PrairiePundit

  Washington Examiner: President Joe Biden will release nearly one-third of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve over the next six months to combat rising gas prices and inflation in the face of Russia's war in Ukraine. The Biden administration has sought to cast historic 7.9% inflation, specifically the rise in prices at the gas pump, as the "Putin price hike," but energy prices had already spiked 3.5% in February prior to the invasion after rising steadily for the previous year. ... Biden will also call on Congress to pass legislation enacting what officials referred to as "use it or lose it" fines for domestic oil companies. The fines would tax companies on "wells from their leases that [oil companies] haven't used in years and on acres of public lands that they are hoarding without producing." Furthermore, Biden will invoke the Domestic Production Act to "secure American production of critical materials to bolster our clean energy economy,...

  Niamh Cavanagh and Sam Matthews: As the Russian invasion of Ukraine grinds into its sixth week, experts and Western intelligence agencies are continuing to sketch out potential endgames for the conflict. It’s possible that a ceasefire could emerge, and the Russian military, facing surprisingly fierce Ukrainian resistance, would simply back off its initial war aim of regime change in Kyiv and control over the country’s future. But recent history suggests the solution won’t be that simple. Russia could also exploit its far larger military might and continue its advance into Ukraine, particularly in the east, where it now appears to be focused. Although Russian President Vladimir Putin may continue to face heavy losses, the sheer size of his army sets up the possibility of the Kremlin occupying swaths of Ukrainian territory and facing a protracted and bloody insurgence. “Insurgency is different from regular warfare in that it's usually troops that are not in a formalized military ...

 National Review: A key inflation metric monitored by the Federal Reserve soared 6.4 percent in February compared to a a year ago, reaching a new 40-year high. The latest price surge, which effected the price of fuel, groceries and other consumer essentials, represents the largest year-over-year increase since January 1982, according to data released by the Commerce Department on Thursday. Not taking into account food and energy fluctuations, which tend to be more erratic and can overemphasize inflation, the personal consumption expenditures price index, the preferred inflation gauge of the Federal Reserve, jumped 5.4 percent in February from a year prior. Including gas and groceries, PCE surged 6.4 percent. ...  If Biden has a plan to defeat inflation there is little evidence of it working. See, also: Joe Biden's Newest Plan to Combat High Gas Prices Is a Mix of Pointless Idiocy and Communism And:  Biden’s big-spending policies helped fuel inflation, says Federal Reser...

 Daily Beast: Several hundred Russian soldiers were forced to hastily withdraw from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine after suffering “acute radiation sickness” from contaminated soil, according to Ukrainian officials. The troops, who dug trenches in a contaminated Red Forest near the site of the worst nuclear disaster in history, are now reportedly being treated in a special medical facility in Gomel, Belarus. The forest is so named because thousands of pine trees turned red during the 1986 nuclear disaster. The area is considered so highly toxic that not even highly specialized Chernobyl workers are allowed to enter the zone. Energoatom, the Ukrainian agency in charge of the country’s nuclear power stations, said the Russian soldiers had panicked and fled. “It has been confirmed that the occupiers who seized the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and other facilities in the Exclusion Zone set off in two columns towards Ukraine’s border with Belarus. The occupiers announce...

  The Week: New intelligence out of Ukraine shows that some Russian troops are refusing to carry out orders, even going so far to sabotage their equipment, Jeremy Fleming, head of Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), said on Wednesday. The spy chief shared the information during a speech at the Australian National University in Canberra. He said Russian President Vladimir Putin "massively misjudged" the capabilities of his military, adding, "We believe Putin's advisers are afraid to tell him the truth." Ukraine has fought back harder than Putin expected, Fleming said, and "we've seen Russian soldiers — short of weapons and morale — refusing to carry out orders, sabotaging their own equipment, and even accidentally shooting down their own aircraft." ... There have also been reports of self inflicted wounds to avoid combat operations.  There are also reports of the failure of equipment large and small in the Russian operation....

 Reuters: The burnt wreckage of two Russian tanks with blown off turrets and several armoured personnel carriers attest the ferocity of last week's clashes in Lukyanivka village just outside Kyiv. The charred corpse of a Russian soldier lies in a field nearby. "There were mortars so strong that it was scary even in the cellar," local resident Valeriy Hudym told Reuters on Sunday, two days after Ukrainian soldiers seized back control of Lukyanivka in a five-hour battle with the Russians. "Tanks were firing, artillery, and machine guns. Everything possible was there," Hudym said. Two Ukrainian soldiers, involved in the battle to retake the village, said the fighting was intense. More than a month since Russia's invasion, the defence of Ukraine's capital Kyiv has played out in heavy clashes in places like Lukyanivka and the nearby town of Brovary to the east, Irpin and Bucha to the northwest and Makariv to the west. When the histories are written such towns...

 Breitbart: Secretary of State Antony Blinken attempted to mend President Joe Biden’s increasingly strained relationship with Gulf states on Tuesday in a meeting with Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, following a conversation with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have both expressed increasing frustration with the Biden administration’s failure to address the potential global implications of the seven-year-old Yemeni civil war, which overflowed into Saudi Arabia last week as the Iran-backed Houthi terrorist organization bombed oil facilities belonging to the Saudi state oil corporation Aramco. Saudi officials have repeatedly warned that Houthi attacks on oil assets could threaten the global fuel supply at a time in which the war between Russia and Ukraine has triggered shortages and record-high prices. The Houthi movement is a Shiite jihadist organization that seized Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, ...

 Roll Call: It’s been another bad week for the president, as White House staffers, and Biden himself on Monday, tried to clean up a string of troubling gaffes made during his crucial trip to meet with NATO leaders as the Ukraine war continued to rage. With Russian President Vladimir Putin hinting that a nuclear response was possible if NATO directly intervenes in Ukraine or threatens Russia itself, Biden’s misstatements couldn’t have come at a worse moment. Yet, when asked about his ad-lib remarks to American servicemen in Poland, his response to the possible use of chemical weapons by Russia, and now, famously, his barely nuanced call for the ousting of Putin, incredulously, Biden told reporters, “None of the three occurred.” It was a mind-boggling moment. Even the president’s supporters in the media are having trouble excusing Biden’s latest attempt to explain away his gaffes, which sent shock waves across international diplomatic and security circles. The world is wondering who ...

  Daily Mail: EXCLUSIVE: Now Washington Post reverses course! Paper joins NYT in finally admitting Hunter Biden's laptop IS REAL - nine months after it first received - and dismissed - a copy of the hard drive and ONE YEAR after DailyMail.com authenticated it I suspect the original denial about it was ideology and Trump hatred.  They were desperate to defeat Trump and refused to believe the evidence that was there and verified by others. The story also indicates that the WaPo lost the first copy of Hunter's hard drive and had to get another.  I guess they are kind of like the DOJ that can't find the original laptop anymore.

  The Hill: More than 20 states filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against the federal mask mandate on transportation, which has been extended until April 18, saying it violated the Constitution and violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). The 21 states claim that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had not allowed for public comment for more than a year since the federal transportation mask mandate was first issued. They also claimed that they were negatively impacted by the mask mandate because it required states to “expend resources to enforce the mandate” and harmed states’ “sovereign interests” because many states “have laws or policies prohibiting or discouraging mask requirements in contexts where the mask mandate applies,”  according to court filings . ... There is also growing evidence of the lack of efficacy of the masks, to begin with.  There is some evidence that there is no material difference in the spread of the virus where there are mask r...

  Newsbusters: Column: The Unanimously Liberal Tilt of the 'Fact Checkers' The piece examines the responses of "fact-checkers" to the recent hearing on Biden's nomination for a Supreme court seat and finds that they collectively sound like they are writing briefs for her defense.

 Power Line: John Lott has published a paper in which he applies three tests for voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. (I wrote about Lott’s analysis while it was still a work in progress  here .) The paper is  here . Lott begins by looking at adjacent precincts that are in different counties. He did this for Fulton County, Georgia and Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. The operative assumption is that precincts across the street from one another shouldn’t vote very differently (Lott controlled for demographic factors), suggesting that significant differences among the precincts relate to vote counting at the county level. This analysis found at least 10,000 extra votes for Biden in those two counties. Next, Lott applies the same approach to provisional ballots in Allegheny County, where voters were illegally allowed to correct defects in absentee ballots by submitting provisional ballots on election day. Lott finds an extra 6,700 Biden votes because of this illegal...

 DailyWire: ... The Saint Leo University Polling Institute found DeSantis leading former Florida governor Charlie Crist  by 16 points, 49%-33%,   Annette Taddeo, who was Crist’s running mate in the 2014 gubernatorial election and now serves as a state senator, by a whopping 19 points, 49%-30%, and Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried by a staggering 24 points, 51%-27%. ...Recent Flroida races have been pretty tight.  This one does not look like it will be.  DeSantis took bold positions and followed through and voters appear to appreciate it.  He also benetits from more conservatives moving to Florida in response to liberal lockdowns in blue states.

 Fox News: Question: What’s one thing that former Presidents Donald Trump and Barack Obama have in common? Answer: Both of President Biden ’s two most immediate predecessors in the White House suffered from negative poll numbers on the eve of their first midterm elections in office and both saw their party lose control of the House of Representatives. In November 2010, Obama’s approval rating was underwater by 4 points as the Republicans rode a powerful Tea Party fueled red wave to flip the House with a massive 63-seat net gain, the largest shift of seats in more than 60 years. WITH 7 MONTHS TO GO, GOP HAS UPPER HAND IN MIDTERM ELECTIONS: POLLS Fast-forward eight years and Trump’s approval rating was underwater by nearly 10 points on the eve of the 2018 midterms, when the Democrats stormed back to reclaim the House majority thanks to a 41-seat pickup. Fast-forward again four years to present day and Biden finds himself in similar negative territory. The president stands at 45% ap...

 ISW: ... Russia is reportedly increasingly deploying support personnel and auxiliary units to replace combat losses in Ukraine. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russia is deploying servicemen from military support units, including educational institutions, to replace combat losses.[1] Russian officer casualties and the decision to strip Russian training units of personnel will further impede the Russian military’s ability to train new conscripts and replacements. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that three battalion tactical groups (BTGs) including up to 2,000 Russian and South Ossetian personnel from Russia’s 4th and 7th Military Bases in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, respectively, deployed to unspecified locations in Ukraine.[2] Social media users observed South Ossetian forces in the Donbas region on March 29, but ISW cannot independently confirm if the entirety of these reinforcements were deployed to Donbas.[3] The Ukrainian General Staff additionally stated that R...

  DailyWire: Biden Administration Gave Teachers Union ‘Unprecedented Access’ To Shape National COVID-19 Guidelines, Report Says ... “AFT staff asked CDC Director Rochelle Walensky to install a ‘trigger’ in the guidance that would cause schools to close automatically if COVID-19 positivity rates reached a certain threshold. The CDC obliged, and thousands of schools across the country remained closed throughout the 2020-2021 school year,” the report states. In a February interview with the committee, Walke told lawmakers that the level of coordination between the teachers’ union and CDC was “uncommon.” ... “The facts are clear: Biden’s CDC overrode routine practice to allow a radical teachers union that donated millions of dollars to Democrat campaigns to bypass scientific norms and rewrite official agency guidance,” the statement says. “The damaging edits by union bosses effectively kept thousands of schools shuttered across the country, locking millions of children out of their c...

 Epoch Times: One of the highest priorities of the Biden administration’s trade agenda is resetting the U.S.- China  trade relationship with a view to putting American farmers and exporters on a level playing field with their Chinese counterparts, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said on March 30. In a prepared  statement  before a House Ways & Means Committee hearing, Tai criticized the prominent role of state-owned enterprises in China’s imports and exports as well as “labor rights suppression, a weak environmental regime, [and] other distortions that put market-oriented participants out of business.” She also noted Beijing’s failure to meet purchase commitments under the “phase one” trade agreement signed in January 2020. Those purchase agreements stipulated that China would import at least $200 million more of U.S. goods and products in 2020-2021 than the country bought in 2017. “We absolutely need to enforce all our agreements, phase on...

  Washington Examiner: Russian forces 'walking away' from Chernobyl, heading to Belarus: Pentagon official ...   Both the Pentagon and the White House believe that attacks will continue across Ukraine despite Russian troop movements. Russia intends to “refit these troops, resupply them and probably employ them elsewhere in Ukraine,”  according  to Pentagon spokesman John Kirby. “They should send them home,” Kirby  said  of the Russian troops. “But that’s not what they’re doing, at least not yet.” ... Some in the US military believe that the Russian military is lying to Putin about the lack of success in Ukraine.  See, also: Putin being lied to by own advisers: US defense official

 James Varney: The Biden administration has allowed a more than eleven-fold increase in the number of illegal immigrant offenders let out of Texas prisons and into the general U.S. population, despite federal immigration law requiring ICE to take convicts into custody after serving their time, usually in advance of deportation. The disclosure emerges from state-initiated litigation that is beginning to shed light on what critics call the administration's secretive and lenient handling of immigrants beginning last year – treatment that is imperiling public safety, alarmed state authorities say. Soon after President Biden assumed office a year ago January, agents of federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement began dropping their usually automatic requests to take custody from Texas authorities of immigrant convicts set to be released from the state's prisons and jails, so they could be deported. In the past, few such convicts were exempt from the process. From 2017 to 2020, ICE ...

 ISW: ... The Kremlin's claimed withdrawal of forces around Kyiv, which it seeks to portray as a “huge step” towards peace, is a cover for an ongoing redeployment of Russian forces after their failure to take Kyiv. Russian Deputy Defense Minister Colonel-General Alexander Fomin claimed on March 29 that Russia will “drastically reduce military activity in the Kyiv and Chernihiv directions” and provide details on Russia’s claimed withdrawal later this week.[1] Chief Russian negotiator Vladimir Medinsky falsely framed this claimed withdrawal as a “huge step” toward peace that requires “counter-movement” from Ukraine.[2] The Kremlin is attempting to falsely portray the failure of its campaign to encircle Kyiv, which ISW assessed had failed as of March 19, as an olive branch requiring a Ukrainian concession.[3] Russian forces continue to fight to hold their front-line trace near the city, and Russian forces have been withdrawing into Belarus for rest and refit for several days – prior t...

  National Journal: Rural voters playing outsized role in battleground House races   Over half of this year’s toss-up races are in districts with a sizable rural constituency. That reality makes holding the House—or even staying within striking distance—more challenging for Democrats. The Democrats' energy policies have been a disaster for rural voters regardless of ethnicity.  The gas to get to the grocery store becomes a hardship.  For rural voters who are farmers, it is even worse because fuelling their tractors and other implements also costs more. As a rural voter, I can't wait to vote against every Democrat on the ballot.

 PJ Media: A federal judge blasted U.S. prosecutors seeking excessive sentences for some nonviolent participants in the Capitol riot, pointing to the treatment of BLM rioters as an example of a clear double standard. “I know that the government believes that the January 6th cases are  sui generis  [one of a kind] and therefore can’t be compared to other cases. But I don’t agree,”  said  U.S. District Judge Trevor N. McFadden. “It does feel like the government has had two standards here, and I can’t abide by that,” he added, noting that before January 6, he couldn’t remember an instance where  a nonviolent, first-time offender was “sentenced to serious jail time … regardless of their race, gender or political affiliation.” McFadden expressed his views during the sentencing of a defendant who pleaded guilty to misdemeanor trespassing. The Biden administration called for her to be sentenced to 75 days in jail and one year of probation, which McFadden beli...

  NY Times: Tension Between Russian Leader and Defense Ministry Appears to Be Growing President Vladimir Putin has been misinformed about his military’s struggles from aides fearful about his reaction, according to U.S. intelligence. Mixed signals were coming from Russia on the progress in peace talks. Officials reported new attacks in northern Ukraine. Here’s the latest. I am not sure I buy this since Putin has been desperately trying to get replacement troops from alleged reserves to mercenaries.  How could he not know that his forces have not achieved their objectives?  What he may not know is that the military equipment has been failing the troops or that material in storage has deteriorated beyond usage.

 Epoch Times: Newly released bank records show that payments were made to President Joe Biden ’s son from a Chinese Communist Party-linked company. Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) presented the records on the Senate floor on March 28 and March 29. One showed a wire payment of $100,000 to Owasco, one of Hunter Biden ’s firms, from CEFC China Energy, a now-defunct company closely associated with the Chinese regime , Another showed a wire transfer of $5 million to Hudson West, a company Hunter Biden invested in and managed, from Northern International Capital, a business that partnered with CEFC. A contract also made public by the senators showed $500,000 went to Hunter Biden as a “one-time retainer fee.” Two others showed a $1 million payment made to Hudson West by CEFC and a transfer of $1 million from Hudson West to Owasco, with the money appearing to go to Hunter Biden for the purposes of representing Patrick Ho, a Chinese businessman who has helped CEFC gai...

 Washington Examiner: The Federal Election Commission has fined the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign for lying about the funding of the infamous, and discredited, Russian “dossier” used in a smear attempt against Donald Trump weeks before he shocked the world with his 2016 presidential victory. The election agency said that Clinton and the DNC violated strict rules on describing expenditures of payments funneled to the opposition research firm Fusion GPS through their law firm. A combined $1,024,407.97 was paid by the treasurers of the DNC and Clinton campaign to law firm Perkins Coie for Fusion GPS’s information, and the party and campaign hid the reason, claiming it was for legal services, not opposition research. Instead, the DNC’s $849,407.97 and the Clinton campaign’s $175,000 covered Fusion GPS’s opposition research on the dossier, a basis for the so-called “Russia hoax” that dogged Trump’s first term. The memo said that the Clinton campaign a...

 Monica Showalter: Does Joe Biden know what he's talking about? A few stale weeks after being rebuffed by Congress and  many  Democrat  economists  over his $3.5-trillion "build back better" spend-a-thon, he's tweeting up a storm about being a deficit-cutter while vowing even more big government spending. ... Hearing this spend-a-thon artist blame President Trump for "fiscal management" is something just a little beyond the pot calling the kettle black. Yes, Trump spent a lot.  But he also cut government.  And much of what was spent on his watch was on temporary COVID relief measures with built-in expiration dates.  That's where Biden's so-called deficit-cutting comes from.  What Biden is claiming as his great fiscal record is really just the end of COVID relief measures that were baked into the bills themselves.  What's more, it was Democrats, not Trump, who demanded this extra spending in Congres...

  William Jacobson: Ron DeSantis Needs To Defeat Disney Over Parental Rights In Education Law   Ron DeSantis has his finger on the pulse of the parents movement like no one else. He understands that the civil rights issue of our time is whether children belong to their parents or to whatever social justice warrior happens to be in a public elementary school classroom at any given moment. Opponents of the law are lying about what it says and does.  What the Disney management is demanding looks crazy from the standpoint of the kids and from the standpoint of their own business model.

 Washington Free Beacon: A gunman suspected of killing two homeless men and wounding others in two East Coast cities in March would have been in prison at the time of the shootings if not for the work of one progressive Virginia prosecutor. The office of Fairfax County commonwealth's attorney Steve Descano (D.) in December 2020 charged the shooter, Gerald Brevard III, with three felonies related to his attempt to abduct a hotel housekeeper and later break into a nearby apartment. The felonies— abduction with attempt to defile , burglary , and possession of burglarious tools —together would carry a minimum of 26 years in prison and up to a life sentence. But six months later in June 2021 Brevard was a free man. Descano's office reduced the first two felonies to misdemeanors, and dropped the third entirely, the case file shows, allowing him to leave prison after just five months. Less than a year later in March, Brevard opened fire on the first victim of his shooting spree. In ...

  Breitbart: Poll: Nancy Pelosi Most Unpopular Democrat Politician ...   Pelosi’s favorability   is   only 34 percent, with 48 percent disapproval, a negative net unfavorable rating of 14 percentage points. Pelosi’s favorability rating has decreased since the NRCC began polling the question. In February 2021, 41 percent of voters approved and 52 percent disapproved of Pelosi, an 11- point gap. In comparison, President Biden polled with a 44 percent favorable opinion and 53 percent unfavorable. Vice President Kamala Harris came in at a 41 percent favorable rating and 52 percent unfavorable. Pelosi’s numbers are far worse than both the president and vice president. Much of Pelosi’s unlikability is perhaps because of corruption. In 2021, Speaker Pelosi  disclosed  her husband Paul Pelosi traded stocks valued at up to $5 million. The stock trades were primarily in big tech, such as Apple, Amazon, Tesla, and Microsoft stocks. The Pelosis in July  earned ...

 Newsmax: Russia no longer was requesting that Ukraine "denazify" as part of cease-fire negotiations, Financial Times reported. Moscow also was willing to let Ukraine join the European Union (EU) if it remains militarily nonaligned, four people briefed on the discussions told Financial Times . Russian and Ukrainian envoys were meeting in Istanbul on Tuesday in a fourth round of peace talks. They were discussing a pause in hostilities as part of a potential peace deal that would involve Kyiv giving up hopes of joining NATO. ... Financial Times said a draft cease-fire document did not contain any mention of three initial Russian demands — denazification, demilitarization, and legal protection for the Russian language in Ukraine. Ukraine also would refrain from developing nuclear weapons or hosting foreign military bases. Ukraine and Western officials, though, remained skeptical of Russian President Vladimir Putin's intentions. The officials worried that Putin was dragging o...

 DailyWire: ... “The only thing I will say is Clarence Thomas is the greatest living justice and one of the greatest public servants in America,” DeSantis said. ... The attacks on Thomas look like a bad faith attempt by the left to try to pack the court with another liberal wacko. 

 DailyWire: According to U.S. and U.K. officials, Russian forces are not withdrawing from Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. Instead, troops are simply being redeployed. “[A]ny movement of Russian forces from around Kyiv is a redeployment, not a withdrawal, and the world should be prepared for a major offensive against other areas of Ukraine,” a U.S. official told Fox News’ Mark Meredith on Tuesday. “No one should be fooled by Russia’s announcements,” the official said. “It also does not mean the threat to Kyiv is over. Russia has failed in its objective of capturing Kyiv, and failed in its objective of subjugating all of Ukraine, but it can still inflict massive brutality on the country, including Kyiv.” Russian Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin previously announced that Russia had decided to “to fundamentally cut back military activity in the direction of Kyiv and Chernihiv” following peace negotiations in Turkey. ... The Russian current deployment has been a rolling disaster with ...

  National Pulse: The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Cyber Division Assistant Director revealed the agency is unaware of the location of Hunter Biden’s laptop and failed to assess whether or not the first son’s hard drive – which reveals countless business deals and personal relationships with America’s adversaries – contained information comprising America’s national security. The revelation came during a line of questioning from Congressman Matt Gaetz, who inquired with the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Bryan Vorndran for details about the laptop of President Joe Biden’s son. Unearthed emails, texts, and photos from replicas of the original hard drive have revealed Hunter Biden’s business dealings, often involving President Joe Biden, with countries including China and Ukraine . “I want to know where Hunter Biden’s laptop is. Where is it,” inquired the Florida Congressman. “I don’t know that answer,” replied Vorndran. “Has FBI Cyber assessed whether or not Hunter B...