Podcasts about house committees

The heated debates on college campuses over the Israel-Hamas war made its way to Capitol Hill Tuesday. The presidents of several universities faced questions from the House Committee on Education and the Workforce about the protests that erupted after the October 7 attack and Israel's response. Geoff Bennett reports. PBS NewsHour is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

TOP NEWS | On today's Daily Signal Top News, we break down: FBI Director Christopher Wray testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee in a hearing focused on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. House Republicans won't back additional aid to Ukraine without what House Speaker Mike Johnson calls “transformative changes” being made to America's border security. Sen. Tommy Tuberville backs off a pro-life battle he has been waging for months. After a rise of antisemitism has swept across American college campuses, presidents of Harvard, MIT, and UPenn testify before the Republican-led House Committee on Education and the Workforce.Relevant Linkshttps://www.dailysignal.com/2023/12/05/fbi-director-admits-he-hasnt-fired-anyone-anti-catholic-memo/ Listen to other podcasts from The Daily Signal: https://www.dailysignal.com/podcasts/Get daily conservative news you can trust from our Morning Bell newsletter: DailySignal.com/morningbellsubscription Listen to more Heritage podcasts: https://www.heritage.org/podcastsSign up for The Agenda newsletter — the lowdown on top issues conservatives need to know about each week: https://www.heritage.org/agenda Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Last Thursday saw the GOP-majority House move forward with its decision on an influential issue pertaining to migrants residing unlawfully in the United States. This comes in the wake of an unprecedented influx of migrants following President Biden's swift rollback of comprehensive immigration regulations and border management methods imposed by his predecessor. The newly instated provision bars the use of public land for the brief accommodation of these migrants during their asylum request procedure, as stated by Colorado Newsline. The voting paved the way for the conception and passage of H.R. 5283, with a notable portion of Republican support, by a margin of 224–203. This development was reported by the outlet, but the outcome of the bill in the Senate is predicted to bear no favors for the GOP. With Democrats holding a thin majority in the upper house, many have voiced their criticisms of the bill, viewing it as a political maneuver in anticipation of the 2024 elections with robust immigration policies forming the backbone of the GOP's strategy. Bruce Westerman, Chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources and a Republican from Arkansas, made a clear statement: 'The responsibility of the National Park Service is to retain and protect natural and cultural treasures for future enjoyment, and not succumb to the unsuccessful border strategies of the Biden administration.'See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You wouldn't have known it from the red-carpet treatment Chinese dictator Xi Jinping received in San Francisco two weeks ago from President Joe Biden, California Governor Gavin Newsom and 400 corporate leaders, but until recently their guest was stealthily operating a biolab with potential weapons of mass destruction near Fresno. A chilling report subsequently issued by the House Committee on the Chinese Communist Party confirmed that this facility was replete with samples of 20 deadly pathogens, the equipment to replicate them and mice genetically modified to spread COVID-19.  In the hands any of the thousands of apparent People's Liberation Army special forces personnel who have illegally entered this country in recent months, such diseases could have been unleashed with devastating effect.  And we have no idea if there are other labs like this still operating in America.  Thanks, Xi! This is Frank Gaffney.

Congressman Gregory Meeks (D-NY-5) and Chair of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Congressman Michael McCaul (R-TX-10) join to discuss the importance of Congress continuing to fund aid for Ukraine and Israel.   Together they talk about how the government has been able to allocate funds to Ukraine using seized Russian assets, and why the United States must stay vigilant in their support to allies, as China continues aggression in the South China Sea against Taiwan. Follow Bret on Twitter: @BretBaier Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Thanks to TikTok, China's Spy Balloon of the Internet and Propaganda Propagator, Osama Bin Laden has attracted groupies who are entranced by his hatred of America and  want to follow in his footsteps to destroy it. In this episode of The Terrorist Therapist podcast, we will look at recent surreal events that have gone from bad to worse in terms of the increased threat of terrorism - now from homegrown Americans. We start with the Muslim in Times Square, who proclaimed on a loudspeaker, “We will not stop until Islam enters every home! So, I want you to repeat after me….!” and the throngs did with a deafening roar.Then we examine the phenomenon begun by TikTok so-called Influencers, who chose to post portions of Osama Bin Laden's "Letter to America” out of context - including only the most antisemitic statements and leaving the restbehind. They idolize Bin Laden like groupies idolize rock stars. But, this isn't the worst of it. Now some millennials and GenZ women are taking it even further. They are converting to Islam and posting it on social media - looking for attention and ‘likes'. So, now we don't only have to worry about Radical Islamist terrorists coming from the Middle East, or coming across our borders.We're also endangered by homegrown Americans obsessed with Bin Laden, his religion and his plans to destroy America. By the end, you'll come to understand why FBI Director Wray, in his recent statement to the House Committee on Homeland Security, said the “war in the Middle East has raised the threat of an attack against Americans… to a whole new level.”

In this week's Security Sprint, Dave and Andy talk about the following topics:   Workplace Violence. CISA: Preventing Workplace Violence: Security Awareness Considerations Infographic. The Preventing Workplace Violence: Security Awareness Considerations Infographic is a new CISA product designed for critical infrastructure leaders, human resources personnel, managers, and workers of any level. Passwords. The worst passwords of 2023 are also the most common, "123456" comes in first. NordPass has published their 2023 edition of the top 200 most common passwords and unsurprisingly very few of the entries are secure. The top 10 can all be cracked in under a second using simple brute-force tools.   Dave Round-UP CDC - Flu season. https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/influenza-general/us-flu-activity-continues-rise-steadily Taylor Swift. https://abcnews.go.com/International/Culture/taylor-swift-fan-dies-eras-tour-concert-rio/story?id=105006498 Security guard incident in Canada which was captured on Social Media.   FBI IC3 PSA: 2023 Holiday Shopping Scams 2023 Holiday Scam Predictions—Here's What You Should Know FBI Warns of Scammers Targeting Senior Citizens in Grandparent Scams and Demanding Funds by Wire, Mail, or Couriers Pro Bono Investigations for Elderly Scam Victims   Threats to Homeland The Committee on Homeland Security: Worldwide Threats to the Homeland Witness testimony can be found here Director Wray's Opening Statement to the House Committee on Homeland Security.  U.S. political violence driven by new breed of ‘grab-bag' extremists   Ransomware CSA - Scattered Spider #StopRansomware: Rhysida Ransomware CISA Releases Update to Royal Ransomware Advisory AlphV files an SEC complaint against MeridianLink for not disclosing a breach to the SEC (2)   Quick Hits Faith-Based and Israel-Gaza Related Updates: FB-ISAO Newsletter, v5, Issue 11. Official Tribal-ISAC Announcement: Tribal-ISAC Announces Membership as an Approved Expense of the Tribal Cybersecurity Grant Program CISA turns 5 and looks to the future Critical infrastructure policy rewrite expected to ‘emphasize' CISA, NSC official says Readout of President Joe Biden's Meeting with President Xi Jinping of the People's Republic of China China is using the world's largest known online disinformation operation to harass Americans, a CNN review finds NCSC Annual Review 2023 - Looking back at the National Cyber Security Centre's seventh year and its key developments and highlights, between 1 September 2022 and 31 August 2023 CISA: Secure Tomorrow Series Toolkit ACSC and CISA Release Business Continuity in a Box HHS Factsheet: National Climate Assessment 5 Unveiled FCC Adopts Rules to Protect Consumers' Cell Phone Accounts

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In this week's update we review a troubling assessment on threats to the U.S. delivered by the Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security. An expanded written version of this report can be found within our weekly Threat Journal email newsletter. You can subscribe for FREE by simply visiting https://www.ThreatJournal.com . A link to this issue will immediately be sent to you via email. AlertsUSA Homepage http://www.AlertsUSA.com – (Emergency Alerts for Mobile Devices) Now in our 21st year! Use promo code 'SAFE23' for a steep discount. AlertsUSA on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/alertsusa AlertsUSA on Twitter https://twitter.com/alertsusa Threat Journal on Twitter https://twitter.com/threatjournal Threat Journal Homepage https://www.ThreatJournal.com

Joe Piscopo's guest hosts this morning are Al Gattullo and Joe Sibilia. Congressman Andrew Garbarino, Republican representing New York's 2nd District and a member of the House Committee on Ethics Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Law Professor Emeritus, host of "The DerShow," and the author of "War Against the Jews: How to End Hamas Barbarism" Tom Del Beccaro, acclaimed author, speaker and the former Chairman of the California Republican PartySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Rep. August Pfluger, R-Texas's 11th congressional district and member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, talked to WMAL's Larry O'Connor and guest co-host Angela Morabito, about the border crisis, upcoming hearing tomorrow with Sec. Mayorkas and Dems blocking efforts to impeach Sec. Mayorkas. MAYORKAS CONGRESSIONAL HEARING TOMORROW:  On Wednesday, a full Committee hearing on Wednesday, November 15, 2023, at 9:00 AM ET, to examine global threats to the U.S. homeland and our security interests abroad. The hearing will feature testimony from Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray, and National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) Director Christine Abizaid. Yesterday: Democrats block effort to impeach DHS Secretary Mayorkas with Republican support. Mayorkas has faced increased impeachment calls over his handling of the border crisis. Last week, the House Committee on Homeland Security is releasing a new report as part of our months-long oversight investigation into DHS Secretary Mayorkas' handling of the crisis Where to find more about WMAL's morning show:  Follow WMAL's "O'Connor and Company" on X: @WMALDC, @LarryOConnor,  @Jgunlock,  @patricepinkfile and @heatherhunterdc.  Facebook: WMALDC and Larry O'Connor Instagram: WMALDC Follow the Show on Apple podcasts, Omny, Spotify or Audible. Show Website: https://www.wmal.com/oconnor-company/ How to listen live weekdays from 5 to 9 AM: https://www.wmal.com/listenlive/ Episode: Tuesday, November 14, 2023See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Join America's Roundtable (https://americasrt.com/) radio co-hosts Natasha Srdoc and Joel Anand Samy with Chairman Mike Bost, The House Committee on Veterans' Affairs, member of House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, and House Committee on Agriculture. Chairman Bost is a U.S. Marine Corps Veteran. As we commemorate Veterans Day, our discussion focuses on: — Reforms Advanced at the Department of Veterans Affairs | Healthcare and Innovation — Update on Advancements in Prosthetic Technology — Empowering Veterans — Update on Israel's War Against Iran-Backed Hamas — Over 240 Hostages Remain in Gaza | Israel Announces 4-Hour Daily Pause in Gaza — America Strikes Iran-Linked Facility in Syria americasrt.com (https://americasrt.com/) https://ileaderssummit.org/ | https://jerusalemleaderssummit.com/ America's Roundtable on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/americas-roundtable/id1518878472 Twitter: @RepBost @ileaderssummit @AmericasRT @NatashaSrdoc @JoelAnandUSA @supertalk America's Roundtable is co-hosted by Natasha Srdoc and Joel Anand Samy, co-founders of International Leaders Summit and the Jerusalem Leaders Summit. America's Roundtable (https://americasrt.com/) radio program - a strategic initiative of International Leaders Summit, focuses on America's economy, healthcare reform, rule of law, security and trade, and its strategic partnership with rule of law nations around the world. The radio program features high-ranking US administration officials, cabinet members, members of Congress, state government officials, distinguished diplomats, business and media leaders and influential thinkers from around the world. Tune into America's Roundtable Radio program from Washington, DC via live streaming on Saturday mornings via 65 radio stations at 7:30 A.M. (ET) on Lanser Broadcasting Corporation covering the Michigan and the Midwest market, and at 7:30 A.M. (CT) on SuperTalk Mississippi — SuperTalk.FM reaching listeners in every county within the State of Mississippi, and neighboring states in the South including Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Tennessee. Listen to America's Roundtable on digital platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, Google and other key online platforms. Listen live, Saturdays at 7:30 A.M. (CT) on SuperTalk | https://www.supertalk.fm

The news of Texas covered today includes:Our Lone Star story of the day: Some Texas legislators own comments demonstrate that we need serious improvements in public education. As the House Committee on Public Education, meeting today in the forth called special session, considers the school choice and public ed. bureaucracy largess bill, HB1, members show ignorance and hypocrisy. Dullards, dimwits, and dunderheads are quoted by leftwing media as incisive and smart, which is no surprise. (Liberal Republican Rep. Ernest Bailes is a chief dullard in the House!)Our Lone Star story of the day is sponsored by Allied Compliance Services providing the best service in DOT, business and personal drug and alcohol testing since 1995.Leftist media people: Please stop the always present handwringing over low voter turnout. People vote when they have enough “skin in the game” to care and other than that, young or old, NO VOTE is better than an uniformed vote. By the way, what is it you folks don't like about freedom? Freedom means one has the right to choose not to vote. Houston voters did not show up on Election Day, polls show Houston election: Low voter turnout is an access issue Some Houston youth skip election, citing time, inexperience Voters said “No!” to raising the mandatory retirement age for judges and one wonders who got legislators to even put the item on the ballot. A guy who was likely behind it, Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan Hecht will have to resign soon.Listen on the radio, or station stream, at 5pm Central. Click for our radio and streaming affiliates.www.PrattonTexas.com

This week, the Texas Legislature adjourned the third special session, and almost immediately, the Governor called them back for a fourth 30-day special session focused on public education-specifically trying to divert public dollars to private schools and immigration-related bills.   Thursday, two House Committees met to hear bills, and the Texas Impact team stayed up late to testify and cover the hearings. On the other side of the building, the Senate operated at warp speed, passing four bills out of committee with little to no public input and off the floor in a matter of hours.   This morning, the House Select Committee on Educational Opportunity and Enrichment met to approve HB 1, the voucher bill and two of the Senate bills concerning border security and funding for a border wall were rushed out of House committees.   Texas Impact's Executive Director and Advocacy Director, Bee Moorhead and Josh Houston, are here to help us center ourselves in these– not unprecedented but unique times.  

Join America's Roundtable (https://americasrt.com/) radio co-hosts Natasha Srdoc and Joel Anand Samy with Chairman Mike Bost, The House Committee on Veterans' Affairs, member of House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, and House Committee on Agriculture. Chairman Bost is a U.S. Marine Corps Veteran. americasrt.com (https://americasrt.com/) https://ileaderssummit.org/ | https://jerusalemleaderssummit.com/ America's Roundtable on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/americas-roundtable/id1518878472 Twitter: @RepBost @ileaderssummit @AmericasRT @NatashaSrdoc @JoelAnandUSA @supertalk America's Roundtable is co-hosted by Natasha Srdoc and Joel Anand Samy, co-founders of International Leaders Summit and the Jerusalem Leaders Summit. America's Roundtable (https://americasrt.com/) radio program - a strategic initiative of International Leaders Summit, focuses on America's economy, healthcare reform, rule of law, security and trade, and its strategic partnership with rule of law nations around the world. The radio program features high-ranking US administration officials, cabinet members, members of Congress, state government officials, distinguished diplomats, business and media leaders and influential thinkers from around the world. Tune into America's Roundtable Radio program from Washington, DC via live streaming on Saturday mornings via 65 radio stations at 7:30 A.M. (ET) on Lanser Broadcasting Corporation covering the Michigan and the Midwest market, and at 7:30 A.M. (CT) on SuperTalk Mississippi — SuperTalk.FM reaching listeners in every county within the State of Mississippi, and neighboring states in the South including Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Tennessee. Listen to America's Roundtable on digital platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, Google and other key online platforms. Listen live, Saturdays at 7:30 A.M. (CT) on SuperTalk | https://www.supertalk.fm

The January 8, 1976, capital protests in Beijing, and the communist responses, are eerily similar to the way officials reacted to the January 6, 2021, protests. The double standard of reporting and prosecution was made even more glaring over the last month as left-wing protesters stormed the capital on numerous occasion over Palestine. The hypocrisy was even more clear when D-NY Jamaal Bowman pulled a fire alarm, on video, to prevent a vote on government spending. More video footage recently proved the vice chair of the Bridgeport Democratic Town Committee was stuffing ballot drop boxes with votes for the incumbent D-mayor, against another D-mayoral candidate. A judge has thus overturned that primary election. This is par for the Democrat course: Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren stepped down over campaign fraud, New York State Lieutenant Governor Brian Benjamin was charged with bribery and other offenses, the money launderer Sam Bankman-Fried was the second largest contributor to the D-party, and top D-contributor Ed Buck was running a drugging and molestation operation against black people. Now the Supreme Court is hearing a case on New York threatening, discouraging, and reputation damaging the NRA, by trying to get companies to cut ties or debunk them. The corruption just keeps pouring out: ex-FBI counterintelligence chief, Charles McGonigal, partly behind the 2016 Russian collusion story, was actually colluding with Russia just like Hillary Clinton. The Oversight for the Committee on House Administration found that the J6 committee failed to keep documents, data, and video depositions, of their investigation, along with communications with the current White House, and that they outright ignored evidence, including Capitol Hill security failures. The same White House also sent letters to news execs urging them to ‘ramp up' scrutiny of GOP's Biden impeachment inquiry, and instructed social media on how to censor Hunter Biden stories. The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability also released bank records showing that Joe Biden and his son Hunter, along with business associates, received millions in payouts from Russians, Ukrainians, and Kazakhstani oligarchs as political bribes. There is now physical evidence that Joe Biden received $40,000 from his brother in laundered money from China. Meanwhile, the FBI has had 40 sources inside the Biden family for years, collecting blackmail. The National Archives has likewise announced their finding of 82,000 Biden-pseudonym emails. Dark Brandon's adventures just keep escalating in this part 2 episode.This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5328407/advertisement

While the world is distracted, members of Congress are writing bills designed to steal Russia's money and give it to Ukraine. In this episode, listen to the pitch being made to Congress as we examine if this is a good idea. Please Support Congressional Dish – Quick Links Contribute monthly or a lump sum via Support Congressional Dish via (donations per episode) Send Zelle payments to: Donation@congressionaldish.com Send Venmo payments to: @Jennifer-Briney Send Cash App payments to: $CongressionalDish or Donation@congressionaldish.com Use your bank's online bill pay function to mail contributions to: Please make checks payable to Congressional Dish Thank you for supporting truly independent media! Background Sources Recommended Congressional Dish Episodes Taking the Russian money: is it legal? Lee C. Buchheit and Paul Stephan. October 20, 2023. Lawfare. Chelsey Dulaney and Andrew Duehren. October 11, 2023. The Wall Street Journal. Lawrence H. Summers, Philip Zelikow, and Robert B. Zoellick. June 15, 2023. Foreign Affairs. Paul Stephan. April 26, 2022. Lawfare. Laurence H. Tribe and Jeremy Lewin. April 15, 2022. The New York Times. April 15, 2021. President Joe Biden. White House Briefing Room. What we're being told about Ukraine Secretary of State Anthony Blinken [@SecBlinken]. November 3, 2023. Twitter. Visual Journalism Team. September 29, 2023. BBC News. June 2023. Reuters. Biden wants to hide weapons deals with Israel Sharon Zhang. November 2, 2023. Bills Audio Sources October 31, 2023 Senate Appropriations Committee Witnesses: Antony Blinken, Secretary, U.S. Department of State Lloyd Austin, Secretary, U.S. Department of Defense Clips 1:05:05 Secretary of State Antony Blinken: If you look at total assistance to Ukraine going back to February of 2022, the United States has provided about $75 billion our allies and partners $90 billion. If you look at budget support, the United States has provided about $22 billion during that period, allies and partners $49 billion during that period; military support, we provided about $43 billion allies and partners $33 billion; humanitarian assistance, the United States $2.3 billion allies and partners 4.5 billion, plus another $18 to $20 billion in caring for the many refugees who went to Europe and outside of Ukraine. October 19, 2023 Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (The Helsinki Commission) Witnesses: Eliav Benjamin, Deputy Head of Mission, The Embassy of Israel to the United States Jamil N. Jaffer, Founder and Executive Director, National Security Institute at George Mason University Dr. Jonathan Schanzer, Senior Vice President, Foundation for the Defense of Democracies Dr. Dan Twining, President, International Republican Institute Oksana Markarova, Ukrainian Ambassador to the United States of America Clips 19:25 Eliav Benjamin: Understanding in the most unequivocal manner and in the clearest way that these are evil people. If we can even call them people. This is Israel's 9/11, only if you take the proportion of the size of Israel, this is 9/11 times 10, at least. 20:45 Eliav Benjamin: Because these terrorist organizations are not only against Israelis or against Jews, and not only in Israel, they are against mankind and anything which calls for decency, any entity and anybody who calls for protecting human rights and protecting individuals and protecting civilians. 21:25 Eliav Benjamin: Hamas have no value for human life, while Israel is doing its utmost to protect human life, including Palestinians in Gaza by even calling for them to go down south so that they won't be affected by the war. Hamas is doing everything in its power to harm civilians, to harm its own civilians. And everything that Hamas is committing -- and committed -- is no less than war crimes. And if you want crimes against humanity, and this is while Israel is working within the international human rights law, and within the military law. 28:15 Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN): Ambassador we have attempted to get some monies to from Putin and from the Soviet Un -- the oligarchs, to help rebuild Ukraine. Do you have any new information about that, or concerns? Oksana Markarova: Thank you for this question. First of all, I think it's very just that all this horrible destruction, which only for the first year of the war the World Bank estimated at $411 billion -- just the physical destruction -- has to be compensated and paid for by the Russians. So with regard to the Russian oligarchs and everyone who finances this war, supports this war, thanks to Congress we already have the possibility to confiscate it through the courts and DOJ has already moved forward with one confiscation of malfeasance money -- $5.4 million, and others. It is going to take time. But I think the major question right now to discuss with all the G7 is the Russian sovereign assets. We know that there are at least in the vicinity of 300-400 billion, or maybe even more, frozen by G7 countries. Not only that, but we recently discovered there are about $200 billion that are frozen in the Euroclear system in Belgium. So I'm very glad that there are more renewed talks right now between the G7 Ministers of Finance on how to confiscate and how to better use this money even now. I think we have to join forces there because again, we're very grateful for the American support, we are very much counting on this additional supplementary budget, but at the end of the day, it's not the American, or Ukrainian, or European taxpayers who have to pay for this, it is the Russians who have to pay for their damages. We look forward to working with Congress and we're working very actively with the administration, the State Department and Treasury, on how to better do it. As the former Minister of Finance, I not only believe -- I know -- that it can be done and I know this is a very specific case, that will not jeopardize the untouchability of the Sovereign Money, which is normal in the normal circumstances. This is a very specific case of a country that has been condemned by 154 countries in the UN for the illegal aggression. We have in all three major cases, the cases against Russia on both aggression and genocide and everything else. And it's only natural and just to use the sovereign assets as well as the private assets of Putin's oligarchs to compensate and to pay this. 32:50 Eliav Benjamin: Look at the charter of Hamas, which calls for destruction, annihilation of Jews, of Israel and yes, wants to control everything from the Mediterranean Sea until the Jordan River. 33:00 Eliav Benjamin: That is their aspiration, that is what they want to do, with zero care about civilians, including their own whom they take us human shields. As we're speak now, they're firing rockets from underneath hospitals, from underneath schools, from underneath mosques, from within residential areas, putting their own people at risk and sending them to die as well. This is not what Israel is about, but this is what Hamas is about and has been about. And now once and for all, unfortunately, really unfortunately, it took such a horrific war that they launched on Israel for the whole world to realize what Hamas is really about and what we've been saying for so many years that Hamas stands for. But it's not only Hamas: it's Hamas, it's the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, it's Hezbollah, it's all of these terrorist organizations who have zero care about human beings. This is who we should go after, and make sure they don't do any more harm. 39:10 Jamil Jaffer: It was the single deadliest day in Israel's history, single deadliest day for the worldwide Jewish community since the Holocaust. The equivalent of over a dozen 9/11 attacks on a population adjusted basis. Let me say it again. On the day of the 9/11 attacks, we had about 280 million Americans and we lost approximately 3000 Americans that day. Israel has lost 1400 have their own in a population of approximately 9 million -- over a dozen 9/11 attacks. 41:15 Jamil Jaffer: There's a key connection between these two fights. We know that Iran today supplies all manner of drones to Russia in its fight in Ukraine. We know that Iran has troops on the ground in Ukraine, training Russians on the use of those drones. We know that Iran is considering providing short range ballistic missiles to Russia, in that conflict. Russia, for its part, has provided Iran with its primary source of Conventional Munitions and nuclear technology for the vast majority of the time. Now, the key connection between these organizations is important to note. It's not just Russia and Iran; it's China and North Korea as well. These are all globally repressive nation states. They repress their own people, they hold them back, they give them no opportunity, and then they seek to export that repression to other parts of the globe, first in their immediate neighborhood, and then more broadly across the world. These nations are increasingly working together. We see China and Russia's no-limits partnership. We see President Xi saying to President Putin, in an off hand conversation that the world heard, that there are changes that haven't been seen in 100 years, and Russia and China are leading those changes. We know that for decades, Iran and North Korea have cooperated on ballistic missile and nuclear technology. We know that today in the fight in Gaza, Hamas is using North Korean rocket propelled grenades. So the reality is these globally repressive nation states have long been working together. And it is incumbent upon the United States to stand with our friends in Ukraine and our allies in Israel in this fight against global repression. 41:35 Dr. Dan Twining: It's vital not to mistake Hamas's control of Gaza with legitimacy. There have been no elections in Gaza since 2006. Hamas will not hold them because it thinks it will lose. Polling from September, a month ago, shows that only a quarter of Palestinians support Hamas leading the Palestinian people. Before the conflict, 77% of Palestinians told pollsters they wanted elections as soon as possible. A super majority tells pollsters that Hamas is corrupt. It is a terrorist organization, not a governing authority that seeks better lives for Palestinians. Residents of Gaza suffer poverty, isolation, and violence at its hands. 43:25 Dr. Jonathan Schanzer: Israel has just suffered in Iran-sponsored massacre, Ukraine is struggling to repel Russian forces, and Taiwan watches with grave concern as China threatens to invade. America must view these three embattled democracies as important assets. And it must view these three adversaries as a threat to the US-led world order. As we speak, there is a very real possibility of a regional war erupting in the Middle East. The Islamic Republic of Iran has armed and funded Hamas and Hezbollah along with other factions in the region. Recent reports point to the existence of an Iranian-led nerve center in Beirut that is designed to help these terrorist groups target Israel more efficiently. Fortunately, the IDF has thwarted Iranian efforts to create a new terror proxy in the Golan Heights. Israel has repeatedly destroyed most, if not all, of what Iran is trying to stand up there. However, Iran-backed militias do remain in Syria, and Russia's presence in Syria is complicated all of this. Moscow's missile defense systems have forced Israel to take significant precautions in the ongoing effort to prevent the smuggling of advanced Iranian weapons from Syria to Lebanon. These are precision guided munitions. We've never seen a non-state actor or a terrorist group acquire these before and Russia is making this more difficult. The operations to destroy these weapons in Syria are ongoing. They often take place with Russian knowledge. It's an uneasy arrangement and because of that, the Syrian front is still manageable, but Russia's role in the region is far from positive. Moscow continues to work closely with both Iran and Hezbollah. In fact, Russian-Iranian relations have deepened considerably since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022. This goes beyond the sanctions busting that was the basis of their relationship before all this started. Russia has received UAVs from Iran, which we've heard today, Tehran has sent advisors to train Russian personnel, and since last summer, Russia has launched over 2000 Iranian UAVs into Ukraine. Moscow now wants to produce some of these UAVs domestically and so Russia and Iran are currently working together to increase the drones' range and speed. Iran has supplied other material to Russia like artillery shells and rockets. In return, Tehran wants Russia to provide fighter jets, attack helicopters, radar and combat trainer aircraft, and more. Moscow has sent to Tehran some captured Western weapons from Ukraine. These include javelin, NLAW anti-tank guided missiles, and Stinger MANPADS. Amidst all of this, on top of it all, concerns are mounting about a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Beijing has openly intimidated the island nation. Within a 24 hour time span in July, 16 PLA warships approached Taiwan, accompanied with over 100 different aircraft sorties. China's calculus about an invasion of Taiwan could be influenced heavily right now by what the United States does in Ukraine and in Israel. Ihe landscape is clear: China, Iran and Russia are working together. Our policy must be to deny them the ability to threaten our friends and our interests. 47:45 Dr. Jonathan Schanzer: It's great news. I was gonna recommend it, but it's already happened: the United States has sent two of its Iron Dome batteries based in Guam to Israel, en route already. 52:15 Dr. Dan Twining: If America's three greatest adversaries are going to actively collaborate in armed attacks on our allies, that's all the more reason for us to ensure that friendly democracies prevail in the fight. Giving Ukraine and Israel what they need to restore their sovereignty and security is essential. Appeasing aggression in one theater only invites belligerence in another. Make no mistake, China is watching our reaction to the wars on Ukraine and Israel with great interest. If we don't show the will and staying power to help our friends win, we only embolden Chinese designs in Asia. Defeating aggression in Europe and the Middle East is central to deterring aggression in Asia. 1:09:55 Dr. Jonathan Schanzer: I am going to use the current crisis right now to sort of explain how America can get a win. That attack by Hamas was sponsored by Iran. Hamas is an Iran-back terrorist organization that also enjoys the support of China and Russia. As Israel has now readied to go into the Gaza Strip and to destroy this terrorist organization with the support of the United States, we're now seeing Iran-backed proxies threaten a much wider war. We're watching Hezbollah and Lebanon, Shiite militias in Syria, potentially other groups in other parts of the region. What needs to happen here right now is America needs to determine the outcome of this conflict. And by that, I mean it needs to deter Iran, it needs to deter Hezbollah and any other actor that might intervene, and force them to watch helplessly as our ally destroys Hamas. Watch them look on helplessly as one of their important pieces is removed from the chessboard. If we can do that, then I think we're now in the process of reestablishing deterrence after having lost it for many years. 1:14:15 Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI): Along with Ranking Member [Jim] Risch, I'm the lead on the what we call the REPO Act, which would authorize the President to work with other countries in Europe that are also home to frozen Russian sovereign assets, and create a procedure for seizing those assets and directing them to Ukraine to be used for rebuilding and other purposes. I think there are mixed feelings in the administration about this, but they seem to be moving our way. I'd love to have your thoughts on the value of grabbing those sovereign assets, not just as additional resources for Ukraine, but also as a powerful signal to Putin that his behavior is going to have real punishment and hitting him good and hard right in the wallet, I think, would be a good added signal. 1:15:20 Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI): The second is simply to make sure that we do a better job of grabbing Russian oligarch assets. We have a predicament right now, which is that if you're a US citizen, and you're driving down the highway and you've got $400,000 in unexplained cash in your car, the police can pull you over and they can seize that. If you are a foreign, Russian, crooked oligarch, and you have a $400 million yacht someplace, you have more rights than that American citizen, in terms of defending your yacht. It's a very simple procedure, it's called "in rem." You move on the yacht rather than having to chase through all the ownership structures. And I would very much like to see us pass a bill that allows us to proceed against foreign oligarchs', criminals', and kleptocrats' assets in rem. 1:16:50 Dr. Jonathan Schanzer: The seizing of assets and redirecting them to Ukraine, I think, sounds like a solid thing for the United States to do. I think, though, it would make sense to do this with a coalition of countries. So that the US is not singled out -- Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI): That's what the legislation requires. In fact, the bulk of the funds are actually held in European countries, so acting on our own would not be sensible. Dr. Jonathan Schanzer: It wouldn't be effective, correct. So getting the Europeans on board, and by the way, getting the Europeans to chip in a bit more, just as we are, I think is also a very sound policy. As far as targeting the oligarch assets, I fully understand your frustration. When I worked at the Treasury Department trying to track those kinds of assets was never easy. We did work with a sort of shorthand version of, if we're 80% sure that we know what we're dealing with we're going to move first and then adjudicate after it's been done. And by and large, that worked out very well during the height of the war on terror. And there was an urgency that I think needs to be felt now, as we think about targeting Russian assets too. 1:18:00 Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI): To follow me on my path of in rem Latinate legal terms. There's also qui tam out there, which allows individuals to bring fraud actions in the name of the United States, and if it turns out there really is fraud, they get a share of it. It would be nice to have people who work for, let's say, a Russian oligarch to be able to be paid a bit of a bounty if they come in and testify and say, "Yep, definitely his boat every time we go out, he's on it. Every time the guests come they're his guests and we call him boss." Things like that can make a big difference, so we're trying to push that as well. Dr. Jonathan Schanzer: That sounds like something for the Rewards for Justice program at the State Department. They might be able to expand it. We already have bounties for those that provide evidence leading to arrests of terrorists, why not oligarchs? Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI): Correct. 1:24:40 Dr. Jonathan Schanzer: Qatar has, for the last 10 or 12 years, had a an external headquarters. Some of [Hamas's] political leadership has been based there: Ismail Haniyeh and Khaled Meshaal both call Qatar home. Of course, this is not new for the Qataris. They've also hosted all manner of other terrorist organizations in that country. It's the Taliban, al Qaeda, ISIS. It's well known at this point that Qatar is a hospitable place. They just don't agree with our definition of terrorism. Fundraising takes place there, all sorts of organizational activities take place there, and people are free to come and go. It is a safe haven for them. It is extremely dangerous that we have bestowed upon that country the label of major non-NATO ally, and that this is allowed to continue. They're offering right now their "good offices" -- I'll put those in air quotes -- to try to negotiate the release of the 302 hostages. This is not in Qatar's is interest. They are advocating on behalf of Hamas, as they have been for a long time. This should not be allowed to stand. 1:28:10 Dr. Jonathan Schanzer: Hezbollah is based in Lebanon primarily, although they've got a significant base of operations in Latin America right now, and of course they've got a lot of operatives running around in Tehran. They are a wholly-owned subsidiary of the regime in Iran. Just to give you a sense of the threat, right now Hezbollah is threatening to open up a second front with Israel. While the fighting rages in Gaza, in the north of Israel there is a second front that could very well be open. There have been dozens of rockets that have been fired, dozens of anti-tank missiles infiltrations into northern Israel. This is very disconcerting. This is one of the things that I think the President is trying to deter at this moment, to deter a second front from opening. Hezbollah is considered to have an army that is equal in strength to the average European army. It has 150,000 rockets right now facing south at Israel. It's got precision guided munitions that could hit strategic targets, like Israel's nuclear facility, or like its chemical plant. These are things that could create catastrophic attacks, and we could be hours or days or weeks away from watching those threats materialize. And so this is why it is imperative right now that the US mount the deterrence that is necessary to stare down Iran and to stare down Hezbollah and to allow Israel to be able to do what it needs to in Gaza and hopefully end this crisis. 1:31:15 Rep. Marc Veasey (D-TX): What does it look like if a Palestinian family of four is being interviewed for safe passage into a neighboring country or nearby country? What exactly does that look like? What does that processing and that vetting look like? Dr. Jonathan Schanzer: I'm going to make a suggestion here. I don't know how that kind of vetting can happen. You know, you're looking at a territory roughly the size of Washington DC, with 2.2 million people that had been subjected to Hamas rule for 16 years. How you start to figure out who's okay and who's not at this stage in the game, who's a threat and who isn't, is going to be really challenging. I wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal with a colleague of mine, Mark Dubowitz, our CEO, on Monday. I want to make this suggestion: I've already identified a number of the countries that have been Hamas supporters over the years, those that have financed and provided the weapons and the training to Hamas. I think there should be significant pressure on those countries to take in the refugees. Have a clear message from the United States that they created this problem, and it is now their problem to take care of these 2 million people. Quite frankly, I don't care who's radicalized when they go to these countries that have been supporting a radical cause for as long as they have. I think this would be justice. October 18, 2023 House Committee on Foreign Affairs Witnesses: Philip Zelikow, Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and White Burkett Miller Professor of History at the University of Virginia Rebeccah Heinrichs, Senior Fellow and Director of the Keystone Defense Initiative at the Hudson Institute Clips 14:35 Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX): The Russian sovereign assets is a winner in my judgment. If we can tap into the right -- the very people who started this war and this conflict, in my judgment, should be paying for the cost, and not as much the US taxpayer. And that's why I introduced the REPO Act, the bipartisan, bicameral legislation that demands that the Biden administration transfer frozen Russian sovereign assets to the Ukraine effort. It's beyond time that Russia pay for the war that it created. My bill prohibits the Biden administration from unfreezing Russian sovereign assets until Russia ends its unprovoked war of aggression and agrees to compensate Ukraine for the damages it has inflicted. 16:05 Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX): To be clear, the war crimes and genocide committed by Russia cannot be reversed by money alone. 22:30 Rep. French Hill (R-AK): My approach was crafted to be consistent with US Policy and International Law by amending the International Emergency Economic Powers Act IEEPA, and using its established framework and existing definitions. As a former Treasury official, in my view, this is a better legislative approach. This is consistent with well established international precedent, whereby the United States work with international partners to establish a fund like we saw in Afghanistan in 2022. The Iran-US Claims Tribunal in 1981, the UN compensation fund for Kuwait in 1991, following the invasion by Iraq. 22:40 Rep. French Hill (R-AK): I too have introduced a bill on this topic, HR 5370. And I appreciate the Foreign Affairs staff working with me on that. My bill would give the President authority to seize and transfer title of Russian sovereign assets within the United States jurisdiction into an international fund for the sole purpose of Ukraine's eventual reconstruction and humanitarian relief. I'm grateful to Chairman McCaul and I co-sponsor his bill on this topic, as well for his leadership. 24:10 Rep. French Hill (R-AK): Considering most Russian sovereign assets are actually located outside the United States, it's important for our partners and allies around the world to introduce and pass similar companion legislation rather than having the US act unilaterally. 24:30 Rep. French Hill (R-AK): Let me be clear, I consider Russian Federation sovereign assets inclusive of all state owned enterprise assets and those of Russian publicly traded companies, like Gazprom, that are controlled by more than 50% by the Russian Federation. 26:30 Philip Zelikow: Economic warfare is the real center of gravity in this war. Economic warfare is the center of gravity in the war. I know we all watch the daily updates from the battle front lines. You know, this movement here, that movement there. This is a war of attrition. It's going to be decided by economic and industrial staying power as the war continues almost certainly into 2025 and perhaps beyond. 27:00 Philip Zelikow: In that struggle, the economic warfare against Russia has achieved some gains, and will have some more gains over the long haul. Russia's economic warfare against Ukraine has been devastating and is not sufficiently appreciated. Ukraine lost 30% of its GDP in the first year of the war. 1/3 of the population of Ukraine is displaced, half externally half internally. Russia is waging economic warfare on three main fronts. It's destroying Ukraine's infrastructure, and will do another energy infrastructure war this winter, for which it's gearing up, including with North Korean weapons and Iranian weapons. Point two: they've destroyed Ukraine's ability to export through the Black Sea except for a trickle, which was the fundamental business model of a commodity exporting country. Point three: they have destroyed Ukraine's civil aviation. Ukraine has no civil aviation. Any of you who've traveled, as I have, to Ukraine will notice that you can't fly in the country, which makes travel and business in the country now back to the era of the railroads before there were airplanes. So the the Russian economic warfare against Ukraine is devastating. And as time passes, this is going to have deep effects on the ability of Ukraine's economy and society to hold together, which will play out politically. So point one: economic warfare is the true center of gravity in the war. 28:35 Philip Zelikow: Two, the Russian assets are the key strategy to change the outcome. The Russian assets are at least $280 billion. Now, even in our debased day and age, that's a lot of money. It's a lot of money in the context of the Ukrainian economy. Even using very conservative multipliers of how much private investment the public investment can unlock, let's say one to one, the impact of this money on the whole future prospects of Ukraine and its staying power are decisive. Otherwise, they're relying on US and European taxpayers whose readiness you can gauge. So this is potentially the decisive fulcrum of the economic warfare and Ukraine's prospects in the war. 29:25 Philip Zelikow: So, third point, why has this been so hard? First reason was there was a knee jerk neuralgia on the part of bankers and financiers to the actual confiscation of Russian assets in the foreign exchange holdings, with much talk of losing confidence in the dollar in the euro. On analysis, these worries quickly fall away, which is one reason that I worked with my colleagues, Larry Summers, the former Treasury secretary, and Bob Zoellick, the former president of the World Bank, who do know something about international finance to debunk those concerns. And I'd be glad to go into more detail about why the concerns about the dollar or the euro turn out to be overblown when they're analyzed. 30:10 Philip Zelikow: The other concern was how do we do this legally? There's been a ton of legal confusion about this. This bill will help dispel that legal confusion. 30:30 Philip Zelikow: What about sovereign immunity? Sovereign immunity is a doctrine that only exists in the context of national courts trying to usurp sovereign authority in a situation where it's sovereign on sovereign, whereas in this bill, there would be an act of state that goes after Russian sovereign property. There is no such thing as immunity; there is no doctrine of sovereign immunity. Ordinarily, under international law, if one sovereign takes another sovereign's property, then the loser is entitled to compensation for that nationalization or expropriation. So why isn't Russia entitled for that compensation in this case? Because it's a lawful state countermeasure. Countermeasures are different from sanctions. And countermeasures -- and this is a well recognized body of law -- you are allowed to do things that would ordinarily violate your sovereign obligations to a fellow sovereign, because that sovereign has committed such extreme outlaw behavior, that the countermeasure is a lawful recourse. And that is exactly the extreme case we have here. There is a well codified body of law on this, and Russia has hit every one of the marks for a set of lawful state countermeasures that deprives them of any right to compensation when states take their money and then use it, putting it in escrow to compensate the victims of Russia's aggression. 37:35 Rebeccah Heinrichs: The United States directly benefits from Ukraine's battlefield successes as Russia remains a top tier adversary of the United States. These are the weapons that Americans made and designed specifically to go after the kinds of things that the Ukrainians are destroying in the Russian military. 39:55 Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX): The EU has a plan just to tax frozen assets and send those proceeds to Ukraine. Our Treasury Secretary, Miss Yellen recently claimed that transferring sovereign assets to Ukraine was not legal. Do you agree with that, and if not, what is your opinion from a legal standpoint? Philip Zelikow: I think Secretary Yellen has now revised her view of this matter, having had a chance to be informed by some of the legal work that's been done since she first made that impromptu remark. There is the legal authority both under domestic law and international law, and the bill this committee is considering would reaffirm, consolidate, and elaborate that authority. So legally, this can be done. 40:55 Philip Zelikow: What the EU came up with in May was the idea -- they were encountering a lot of resistance to actually taking the Russian money, so they said, Well, can we come up with something, since a lot of these as the securities have now matured and are in cash and Euroclear, mainly -- the clearing house in Brussels -- is now managing the cash on behalf of Russia, because Russia is no longer able to manage it. So can we do something with the interest? And by the way, the EU couldn't get that through in June. Ursula von der Leyen couldn't get that adopted over, principally, French and German opposition at the time. So they're talking about just taking this interest. As a legal matter, if you have the legal right to take the interest, you have the legal right to take the principle. This was a cosmetic idea trying to overcome the opposition they had there. It's kind of a situation where, as one of my colleagues in this effort, Larry Tribe, has put it as well, instead of crossing the Rubicon, they're kind of wading in. From a legal point of view, it's actually clearer to do the transfer for Ukraine than to try to expropriate the money using tax authorities, which makes it look like you're expropriating it for your country, rather than for the benefit of the victims, which is a much cleaner, legal way to do it. So they ended up, for political reasons, with a half measure that takes only a tiny fraction of what they should and does so in ways that are actually legally awkward. I understand why they are where they are, but as they process this, I think they're just going to have to step up to going ahead and crossing the Rubicon. 50:20 Philip Zelikow: The whole argument that I made in an article with Summers and Zoellick in Foreign Affairs is that actually, this is a strategy for victory. You put this enormous war chest and the multiplier of private investment into play. And what you can envision is a whole new European recovery program, anchored on the rebuilding of Ukraine that not only saves Ukraine, revitalizes it, but links it to the EU accession process, to the enlargement of the European Union. In other words, to the victory of the whole cause of freedom, in a way almost regardless of where the final battle line ends up being in Ukraine, Ukraine will be growing with bright prospects, part of a Europe with brighter prospects, because of its alignment with the free world. 51:25 Philip Zelikow: When people worry about the significance of this in foreign exchange, I ask them to just remember two numbers 93 and three. If you look at the percentage of foreign exchange holdings held in the world today, 60% United States, 23% Euro, 6% yen, 4% Sterling: that's 93. The percentage of foreign exchange holdings in Chinese renminbi: three. And the Chinese were really encouraged that it's gone up from 2.5 to 3 in recent years. So when you look at 93 to three, that's what you get when we work with our allies in a concerted economic strategy. We can move on the Russian assets, and there's really no choice except to stick with the currencies of the free world because they're still the only basis for being a participant in the world economy. 54:20 Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-MI): Who actually has the authority to take possession of it? Because as you point out, if you've got the legal right to the interest, you got the legal right to the principal. Who is granted that authority? And then who is granted the authority to distribute that? Philip Zelikow: So the theory is that the national governments can transfer any of the Russian state assets in their jurisdiction into escrow accounts for the benefit of the victims, as a state countermeasure to Russia's aggression. So the way that would work is under the President's IEEPA authority, he could transfer all this -- and there are precedents for this -- into an escrow account held in the States and then an international escrow account, with this limited purpose of compensating the victims of Russian aggression, then you need to create an international mechanism, which the US would participate in creating, to then manage that distribution, which needs to have a proactive urgent speed of relevance. Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-MI): That was what I was afraid of. If it just simply takes one participant to bog the whole thing down, guess what? It's not going to work, in my humble opinion. Philip Zelikow: When they're debating this in the EU, some people say we should have a new EU directive to govern this, but under our Common Foreign and Security Policy, one member like Hungary, for example, could botch that. So if you create something perhaps managed by the G7 Donor Coordination Platform, that is a relatively simple instrument in which the United States could play a part. One thing that you've done in the bill you've drafted, Mr. Chairman and Congresswoman Kaptur, is you're creating mechanisms in which Congress has insight and some oversight into how the United States participates in that process, and what the mechanism does and how the money is spent, which I think is an appropriate role for the Congress. There are precedents for how to do this. The design of this international mechanism I'm discussing is both policy driven, but also has a reactive claim side, but can have some conditionality on reform and the EU accession process. That's a heavy lift. Building that mechanism will be the biggest job since we built the Economic Cooperation Administration to run Marshall Plan aid 70 years ago. That serious work has not really begun, because we're just working on the preliminary phase of mobilizing and using this money. 58:25 Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA): You believe the Administration, even without this bill, has authority right now to transfer the frozen Russian assets to Ukraine. Philip Zelikow: Yes, it does. It has it under the existing IEEPA authorities that the President has already invoked. The Renew Democracy Initiative has put out a really extensive legal brief that goes into great detail about this. I think actually the administration's lawyers are coming around to the view that yes, they do have the authority under existing law. What the REPO Act does is, one, it reaffirms that, but two, it makes Congress a partner in this with regulation and oversight that's an appropriate Congressional role. So by both reaffirming the authority and getting Congress to join the executive and doing this together I think it makes it a truly national effort with an appropriate Congressional part. 59:20 Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA): How would you respond to critics who say this would make it harder for other folks in the future to want to invest in the United States? Philip Zelikow: You can look at the numbers. After we froze Russian assets, everybody understood the political risks that might be involved with putting their money into dollar holdings. The Chinese called in all their bankers and asked them, "Do we have any other options?" That happened last year. You can just simply track what's happened in the international financial markets and see how folks have now priced in that political risk. But the result is still very strong demand and interest in the dollar. But here again, to come back to Congressman [Gregory] Meeks point, by working with the Euro and the yen and Sterling, we give them no place to go. If they want to participate in the world economy, then they're just going to have to invest in assets like that. 1:00:30 Rebeccah Heinrichs: The other thing that's very interesting and good in the REPO bill that is different is this provision, Section 103, that would prohibit the release of blocked Russian sovereign assets. I think that's an incredibly important element of this bill. That would remove the temptation for any kind of sweetener for the Russians to have access to these funds and leave Ukraine in a lurch whenever they have to rebuild their society. That's a very important part of the bill. 1:01:10 Rep. Nathaniel Moran (R-TX): Why would it be better to transfer these assets for Ukraine's direct benefit than to use them for leverage in negotiations and ending this conflict at some point? Rebeccah Heinrichs: It comes back down to the fundamental question at the end: who's going to foot the bill for rebuilding Ukrainian society? Somebody's going to have to do it. It should not be the American people primarily. They're footing a pretty significant bill. I think that benefits American industry and benefits our own military, but this particular piece should be carried out by the perpetrators of this act. So I think that it'd be a mistake to hold that out as a sweetener to get the Russians to come to the end or the conclusion. 1:01:55 Rep. Nathaniel Moran (R-TX): Mr. Zelikow, you mentioned earlier in response to one of my colleague's questions that it looks like that under current law under the IEEPA authorities, the president can do this activity now. Do you know why the President is not doing that? And if he chose to do that, could he do it immediately? Or is there any delay in that? Philip Zelikow: They could act immediately. They've delayed a long time, partly, to be very blunt -- because I've been talking to a lot of people about this -- they had very deep interagency disagreements inside the administration over how to proceed and they found that their bandwidth was totally overwhelmed by other Ukrainian-related concerns, and they didn't give this heavy attention until fairly recently. And now that they have given it sustained attention, I think the President has actually settled, at a fundamental level, those interagency disputes and they are now moving forward to try to find a way to make this work. 1:02:50 Philip Zelikow: I think the point you raised a minute ago about whether we want to hold this back as leverage was one factor in the back of the minds of some people. I think as the war has continued on through this year, hopes of a quick settlement of the war have dissipated. I think they realize that this is going to be a long war. That sobering realization has kind of sunk in. Also, from a legal point of view, if you want to, you could credit the Russians in any peace negotiation. You can basically say this is a credit against your liability for the for rebuilding Ukraine. 1:04:55 Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA): As a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, we have been to many European nations. To a nation, they say the United States is the indispensable partner here, and they say that with all humility and not blowing smoke. We visited the Hague and sat with lead prosecutor Khan, and everyone is talking about waiting us out. Not just waiting out Congress's support, but waiting out the outcome of the next election. They asked us specifically about that. Mr. Putin is clearly waiting for the outcome of the next election in hopes that it will not be the reelection of Joe Biden, who I'm really proud is in Israel right now. Timing. How does this work? You already said it's going to be into 2025. How do we use this leverage, this economic warfare as the center of gravity in this conflict, to bring the timing tighter to a successful conclusion for Ukraine? Philip Zelikow: So that's a great question. And this is why action on this issue is so urgent now, because the operational timeline to stand this up on a massive multi 100 billion dollar scale is if we move on this in the next couple of months and mobilize the money. We could get an enormous operation up and running with a relatively secure source of funding by next year. If we get that up and running by the middle of next year, we then insulate ourselves, to some extent, against the kind of electoral risk to which you gently alluded. 1:07:55 Rep. Thomas Kean Jr. (R-NJ): If the United States did transfer Russian sovereign assets to Ukraine, how could Ukraine best use these in the near term? Philip Zelikow: In the near term, what they would do, I think, is begin undertaking a comprehensive program to shore up their infrastructure, withstand the coming Russian campaigns to further damage that and begin to rebuild the basic transportation infrastructure and other things that can then begin to unlock a really bright future for the rest of the Ukrainian economy. There are things that can be done then to move Ukrainian industry into new sectors. I think the Ukrainian goal is not just to restore what they had five years ago, but actually to use this as a way to build back better, to imagine a brighter future in partnership with Europe. And then if the money is managed well, this gives leverage to encourage the Ukrainian reform process as part of the EU accession. Putin's whole effort here is, "if I can't conquer Ukraine, I will wreck it and make it ungovernable," and we'll show decisively that that objective cannot be achieved. 1:10:35 Rebeccah Heinrichs: If I may, sir, another principle that has been misunderstood throughout this conflict is this notion of escalation. Escalation is not bad. It's only bad if it's the adversary who's escalating to prevail. We want Ukraine to escalate to win, to convince the Russians to end the war. If you do not permit the Ukrainians to escalate, then you only have a long protracted war of attrition that none of us can afford. 1:12:05 Philip Zelikow: Whenever you do a large thing in international affairs, there are going to be unintended consequences from that, and rather than be dismissive about that concern, I'll say if you embark on this, then people will be tempted to try to use these sorts of precedents against us. They'll be limited in their ability to do that because of the fundamental places where money is held in the world economy. A lot of people don't do business with the United States because they love us; they do business with us because they think it's necessary. If they could expropriate our property with no penalty, they would. Venezuela tried that. Most of the world doesn't want to follow Venezuela's example. So yes, there are some potential unintended consequences of people trying to use this precedent. But one reason we've tried to set this under international law is to use the standards of international law to govern this countermeasure. International law allows these countermeasures, but it says you can only do this if the target country's outlaw behavior is extreme, and there's a standard for that. It turns out Russia totally meets that standard. This is the most extreme case of international aggression since the Second World War, bigger than Korea, bigger than Kuwait. But by setting that kind of standard, it makes that slippery slope a little less slippery. 1:14:25 Rep. Greg Stanton (D-AZ): There are some concerns that if we were to transfer these assets, use it for the benefit Ukraine, would there be an impact on the US dollar? Just get your thoughts on that? Philip Zelikow: Yeah, that's why we got in some of the best people we could on international plans, just to do the analysis on that. 93% of the foreign exchange holdings are held in G7 countries and only 3% in renminbi. Running to the renminbi because they're worried about the dollar is something people would do if they wanted to do it already. They've already priced in the political risk of dollar holdings after they've seen what we've done. And you can see their asset allocations. Now, the dollar is involved in 88% of all foreign commercial transactions on one side of the transaction or another. So it's hard to run away from it, especially if the Euro, Yen, and Sterling are in there with you. There's really kind of no place to go if you want to participate in the international economy. Working with Larry Summers, the former Treasury Secretary, Robert Zoellick, with Brad Setser, who studies international finance, we ran some numbers about worst case scenarios and so on, and we think that concern, which sounds good as a soundbite, it turns out on analysis, it fades away. 1:16:10 Philip Zelikow: The US only holds a fraction of the relevant Russian money because the Russians tried to get their money out of our jurisdiction. But when you go to Europe and ask them what's holding them up, they all say "We're waiting for the American lead." So even though we may only hold a fraction of the money, we hold a lot more than a fraction of the relevant clout, and we need to go together, exactly as you imply. September 28, 2023 House Committee on Foreign Affairs Witnesses: Victoria Nuland, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, United States Department of State Christopher P. Maier, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict, United States Department of Defense Caroline Krass, General Counsel, United States Department of Defense Richard C. Visek, Acting Legal Adviser, United States Department of State Clips 33:00 Victoria Nuland: First with regard to the Taliban, we've been very clear we're going to judge the Taliban by their actions. It is our assessment that the Taliban have partially adhered to their counterterrorism commitments. We've seen them disrupt ISIS-K, for example. But there's obviously plenty more to to do to ensure that Afghanistan doesn't become a safe haven, or return to safe haven, or persist as a safe haven. That said, I would note that the director of the National Counterterrorism Center Christy Abizaid recently said publicly that al Qaeda is at its historic nadir in Afghanistan, and its revival is unlikely. 34:20 Victoria Nuland: Iran is obviously a state sponsor of terrorism; it is the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world. Music by Editing Production Assistance

Chairman Mark Green of the House Committee on Homeland Security, discusses yesterday's hearing with Wray and Mayorkas, the threat assessment of our border and how frightening it is that Director Wray believes the next attack on our soil is a when, not an if. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Devin call in to discuss a plethra of topics including Mike Johnson, Hamas and Israel, and more. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby blasted a reporter for asking a question critical of President Joe Biden's response to the war in Gaza. 2023 has been the worst year on record at the border, with a staggering 3.2 million encounters nationwide, according to a report from the House Committee on Homeland Security.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Congressman James Comer represents Kentucky's 1st Congressional District. He currently serves as the Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, where he aggressively advocates for reducing waste, fraud and abuse in government. His committee is currently investigating the Biden family over influence peddling allegations, including a $200,000 check written for the "Big Guy." Follow Congressman Comer on Twitter: @RepJamesComerSUPPORT OUR WORK https://www.judicialwatch.org/donate/thank-youtube/ VISIT OUR WEBSITE http://www.judicialwatch.org

I interview Jennifer Schulp, director of financial regulation studies at the Cato Institute's Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives. She focuses on the regulation of securities and capital markets. She has testified before Congress multiple times, including before the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services, and the Committee on House Administration. We discuss regulatory land grabs and mission creep, why ESG is terrible branding, crypto as a store of value for electricity, fractional reserve banking, payment for order flow, and how to protect investors from themselves. This is a wide-ranging conversation with a true expert in the field. Highly recommended. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theleeshow/support

The House Financial Services Committee has been investigating the possibility of the Federal Reserve creating a Central Bank Digital Currency. In this episode, hear experts unpack the nuances and implications of this idea during three hearings, and discover how you can play a part in shaping the future of American currency. Please Support Congressional Dish – Quick Links Contribute monthly or a lump sum via Support Congressional Dish via (donations per episode) Send Zelle payments to: Donation@congressionaldish.com Send Venmo payments to: @Jennifer-Briney Send Cash App payments to: $CongressionalDish or Donation@congressionaldish.com Use your bank's online bill pay function to mail contributions to: Please make checks payable to Congressional Dish Thank you for supporting truly independent media! Background Sources Recommended Congressional Dish Episodes Operation Choke Point Frank Keating. November 7, 2018. The Hill. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Staff. May 29, 2014. U.S. House of Representatives. Digital Asset Glass-Steagall James Rickards. August 27, 2012. U.S. News & World Report. Audio Sources September 14, 2023 Committee on Financial Services, Subcommittee on Digital Assets, Financial Technology and Inclusion Witnesses: Yuval Rooz, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Digital Asset Paige Paridon, Senior Vice President and Senior Associate General Counsel, Bank Policy Institute Christina Parajon Skinner, Assistant Professor, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania Dr. Norbert Michel, Vice President and Director, Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives, Cato Institute Raúl Carrillo, Academic Fellow, Lecturer in Law, Columbia Law School Clips 27:35 Rep. French Hill (R-AK): Look, the Constitution is clear. Only Congress has the authority to coin money and regulate the value of such money. And we've heard the same from Fed officials, right before this committee, and most recently from Vice Chair for Supervision, Michael Barr, who last week told an audience in Philadelphia and I quote, "The Federal Reserve would only proceed with the issuance of a CBDC with clear support from the executive branch and authorizing legislation from Congress." The Biden Department of Justice agrees, saying, quote, "there would be substantial legal risks to issuing a CBDC without such legislation." 32:05 Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA): CBDC is just one type of publicly issued digital dollar and would be issued, backed, and regulated by the Federal Reserve and have the full faith and backing of the US government. This could serve as an alternative to existing forms of payments and have a benefit, including instant payment settlement, provide a medium for cross border transactions, and foster greater financial inclusion. More than 130 countries have begun to explore their own government backed digital currencies. China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and India have already commenced pilot programs, and a digital Euro pilot could be launched as early as 2028. Meanwhile, the US remains far behind amid increasing and blatant information about features of digital currency. While concerns about data privacy and government surveillance are real, especially in countries that do not respect human rights and privacy, a CBDC does not have to be designed that way. We could employ an architecture that would protect personal data while including anti-money laundering and terrorist financing features. 33:15 Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA): It is counterintuitive that my colleagues should be raising concerns about data privacy while thousands of private companies, domestic and foreign, are surveilling, aggregating, and selling consumer data each and every day. 33:45 Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA): I'm announcing and inviting my colleagues to join the Congressional Digital Dollar Caucus. This forum will educate members on critical issues relating to the development, design, and potential implementation of a government issued digital dollar. I plan to invite innovators, technologists, academics, and other experts to share their findings and development. I hope my colleagues will join me in this exploration. 34:15 Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA): The use of anonymous cash has plummeted and more of our transactions are occurring online and under surveillance, tracked and aggregated by financial services companies. Indeed China has turned that fact into a tool of full spectrum surveillance of its citizens. This is why I've introduced the Ecash Act. This bill directs the Treasury to design and pilot a digital version of cash and would complement the Fed-issued CBDC. It would allow individuals to make instant peer to peer payments with no consumer data or transaction tracking and without the use of a bank account. 36:10 Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN): The need to protect Americans' right to financial product privacy is at an all time high. That's why I introduced the CBDC Anti-Surveillance State Act with over 50 of my colleagues. This bill prevents unelected bureaucrats from creating a tool for financial surveillance if not open, permissionless, and private, like cash, a CBDC is nothing more than a CCP-style surveillance tool that will oppress the American way of life and we're not going to allow that to happen. 38:20 Dr. Norbert Michel: In my testimony, I argue that the United States should not launch a Central Bank Digital Currency, a CBDC. Advocates for a CBDC tout many potential benefits, but there's nothing unique about the technology that would provide those supposed benefits. 39:00 Dr. Norbert Michel: A CBDC in any form would be a direct liability of the central government, a digital tether to its citizens such that it would radically alter the existing public-private relationship that already exists in our monetary arrangement. 39:25 Dr. Norbert Michel: First, issuing a CBDC would not help preserve the status of the United States dollar, it would likely damage it. Proponents argue that because China has launched a CBDC, the United States must keep up by launching its own. Others make the narrower claim that the US must launch a CBDC to keep up with broader technological changes in the payment sector. But anyone who chooses to do so can transact digitally in U.S. dollars right now. The CBDC does not take us from a world with zero or a few digital transactions to one filled with digital transactions. Moreover, the dollar's renowned status is owed to the strength of the American economy and its legal protections for private citizens relative to many other countries. Unlike in many other places, Americans do not have to live in constant fear that the government will take their money. However, if the US creates a CBDC, anyone who wants to use the dollar would lose a layer of protection from that type of government abuse. 40:30 Dr. Norbert Michel: The second myth is that a CBDC would expand financial inclusion by providing a new source of financial services for America's unbanked and underbanked populations. Again, though, this is not a technological problem. In other words, the CBDC itself does not accomplish this goal. The private sector already enables us to transact digitally, and it has been steadily shrinking the number of Americans without financial services for years. We also know, because the FDIC asked them, that unbanked and underbanked Americans primarily are in that situation because either they don't have enough money to have an account, or they don't want to give their personal information to a bank or the government. And what should be obvious is that a lack of sufficient income is a much broader economic problem than a CBDC or financial service technology. While some proponents argue that a CBDC lowers the cost of providing financial services, that's true only if the government subsidizes those costs or chooses to waive the same level of regulatory scrutiny it requires of private firms. And that level of scrutiny, it turns out is more than just a costly mandate that the government has placed on private firms. It's also the one that causes those unbanked Americans to say they don't trust banks. It's also the same one that requires people to hand over their personal information to private companies, and as a result potentially to the government. If the government removes that mandate for all financial service providers, there would be no cost advantage to a CBDC. 42:05 Dr. Norbert Michel: That brings me to my last myth, the idea that a CBDC could somehow enhance financial privacy. Currently, Americans are forced to hand over personal information to financial institutions. Those institutions are required to track transactions, and the government can access that information without a warrant. The fourth amendment is supposed to protect Americans from the government gaining access to this kind of information, unless they show probable cause and obtain a warrant. But it no longer protects Americans when it comes to financial information. And the only buffer left is that the government must go through the financial institution to obtain that information. Introducing a CBDC would remove this last layer of protection. It would place all financial transactions either in a government database or leave them a keystroke away. 44:15 Paige Paridon: We believe that at this point there is little evidence that a CBDC would bring measurable benefits to the US economy or consumers. Furthermore, a CBDC could upend the commercial banking system and create financial instability. 44:30 Paige Paridon: CBDC can take one of two general forms: a wholesale CBDC, which would be used only by financial intermediaries, and a retail CBDC, which could be used by consumers and businesses. To date, most research and attention has been focused on a retail, intermediated, account-based model in which consumer's CBDCs would be held in an account at a bank or another financial intermediary, like an asset held in custody. The CBDC could not be used by the bank to make loans in the way that dollar deposits are used today. Any transfer of $1 deposit from a bank to a CBDC is $1 unavailable for lending to businesses or consumers. By attracting deposits away from banks, a CBDC likely would undermine the commercial banking system in the United States and severely constrict the availability and increase the cost of credit to the economy. 46:30 Paige Paridon: With respect to financial inclusion, a review of the reasons why certain individuals are unbanked makes it clear that a CBDC would be unlikely to meaningfully increase financial inclusion. For example, FDIC data reveals that many respondents are unbanked because of privacy concerns, and intermediated CBDC is unlikely to mitigate those concerns, given that it would presumably come with the same know-your-customer requirements that currently apply to banks. 54:35 Christina Parajon Skinner: So privacy rights are the clearest place to start. Today, individuals can enjoy comprehensive privacy in their payments transactions by using cash. Now, although most central banks have suggested that CBDC is not going to replace cash, that near-term promise can't be guaranteed over the longer term, and the insinuation that CBDC is necessary or inevitable seems motivated by a view that cash will eventually become obsolete. But because central banks don't have the technology presently to offer cash-like privacy, a digital currency -- unless it's radically redesigned -- will bring with it the ability for the state to monitor or surveil its citizens' payments activity. 55:20 Christina Parajon Skinner: I'd like to focus on the impact of a CBDC on the Federal Reserve. Certainly since 2010, the power and authority of the Fed has grown considerably, and Congress's responsibility to oversee the Fed requires it to understand how a CBDC could further empower the central bank but also how it might weaken it. On the one hand, CBDC could result in a larger central bank balance sheet. Issuing CBDC would increase the liability side of the Fed's balance sheet if the total of bank reserves, repos, and cash balances largely remained unchanged. So if the liabilities with CBDC increase, so too much the Fed's assets. The Fed could buy more Treasury securities to match CBDC, but that could possibly invite pressure on the Fed to issue more CBDCs to in turn absorb more government debt. And overall, that dynamic could further erode the limited fiscal discipline that we have remaining. A CBDC could also affect the Fed's independence in the way that it would establish a direct relationship between the central bank and the real economy for the first time in history. One result of that relationship would almost certainly be the further erosion of the line between monetary and fiscal policy. When central banks begin to issue liabilities directly to the people, it will become much more difficult for the central bank to justify their provision of liquidity to banks and the financial system, as opposed to households, especially during a crisis. And effectively this could open the door to political pressure on the Fed to provide liquidity assistance to households during turbulent economic times. But these sorts of household level interventions would radically transform the central bank and its purpose and role within society. 57:40 Christina Parajon Skinner: So it does not inherently improve financial inclusion unless it's paired with accounts for all citizens, which the central bank itself has already recognized as infeasible. 59:15 Raúl Carrillo: Today, I support the call for a digital dollar system, including CBDC, Fed accounts, and Ecash. 1:02:15 Raúl Carrillo: Indeed, the only way to evolve beyond the surveillance status quo is to establish a direct digital dollar interface with consumers where the Fourth Amendment and other protections may actually apply. If we truly care about privacy, we should treat the banking and blockchain industries' appeals to partnership as suspect, based on legal and technological grounds alone. We can build a retail CBDC and Fed account system with superior protections compared to what exists now and superior protections to the systems that are being built around the world currently. 1:02:50 Raúl Carrillo: So today I also advocate for the inclusion of digital cash, as detailed in the Electronic Cash and Hardware Security and Secured Hardware Act, the Ecash Act, re-introduced by Representative Lynch. Today, Ecash devices available on a smart card or a phone card would serve as digital counterparts to cold hard American cash. These devices would not make payments over the internet. Instead, they would store Treasury issued digital dollars on card hardware to enable everyday small dollar transactions for everyday people. These transactions would be subject to the BSA/AML regime, and as a boon to law enforcement, we can set privacy-sensitive security controls and caps on transactions and usage. However, the cards would in no instance be capable of generating data that companies and agencies can abuse. We preserve a place for privacy within public infrastructure. The Ecash Act harkens back to the past to the days when President Lincoln established the banking and cash system that we still use today. And it also harkens to an exciting, inclusive, safe digital future. 1:08:05 Paige Paridon: CBDC, because it would be a direct liability of the central bank, it would be perceived as the ultimate safe asset. So from that perspective, particularly during times of economic stress, it could attract depositors to pull their money out of the banking system to flee or run to a CBDC if there was perceived concern about the banking system or the financial system overall. So every dollar that currently resides in a bank account can be deployed for useful purposes in the economy, primarily through lending. Every dollar that is pulled out from the banking system and put into a CBDC is one less dollar that could be put to good economic use. And that is why we have a fundamental concern with a retail CBDC, given the flight-to-quality risks. 1:09:35 Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA): 130 countries, representing 98% of the global economy, are now exploring digital versions of their currencies, including the United States. Almost half of these countries are in advanced development pilot or launch stages of their CBDCs. Can you discuss how CBDCs may shape the future global financial landscape? What would it mean for the United States if we instead chose to stay on the sidelines of this race? Raúl Carrillo: Thank you very much for the question, Representative Waters. My opinion is that it is incumbent upon the United States to provide leadership with respect to an inevitable process that is going to occur across the world. It is clear that we're all moving to digital fiat currency. The question is what sort of protections are going to attend digital fiat currency? 1:12:35 Raúl Carrillo: I hear a lot of concern across the political spectrum in this committee about the power of Silicon Valley. And if you do not create an alternative to the corporate systems that collect data, or promise to protect it and then collect it en mass, which is even worse and common in the blockchain industry, then what is going to happen is that Silicon Valley is going to win. And frankly, I don't think anybody here wants that. But in order to preserve the space that we have for public money and not make it a big tech enterprise, we, in fact, have to move forward with digital fiat currency. 1:13:50 Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH): One of the key characteristics of sound money is that it facilitates permissionless, peer-to-peer transactions like cash. Currently, of the 100+ countries developing a central bank digital currency, none of them are developing a permissionless system. Every one of them is developing a permission system, including the United States Federal Reserve. So when we talk about permissions, we can kind of get something from the Federal Reserve's own report of that. They said in their report that it should be privacy-protected, intermediated, widely transferable, and identity-verified. Mr. Michel, Professor Skinner, in your view, is it possible to be both privacy-protected and identity-verified? Dr. Norbert Michel: No, in my view, it's not. Once the information is in a system, it's in a system and somebody is going to get it and it's going to get out. And I just quickly really want to say I'm very happy to hear everybody here on the panel is pro-Fourth Amendment. The problem, of course, as you know, is that the Bank Secrecy Act, and the anti money laundering regime runs right over the Fourth Amendment. So that's what needs to be fixed. Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH): It's already a problem in third party hands, but this wouldn't even be in third party hands. But, you know, Professor Skinner, what's your view? Christina Parajon Skinner: My view is no, that that's not possible right now, and central banks have essentially admitted as much. And to the extent such technology is or could be under development, it's extremely immature. And I think the point to emphasize here is that inherently there will be a tradeoff to the extent central banks create CBDC, between identity verification and privacy. And more than likely central banks will always choose identity verification because they will never feel comfortable sacrificing the national security goals that they see as accompanying robust identity verification. 1:24:35 Rep. John Rose (R-TN): Decisions in United States v. Miller and Maryland v. Smith gave us the third party doctrine. Under that doctrine. if you voluntarily provide information to a third party, the Fourth Amendment does not preclude the government from accessing it without a warrant. Dr. Michelle, can you explain how the third party doctrine has impacted Americans' financial privacy? Dr. Norbert Michel: Yes, they practically have none at the moment partly because of this. But I also want to clarify, because of something that was just said on the panel. The Fourth Amendment is the one that amends the Constitution to the United States, which protects American citizens from the government. So this is exactly the issue and it was brought up in the cases in the 70s, when the Bank Secrecy Act was challenged. If the Bank Secrecy Act were not there, the banks and financial institutions that we have would not be required by the government to collect the data that they are, that is a requirement in the Bank Secrecy Act. And everybody can go back and look at those cases, that was always an issue as to whether this was constitutional and in violation of possibly the Fourth Amendment. So between the combination of the Bank Secrecy Act, the Fourth Amendment issues, and the third party doctrine, Americans, although many of them don't realize it, have very little financial privacy at the moment. 1:26:05 Rep. John Rose (R-TN): How would the adoption of a CBDC further erode Americans' reasonable expectation of financial privacy? Dr. Norbert Michel: I believe it would remove the last layer that we have, quite simply, instead of having to go through the financial institution, the government would have that information either in a central database or a keystroke away. 1:31:05 Raúl Carrillo: We envision hardware devices. So those can be cards, similar in size to an existing debit or credit card, or they can be secured SIM cards, or something like it, on a phone that would enable hardware based transactions and for people to make payments as they do today with paper cash for everyday things without fear of government or corporate surveillance, which occurs in tandem when we use digital payments today. 1:32:20 Raúl Carrillo: I would clarify that the point of Ecash is that it does not operate online. It is actually open, permissionless, and private, in the sense that you don't need a blockchain or a banking intermediary. 1:35:45 Rep. Bryan Steil (R-WI): In your testimony you wrote, "any transfer of $1 deposit from a commercial bank or credit union to a CBDC is $1 unavailable for lending to businesses or consumers." Can you expand a little bit on that statement about how an adoption of an intermediated CBDC would impact credit availability and the cost of banking services? Paige Paridon: Sure. Happy to, thank you. So I think there's a misconception generally, that $1 transferred from a deposit account to a CBDC would mean that CBDC would still be able to be used for lending and investment in the economy the way that dollar deposits currently are now. And that is not the case of CBDC, even if intermediated. In other words, even if the services including onboarding and other services that commercial banks currently provide, even if those services were provided by banks with respect to a consumer's CBDC, the fact is the bank would really only hold that CBDC in the same manner it holds an asset in custody. So it would have to essentially keep that CBDC under the proverbial mattress and it would not be able to be redeployed in the form of loans. 1:41:20 Paige Paridon: If it was an intermediated CBDC, banks would essentially hold CBDC as a custodian. That's right, they wouldn't be able to lend out some portion of the CBDC as they do deposits. 1:42:10 Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL): If you had 100%, CBDCs was all the money supply, you'd have no lending, right? So doesn't any proportional increase in the amount of a CBDC in an economy shrink the economy? Paige Paridon: Well, there could be shifts to other forms of ways to fund lending. Banks could borrow in the wholesale markets, they could potentially borrow from the Federal Reserve. So I'm not necessarily sure it's a one-to-one relationship. 1:46:25 Rep. Mike Flood (R-NE): Ms. Skinner, in your testimony, you mentioned how a CBDC could lead to the Federal Reserve's independence being threatened. Can you speak more on that? Christina Parajon Skinner: Yes, certainly. Thank you for the question. So in the first instance, to the extent the Federal Reserve doesn't change the composition of its balance sheet otherwise, issuing a CBDC will increase its liabilities, which means that it has to match that increase in liabilities by purchasing more assets. So the first thing that we would think about when the Fed would purchase more assets would be buying more Treasury securities. That being said, with the potential for the Fed to issue more CBDC, thereby giving it more headroom to buy more Treasury securities, would be likely to put some pressure on the Fed at some point down the line from the Treasury to issue that CBDC to absorb more government debt, which we call monetary finance or monetizing the deficit. Before World War Two, the Fed essentially operated under the thumb of the Treasury so that during wartime and otherwise, the Fed could effectively monetize the deficit. And really today, that's anathema to an independent central bank. There were other things that the Fed could also be pressured to buy to match an increase in CBDC, like corporate bonds. Now our recent experimentation in corporate bonds has put some question around whether this too could politicize a central bank because inevitably if central banks buy corporate bonds, they are picking winners and losers in the economy. Now, the Fed has been pretty neutral in its approach, but there has been a lot of pressure on the central bank to, for example, buy green bonds in order to facilitate a transition to a low carbon economy and certainly other central banks do actively green their corporate bond portfolios. 2:23:05 Dr. Norbert Michel: I believe this is a question of centralization versus decentralization. And if you have a CBDC, you ultimately have one major point of failure. One way of doing this would be to have the Fed have a database. Well, we know the Fed's been hacked. Even if the Fed has multiple databases, it's the Fed being hacked, as opposed to having multiple private companies all across the country. If Capital One, for example, has a hack or a cybersecurity problem, everybody in the country is not immediately at risk, only their customers, and that's a problem for them. 2:25:25 Rep. William Timmons (R-SC): Based on your research, can you explain what, if any, technological advantage a CBDC has over the private sector? Dr. Norbert Michel: None. And this should be this is properly viewed as a government reaction to a private innovation. We can call it Bitcoin or you could just call it distributed ledger technology in general. That's what this is about. This is about the government seeing an innovation that possibly threatens their control over the payment system and it is a movement to come up with something that takes that back and it just so happens that what they're coming up with here is something that goes even further than where we are without the CBDC. 2:26:45 Christina Parajon Skinner: The status of the dollar is undergirded by our commitment to the rule of law, democratic institutions, having a judiciary that enforces property rights, and perhaps most importantly, maintaining the dollar as a stable store of value. So for there, it's important that the Fed maintain its fight against inflation and with the issuance of the CBDC, there will absolutely be a propensity to over-issue, to for example, monetize the deficit and if that were to happen that would undermine the status of the dollar. 2:29:45 Paige Paridon: A so-called flight to quality is something that we fear would be almost inevitable. Were a retail CBDC to be issued by the Federal Reserve, in times particularly of financial stress or instability, a CBDC would be viewed likely as the ultimate safe asset and depositors would likely be incentivized to pull the deposits out of the banking system and put them into CBDCs as a safe asset, which would reduce the availability of deposits available to lend out, and moreover, increase the cost of credit. 2:31:10 Raúl Carrillo: President Lincoln created cash after the Civil War in order to help everybody have day to day transactions throughout our economy. Today we have cutting edge technology in various other sectors in the government, including in the US military where they use stored value cards known as Eagle Cash in order to make offline payments. 2:33:15 Yuval Rooz: If the US government were to decide to issue a retail CBDC, unlike wholesaled CBDC, I think that it is going to be critical for the government to show an evidence that there is no ability for the government to see transactions of citizens. I personally would be against such an act. 2:35:05 Yuval Rooz: If we wanted to have privacy included in the smart contract of the money, it would state that any movement of money would only be visible to the sender of money and the receiver of money for example, and the issuer of money would be blinded. So all that the issuer would see is the overall balance, but would not see any underlying movements of the money, for example. March 8, 2023 House Financial Services Committee Witnesses: Jerome Powell, Chair, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System Clips 53:50 Rep. French Hill (R-AK): Turning to a topic that's been a subject here for nearly four years: Central Bank Digital Currencies. Article One of the Constitution, reserves coins and money issuance to the Congress and we've in turn delegated that to the US Treasury, which has since 1912 engaged the Federal Reserve as their fiscal agent. You've testified here many times before that to issue a Central Bank Digital Currency that would be have to be authorized by statute by Congress. Is that still your testimony? Jerome Powell: So that is absolutely the case as it relates to a retail CBDC. There are potential forms of a wholesale CBDC that you would need to look at, it's less clear. But we've always been talking about retail CBDC and that's something we would certainly need Congressional approval for. Rep. French Hill (R-AK): What would be a parameter on something that's not a retail CBDC where you think that could be issued in some form or fashion without Congress's direct statutory authorization? Jerome Powell: It would be, for example, something between banks, so it would look an awful lot like a bank reserve. And you might ask, Well, why would we need it? And that's a really good question, too. But just something that's literally within a wholesale market. Rep. French Hill (R-AK): But that speaks that you might have a blockchain between banks and the Fed using a Central Bank Digital Currency token to settle transactions institutionally inside the US. 1:15:40 Jerome Powell: We did go out for comment in general on a CBDC a year or so ago and I do expect that we'll go out, I can't give you a date, but we'll certainly go out and we engage with the public on an ongoing basis. We're also doing research on policy and also on technology. That's what we're up to. Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA): The Boston Fed has a partnership over there with the folks from MIT Media Lab, they're doing a great job, but it says here that the discussions would include technical experimentation. I was just wondering, at what level are you talking about making decisions on architecture for a retail CBDC? Jerome Powell: We're not at the stage of making any real decisions. What we're doing is experimenting, in kind of early stage experimentation. How would this work? Does it work? What's the best technology? What's the most efficient? We're really at an early stage but we're making progress on sort of technological issues. The policy issues are equally important though. You know, we haven't decided that this is something that the financial systems in the country want or need. So that's going to be very important. 1:18:15 Jerome Powell: A CBDC is going to be years in evaluation. 1:18:30 Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA): You know, before the greenback, everybody had their own currency. You know, you had rail rail companies, you had coal companies, you had, you know, state banks that were authorized to issue their own currency. But when the greenback came out, all of those various currencies went to zero, because the greenback had the full faith and credit of the United States behind it. I'm worried about a lot of these Stablecoins and other cryptocurrencies. Do they go to zero when we come up with a CBDC that has the full faith and credit of the United States behind it? We've got 1000s of these out there, and you've got people investing millions and millions of dollars, well trillions right now. And I'm just thinking if we had those advantages built into a CBDC? Wouldn't those alternatives go to zero, if they did not have the transparency and the full faith and credit that we enjoy? Jerome Powell: So certainly, unbacked cryptocurrencies that don't have any intrinsic value, but nonetheless, trade for a positive number, I've never understood the valuation of those. Stablecoins, many of them are really drawing on the credibility of the dollar. They're dollar denominated mainly, dollar-based reserves, although we don't know what's in the reserves because there's no regulation. 2:16:05 Jerome Powell: What we say about permissionless blockchains is that they have been vehicles for fraud -- Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH): 0.24% if you follow your own report on fraud. It's a fraction of what it is with the US dollar. May 26, 2022 House Financial Services Committee Witness: Lael Brainard, Vice Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System Clips 2:08:30 Rep. John Rose (R-TN): Vice Chair Brainard, we saw how dangerous it can be when the government weaponizes the financial system for political purposes under the Obama administration's Operation Choke Point. More recently, the Canadian government instructed banks to freeze accounts linked to the trucker protests over vaccine mandates. Vice Chair Brainard, without appropriate safeguards, would a CBDC make it easier for the federal government to block individuals it disagrees with from accessing the financial system? Lael Brainard: So I really don't see CBDC as raising questions that are different from deposits and bank accounts, for instance. And the paper that was released in January, in particular, talks about an intermediary model, akin to what we see with commercial bank deposits, where the central bank doesn't have any direct interaction with consumers, doesn't see transactions by consumers, but there are intermediaries and, very importantly, including banks that would be responsible for both identity verification and for keeping that transaction data private. So in that sense, I don't see it it's as really any different than the issues that are raised with commercial bank deposits. June 16, 2021 Committee on Financial Services, Subcommittee on National Security, International Development, and Monetary Policy Witnesses: Eric B. Lorber, Senior Director, Foundation for Defense of Democracies Clips 43:33 Eric Lorber: The number of transactions which are elicit that use Bitcoin or blockchain technology is actually fairly low percentage wise it's in I believe, below 1% or somewhere around there. So it's fairly small. Music by Editing Production Assistance

Today Rich delves into how President Biden's open border policy has allowed for an explosion in child trafficking. Then Congressman James Comer (R-KY), Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, has unveiled some more evidence of the corruption within the Biden family. Finally, Rich has a conversation with Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, co-founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, about the differences in the beliefs of Muslims and Islamic extremists. Comment and follow on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Truth Social or visit us at RichValdes.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Republican members of the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security say they are continuing to produce evidence to support their claim that Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is derelict in his duty and should be removed from office. In July, the committee published its first report detailing the laws and court orders the committee says Mayorkas has “ignored, abused or failed to follow.” Members cite alleged violations of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), including an abuse of its parole program, detention and removal requirements, instituting mass parole programs, ignoring federal court orders, among other actions. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support

This is Garrison Hardie with your CrossPolitic Daily News Brief for Friday, October 20th, 2023. PUB MEMBERSHIP PLUG: Summer has been great here at CrossPolitic, and we want you to join us on this ride… First, we’re no longer calling it the Fight Laugh Feast club… it’s now called the Pub! Second, we’ve launched a new line of content, focused on family entertainment. We will have our new show “This America” and our exciting new “Rowdy Christian Guides” highlighting the practical guides to fun and godly life! Additionally, we will have the live streaming of our conferences, and our past conference talks, all bundled within our new polished Fight Laugh Feast App. Sign up today! Head on over to fightlaughfeast.com, and join the Pub! that’s fightlaughfeast.com. https://www.breitbart.com/middle-east/2023/10/18/watch-pro-palestinian-protesters-stage-insurrection-in-u-s-capitol-office-building-cannon/ Pro-Palestinian Protesters Stage ‘Insurrection’ in U.S. Capitol Office Building Pro-Palestinian protesters, who want a ceasefire that would benefit the Hamas terrorist organization in Gaza, stormed the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday and staged a protest inside the Cannon Rotunda that one observer likened to an “insurrection.” The Cannon Rotunda is part of the Cannon House Office Building. It is separate from the iconic Capitol building but is considered part of the Capitol complex. It is the oldest congressional office building on Capitol Hill. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), who falsely accused Israel of bombing a Gaza hospital Tuesday, addressed the protesters. Fox 5 in Washington, DC, reported: A large group of pro-Palestinian protesters are demonstrating inside the Cannon Rotunda on Capitol Hill. The Cannon House Office Building holds the House Committee offices. U.S. Capitol Police say demonstrations are not allowed inside Congressional Buildings and are working to clear the crowd. Police have already detained some individuals as chants of “ceasefire” are echoing around the building. Left-wing protesters have staged demonstrations inside the Capitol before, but none have been treated the way participants in the January 6, 2021 protesters have been treated, many of whom were detained and given harsh sentences for non-violent offenses. The U.S. has seen anti-Israel protests in major cities and on college campuses since a Hamas terror attack Oct. 7 killed 1,400 Israelis and wounded roughly 4,400 more. About 200 people — including some Americans — were taken to Gaza as hostages. FBI Director Christopher Wray called the Capitol riot “domestic terrorism.” In this case, the pro-Palestinian protest is supporting terrorism against Israelis and Americans; a ceasefire would allow Hamas to escape without consequences for its atrocities. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/education/israel-war-harvard-columbia-students-lose-job-offer-law-firm Harvard and Columbia students lose law firm job offer for anti-Israel stance A major law firm has rescinded its offer of employment to three students at Harvard and Columbia law schools who endorsed statements that blamed Israel for a series of terrorist attacks by Hamas. The law firm Davis Polk notified employees in an internal email that the firm had withdrawn job offers to three students from Harvard and Columbia who had signed statements that blamed the Israeli government for the attacks by Hamas. The Columbia statement went further and said the attacks were justified acts of resistance. The attacks and the subsequent military response by Israel have claimed the lives of more than 4,000 people. “These statements are simply contrary to our firm’s values and we thus concluded that rescinding these offers was appropriate in upholding our responsibility to provide a safe and inclusive work environment for all Davis Polk employees,” the firm said in the email to employees. The firm's action is the latest example of students losing employment offers because of their support for the statement. Ryna Workman, a law student at New York University and the president of the student bar association, lost an employment offer from the law firm Winston & Strawn after supporting a statement that said: “Israel bears full responsibility for this tremendous loss of life.” In addition to withdrawn job offers, other prominent figures have urged that the students be named publicly and face professional consequences. A number of the 31 student groups who signed the Harvard statement have since withdrawn their support for the statement. Billionaire Bill Ackman, a Harvard alum, asked that the names of the students who signed the statement be publicly released "so as to ensure that none of us inadvertently hire any of their members." Sweetgreen CEO Jonathan Neman echoed Ackman, saying, "I would like to know so I know never to hire these people." https://www.theblaze.com/news/sen-vances-new-bill-would-protect-mothers-who-exit-the-workforce-to-care-for-their-babies-from-undue-healthcare-costs Sen. Vance's new bill would protect mothers who exit the workforce to care for their babies from undue health care costs Republican Sens. J.D. Vance (Ohio) and Marco Rubio (Fla.) introduced legislation Tuesday that would ensure that mothers "who choose to prioritize their child's early development and recover rather than return to work" after giving birth won't be retroactively stripped of their health care premiums for having done so. Currently, the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 requires covered companies with over 50 employees to give their workers 12 weeks of unpaid medical leave in a 12-month period for the birth of a child as well as in cases of adoption. Furthermore, it requires the "continuation of their group health benefits under the same conditions as if they had not taken leave." The bill, entitled "Fairness for Stay-At-Home Parents Act," would amend the FMLA to "prohibit an employer from recovering any health care premium paid by the employer for an employee if the employee fails to return to work due to the birth of a child, and for other purposes." In addition to preventing clawbacks, the legislation would have employers continue their health premium contributions for the duration of the 12-week leave. "Our laws should not penalize new parents who choose to stay home to care for their newborn babies," Vance said in a statement. "We should celebrate and promote young families, not punish them. This legislation would relieve a serious financial burden for working families all over America and steer Washington in a more pro-family direction." America appears to be in dire need of a "pro-family direction." The U.S. Census Bureau revealed in November 2022 that less than 24% of children under the age of 15 living in normal families had a stay-at-home mother. Only 1% had a stay-at-home father. The Pew Research Center indicated that as of 2021, 26% of mothers stayed home with their children and 7% of fathers stayed home with their children. According to the Mayo Clinic, over half of women return to work after their maternity leave. Not only are fewer people staying home to raise their children, but fewer Americans are having children. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicated in a June report that the provisional number of births in the U.S. for 2022 was just over 3.6 million, a decline from the previous year. The fertility rate was 56.1 per 1,000 women ages 15-44. This figure is roughly half of what the rate was in the 1960s and more or less on par with the rate in 2020, which was the lowest rate on record. The New York Times noted in 2018 that one of the key drivers behind Americans having fewer or no children is financial insecurity. A poll conducted by USA Today last year confirmed that was still the case. About 46% of respondents suggested their personal financial situation influenced their planned or current childlessness; 40% indicated work-life balance was at least partly to blame. The Washington Examiner noted that financial struggles hit parents straight out the gate. The national average cost of child delivery in a hospital exceeds $18,000, or $3,000 out of pocket for those with insurance. The 12-week reprieve that some parents might find as a result of Vance's bill could go a long way. "The Fairness for Stay-At-Home Parents Act supports mothers' and parents' invaluable role in raising the next generation," said Rubio, the original co-sponsor of Vance's bill. "This legislation stops employers from imposing harsh financial penalties if a parent decides not to return to work after unpaid leave, and it empowers families to make choices that prioritize the well-being of their children." Rubio, like Vance, appears keen on bolstering the family. Following the Supreme Court's Dobbs ruling, Rubio released a pro-family framework, stressing the "need to adopt pro-life policies that support families, rather than destroy them." Among the proposals in the Florida senator's framework were an expansion to the child tax credit; an allowance for new parents to pull forward up to three months of their Social Security benefits to finance paid parental leave; tax relief for adoptive parents; expanded support for pro-life crisis pregnancy centers; and the establishment of a grant program funding integrated mentoring services for poor mothers. Following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the Manhattan Institute's Brian Riedl prophesied to the Washington Post that Republicans would likely take a stronger lead on bolstering the family beyond just sparing the unborn from mass extermination. "I could see if Republicans decide that abortion politics are working against them, there could be a push for child-care benefits, more maternal health care, and better adoption services to make it easy and more affordable for more mothers to carry the babies to term," said Riedl. "It would put their money where their mouth is when challenged on making it easier for mothers to afford their children and get their health care." https://www.outkick.com/conor-mcgregor-no-charges-nba-finals-heat-sexual-assault-allegation/ CONOR MCGREGOR WON’T FACE CHARGES AFTER BEING ACCUSED OF SEXUAL ASSAULT DURING NBA FINALS Conor McGregor won’t face charges stemming from allegations he sexually assaulted a woman during the NBA Finals. McGregor was accused by a woman of sexually assaulting her in the bathroom of Kaseya Center during a Heat/Nuggets NBA Finals game, and the UFC star always maintained he didn’t do anything wrong. Prosecutors have now decided there is “insufficient evidence” to pursue the situation further, according to TMZ. Authorities also cited “contradicting and/or no corroborating witnesses” as another reason for why no charges will be brought. “In light of the above facts and circumstances, the State would not be able to satisfy its burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” prosecutors wrote in a closeout memo, according to the same TMZ report. The woman initially claimed security separated her from her friends to get her in a bathroom with McGregor, but video of the situation told a very different story. She was filmed entering the bathroom with McGregor on her own freewill, and nobody was forcing her to go anywhere. TMZ also reported she was seen at a club with McGregor AFTER they left the bathroom together where she alleged she was assaulted. An attendant outside the bathroom told authorities they “did not hear any signs of distress or sounds that would corroborate that whatever was occurring was not consensual.” McGregor’s attorney told TMZ, “After a thorough investigation, including a review of videos and interviews with eyewitnesses, the authorities have concluded that there is no case to pursue against my client, Conor McGregor. On behalf of my client, his family and his fans we are pleased this is now over.” The situation is now behind McGregor, and that means he can focus on getting back in the octagon.

This is Garrison Hardie with your CrossPolitic Daily News Brief for Friday, October 20th, 2023. PUB MEMBERSHIP PLUG: Summer has been great here at CrossPolitic, and we want you to join us on this ride… First, we’re no longer calling it the Fight Laugh Feast club… it’s now called the Pub! Second, we’ve launched a new line of content, focused on family entertainment. We will have our new show “This America” and our exciting new “Rowdy Christian Guides” highlighting the practical guides to fun and godly life! Additionally, we will have the live streaming of our conferences, and our past conference talks, all bundled within our new polished Fight Laugh Feast App. Sign up today! Head on over to fightlaughfeast.com, and join the Pub! that’s fightlaughfeast.com. https://www.breitbart.com/middle-east/2023/10/18/watch-pro-palestinian-protesters-stage-insurrection-in-u-s-capitol-office-building-cannon/ Pro-Palestinian Protesters Stage ‘Insurrection’ in U.S. Capitol Office Building Pro-Palestinian protesters, who want a ceasefire that would benefit the Hamas terrorist organization in Gaza, stormed the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday and staged a protest inside the Cannon Rotunda that one observer likened to an “insurrection.” The Cannon Rotunda is part of the Cannon House Office Building. It is separate from the iconic Capitol building but is considered part of the Capitol complex. It is the oldest congressional office building on Capitol Hill. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), who falsely accused Israel of bombing a Gaza hospital Tuesday, addressed the protesters. Fox 5 in Washington, DC, reported: A large group of pro-Palestinian protesters are demonstrating inside the Cannon Rotunda on Capitol Hill. The Cannon House Office Building holds the House Committee offices. U.S. Capitol Police say demonstrations are not allowed inside Congressional Buildings and are working to clear the crowd. Police have already detained some individuals as chants of “ceasefire” are echoing around the building. Left-wing protesters have staged demonstrations inside the Capitol before, but none have been treated the way participants in the January 6, 2021 protesters have been treated, many of whom were detained and given harsh sentences for non-violent offenses. The U.S. has seen anti-Israel protests in major cities and on college campuses since a Hamas terror attack Oct. 7 killed 1,400 Israelis and wounded roughly 4,400 more. About 200 people — including some Americans — were taken to Gaza as hostages. FBI Director Christopher Wray called the Capitol riot “domestic terrorism.” In this case, the pro-Palestinian protest is supporting terrorism against Israelis and Americans; a ceasefire would allow Hamas to escape without consequences for its atrocities. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/education/israel-war-harvard-columbia-students-lose-job-offer-law-firm Harvard and Columbia students lose law firm job offer for anti-Israel stance A major law firm has rescinded its offer of employment to three students at Harvard and Columbia law schools who endorsed statements that blamed Israel for a series of terrorist attacks by Hamas. The law firm Davis Polk notified employees in an internal email that the firm had withdrawn job offers to three students from Harvard and Columbia who had signed statements that blamed the Israeli government for the attacks by Hamas. The Columbia statement went further and said the attacks were justified acts of resistance. The attacks and the subsequent military response by Israel have claimed the lives of more than 4,000 people. “These statements are simply contrary to our firm’s values and we thus concluded that rescinding these offers was appropriate in upholding our responsibility to provide a safe and inclusive work environment for all Davis Polk employees,” the firm said in the email to employees. The firm's action is the latest example of students losing employment offers because of their support for the statement. Ryna Workman, a law student at New York University and the president of the student bar association, lost an employment offer from the law firm Winston & Strawn after supporting a statement that said: “Israel bears full responsibility for this tremendous loss of life.” In addition to withdrawn job offers, other prominent figures have urged that the students be named publicly and face professional consequences. A number of the 31 student groups who signed the Harvard statement have since withdrawn their support for the statement. Billionaire Bill Ackman, a Harvard alum, asked that the names of the students who signed the statement be publicly released "so as to ensure that none of us inadvertently hire any of their members." Sweetgreen CEO Jonathan Neman echoed Ackman, saying, "I would like to know so I know never to hire these people." https://www.theblaze.com/news/sen-vances-new-bill-would-protect-mothers-who-exit-the-workforce-to-care-for-their-babies-from-undue-healthcare-costs Sen. Vance's new bill would protect mothers who exit the workforce to care for their babies from undue health care costs Republican Sens. J.D. Vance (Ohio) and Marco Rubio (Fla.) introduced legislation Tuesday that would ensure that mothers "who choose to prioritize their child's early development and recover rather than return to work" after giving birth won't be retroactively stripped of their health care premiums for having done so. Currently, the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 requires covered companies with over 50 employees to give their workers 12 weeks of unpaid medical leave in a 12-month period for the birth of a child as well as in cases of adoption. Furthermore, it requires the "continuation of their group health benefits under the same conditions as if they had not taken leave." The bill, entitled "Fairness for Stay-At-Home Parents Act," would amend the FMLA to "prohibit an employer from recovering any health care premium paid by the employer for an employee if the employee fails to return to work due to the birth of a child, and for other purposes." In addition to preventing clawbacks, the legislation would have employers continue their health premium contributions for the duration of the 12-week leave. "Our laws should not penalize new parents who choose to stay home to care for their newborn babies," Vance said in a statement. "We should celebrate and promote young families, not punish them. This legislation would relieve a serious financial burden for working families all over America and steer Washington in a more pro-family direction." America appears to be in dire need of a "pro-family direction." The U.S. Census Bureau revealed in November 2022 that less than 24% of children under the age of 15 living in normal families had a stay-at-home mother. Only 1% had a stay-at-home father. The Pew Research Center indicated that as of 2021, 26% of mothers stayed home with their children and 7% of fathers stayed home with their children. According to the Mayo Clinic, over half of women return to work after their maternity leave. Not only are fewer people staying home to raise their children, but fewer Americans are having children. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicated in a June report that the provisional number of births in the U.S. for 2022 was just over 3.6 million, a decline from the previous year. The fertility rate was 56.1 per 1,000 women ages 15-44. This figure is roughly half of what the rate was in the 1960s and more or less on par with the rate in 2020, which was the lowest rate on record. The New York Times noted in 2018 that one of the key drivers behind Americans having fewer or no children is financial insecurity. A poll conducted by USA Today last year confirmed that was still the case. About 46% of respondents suggested their personal financial situation influenced their planned or current childlessness; 40% indicated work-life balance was at least partly to blame. The Washington Examiner noted that financial struggles hit parents straight out the gate. The national average cost of child delivery in a hospital exceeds $18,000, or $3,000 out of pocket for those with insurance. The 12-week reprieve that some parents might find as a result of Vance's bill could go a long way. "The Fairness for Stay-At-Home Parents Act supports mothers' and parents' invaluable role in raising the next generation," said Rubio, the original co-sponsor of Vance's bill. "This legislation stops employers from imposing harsh financial penalties if a parent decides not to return to work after unpaid leave, and it empowers families to make choices that prioritize the well-being of their children." Rubio, like Vance, appears keen on bolstering the family. Following the Supreme Court's Dobbs ruling, Rubio released a pro-family framework, stressing the "need to adopt pro-life policies that support families, rather than destroy them." Among the proposals in the Florida senator's framework were an expansion to the child tax credit; an allowance for new parents to pull forward up to three months of their Social Security benefits to finance paid parental leave; tax relief for adoptive parents; expanded support for pro-life crisis pregnancy centers; and the establishment of a grant program funding integrated mentoring services for poor mothers. Following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the Manhattan Institute's Brian Riedl prophesied to the Washington Post that Republicans would likely take a stronger lead on bolstering the family beyond just sparing the unborn from mass extermination. "I could see if Republicans decide that abortion politics are working against them, there could be a push for child-care benefits, more maternal health care, and better adoption services to make it easy and more affordable for more mothers to carry the babies to term," said Riedl. "It would put their money where their mouth is when challenged on making it easier for mothers to afford their children and get their health care." https://www.outkick.com/conor-mcgregor-no-charges-nba-finals-heat-sexual-assault-allegation/ CONOR MCGREGOR WON’T FACE CHARGES AFTER BEING ACCUSED OF SEXUAL ASSAULT DURING NBA FINALS Conor McGregor won’t face charges stemming from allegations he sexually assaulted a woman during the NBA Finals. McGregor was accused by a woman of sexually assaulting her in the bathroom of Kaseya Center during a Heat/Nuggets NBA Finals game, and the UFC star always maintained he didn’t do anything wrong. Prosecutors have now decided there is “insufficient evidence” to pursue the situation further, according to TMZ. Authorities also cited “contradicting and/or no corroborating witnesses” as another reason for why no charges will be brought. “In light of the above facts and circumstances, the State would not be able to satisfy its burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” prosecutors wrote in a closeout memo, according to the same TMZ report. The woman initially claimed security separated her from her friends to get her in a bathroom with McGregor, but video of the situation told a very different story. She was filmed entering the bathroom with McGregor on her own freewill, and nobody was forcing her to go anywhere. TMZ also reported she was seen at a club with McGregor AFTER they left the bathroom together where she alleged she was assaulted. An attendant outside the bathroom told authorities they “did not hear any signs of distress or sounds that would corroborate that whatever was occurring was not consensual.” McGregor’s attorney told TMZ, “After a thorough investigation, including a review of videos and interviews with eyewitnesses, the authorities have concluded that there is no case to pursue against my client, Conor McGregor. On behalf of my client, his family and his fans we are pleased this is now over.” The situation is now behind McGregor, and that means he can focus on getting back in the octagon.

House Committee on Natural Resources Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Securing Our Border, Saving Our National Parks Wednesday, October 18, 2023 | 3:00 PM NOTE: POSTPONED UNTIL 3:00 PM on October 18, 2023 On Wednesday, October 18, 2023, at 2:00 p.m., in room 1324 Longworth House Office Building, the Committee on Natural Resources, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations will hold an oversight hearing titled "Securing Our Border, Saving Our National Parks." Witnesses and Testimony PANEL I Mr. Michael Reynolds Deputy Director National Park Service DOI Washington, DC Mr. Chris French Deputy Chief National Forest System USDA Forest Service Washington, DC PANEL II • Ms. Julie Axelrod Director of Litigation Center for Immigration Studies Alexandria, Virginia Lt. John Nores Jr. (ret.) Special Operations Marijuana Enforcement Team California Department of Fish and Wildlife Morgan Hill, California The Hon. Verlon M. Jose Chairman Tohono O'odham Nation Sells, Arizona [Minority witness] Committee Notice: https://naturalresources.house.gov/calendar/eventsingle.aspx?EventID=414953

House Committee on Natural Resources Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Securing Our Border, Saving Our National Parks Wednesday, October 18, 2023 | 3:00 PM NOTE: POSTPONED UNTIL 3:00 PM on October 18, 2023 On Wednesday, October 18, 2023, at 2:00 p.m., in room 1324 Longworth House Office Building, the Committee on Natural Resources, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations will hold an oversight hearing titled "Securing Our Border, Saving Our National Parks." Witnesses and Testimony PANEL I Mr. Michael Reynolds Deputy Director National Park Service DOI Washington, DC Mr. Chris French Deputy Chief National Forest System USDA Forest Service Washington, DC PANEL II • Ms. Julie Axelrod Director of Litigation Center for Immigration Studies Alexandria, Virginia Lt. John Nores Jr. (ret.) Special Operations Marijuana Enforcement Team California Department of Fish and Wildlife Morgan Hill, California The Hon. Verlon M. Jose Chairman Tohono O'odham Nation Sells, Arizona [Minority witness] Committee Notice: https://naturalresources.house.gov/calendar/eventsingle.aspx?EventID=414953

House Committee on Natural Resources Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Securing Our Border, Saving Our National Parks Wednesday, October 18, 2023 | 3:00 PM NOTE: POSTPONED UNTIL 3:00 PM on October 18, 2023 On Wednesday, October 18, 2023, at 2:00 p.m., in room 1324 Longworth House Office Building, the Committee on Natural Resources, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations will hold an oversight hearing titled "Securing Our Border, Saving Our National Parks." Witnesses and Testimony PANEL I Mr. Michael Reynolds Deputy Director National Park Service DOI Washington, DC Mr. Chris French Deputy Chief National Forest System USDA Forest Service Washington, DC PANEL II • Ms. Julie Axelrod Director of Litigation Center for Immigration Studies Alexandria, Virginia Lt. John Nores Jr. (ret.) Special Operations Marijuana Enforcement Team California Department of Fish and Wildlife Morgan Hill, California The Hon. Verlon M. Jose Chairman Tohono O'odham Nation Sells, Arizona [Minority witness] Committee Notice: https://naturalresources.house.gov/calendar/eventsingle.aspx?EventID=414953

House Committee on Natural Resources Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Securing Our Border, Saving Our National Parks Wednesday, October 18, 2023 | 3:00 PM NOTE: POSTPONED UNTIL 3:00 PM on October 18, 2023 On Wednesday, October 18, 2023, at 2:00 p.m., in room 1324 Longworth House Office Building, the Committee on Natural Resources, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations will hold an oversight hearing titled "Securing Our Border, Saving Our National Parks." Witnesses and Testimony PANEL I Mr. Michael Reynolds Deputy Director National Park Service DOI Washington, DC Mr. Chris French Deputy Chief National Forest System USDA Forest Service Washington, DC PANEL II • Ms. Julie Axelrod Director of Litigation Center for Immigration Studies Alexandria, Virginia Lt. John Nores Jr. (ret.) Special Operations Marijuana Enforcement Team California Department of Fish and Wildlife Morgan Hill, California The Hon. Verlon M. Jose Chairman Tohono O'odham Nation Sells, Arizona [Minority witness] Committee Notice: https://naturalresources.house.gov/calendar/eventsingle.aspx?EventID=414953

House Committee on Natural Resources Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Securing Our Border, Saving Our National Parks Wednesday, October 18, 2023 | 3:00 PM NOTE: POSTPONED UNTIL 3:00 PM on October 18, 2023 On Wednesday, October 18, 2023, at 2:00 p.m., in room 1324 Longworth House Office Building, the Committee on Natural Resources, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations will hold an oversight hearing titled "Securing Our Border, Saving Our National Parks." Witnesses and Testimony PANEL I Mr. Michael Reynolds Deputy Director National Park Service DOI Washington, DC Mr. Chris French Deputy Chief National Forest System USDA Forest Service Washington, DC PANEL II • Ms. Julie Axelrod Director of Litigation Center for Immigration Studies Alexandria, Virginia Lt. John Nores Jr. (ret.) Special Operations Marijuana Enforcement Team California Department of Fish and Wildlife Morgan Hill, California The Hon. Verlon M. Jose Chairman Tohono O'odham Nation Sells, Arizona [Minority witness] Committee Notice: https://naturalresources.house.gov/calendar/eventsingle.aspx?EventID=414953