has not yet received a response from CTCL.
In addition to the three metropolitan Atlanta counties of Cobb, Gwinnett, and Fulton, three counties outside of metropolitan Atlanta received CTCL grants in 2020.
Dougherty County, which received a $300,000 grant from CTCL, went overwhelmingly for Joe Biden over Donald Trump in 2020, 69.6 percent to 29.6 percent. Biden’s net margin in the county was 24,579 votes, compared to Trump’s 10,449. a differential of 14,130 votes in favor of Biden.
The Macon-Bibb County Board of Elections, which administers elections for Macon County and Bibb County, received a $557,000 grant from CTCL. Both counties went overwhelmingly for Biden over Trump in 2020.
In Bibb County, Joe Biden received 61.4 percent of the vote to Donald Trump’s 37.6 percent. In terms of vote total, Biden received 43,460 votes while Trump received 26,583 votes, a margin of 16,887 for Biden. In the less populous Macon County, Biden received 2,857 votes compared to Trump’s 1,783, a net vote margin of 1,070 in favor of Biden.
video: mayorkas urges illegals to vote for biden
When Jose Antonio Ibarra of Venezuela first crossed the United States-Mexico border in September 2022 near El Paso, Texas, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had about 8,100 detention beds available. Instead of holding Ibarra in its available detention space, ICE released him into the U.S. interior.
A year and a half later, Ibarra was arrested and charged with 22-year-old Laken Riley‘s murder in Athens, Georgia.
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, during a Senate hearing on Thursday, suggested that Ibarra’s release into the U.S. interior was justified because the agency had no reason to detain him — even as thousands of ICE detention beds were available at the time of his release.
“There was no derogatory information of which we were aware in our holdings to compel the detention of this individual,” Mayorkas told Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL), a ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Homeland Security Subcommittee.
Laken Riley was murdered allegedly by Jose Antonio Ibarra in February in Athens, Georgia. Ibarra was released at the border instead of being detained by DHS. (Facebook/CCSO)
In a separate case unveiled this week, President Joe Biden’s DHS was found to have released 48-year-old Mohammad Kharwin of Afghanistan into the U.S. interior in March 2023. At the time of his release, ICE figures indicate there were about 7,000 detention beds available.
Kharwin was later discovered to be a member of the terrorist group Hezb-e-Islami and on the federal government’s “Terrorist Watch List.”
Experts told Breitbart News that the Biden administration has continuously sought to gut ICE detention in favor of a mass release policy at the border that even cuts out monitoring of migrants post-release.
For instance, in Biden’s latest Fiscal Year 2025 budget request, Mayorkas asks for just 34,000 ICE detention beds — a decrease from the 41,500 detention beds funded by Congress in spending packages approved last month and far below the 50,000 detention beds that the administration agreed to accept in legislation proposed by Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) and Democrats.
RJ Hauman with the National Immigration Center for Enforcement (NICE) told Breitbart News that Biden and Mayorkas only agreed to the 50,000 detention beds in the Lankford bill because the provision was “in exchange for codification of crisis levels and millions for non-governmental organizations and sanctuary jurisdictions.”
“A mass-migration extortion attempt,” Hauman called the Lankford bill, saying that the Biden administration’s seeking to massively reduce detention beds as part of its latest funding request “proves that the Senate saga was nothing more than a political charade.”
The House Homeland Security Committee issued a report late last year that chronicled the Biden administration’s reduction of detention beds:
In fact, ICE is not using many detention facilities to their full capacity, despite the record number of illegal aliens crossing each month. For example, by December 2023, the Adelanto ICE facility in Southern California, with a detention capacity of nearly 2,000 illegal aliens, is currently holding just six, because the Biden administration refuses to actively fight a court order that prohibited new intake to the facility in 2020 due to COVID-19 spacing and distance requirements. [Emphasis added]
…
All told, 25,000 ICE beds at the ceiling of $142.44 per day, for 365 days a year, totals around $1.3 billion, and $1.43 billion at $157.20 per day. Regardless of whether those beds are used to full capacity, they are still paid for by the American taxpayer. However, instead of using that detention capacity to hold and deport illegal aliens, Mayorkas has stifled interior enforcement and implemented his policy of “catch and release,” whereby hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens are being released into the interior. This mass wave off illegal aliens subsequently making its way throughout the country, but especially major cities, who are then forced to pay to house them. This leads to outcomes in which state and local governments are forced to unnecessarily shoulder new costs to house illegal aliens, often asking the federal government to reimburse them for those costs—on top of the expenditures DHS has already made for thousands of ICE beds. [Emphasis added]
US Border Patrol agents prepare to transport migrants for asylum claim processing at the US-Mexico border in Campo, California, US, on Friday, April 5, 2024. (Mark Abramson/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Like ICE detention beds, the number of migrants enrolled in ICE’s Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program has also failed to grow alongside a record number of border crossings and mass releases under Biden.
For instance, data suggests that in March 2021, about 2.7 percent of the 3.3 million migrants on ICE’s non-detained docket — who reside in the U.S. while awaiting immigration hearings — were enrolled in the ATD program to ensure they were properly monitored.
By March 2024, Biden grew ICE’s non-detained docket to more than 6.2 million migrants. Still, fewer than three percent are enrolled in the ATD program to be monitored amid their release into the U.S. interior, despite an almost doubling of the non-detained docket population.
While still using the ATD program, the Biden administration has helped greatly tilt its use toward providing services like mental health evaluations and cultural orientation via the Case Management Pilot Program (CMPP) and Young Adult Case Management Program (YACMP).
The CMPP and YACMP help shift huge sums of American taxpayer dollars away from the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP), which tracks migrants through GPS monitoring, and towards offering services to migrants.
Though it has failed to come to fruition, the Biden administration had wanted to eventually put billions toward the Release and Reporting Management (RRM) program — designed to have released migrants make annual “check-ins” rather than being monitored through ISAP.
US Border Patrol agents prepare to transport migrants for asylum claim processing at the US-Mexico border in Campo, California, US, on Friday, April 5, 2024. (Mark Abramson/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
At a House hearing this week, Reps. Michael Guest (R-MS) and David Joyce (R-OH) questioned Mayorkas about his seeking to reduce detention bed space amid sky-high illegal immigration, where last month more than 189,000 migrants arrived at the southern border.
“Does this request ask for enough resources to remove the more than 1.3 million aliens on the non-detained docket whose cases have already been adjudicated and no longer have a legal basis to remain in this country?” Joyce asked Mayorkas:
Does it ask for an appropriate level of detention beds to detain aliens who pose a national security risk or public safety risks? No, this administration instead asks for 7,500 less beds than Congress just funded in the Fiscal Year 2024 budget. [Emphasis added]
In an exchange with Guest, Mayorkas said DHS is “committed to working with Congress to sustain the 41,500 beds that Congress funded” in its spending packages passed last month.
Guest questioned why Mayorkas officially asked for a decrease in detention beds, 34,000, if the agency wanted more bed space.
“If that’s the number, why didn’t you put that in your budget?” Guest asked Mayorkas. “… if those were the numbers you need … I would ask you to put those numbers actually in your budget and you asked Congress to fund that and you don’t just expect us to plus up those numbers.”
Migrants wait to be transported for asylum claim processing at the US-Mexico border in Campo, California, US, on Friday, April 5, 2024. (Mark Abramson/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
In her testimony, Britt noted a widespread number of criminal migrants continuously being released from ICE custody rather than remaining detained.
“There have been 4,700 with convictions for assault, 450 of whom have been released,” Britt detailed to Mayorkas:
There have been 5,200 with convictions for drug crimes, 261 of which have been released. There have been 1,100 with convictions for weapons crimes, 92 of which have been released. There have been 1,200 with convictions for sexual assault, 46 of whom have been released. And there have been 490 with convictions for homicide, 50 of whom have been released.
[Emphasis added]
“More detention beds lead to more removals which would, in turn, lead to a secure border and safer American communities,” Hauman told Breitbart News. “What will it take for the Biden administration and Democrats to finally realize this? Another college student’s murder? A terrorist attack? This is a sad, dangerous reality we’re in.”
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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