Biden in a Sunday social media post boasted that real wages, which reflect a worker's pay after accounting for inflation, are higher than before the pandemic. "That's Bidenomics," the Democrat said. Biden's claim, however, relies on data from February 2020, when real wages were just two cents lower than they are now. Over the next 11 months—from March 2020 to January 2021, when Biden took office—real wages rose, only to continuously decline under Biden. In total, real hourly wages have dropped more than 3 percent since Biden became president.

Biden is nonetheless insisting that his "Bidenomics" have clawed Americans out of a deep economic hole created by the coronavirus pandemic, a message that comes as he faces a difficult reelection campaign and abysmal approval ratings.

For now, Americans aren't buying it—just a third approve of the president's economic decisions, according to an Associated Press poll released in June. Many economists agree, contending that the U.S. economy is not in the shape Biden says it is.

Hillsdale College economics department chair Charles Steele, for example, told the Washington Free Beacon he "would be embarrassed" to brag about a two-cent jump in real hourly wages. "I'm reminded of when my wife and I each measured a course we were running and disagreed over where the half mile point was—by a distance of four feet. That's the kind of argument they are making," Steele said. "It is dishonest to pretend this shows 'Bidenomics' works. 'Bidenomics' has failed to match the economic growth of the Trump era."

EJ Antoni, a public finance economist at the Heritage Foundation, echoed Steele's rhetoric. Antoni told the Free Beacon that Biden is "either ignorant or intentionally deceptive" if he believes his economic policies have helped Americans.

"The administration seems to be implying that real earnings have clawed their way back up from depressed levels, but the opposite is true," Antoni said. "Real earnings are still down relative to when Biden took office."

Still, the White House defended Biden's Sunday claim, arguing that March 2020—when real wages were higher than they are now—is not an accurate portrayal of the pre-pandemic economy because the United States was already in a recession. As a result, the White House told the Free Beacon, the labor force was "substantially distorted" and did not reflect a "pre-pandemic normal."

That argument is "nonsensical," Antoni said. He noted that wage data are "gathered the week of the month containing the 12th," meaning the data for March 2020 would have been compiled before "government-imposed lockdowns and mass layoffs" plagued the U.S. economy.

"You can certainly consider March 2020 as pre-pandemic when it comes to wage data," Antoni told the Free Beacon. Using March 2020 as a pre-pandemic benchmark would mean real wages are not higher today than before the pandemic, as Biden claimed.

Biden is far from the only prominent Democrat to use misleading stats to pump up the economy. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.) on Monday said the "Biden economy" has produced "declining inflation," adding that "extreme MAGA Republican haters are having a meltdown" as a result. Under Biden, however, inflation in 2022 reached a 40-year high. While inflation is now slowly coming down from those record levels, prices remain high. Nearly 60 percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, according to a CNBC survey published in April.

For Job Creators Network president and CEO Alfredo Ortiz, Biden "is desperate to distract from the reality that average Americans have gotten poorer under his presidency."

"Over the course of his term, inflation has risen by approximately 16 percent, significantly faster than average wages," Ortiz told the Free Beacon. "In an attempt to sell 'Bidenomics,' Biden is making a series of misleading and false claims about Americans' wages. But as any consumer or small business can tell you, the reality is that 'Bidenomics' equals Bidenflation."

The post 'I Would Be Embarrassed': Economists Hammer Biden's Attempts to Spin Sky-High Inflation appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

California’s State Board of Education last week approved its "2023 Mathematics Framework for California Public Schools," a move that reimagines how the subject is taught in the state. Rather than traditional computational fluency involving speed and accuracy, the new math teaching guidelines provide a vague framework of "teaching around big ideas" through student-led "inquiry." The guidelines also approach math concepts, such as algebra, "visually and through words" and abandon "student tracking" practices, which provide learners access to more advanced instruction. California hopes those policies will eliminate differences in "school experiences," such as accelerated versus non-accelerated course pathways, in pursuit of more "equitable student mathematics success."

The guideline changes come as California students struggle. Only a third of the state's students and 23 percent of its eighth graders are proficient in math, according to data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress. California is nonetheless abandoning a traditional framework that once brought growth in student math achievement, particularly among minorities and low-income students.

Williamson Evers, a senior fellow at the Independent Institute who shaped education policy in Republican presidential administrations, told the Washington Free Beacon that California educators’ "obsession" with race is hurting students. Those educators, Evers argued, should help "individual kids succeed through hard work and talent" but are instead holding accelerated learners back from taking more advanced instruction.

In addition to abandoning student performance tracking—which assesses whether a student should take more, or less, rigorous coursework—California's new math guidelines also reject the traditional pathway of preparing students to take Algebra I by eighth grade. That pathway "undermines" student success, according to the guidelines.

Instead of preparing students for Algebra I in eighth grade, the new guidelines recommend that most students wait until ninth grade to take it, effectively limiting students from reaching Calculus before graduating high school. Students who are highly proficient in math and wish to attend more selective colleges or universities typically need to pass Calculus in high school, which in most cases requires taking Algebra I in eighth grade. Under California’s new guidelines, however, a high-achieving student must enroll in summer school—or complete two years of math in a single academic calendar year—to reach Calculus before graduation. The guidelines also allow schools the possibility to compress Algebra I, Algebra II, and Pre-calculus to eliminate "redundancies," though the new math framework admits that "repetition" adds "value."

Between 1999 and 2013, when 67 percent of California students took Algebra I in the eighth grade, black and Latino students saw their rates of success jump five- and six-fold, respectively, according to research from Evers and the late Ze'ev Wurman, another Independent Institute fellow. Low-income students saw their achievement double. Evers and Wurman credited high expectations, as well as quality teaching methods and curriculum materials, for the increase. "It wasn’t perfection, every kid wasn’t getting an ‘A,'" Evers told the Free Beacon. "But they were doing very well."

The California Department of Education said its newly approved framework "does not limit Algebra I to ninth grade." But to discourage widespread enrollment in eighth-grade algebra, the framework’s diagram that lays out eighth grade course pathways omits algebra as an option. When the Free Beacon pressed the department about this, it admitted that it retroactively adopted "amendments" after the California State Board of Education approved the framework on July 12.

Besides amending the traditional Algebra I pathway, California’s math framework also promotes taking math-lite data science courses rather than the more rigorous Algebra II in high school, something hundreds of California university professors have argued will fail to adequately prepare students for college.

In addition to holding back higher-performing students, California’s new math curriculum guidelines push "teaching towards social justice," which the policy says begins with educator awareness that "mathematics plays a role in the power structures and privileges that exist within our society." The math curriculum guidelines argue that educators who are "committed to social justice work" will "equip students with a toolkit and mindset to identify and combat inequities with mathematics."

Evers argued in a memo last week that parents and taxpayers "want math to be taught sensibly," adding that it’s "a scientific reality that children need to learn math facts and standard algorithms." California’s massive student population, comprising of close to six million students, will influence practices around the rest of the country, Evers concluded.

The post 'Teaching Toward Social Justice': California's New Math Framework Aims to Create 'Equitable Outcomes' Between Students appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Who said it: Heather Boushey, an economic adviser to President Joe Biden, during a Monday sit-down with CNBC. Boushey argued that Biden's American Rescue Plan couldn't have been the "real cause" of inflation because prices in the United States did not rise higher than "other countries that did not have the same policies." Instead, Boushey said, the "global pandemic" caused equal inflation in the United States and abroad.

Why it matters: Sky-high inflation meant the average U.S. household in 2022 had to spend an extra $8,600 in typical household expenses, according to an estimate from Joint Economic Committee Republicans. Biden's reelection chances in 2024 will in large part hinge on the president's ability to convince voters that the American economy is nonetheless thriving—or at least that the nation's economic woes are not the administration's fault. Just one in three U.S. adults approve of Biden's handling of the economy, according to an Associated Press poll published in June.

Context: Biden and his top officials have long balked at Republican criticisms that American Rescue Plan spending caused consumer prices to rise. Instead, they argue, corporate greed and pandemic-driven supply chain disruptions were the "real" catalysts. After Democrats passed the plan in March 2021, Biden repeatedly dismissed claims that the stimulus spending raised consumer prices. "There's nobody suggesting there's unchecked inflation on the way—no serious economist," Biden said in July 2021. Nearly a year later, Biden told the Associated Press, "The idea that [the American Rescue Plan] caused inflation is bizarre."

Analysis: Prior to the American Rescue Plan's passage, Biden's own Treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, urged administration officials to scale back the bill over fears it would exacerbate inflationary pressures. Economist Larry Summers, who served in both the Clinton and Obama administrations, echoed Yellen's concerns. Summers questioned the American Rescue Plan's size and later called the measure the "least responsible macroeconomic policy" in decades.

"There is a chance that macroeconomic stimulus on a scale closer to World War II levels than normal recession levels," Summers wrote in a February 2021 column for the Washington Post, "will set off inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation, with consequences for the value of the dollar and financial stability."

During the 2008 recession, the Obama administration provided around 55 million Americans with roughly $13.75 billion in direct payments. Meanwhile, the American Rescue Plan provided around 168 million Americans with approximately $401.5 billion in direct stimulus payments. Once that spending set in, core inflation in the United States skyrocketed, prompting members of Biden's own party to acknowledge the plan's inflationary impact. During a June 2021 town hall, Rep. Kim Schrier (D., Wash.) said Biden's stimulus spending resulted in "a lot more people buying things," which she said would "cause prices to go up." In October, meanwhile, then-House majority whip Jim Clyburn (D., S.C.) said that "all of us knew" the stimulus spending would lead to "rising costs."

"Any time you put more money into the economy, prices tend to rise," Clyburn said.

Boushey's argument that America's inflation did not exceed price hikes seen in other nations also falls flat. A March 2022 report from economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco found that U.S. core inflation from early 2021 onward grew at a higher rate than the average price hikes seen in nine other wealthy countries, including France, Germany, Canada, and the United Kingdom. "These differences in inflation readings cannot be explained by measurement issues," the report said. It went on to argue that "fiscal support measures," such as the American Rescue Plan, "may have contributed to this divergence by raising inflation about 3 percentage points by the end of 2021."

Printing money leads to inflation—and everyone knows it.

The post FACT CHECK: Biden Admin Says Its Stimulus Spending Didn't Spike Inflation appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

HereTogether Oregon last week spearheaded an effort to "continue funding" an "Office of Equity and Inclusion" in Clackamas County, which sits just southeast of downtown Portland. While local leaders have considered slashing the more than $828,000 it will take to run that office in the upcoming fiscal year, arguing that the spending is wasteful, HereTogether Oregon disagrees. It rallied hundreds of other local groups to voice support for the equity office in a July 6 letter, arguing that the office is "essential" for the Portland area's "continued progress, unity, and success."

HereTogether Oregon's stated mission is to address the "Portland region's homeless crisis." That crisis has spiraled this year—in Multnomah County, which includes downtown Portland, the homeless count jumped 20 percent in 2023, and Oregon as a whole saw one of the nation's largest spikes in homelessness from 2020 to 2022.

HereTogether Oregon acknowledges that increased homelessness in Portland has created a "crisis on our streets," a crisis it hopes to combat through "inclusion." Its website boasts that the group places "equity at the center of our work," given that it says the homelessness crisis "is exacerbated by racism, homophobia and transphobia, sexism, ableism, classism, and xenophobia." It also pledges to "bring diverse voices to this work and create a culture of inclusion." Local groups that signed the HereTogether Oregon letter in defense of DEI spending include a climate change nonprofit, a guitar retailer, and a local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Clackamas County commissioner Mark Shull, who first proposed the motion to strike down the funding for the county's equity office, said HereTogether Oregon "should be focusing its efforts on building their ability to alleviate the dire homeless situation in Oregon."

"The woke ideology is about gaining political power, and [equity] is a tool for them to gain that power," Shull told the Washington Free Beacon. "The words equity, inclusion, and diversity are friendly words that naïve people are attracted to, but for the woke, the words really mean one thing: applying unequal standards to ensure preferential outcomes for individuals and groups based on race, color of skin, sex, or gender identity."

HereTogether Oregon defended its decision to rally local groups behind the equity office funding, insisting that the office would help "effectively address homelessness and housing insecurity."

"HereTogether's work is in line with the Office of Equity and Inclusion's vision: a Clackamas County that is healthy, safe, and welcoming for all," the nonprofit told the Free Beacon.

Oregon's homelessness population grew nearly 23 percent from 2020 to 2022, a figure that massively outpaces the national average of less than 1 percent, according to an assessment from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Oregon also outpaced many other West Coast states, the report showed, including California, which saw just a 6 percent increase in homeless individuals over the same two-year period.

While HereTogether Oregon says the local equity office will help solve this problem, its letter arguing in favor of the office does not mention the word "homeless."

Shull and other county commissioners are set to further discuss the equity funding during an August 1 policy session. Shull insisted that HereTogether Oregon's letter would not impact that process.

"In the past, Clackamas County has done a fine job in supporting the needs of its residents … without an 'equality department,'" Shull said. "The letter we received from HereTogether Oregon, with the many signatures, is nothing more than progressive left political pressure [from] a minority with a loud mouth."

The post Liberal Nonprofit Finds Solution to Portland's Homeless Crisis: A Million Dollars for 'Equity and Inclusion' appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Oregon Democratic governor Tina Kotek on June 27 appointed Charlene Williams to become the state's next education director, lauding Williams in a press release as "exactly the leader our state education system needs at this moment." Williams, a former deputy superintendent who is described in a 2019 bio as a "social justice advocate," has long pushed controversial "equity" policies inspired by prominent critical race theorists.

One district under Williams's purview, for example, in 2018 implemented its first ever "equity" policy, which required teachers to "own" their "privilege" and commit to dismantling "practices and policies that perpetuate oppression." Williams led teacher trainings to advance the policy, one of which entailed a semester-long discussion on Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility, which argues that white people are "conditioned into a white supremacist worldview because it is the bedrock of our society." One third-grade teacher who went through Williams's training said the district was "trying to get kids to take stock of whiteness and what that means."

Williams's appointment comes as Oregon students struggle to meet academic benchmarks. Its student achievement levels in basic knowledge and skills are "significantly" below national averages, according to the state. Williams will now work to improve those achievement levels by overseeing the Oregon public school system and managing its funding. Oregon Democrats in June funneled a record $10.2 billion into the state's school fund, which is expected to reach $15.3 billion when local tax revenue is included.

"I recognize the significance of my appointment to this role and the immense amount of work we have ahead of us," Williams said following her appointment, adding that she is particularly excited to build "partnerships with students, educators, and families across Oregon that advance equity."

As assistant superintendent of the Portland-area Camas School District between 2016 and 2022, Williams helped usher in the district’s first ever "equity policy," which many district parents went on to blast as overly "woke" during a May 2021 school board meeting. One parent slammed the policy as an effort to push a "hidden agenda" on students, asking if Williams was working to implement "the 1619 Project in disguise," a reference to a piece of work from New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones that "directly challenges the narrative of American exceptionalism."

Williams's equity policy promoted the use of race and sex-based affinity groups and called for an "emphasis on correcting historical mis- and dis-information," according to parents. Kotek specifically praised Williams for establishing the so-called affinity groups, which effectively act to segregate individuals based on immutable characteristics, such as race. In one case, a Massachusetts school district settled a lawsuit over its affinity groups, pledging to ensure that the groups are open to all students, not just those of a certain race or sex.

As deputy superintendent at Washington-based Evergreen Public Schools, Williams similarly helped facilitate a new strategic plan, "every aspect" of which had "equity threaded through it," according to the district's superintendent. District leaders reportedly said the plan, along with Williams's work to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion, helped the district see things through a new "equity lens."

During her time at Camas School District, meanwhile, Williams gave a TEDxYouth talk that encouraged listeners to inject race into public schools and slammed the idea of a "colorblind" curriculum, arguing it makes white people "blind to injustice." Educators, Williams said, have an "obligation" to "disrupt and repair" the current school system through antiracist efforts, arguing that "all things being equal does not mean equitable outcomes." "You are part of the problem, and you are part of the solution," Williams said.

Kotek's office did not return a request for comment on Williams's social justice emphasis and how it may impact her performance as education director. Williams will take over as the state's interim director on July 10, a title she will hold until September, when Oregon's senate will take up her confirmation vote.

The post Meet Oregon's Next Education Director: A 'Social Justice Advocate' Who Wants Teachers to 'Own' Their 'Privilege' appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Cooper's veto nullifies the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, which the state's GOP-controlled legislature passed last month with support from two Democrats. Cooper disagreed with those party-mates, arguing in a statement that the bill would inflame political "culture wars" by "making broad, uninformed decisions about an extremely small number of vulnerable children."

Should the North Carolina legislature overturn the veto, the state would join at least 22 others that have barred transgender athletes from competing on sports teams that align with their gender identity, rather than their biological sex. Proponents of the policy argue that biological men could cause physical harm when competing in women's sports, an issue that has already played out in North Carolina. Last year, a biological male seriously injured a female opponent during a state high school volleyball game. The girl, Payton McNabb, said she battled a concussion and neck injury after taking a spike to the face.

Former collegiate swimmer Riley Gaines, who competed against national transgender swimmer Lia Thomas and appeared alongside McNabb in April to support the North Carolina bill, slammed Cooper for vetoing the measure.

"Hey Gov, reminder that this happened to a girl in your state. She is partially paralyzed on her right side and her vision is still impaired," Gaines said Wednesday of McNabb. "It's not me who has to go to sleep tonight knowing I'm enabling this." McNabb similarly criticized the veto, saying she felt her injury had been "discounted."

"Today Gov Cooper discarded the safety and opportunities of female athletes for the feelings of males," McNabb tweeted.

In addition to his argument that the policy hurts "vulnerable children," Cooper said the transgender sports bill is "neither fair nor needed" and appeared to be "for campaign purposes only." In at least one case, however, a Democrat that Cooper endorsed in 2022 supported the measure. That lawmaker, state senator Val Applewhite, said that after her vote she received "frightening" messages from supporters of transgender athletes, including one who called her a "transphobic cisgender whore."

"I'm telling you, people are afraid to speak publicly," Applewhite told the Carolina Journal. "Like to say, 'Val, I agree with you,' because you become labeled as transphobic or you're met with backlash. Even the coaches and parents that I spoke to, they don't want to say it publicly."

The post North Carolina Governor, a Democrat, Vetoes Bill That Would Protect Women's Sports From Biological Men appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Pittsburgh Public Schools, the state's second-largest district, hosts on its website an array of "racial equity learning resources" that train educators on topics such as "whiteness" and how to be "culturally responsive as a white teacher." One resource includes curriculum materials developed from critical race theorist Ibram X. Kendi's Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, which argues that "racist ideas have been stamped" into the nation's "Constitution, laws, policies, practices, and beliefs of segregationists and assimilationists." Lessons inspired by the book ask students to explain how America's government is "emblematic" of the statement, "Racism is the bedrock of the USA." They also state that "meritocracy and the American dream narrative are rooted in whiteness."

The district's push to provide teachers with training centered on critical race theory comes as Pennsylvania Democrats make sweeping changes to state standards for teachers. Democratic governor Josh Shapiro's administration last year released "Culturally-Relevant and Sustaining Education" guidelines, which require educators to recognize schools' "inequities and institutional biases" before they can become licensed to teach in the state. For Pennsylvania lawmaker Barbara Gleim (R.), those guidelines are part of a years-long push to support "race theory teaching" through "multi-level educational training webinars and embedded class indoctrination."

"The entrance of race theory into Pittsburgh Public Schools is not surprising," Gleim told the Washington Free Beacon, "as parents have been attending school board meetings across the state with evidence that school assignments are riddled with questions about diversity, equity, and inclusion, social and emotional learning, social justice issues, and secular viewpoints concerning gender ideology."

Pittsburgh Public Schools did not return a request for comment.

In addition to its Kendi-inspired curriculum materials, Pittsburgh Public Schools' teacher trainings include a webinar that labels "middle to upper class white, heteronormative, Judeo-Christian, able-bodied, English-speaking" men as those complicit in promoting "whiteness." The training describes "whiteness" as a "place of advantage, privilege, or domination" that shapes "institutions, policies, and social relations," which mirrors a key tenet of critical race theory. The educator training resource also argues that individuals are racist even if they don’t intend to be and the only remedy is proactive efforts at "antiracism." In line with this thinking, teachers are told not to teach "colorblindness."

The district's teacher trainings also explore at length the Black Lives Matter movement. The webinars explain how to discuss the movement with students, particularly in order to "correct any misconceptions they might have about the movement." One misconception, the teacher trainings suggest, is that Black Lives Matter is violent, an argument that washes over the fiery riots that took place during the summer of 2020, which caused more than a billion dollars in damage and took several lives. The training resources also encourage teachers to talk about social justice protests with their students because they "have a really critical role" in developing patterns of behavior "that will hopefully carry throughout [a student’s] life." Another resource asks teachers if their students can explain the "role of civil disobedience in a democratic society."

"Dismantling Racism in Education," another material presented in the district's "racial equity learning resources," calls on "white educators" to "do the work that’s necessary to disrupt whiteness and white supremacy" within themselves and their classrooms. A video for educators on how to be "culturally responsive as a white teacher," meanwhile, pushes teachers to be activists for "critical consciousness." A training on "the spirit murdering of black children" argues that teachers "‘spirit murder’ the souls of black children every day through systemic, institutionalized, anti-Black, state-sanctioned violence." According to that resource, "school practices and officials are slowly killing Black children by murdering their spirits through intentional actions, physical assaults, and verbal stabbings."

Socialist intellectual Howard Zinn also inspires resources for Pittsburgh Public School officials as well. The Zinn Education Project embodies the socialist ideals of its namesake and claims to provide "a more accurate, complex, and engaging understanding of history than is found in traditional textbooks and curricula."

The district's open embrace of critical race theory stands in contrast to other Pennsylvania districts that have implemented controversial materials in a more subtle manner. Philadelphia's Great Valley School District, for example, denied using critical race theory materials as it simultaneously distributed a webinar to dozens of teachers in the district aimed at guiding them on how to teach students critical race theory under the radar.

Pittsburgh Public Schools, on the other hand, states openly on its website that Social Emotional Learning, a teaching pedagogy rooted in social justice narratives, is "the foundation on which academic learning takes place." It is "equally important," the district says, to master those "soft skills" as it is to master important academic skills such as reading and math. Additionally, the district’s website offers suggested materials for students on various race-focused subjects.

"As a parent and former school board member, I have grave concerns—especially for parents, who ultimately have the last say about what is being taught to their children," Gleim told the Free Beacon. The Republican lawmaker introduced a bill last month seeking to bolster parents' rights and end the requirement that teachers "know and acknowledge that biases exist" in education in order to obtain their teaching licenses. "In most areas of the state, including Pittsburgh, reading and math scores have declined significantly, yet the emphasis on student outcomes remains on these social soft skills and health-related issues that many parents believe to be in their purview of responsibility," she said.

The post 'Building an Antiracist America': Top Pennsylvania School District Pushes Teachers To Infuse Critical Race Theory Into Their Lessons appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

A Small Business Administration inspector general released the numbers Tuesday, finding that "fraudulent actors" stole more than $136 billion from the Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program and $64 billion from the Paycheck Protection Program, two government initiatives that worked to keep small businesses afloat during the pandemic. Those figures mark a whopping 17 percent of all funds issued under the two programs, with a third of all Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program funds being stolen, according to the report.

While fraud in federal spending programs is nothing new, the numbers mark a substantial increase in past projections of stolen funds under the two initiatives. The Small Business Administration inspector general previously estimated that roughly $106 billion was stolen from the Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program and Paycheck Protection Program, according to the Associated Press.

The race to get COVID funds out the door left federal pandemic relief programs ripe for fraud—the government lost roughly 10 percent of all pandemic relief funds to fraud and improper payments, according to an Associated Press estimate, and those figures will likely continue to grow. Inspector General Mike Ware earlier this month told the outlet that he has tens of thousands of "actionable leads into pandemic relief fraud," leads that would take a century to sort through.

"We will continue to assess fraud until we're finished with the investigations on these things," Ware said.

Scammers, in some cases, used fake Social Security numbers from dead people and federal prisoners to exploit COVID unemployment relief. The Biden administration in 2021 and 2022 paid dead people almost a billion dollars in improper payments, a June Free Beacon report revealed. In one case, a Missouri man "collected $200,000 in checks for his dead mother for 26 years before the government found out, while a Michigan man collected $500,000 under the name of a dead relative," fiscal watchdog group OpenTheBooks found.

In other cases, the Small Business Administration disbursed funds to seedy businesses. It sent $117,000 to six massage parlors that were later busted for sex crimes, the Washington Free Beacon reported last year. Now, former executive director of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee Bob Westbrooks is hammering the federal government for its failure to uphold the "integrity" of its pandemic programs.

"The government can walk and chew gum at the same time," Westbrooks told the Associated Press. "They should have put basic fraud controls in place to verify people's identity and to make sure targeted relief was getting into the right hands."

The post Fraudsters Stole More Than $200 Billion From Two COVID Relief Programs, Watchdog Estimates appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Suarez's comments came during a Hugh Hewitt Show appearance, during which Hewitt asked Suarez if he would "be talking about the Uyghurs" during his campaign, a reference to the more than one million Muslims held in Chinese concentration camps. "The what? What's a Uyghur?" Suarez responded. When Hewitt told the Miami mayor he should "get smart" on the issue, Suarez promised he'd "look at—what was it? What'd you call it? A Weeble?"

Hewitt, of course, was not referring to the line of roly-poly children's toys known as Weebles, which Hasbro subsidiary Playskool produced in various egg-shaped sizes from 1971-2011. "The Uyghurs, you really need to know about the Uyghurs," Hewitt clarified. "You gotta talk about it every day." Suarez insisted he would do so, touting his status as a "fast learner."

'I'll look at — what’d you call it, a ‘Weeble?’"

— 2024 GOP presidential candidate Francis Suarez on Uyghurs pic.twitter.com/wAW8lGg0IK

— The Recount (@therecount) June 27, 2023

Suarez’s Tuesday faux-pas harks back to Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson’s so-called Aleppo moment. During a 2016 MSNBC interview, Johnson was questioned about what he would do if elected regarding the embattled Syrian city that was at the center of a civil war between the government and several rebel factions. "What is Aleppo?" Johnson asked.

Suarez blamed the gaffe on a listening comprehension issue, telling the Washington Free Beacon he is "well aware of the suffering of the Uyghurs in China" but "didn't recognize the pronunciation my friend Hugh Hewitt used."

"That's on me," the Republican said in a statement. Hewitt, however, criticized Suarez over the exchange following the interview, calling it a "huge blind spot."

"‘What's a Uyghur?’ is not where I expect people running for president to say when asked about the ongoing genocide in China," the radio host tweeted.

Suarez, who is considered to be a centrist, has long sparred with his state's governor, fellow GOP presidential hopeful Gov. Ron DeSantis (Fla.). Suarez in 2021 lamented that DeSantis would not let him enact a "commonsense" mask mandate in Miami and months later said he would not direct his police department to enforce a state law that made it a felony to willingly transport an illegal immigrant. "We don't usually get involved in the federal immigration system," Suarez noted. Suarez has also attacked DeSantis on education, calling the governor's bill to limit sex education in kindergarten through third grade "excessive."

In 2018, meanwhile, Suarez publicly touted his vote for DeSantis's gubernatorial opponent, Democrat Andrew Gillum. After losing to DeSantis, Gillum was found vomiting in a Florida hotel room, alongside a gay escort and self-described "pornstar performer" who overdosed on methamphetamines. Gillum, who has been married to his wife since 2009, denied ever using drugs that night and came out as bisexual months after the ordeal.

The post Miami Mayor Francis Suarez Asks: ‘What’s a Uyghur?’ appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

President Joe Biden's director of national intelligence published the declassified portion of the report on Friday, days after the agency blew past Congress's June 18 deadline to release the information, as established under the COVID-19 Origin Act of 2023. The report was supposed to lay out the administration's intelligence on China's now-infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology and the lab's potential links to the COVID pandemic's origin. But GOP lawmakers are expressing major dissatisfaction with the report, arguing the information provided was insufficient and "obscures more than it illuminates."

Ohio Republican congressman Mike Turner, for example, said during a Sunday CBS interview that the lackluster report violates the COVID-19 Origin Act and will likely lead to a "battle" between Congress and the Biden administration's director of national intelligence, Avril Haines. "This is not sufficient. … We want the intelligence released, not their opinion about the intelligence," Turner said. "We passed a law saying, 'Declassify it.' It's the law of the land. Release this so the American public can see it."

Friday's report comes after years of speculation over the Wuhan Institute of Virology's culpability in the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. To date, evidence shows that risky gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses—including research funded by U.S. grant programs—took place at the Wuhan lab ahead of the pandemic's emergence in the United States. GOP critics have subsequently accused the federal government's medical experts of working to obfuscate the institute's potential role in starting the pandemic. Former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases head Anthony Fauci, for example, repeatedly dismissed concerns that the virus leaked from a lab in Wuhan, going as far as to commission a paper to "disprove" the theory.

In addition to Turner, Coronavirus Subcommittee chairman Brad Wenstrup (R., Ohio) on Saturday blasted the Biden administration report, with the subcommittee's Twitter account calling it "deficient and disappointing." Washington Republican congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers, meanwhile, said the "Friday night 'news' dump of a mere 10-page summary is a slap in the face of Americans who deserve full transparency about what information the government possesses regarding the origins of COVID-19."

"President Biden should follow through with what Congress has required: to declassify all information we need to help answer one of the most important public health questions of our lifetime," McMorris Rodgers said in a statement. "Perhaps the most important lesson we've learned throughout the pandemic is that our government must be honest and forthcoming if we are ever to restore public trust and obtain justice for the victims of the pandemic. … This report fails to live up to either."

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence did not return a request for comment.

Republicans have specifically criticized the report's failure to name the scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology who in late 2019 were among the first to fall ill with COVID-like symptoms. Just days before the report's release, news reports confirmed the names of those scientists, who all reportedly worked on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan lab. While Friday's report confirmed that scientists at the lab did indeed fall ill with COVID-like symptoms in late 2019, it did not identify who those scientists were.

"The law explicitly requires the director of national intelligence to release details on these researchers, including their names, symptoms, and involvement in coronavirus research at the [Wuhan Institute of Virology]," Wisconsin Republican congressman Mike Gallagher said in a Saturday statement. "This DNI release does none of that and, in many ways, obscures more than it illuminates."

Friday's 10-page report also highlights "biosafety concerns" at the Wuhan lab and confirms that "genetic engineering" of coronaviruses did take place there prior to COVID-19's emergence in the United States. The report notes that Wuhan lab researchers used genetic engineering techniques that make it hard to detect if the changes were intentional but nonetheless asserts that "almost all" intelligence agencies believe COVID-19 was not genetically modified.

In addition to deriding the report's lack of transparency, Kansas Republican senator Roger Marshall, a member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, called for the report's authors to testify before Congress.

"As we've seen nearly every step of the way while trying to uncover the origins of COVID-19 virus, the Biden administration has failed to be transparent with the American people and members of Congress," Marshall told the New York Post. "Today's release of the declassified documents is late and does not provide the full picture of what our intelligence agencies know."

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A National Assessment of Educational Progress report published Wednesday found that math and reading scores among U.S. 13-year-olds are at their lowest levels in decades. Cardona responded to those findings by praising "positive results" in student achievement, arguing that the "historic investments and resources" provided by President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan would "reverse the damage." In school districts across the country, however, a large portion of those funds did not go to more tutoring or new school materials. Instead, they funded bonuses for teachers and administrators.

In North Carolina, for example, the Wake County Public School System from March 2020 to April 2023 spent 78.5 percent of its total pandemic relief funding on salaries and employee benefits, according to the district. Chicago Public Schools—a district where union teachers repeatedly refused to return to the classroom during COVID—similarly spent 77 percent of its pandemic money on staff bonuses, salaries, and benefits. In Tennessee, meanwhile, the state's comptroller found that a district funneled nearly $28,000 to one administrator alone. And in Nebraska, Lincoln Public Schools attempted to use COVID relief dollars to issue across-the-board teacher bonuses, but the state's Department of Education said no.

The use of so-called emergency COVID funds to pay for five-figure staff bonuses reflects the stark divide between Republicans and Democrats on education policy. Democrats generally balk at school choice, shooting down taxpayer funding for charter schools in favor of additional public school spending. For Republicans, that spending is already at an all-time high with little to show for it and showcases the need to pursue alternative options rather than funneling more money to powerful teachers' unions working to pay out their members.

"It turns out the hundreds of billions in taxpayer money that was 'direly needed to safely reopen schools and improve infrastructure' was a lie," Nicki Neily, founder and president of parental rights group Parents Defending Education, said in response to districts' using federal COVID funds to pay for staff bonuses. "The same teachers' unions that kept schools closed are now misusing the taxpayers' money to smooth things over with their growingly dissatisfied members through bonuses and raises. What a slap in the face to families."

The Department of Education did not return a request for comment.

Biden's American Rescue Plan sent tens of billions of dollars to K-12 schools, money the administration said would support efforts to "reopen K-12 schools safely" and "equitably expand opportunities for students who need it most." Two-thirds of the money, however, was disbursed almost immediately and thus went to schools before the administration could approve their plans on what to do with the money. The remaining third went to schools after each state submitted plans meant to ensure the funding would be used responsibly. None of those spending plans mentioned teacher salary or bonuses, and the Biden administration said federal COVID funds should not go to "bonuses, merit pay, or similar expenditures, unless related to disruptions or closures resulting from COVID-19."

Wednesday's National Assessment of Education Progress report details how 13-year-olds scored on a federal standardized test that focuses on basic reading and arithmetic. Students scored an average of just 256 out of 500 in reading and just 271 out of 500 in math. Those scores are the lowest seen since 2004 for reading and 1990 for math.

Well-funded school districts are not immune to those struggles. Baltimore's public schools, for example, rank among the worst in the state despite their status as some of the highest-funded in the country. The city spends around $20,000 per student, yet 93 percent and 79 percent of its students are not proficient in math and reading, respectively, according to a report released by the state’s education department earlier this year. Taxpayers launched a lawsuit in January 2022 alleging the district falsely inflated its student enrollment to gain more funding and falsified student records to push failing students through the system.

Still, Cardona argued Wednesday that America's children are in good hands.

"The latest data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress is further evidence of what the Biden-Harris administration recognized from Day One: that the pandemic would have a devastating impact on students’ learning across the country and that it would take years of effort and investment to reverse the damage as well as address the 11-year decline that preceded it," he said in a statement. "While this latest data reminds us how far we still need to go, I'm encouraged that the historic investments and resources provided by the American Rescue Plan and the Department of Education are beginning to show positive results."

The post Biden Admin Says Its COVID Spending for Schools Will Boost Test Scores. Districts Used the Funds for Staff Bonuses. appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

The report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, written as a result of the COVID-19 Origin Act of 2023, laid out what the intelligence community knows regarding China’s now-infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology, its capabilities, and the actions of its scientists. Though there was much anticipation for the report, it fails to elucidate much new information but states that "all" intel agencies continue to consider both a natural and laboratory-associated origin theory.

The declassified report states that several scientists who worked on animal respiratory viruses at the Wuhan Institute fell sick with symptoms "consistent with but not diagnostic of COVID-19" in the fall of 2019. The report also identified a lack of bio-safety measures being taken by staff prior to the pandemic in handling SARS-like coronaviruses, and therefore increasing their risk for accidental exposure to viruses.

Lawmakers have long derided China for hindering investigations into the origins of COVID-19. The report came on the heels of revelations that Ben Hu, a scientist who worked on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute, was one of the first people to fall sick with what is now believed to be COVID-19. Both Hu and his boss, Shi Zhengli, who ran the bat coronavirus lab at the institute, adamantly denied Hu was sick in late 2019 and that their lab contributed to the COVID outbreak seen in Wuhan in late 2019.

"I swear with my life, [the virus] has nothing to do with the lab," Zhengli said on Chinese social media shortly after the virus emerged in the United States.

SARS-like coronavirus experiments were taking place as early as January 2019 in labs at the Wuhan Institute that were not ranked among their most secure, the report indicated. There was also a shortage of appropriately trained personnel on biocontainment protocols. Months after the coronavirus first emerged, the Wuhan Institute’s high-containment laboratories were found to have aging equipment, a lack of disinfectant, and a lackluster ventilation system. The COVID-19 virus was isolated by scientists at the Wuhan Institute in December 2019, roughly a month before the virus hit the United States.

The integrity of China’s disease control agency has been placed into question by the National Institutes of Health, as was reported earlier this month by the Washington Free Beacon. In 2019, the United States funded research integrity training for scientists at China’s Centers for Disease Control and other Chinese research institutions, citing concerns over "research misconduct," "inadequate ethical review," and "publication fraud."

Though the report states that "almost all" intelligence agencies agreed the virus was not engineered, the report admitted "that some scientists" at the Wuhan Institute did genetically engineer coronaviruses and that the techniques used made it "difficult to detect intentional changes." But the report says that only "most" of the intelligence agencies were of the consensus that the virus was not "laboratory-adapted."

The report also confirms the presence of Chinese military scientists at the Wuhan Institute and indicated that some of the research conducted by Chinese military and civilian scientists there included work with coronaviruses. It chronicles a number of "what if" scenarios that leave the door open to the idea that COVID started in a lab and potentially by the Chinese military for bio-weapon or national defense purposes.

Classified portions of the report were not released publicly.

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Stonesifer has been a prolific donor to Democrats for more than two decades, having first contributed $500 to former Speaker of the House Tom Foley (D., Wash.) in 1993. Stonesifer's status as a prominent liberal donor only grew from there. The Post's new head honcho from 2008 to 2016 combined to give more than $122,000 to Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and Stonesifer in 2020 gave President Joe Biden's campaign and joint fundraising committee more than $100,000. Stonesifer in total has contributed more than $625,000 to Democrats and liberal organizations since 1993, according to an analysis of campaign finance disclosures.

Stonesifer's status as the Post's interim CEO, a role she accepted earlier this month after longtime top executive and publisher Fred Ryan announced his resignation, will likely do little to quash accusations that the newspaper's owner, fellow Democratic donor and billionaire founder of Amazon Jeff Bezos, influences editorial decisions. Stonesifer is a longtime friend of Bezos, having served on Amazon's board since 1997. While Stonesifer told Post employees that she expects her tenure to be short, her mark on the newspaper will be felt for decades, given that Bezos tasked Stonesifer to hire the paper's next publisher and CEO.

"We have a couple really important jobs to fill, starting with the publisher and CEO, and a couple of other big roles," Stonesifer said earlier this month. "There are changes across the organization the last couple of years, and just ensuring the team and the culture are in place for the decade ahead is really the number one goal."

The Post declined to comment on Stonesifer's political contributions. Stonesifer is far from the only Post leader with extensive ties to Democratic politics. In December, the newspaper hired Nike veteran Kathy Baird to serve as its chief communications officer, touting Baird's service on the board of IllumiNative. The nonprofit is a liberal dark money-funded "racial justice organization" that encourages elementary school students to fight for universal health care and other left-wing priorities, the Free Beacon reported in December.

In addition to Stonesifer's staunch support for Obama, Clinton, and Biden, Stonesifer has funneled more than $170,000 to the Democratic National Committee and contributed thousands to prominent Senate Democrats, including John Fetterman (Pa.), John Hickenlooper (Colo.), Jon Ossoff (Ga.), Raphael Warnock (Ga.), and Mark Kelly (Ariz.). Stonesifer has also praised the newspaper's coverage of former president Donald Trump's indictment, saying she is "one of those people who devours the Metro section every morning."

Beyond Stonesifer's status as a major Democratic donor, the new Post CEO is known to rub elbows with the world's wealthiest liberal philanthropists. After working for years as a top-level executive at Microsoft, Stonesifer helped establish the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is the largest private philanthropic foundation in the world and routinely funds liberal groups such as Planned Parenthood. In 2009, meanwhile, Stonesifer reportedly attended what NBC News called a "secret meeting" held in New York City among a who's who of the world’s wealthiest individuals. Attendees included Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Michael Bloomberg, George Soros, Eli Broad, Oprah Winfrey, David Rockefeller Sr., and Ted Turner.

Stonesifer also spent time as the first chair of Obama's White House Council for Community Solutions. Stonesifer claimed Obama nearly picked her to be his domestic policy adviser and said she proudly displayed a portrait of the former president during her time working at a D.C.-based food pantry and family-services nonprofit.

While former Post executive editor Martin Baron has argued that the newspaper has "a very important role in making sure that there is light" on America's government and elected officials, the paper has refrained in recent years from engaging in critical coverage of Biden. Just 100 days into the Democrat's presidency, the Post opted to end its practice of maintaining a database of the president’s false and misleading claims—which it did during the entire four years Trump was in office. The Post’s fact-checker, Glenn Kessler, said Biden does not lie enough to warrant the database's existence.

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The state's liberal attorney general, Matt Platkin, on Wednesday filed lawsuits against Middletown, Marlboro, and Manalapan school districts after their boards passed policies that require teachers to notify parents if their child chooses to exhibit a change in his or her gender identity. Parents would be informed, for example, if their child chooses to be called by a different name or seeks to use a different bathroom or locker room than the one that coincides with that child's biological sex.

The lawsuits are the latest in Platkin's fight against parental rights policies, which have emerged as a point of contention since the coronavirus pandemic brought to the surface disagreements over school closures, curricula, and other policies. The Democrat in May sued another local school district, Hanover Township, after its board members similarly passed a policy that notifies parents of gender identity changes. New Jersey's Democratic governor, Phil Murphy, endorsed that suit, saying the policy effectively requires "staff to 'out' LGBTQ+ students to their parents."

Platkin echoed Murphy in his lawsuits filed Wednesday, arguing that the policies passed in Middletown, Marlboro, and Manalapan require districts to "out" transgender and other gender non-conforming students. For Platkin, the policies pose "serious mental health risks" and threaten "physical harm to students."

The number of students in New Jersey public schools who identify as "non-binary" has exploded in recent years. Only 16 students from the state's public schools identified as "non-binary" during the 2019-2020 school year, enrollment figures from the New Jersey Department of Education show. By the 2022-2023 school year, that number skyrocketed to 675 students, a more than 4,000 percent increase. Forty-one of those students are in elementary school, according to the figures.

Middletown, Marlboro, Manalapan, and Hanover's new policies do provide a carveout if school officials determine that making a student's gender transition public would subject that student to physical or mental harm. Still, the new policies unfairly "single out" LGBTQ students and put them in harm's way, according to Platkin.

Manalapan's school district declined to comment, while Middletown's district did not return a request for comment. Marlboro Board of Education counsel Marc Zitomer said the board "vehemently disagrees" with the suit, expressing confidence that the policy "properly balances parental and student rights."

"It is our position that keeping parents in the dark about important issues involving their children is counterintuitive and contrary to well-established Supreme Court case law that says parents have a constitutional right to direct and control the upbringing of their children," Zitomer told the Washington Free Beacon. "We will not be holding off on implementing the policy unless ordered to do so by the courts."

Following last month's lawsuit, the Hanover Township school district released a statement accusing Platkin of mischaracterizing its "common-sense policy," which it plans to "vigorously defend."

"Simply put, Board Policy 8463 merely requires that staff members 'say something to the parents and appropriate school administrators' if they 'see something that could adversely affect the social/emotional well-being of a child,'" the district's board said. "The Hanover Township Board of Education believes that parents need to be fully informed of all material issues that could impact their children so that they—as parents—can provide the proper care and support for their children."

Charles Hilu, Thomas McKenna, and Ryan Nevin contributed to this report.

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Only 16 students from the state's public schools identified as "non-binary" during the 2019-20 school year, enrollment figures from the New Jersey Department of Education show. By the 2022-23 school year, however, that number skyrocketed to 675 students, a more than 4,000 percent increase, according to the figures. Among the 675 students who identified themselves as "non-binary," 41 are in elementary school.

The explosion of self-identified "non-binary" students in New Jersey public schools comes as the state's liberal leaders argue that parents should not be informed if their child expresses a change in his or her gender or sexual identity. When a local school board last month passed the policy, arguing that it aligns with an effort to inform parents of anything that could have "a material impact on a student's physical and/or mental health," New Jersey Democratic attorney general Matthew Platkin sued the district. For Platkin, the policy "discriminates" against LGBTQ students by requiring teachers to "out" students "to their parents without their consent." The state's liberal governor, Phil Murphy, endorsed the lawsuit.

"Hanover Township Board of Education's new policy requiring staff to 'out' LGBTQ students to their parents violates the rights of our students—jeopardizing their well-being and mental health," Murphy said in May.

Erika Sanzi, director of outreach at parental rights nonprofit Parents Defending Education, said the jump in "non-binary" students comes as no surprise, pointing to school policy and curriculum that are "completely based in gender ideology."

"These numbers aren't surprising to anyone who has been following the massive social contagion of adopting different gender identities, especially among adolescent girls," Sanzi told the Washington Free Beacon.

Beyond the climbing proportion of New Jersey public school students who identify as non-binary, recent studies have shown a similar increase in transgender identification. A 2017 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study, for example, found that roughly 1.8 percent of U.S. high school students identify as transgender. A subsequent American Academy of Pediatrics study released four years later found nearly 10 percent identified as such.

Adolescent mental health struggles are also up, particularly among LGBTQ-identifying youth. A 2021 nationwide survey from the Trevor Project, an LGBTQ advocacy group, found that 70 percent of LGBTQ youth said their mental health was mostly or always "poor" during the coronavirus pandemic.

Nicole Stouffer, a New Jersey parent and biostatistician who founded parent advocacy group NJ Fresh Faced Schools, said the massive increase in self-identified "non-binary" students is both "statistically significant and medically relevant."

"Since non-binary gender is normalized in the schools, expect that this count will become higher for the 2023-24 school year," Stouffer told the Free Beacon.

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Yale University researchers earlier this year published a study that sought to determine how cocaine-addicted minorities recover without formal treatment. The subsequent report found that social pressure, family responsibility, and spirituality—not the encouragement of safer drug consumption—helped addicts recover, findings that the study's authors hope will "inform drug treatment."

The findings are in stark contrast to liberal efforts aimed at combating drug addiction—efforts that frequently blur the line between "harm reduction" and harm promotion. The Washington Free Beacon last year uncovered a Biden administration grant program to administer "smoking kits" to addicts, thus helping them more safely consume crack cocaine, crystal methamphetamine, and "any illicit substance." One grant recipient in Maine, for example, provides users with crack and meth pipes, snorting kits, and instructions on how to smoke crack cocaine. When the Free Beacon asked the Biden-backed organization if it distributed crack pipes at a certain location, an employee responded, "Yes."

Central to the facility's efforts is the belief that addicts may not be ready for abstinence and should receive help—not discouragement—to use drugs with less risk of overdose or disease. For Dr. Keith Humphreys, a Stanford behavioral health sciences professor who has advised both Democrats and Republicans on drug policy, that belief is flawed.

"The rhetoric you often hear is that disapproving of things is inherently bad, and all stigma is bad," Humphreys told the Free Beacon. The evidence does not sustain the belief that "stigma is inherently an evil force," Humphreys argued, pointing to dramatic declines in cigarette smoking, drunk driving, and male-on-female domestic violence.

"I think the decline in all three of those things is linked to greater social disapproval," Humphreys said. "Social disapproval are these guardrails that we collectively use to discourage behavior that we think is destructive."

Neither the White House nor Biden's Department of Health and Human Services returned requests for comment.

Beyond funding smoking kits, which commonly include crack pipes and other paraphernalia, the Biden administration has also taken steps to consider the implementation of so-called safe injection sites across the country. Those sites provide addicts a place to inject their drugs with sterile needles while staff members watch for signs of overdoses. The sites frequently become gathering places for addicts.

The federal government has historically been against the implementation of those sites, with the Trump administration in 2019 suing to stop one from opening in Philadelphia. Under Biden, however, the Justice Department has indicated a reversal, announcing last year that it was "evaluating" such facilities and speaking with regulators about implementing them.

While the federal government is still mulling over the idea, several U.S. cities and the state of Rhode Island have green-lit the establishment of these sites. Last year, New York City officials became the first to authorize private entities to set up "safe injection sites."

Oregon, meanwhile, has gone as far as to decriminalize all drugs for personal use. The move, which the state legislature passed in 2020, has largely been considered a failure, as overdose rates in the state almost doubled between 2019 and 2021. The national average, by comparison, rose at a much lower rate during that time, according to the Economist.

While Humphreys agreed that the situation in Oregon has been "disastrous," he conceded that not all harm reduction efforts are bad, such as the distribution of naloxone, the opioid overdose reversal drug, and syringe exchanges.

"I think it really matters the spirit in which you do things," Humphreys said, arguing that some harm reduction programs operate "with the assumption that the end aspiration is recovery" while others merely "spend our tax dollars to support their right to use drugs."

"I think in those two different spirits, I think you get very different outcomes," Humphreys continued. "I'm much more sympathetic with the systems that say, ‘We're doing this not because we think it's great to use drugs—or that we think that we should never criticize or in any way disapprove of drug use—we're doing this because we have this long term hope of what we consider a better life for this person.’"

Many liberal cities do not seem to agree with Humphreys. In San Francisco, for example, the city erected a billboard instructing residents to use deadly opioids "with friends." The billboard showed a group of well-dressed and happy people partying together, insisting it was best to use drugs in groups, or at the least "have someone check on you" while doing them. 

"Let’s take care of each other, San Francisco," the billboard stated. 

The post When ‘Harm Reduction’ Becomes Harm Promotion: Yale Study Shows Biden's Drug Policy is Misguided appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Gates unveiled the partnership during a speech in Beijing, which the government-run propaganda outlet Global Times quickly covered thanks to a transcript Gates shared with the rag. The $50 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will fund a research partnership with Tsinghua University, which holds "secret-level security credentials" for classified military research, trains students for China's nuclear weapons program, and has allegedly carried out cyberattacks for the Chinese government, according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. The university, from which Chinese president Xi Jinping graduated in 2002 with a degree in Marxist theory, is also funded by China's Ministry of Education and maintains a "CCP Committee" that keeps the school "in accordance with President Xi's hopes."

Gates's partnership with Tsinghua is aimed at carrying out drug discovery research, which involves studying potent viruses. The billionaire's willingness to work with a Chinese government-led entity to conduct such research, however, comes as scientific research integrity in the communist nation emerges as a point of concern for the U.S. government. The U.S. National Institutes of Health in 2019 launched a $300,000 grant to "strengthen research integrity" at China's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and two major Chinese research institutions, citing troubling instances of "research misconduct," "inadequate ethical review," and "publication fraud." Those problems, the agency said, "have had a negative impact on Chinese scientists and their U.S. collaborators" and "highlighted China's underdeveloped research ethics capacity and infrastructure."

Congress has since moved to halt public funding to labs in China through its 2024 defense funding bill, which the House Appropriations Committee passed Thursday. As a nonprofit entity, Gates's foundation would not be subject to the policy.

The Gates Foundation will disburse its $50 million contribution over five years. The Beijing municipal government will also match the donation "in order to bolster the institute's drug discovery capacity," a Gates Foundation press release said Thursday. Tsinghua University, the release continued, will support the endeavor by "building and sharing research platforms, translating research discovery, and developing talent."

Beyond the university's military ties, the school is under the supervision of China's State Administration for Science, Technology, and Industry for National Defense, a Chinese Communist Party entity that works to connect the nation's academics with its defense sector.

This is far from the first time that Gates, who during his trip to China this week called Chinese scientists "invaluable" to public health innovation, has funneled money to Chinese government agencies and military-tied universities. The billionaire's foundation in 2021 sent nearly $30 million to Chinese organizations, including millions to the nation's National Health Commission, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, and Tsinghua.

Gates while in China visited with Xi, marking the first meeting the Chinese president has held with a foreign private entrepreneur in recent years, according to Reuters. Around the time of the meeting, investigative journalists Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag reported that the first people infected by the COVID-19 virus, known as "patients zero," were researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Multiple government agencies believe that the virus came from that lab, despite Dr. Anthony Fauci's efforts to dismiss the theory.

The Gates Foundation did not return a request for comment.

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Minnesota's Department of Corrections in early June agreed to move Christina, formerly Craig, Lusk to the all-female facility, the first time the state has done so. The move comes after Lusk sued the Minnesota Department of Corrections last year over "discrimination and harassment" at the men's facility where he had been remanded, according to his lawsuit. Lusk complained of "misnaming and misgendering," as well as being denied sexual reassignment surgery, insisting the actions were in violation of the Minnesota Human Rights Act, the Minnesota Constitution, and the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA).

The decision to move Lusk means Minnesota's only all-female prison is no more. It also aligns Minnesota with some of the nation's most liberal states, such as California and Connecticut, that have similarly eradicated their all-female prisons to allow transgender inmates to be housed there.

In California, the housing of transgender inmates in all-female prisons has affected biologically female inmates a great deal. Faced with the prospect of unruly male-to-female transgender inmates, prison officials have begun increasing restrictions on movement in female correctional facilities, the Washington Free Beacon reported in January. The state has also ignored claims of sexual assault and rape from biologically female inmates, according to a legal complaint filed on behalf of several female offenders housed under the California Department of Corrections.

"A goal of decreasing vulnerability of a subset of men (those with 'sexual minority' designation) cannot be pursued by increasing the vulnerability of women," the complaint reads. "Decreasing the risk that a subgroup of men will suffer prison rape only by creating a corresponding increased risk that women will suffer prison rape is neither constitutional nor compliant with PREA."

Similar problems have plagued other liberal states. Last year in New York, a transgender inmate at Rikers Island penitentiary raped a female prisoner while in the women's section of the jail and was sentenced to seven more years behind bars for the offense. More recently, in January, law enforcement officials in Cincinnati, Ohio, confirmed they were investigating an alleged rape of a female prisoner by a transgender inmate. In New Jersey, meanwhile, a transgender prisoner last year impregnated two fellow inmates, forcing the state to put the prisoner back into a male-only facility.

A third of biologically male transgender inmates seeking to be moved to female prisons are registered sex offenders, according to data from the California Department of Corrections.

California's liberal governor, Gavin Newsom, in 2020 signed the Transgender Respect, Agency, and Dignity Act, which requires the state's Department of Corrections to house inmates based on their preferred gender identity. Left-wing executives in Connecticut and Washington, D.C., have implemented similar policies, while other states transfer transgender inmates on a case-by-case basis.

More states will likely join the ranks of California and Connecticut. New York is considering legislation that requires jails and prisons to place anyone who "self-identifies as transgender, gender nonconforming, nonbinary, or intersex" in a correctional facility that aligns with his or her self-described gender status.

The post Minnesota's Lone All-Female Prison Is No Longer as Transgender Inmate, a Biological Man, Is Relocated appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Since taking office in 2021, the Biden administration has wasted at least $528 billion in improper payments to people who shouldn't have received them, according to an analysis from fiscal watchdog group OpenTheBooks. More than $974 million of those payments went to dead people, according to the report. In one case, a Missouri man "collected $200,000 in checks for his dead mother for 26 years before the government found out, while a Michigan man collected $500,000 under the name of a dead relative," the report notes. Federal programs ripe with improper payments include Medicaid, Medicare, and the Small Business Administration's Paycheck Protection Program.

While improper payments are nothing new, the Biden administration has failed at an unprecedented level. The $281 billion in improper payments seen during fiscal year 2021 is an all-time high, according to OpenTheBooks, while the $247 billion seen during fiscal year 2022 is "more than every other previous year." The administration could have greenlit even more improper payments in 2022, but in many cases, improper payments during that year decreased only because "federal agencies lowered or removed spending requirements," the report says.

OpenTheBooks founder and CEO Adam Andrzejewski hammered the Biden administration for the improper payments, asking, "What government program is running well under [President Joe] Biden?"

"Biden just doubled the workforce of the IRS and proposed one of the largest tax hikes in history," Andrzejewski told the Washington Free Beacon. "While on track to waste $1 trillion of your taxes, they want to tax you even more."

The revelation marks a failure from the Biden administration to reign in the avalanche of improper payments seen during the coronavirus pandemic—at least $38 million of which was doled out to dead people. Besides COVID fraud, dead people received $974.3 million through federal retirement services, social security, and old-age, survivors, and disability insurance, according to OpenTheBooks.

Republican lawmakers have urged Biden to reign in improper spending, with Louisiana Republican senator John Kennedy arguing that doing so would be "an easy win" for the president. But Biden apparently failed to heed the advice, as Paycheck Protection Program fraud ballooned to $29 billion in fiscal year 2022. Additionally, two Social Security assistance programs that are ripe for fraud saw $7.4 billion in improper payments between FY 2021 and FY 2022.

In 2019, OpenTheBooks found six million Social Security numbers were active for people over the age of 112. Only around 40 people in the world are known to be that old. The Free Beacon reached out to the Social Security Administration to see how many Social Security numbers remain active for 112-year-olds but has yet to receive an answer.

Lawmakers have attempted to bolster cross-agency communication, record keeping, and transparency to limit improper payments, but the Government Accountability Office has indicated that the federal government’s "inability to determine the full extent to which improper payments occur and reasonably assure that appropriate actions are taken to reduce them" is an ongoing problem.

"To operate as effectively and efficiently as possible, Congress, the administration, and federal managers must have ready access to reliable and complete financial and performance information—both for individual federal entities and for the federal government as a whole," the Government Accountability Office argued earlier this year. "Our report on the U.S. government’s consolidated financial statements for fiscal years 2022 and 2021 discusses progress that has been made, but also underscores that much work remains to improve federal financial management and that the federal government continues to face an unsustainable long-term fiscal path."

For Kennedy, the improper payments reflect the need to give federal agencies access to a so-called death database.

"One easy step we can take to end this waste and fraud is to give the vast majority of federal agencies access to the complete death database that Social Security maintains so that we know the federal bureaucracy isn’t sending money to people it doesn’t belong to," Kennedy told the Free Beacon.

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The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services—a federal agency within the Department of Health and Human Services that administers Medicare—is, in almost all cases, refusing to cover an Alzheimer's treatment that research shows can reduce cognitive decline by 27 percent. The decision, a new University of Chicago study argues, could cost Americans up to $546 billion in private and public spending, as patients who deteriorate without the drugs require additional health care spending that Medicare does cover.

In addition to the sizable burden on taxpayers, the administration's refusal to cover the new treatments outside of selective clinical trials contradicts the health department's self-described commitment to "health equity." The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on Wednesday and Thursday held its first ever "Health Equity Conference," which aimed to highlight and address "health disparities" in rural and "underserved communities." Those communities, however, are often unable to participate in clinical trials, which typically take place in heavily populated areas that include universities or large medical centers. 

The University of Chicago study's co-author, professor Tomas Philipson, criticized the administration for creating "barriers to care" that "not only deny patients innovative relief but also hope."

"Millions of Americans are all too familiar with the human cost of Alzheimer's, but this study makes clear the personal and financial suffering caused by red tape that withholds potentially life-altering relief from patients," Philipson said. "The tragedy of Alzheimer’s disease is exacerbated by inaction of policymakers. We hope lawmakers will heed this report’s findings outlining the lost opportunity and harm caused by onerous regulations."

In 2021, the Food and Drug Administration granted accelerated approval for amyloid plaque-targeting treatment in Alzheimer’s patients, which studies have shown delays cognitive decline caused by the disease. In April of 2022, however, Biden's health department implemented a coverage restriction that limited Medicare coverage for the treatment to those who participate in certain clinical trials. As a result, patients who are prescribed the treatment outside of a clinical trial have to pay out of pocket, and it may take as long as 17 years to reverse the restriction, according to the University of Chicago white paper.

In December, the national Alzheimer’s Association formally requested the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reconsider its coverage determination, citing clinical studies the association said "clearly demonstrate a meaningful clinical benefit" of the plaque-targeting treatments for Alzheimer patients. Even the Food and Drug Administration says the treatment has shown "statistically significant treatment effects."

In addition to the two groups, a bipartisan coalition of nearly 100 members of Congress in February wrote Biden's health secretary, Xavier Becerra, to call for the coverage restriction to be removed, arguing that the restriction could bring "irreversible disease progression for beneficiaries living with Alzheimer's." 

"Patients, families, and caregivers living in rural and underserved areas should have the same opportunity for access to treatment," the letter says. "It is an enormous physical and financial burden for Medicare beneficiaries to spend countless hours traveling to limited research institutions that host the trials."

The Food and Drug Administration is expected to weigh traditional approval for one plaque-targeting drug in the coming weeks. But even if the drug does get the okay, Medicare and Medicaid will only cover it "when a physician and clinical team participates in the collection of evidence about how these drugs work in the real world, also known as a registry."

The development of a registry can take many years, Philipson noted in his study, causing the coverage restriction that prevents patients from getting treatment to persist, despite full federal approval.

"With this approach, only the privileged few with access to clinical trials have access to treatment," the Alzheimer's Association stated in a press release. As a result, the association said, the Biden administration policy "exacerbates and creates further health inequities among those who are already disproportionately impacted by this fatal disease."

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services told the Washington Free Beacon it would "continue to look carefully at the evidence and wait for the FDA’s decision on whether to grant traditional approval."

"CMS is committed to helping people obtain timely access to innovative treatments that meaningfully improve care and outcomes for Alzheimer’s disease," senior communications adviser Sara Lonardo said. "If the FDA grants traditional approval CMS is prepared to ensure anyone with Medicare who meets the criteria is covered," Lonardo concluded. 

Thomas McKenna contributed to this report.

The post How the Biden Admin's Refusal to Cover New Alzheimer's Drugs Hurts 'Underserved' Americans and Costs Taxpayers Billions appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.