PrairiePundit

 Breitbart: Report: Soros-Linked Group Wins $41M Contract from Biden to Help Illegal Aliens Evade Deportation They both seek to thwart US immigration law. 

 Biz Pac Review: President Biden once again shirked any responsibility for skyrocketing gas prices and instead demanded that gas stations cut prices at the pump for drivers despite their costs to stay in business being dictated by the market. ... His flawed economic reasoning is that oil prices are dropping. Oil prices are not the only factor in the price of a gallon of gasoline. Taxation and crushing regulation as well as progressive policies have a lot to do with it. It’s almost as if Biden and the left want to drive gas stations out of business. In a meeting with economic aides on Monday, Biden excoriated gas stations, referring to crude prices falling sharply in August. He contended that despite that fact, it has taken a “long time” for the drop in price to trickle down to American drivers. “We haven’t seen the lower prices reflected at the pump though. Meanwhile, oil and gas companies are still making record profits — billions of dollars in profit,” the president claimed , once a

 Thomas Lifson: Large swaths of Florida’s heavily populated Gulf Coast have been ordered evacuated. The  map  below, prepared by the Florida Department of Emergency Management, shows the mandatory areas in reddish colors.  The actual evacuation order from  the state is found  here .  At least 300,000 people from the Tampa Bay Area must leave. It is fortunate that as of the current moment, electric vehicles constitute only  about 100,000,  out of  nearly 8 million vehicles  registered to drive on Florida’s roads. What if they all were electric, the (impractical) dream dream of greenies? Depending on how heavily loaded they were, even assuming everyone had a full battery charge, cars from southern Florida would start running out of juice after 100 – 250 miles. They would then have to spend hours at recharging stations, which would rapidly be clogged with other cars and trucks waiting their turn, since an electricity “fill up” can easily take an hour or more, as compared to a couple of mi

 Daily Mail: The wife of the US Army's first trans officer told her to stop being a 'coward' and to overlook 'ethical issues' when the couple tried to hand over medical records of senior military officers and their families to the Russian government.   Major Jamie Lee Henry, 39, and Johns Hopkins Dr. Anna Gabrielian, 36, were accused of using their secret security clearance at  North Carolina 's Fort Bragg to steal the records from the base's hospital, according to the Department of Justice.  Fort Bragg is among one of the most populated military installations in the world, housing about 52,000 active duty soldiers. The base is home to the US Army's Delta Force and Special Operations Forces.     The couple, from Rockville, Maryland, had communicated and met with an undercover  FBI  agent who they believed was from the Russian embassy in order to deliver files that the Kremlin 'could exploit.'  According to the indictment, which was unsealed on Th

 Hot Air: CNN: Russian ships and submarines were spotted near the Nord Stream pipeline The Europeans think Russian ships passing through the area may be responsible for the damage.  See, also: Swedes Report New Fourth Leak in Nord Stream Pipeline ‘Sabotage

Daily Caller:   Chevron is selling its global headquarters in California as it continues to move its operations and employees to Texas, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. The oil giant sold 92 acres of offices in San Ramon as its workers continue to relocate to its Houston campus, where it has three times the number of employees that California has, according to the WSJ. Chevron will follow in the footsteps of other large companies like Tesla and American Airlines that have left California in recent years for various reasons. (RELATED: Biden Threatens To Investigate Oil Companies If They Raise Gas Prices During Hurricane Ian) “The current real estate market provides the opportunity to right-size our office space to meet the requirements of our headquarters-based employee population,” a Chevron spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Chevron will remain headquartered in California, where the company has a 140-year history and operations and partnerships througho

 Daily Caller: The FBI is revoking the security clearances of conservative agents and retaliating against suspected whistleblowers, three House Republicans alleged in a Thursday letter. Republicans in both chambers of Congress have alleged widespread politicized misconduct in the FBI, most notably by a Washington, D.C., agent who investigated Hunter Biden. That agent, Timothy Thibault , resigned in August rather than face an internal review. Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has said that whistleblowers have approached his office to report internal misconduct in the bureau’s investigations into former President Donald Trump. The FBI is cracking down on suspected whistleblowers in response, Republican Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Darrell Issa of California, and Mike Johnson of Louisiana alleged in a letter to FBI Executive Assistant Director Jennifer Leigh Moore. Moore signed “many” clearance revocation orders and “retaliated against at least

 Just the News: A consortium of four private groups worked with the departments of Homeland Security (DHS) and State to censor massive numbers of social media posts they considered misinformation during the 2020 election, and its members then got rewarded with millions of federal dollars from the Biden administration afterwards, according to interviews and documents obtained by Just the News. The Election Integrity Partnership is back in action again for the 2022 midterm elections , raising concerns among civil libertarians that a chilling new form of public-private partnership to evade the First Amendment's prohibition of government censorship may be expanding. The consortium is comprised of four member organizations: Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public, the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, and social media analytics firm Graphika. It set up a concierge-like service in 2020 that allowed federal

 NY Times: Ian Bears Down on Carolinas After Battering Florida As crews in southwest Florida rescued people amid widespread damage, Ian’s wind speeds grew on its way to an expected landfall in South Carolina on Friday. State and federal officials said they expected deaths connected to the storm, but no firm total had emerged. The wind and the storm surge caused significant damage in Florida where the Governor declared a 500-year flood in parts of the state.  After cutting across Florida it strengthened again over the Atlantic before heading to the Carolinas. See, also: Cajun Navy groups jump into action after Hurricane Ian slams Florida

The Biden energy policies make no sense and are disconnected to reality.

 ISW: The Kremlin continues to violate its stated “partial mobilization” procedures and contradict its own messaging even while recognizing the systematic failures within the Russian bureaucracy just eight days after the declaration of mobilization. Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledged and deflected the blame for repeated “mistakes” during the first week of mobilization in his opening remarks at the Russian Security Council meeting on September 29.[1] Putin recounted instances of mobilizing men without prior military experience, assigning servicemen to the wrong specializations, and unfairly mobilizing men with health conditions or large families. ISW has previously reported that Kremlin-state media began exploring similar complaints just days after Putin’s declaration of “partial mobilization.”[2] Putin called on the Russian General Staff, Ministry of Defense (MoD), and federal subjects to fix the reported problems with mobilization, while noting that prosecutors and working

 Washington Examiner: H ow do you know President Joe Biden is genuinely losing the mental faculties required to govern? One way is to look at his White House staff scrambling to cover up every clue that this is the case. At a recent event,  Biden called for Rep. Jackie Walorski  (R-IN) to come forward, but the congresswoman was  killed last month  in a car crash. "I want to thank all of you here, including bipartisan elected officials like Rep. McGovern, Sen. Braun, Sen. Booker, Rep. — Jackie, are you here? Where's Jackie? I thought she was going to be here — to help make this a reality." Walorski’s death in Elkhart, Indiana, in August had been traumatic for all of Washington and for the Michiana-area district she served. Walorski, who had written op-eds for the  Washington Examiner , was killed along with two staffers while visiting and serving constituents. Her bipartisan work on hunger, the subject of the event in question, had earned her respect on both sides of the a

 Jeff Dunetz: Once believed to be a fearsome fighting force fit for a world superpower, the reality of the Russian military’s losses and other Russian failures has created cracks in Putin’s power base. CIA Director Williams Burns said  Russia’s military has  more issues than manpower after President Vladimir Putin ordered a mobilization of 300,000 reservists last week. Putin’s decision, which has sparked protests and attempts to flee the country, comes as Ukraine has liberated some Russian-held areas. “Even if he’s able to mobilize 300,000 troops, it’s not as if throwing people like cannon fodder toward the front, many of whom are not going to be well trained, many of whom are not going to have the kind of equipment that they need or the logistical support that they need as well,” Burns told “CBS Evening News” anchor and managing editor Norah O’Donnell in an exclusive interview Monday. “His military has a lot of other problems; manpower is only one of them.” He also has some concerns a

 Paul Sperry: Since being named special counsel in October 2020, John Durham has investigated or indicted several unscrupulous anti-Trump informants. But he has spared the FBI agents who handled them, raising suspicions he's letting investigators off the hook in his waning investigation of misconduct in the Russiagate probe. In recent court filings, Durham has portrayed the G-men as naive recipients of bad information, tricked into opening improper investigations targeting Donald Trump and obtaining invalid warrants to spy on one of his advisers. But as the cases against the informants have gone to trial, defense lawyers have revealed evidence that cuts against that narrative. FBI investigators look less like guileless victims and more like willing partners in the fraudulent schemes Durham has brought to light. Notwithstanding his reputation as a tough, intrepid prosecutor, Durham has made excuses for the misconduct of FBI agents, providing them a ready-made defense against any pos

 National Review: States Sue to Stop Biden Loan ‘Forgiveness’ Program: ‘Unwise,’ ‘Unfair,’ and ‘Unlawful’ Nebraska, Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas, Iowa, and South Carolina joined together to file a lawsuit against the Biden administration on Thursday in an attempt to stop the president’s announced student loan-forgiveness program from taking effect. “In addition to being economically unwise and downright unfair, the Biden Administration’s Mass Debt Cancellation is yet another example in a long line of unlawful regulatory actions,” argued the plaintiffs in their filing . The administration has said that it will wipe out up to $10,000 in loans for borrowers making under $125,000 per year, and up to $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients who meet that criteria. Married persons filing jointly will be able to take advantage of the new benefit if their income does not exceed $250,000. While President Biden has styled the program as a “targeted” effort to help “families who need it the most — working

 Washington Examiner: Vice President Kamala Harris accidentally commended the United States's strong alliance with the “Republic of North Korea” during a speech at the Demilitarized Zone on the Korean Peninsula, likely meaning to refer to the “Republic of Korea,” better known as South Korea. The slip-up came during the vice president’s first visit to the DMZ on Thursday, where Harris vowed that the U.S. would support South Korea against the North Korean government. The gaffe was the latest in a string of blunders from the vice president during her time in office, providing fodder for her Republican critics and operatives. President Joe Biden is known for his verbal missteps, but Harris has a number of her own, garnering headlines whenever she falls victim to awkward speech delivery or fumbled words. Here’s a round-up of some of her reported gaffes and blunders to date.... ... The Democrats should be held accountable for selecting these two to lead the country. 

 Bob Hoge: RedState  brought you  the story  last week of how between 20-30 armed FBI agents showed up early on the morning of September 23 at Catholic activist Mark Houck’s home, pounding relentlessly against the door until he opened it, flashing semi-automatic weapons at his wife and seven children, then taking him away—handcuffed with a  belly-chain —while his terrorized, screaming family cried in the background. His crime? He allegedly shoved a man who was verbally abusing his 12-year-old son and getting up into his face. ... Now  22 lawmakers  are demanding answers: The 47-year-old Houck is the Co-Founder & President of  The King’s Men , a pro-Catholic, pro-masculinity advocacy group. He pleaded  not guilty  Tuesday to federal charges of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. The lunacy on display here is mind-boggling: A) local officials and the Philadelphia district attorney declined to press charges last October when the encounter took place. Why? B

 Matt Margolis: Biden’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan may have tanked his approval ratings, but record inflation and soaring gas prices kept them underwater. As fuel prices reached historic highs, Biden stubbornly refused to do anything that would increase domestic supply, opting instead to buy fuel from overseas before eventually raiding the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It was a foolish thing to do, and while gas prices have gone down, the impact of raiding the reserves is debatable. But one thing is for sure: Biden depleted the reserves, which are now at a 37-year low, to boost his poll numbers. Related:   Remember When Democrats Blocked Trump from Filling the Strategic Oil Reserve While Gas Was Cheap? Now that Hurricane Ian is headed for Florida, the folly of Biden’s tactic is on full display. That’s not to say he shouldn’t have seen this coming. Jeffrey Lord predicted this exact scenario back in July. “The Biden administration, for political purposes with an eye on the Novemb

 Fox News: Democrats in competitive House races flip-flop on criminal justice provisions they once championed A recent poll found crime is more of a concern for voters than abortion is ahead of the midterms There is something about an election that causes candidates to focus on what a majority of voters support. 

 Monica Showalter: Own goal: Biden's bid to discredit Trump with Mar-a-Lago raid has only made Trump more popular —I&I/TIPP poll Trump continues to gain popularity while Biden continues to lose popularity.  I suspect that it also deceased respect for the DOJ and FBI. 

 Victoria Taft: It was worse than we thought. It turns out that Hunter Biden’s drug enslavement, sex addiction, and penchant for Russkie hookers didn’t stop there. It was probably worse than his hinky “big guy” business deals, diamond “gifts,” and unearned Ukrainian paydays. There was a Chinese spy involved. Just like Democrat Eric Swalwell’s Fang Fang. Hold on, I’ve got to catch my breath. Be honest: You thought it would be that Putin inserted, so to speak, hookers who would double back and sting the first son. But those chickens haven’t come home to roost — at least as far as we know. Over to you, FBI. No. It turns out that the sex slave son of the president, just like his Dad-showering sister, lived for the next conquest that could not satisfy the kinkiest porn fantasies. So, kinky Hunter had a Chinese honey-on-the-side “secretary” who was the wide-open gateway to “billions” of largesse. And, according to Fox News, she was a spy. Meet JiaQi Bao. ... Surprise, surprise. The Chinese-

Daily Caller: The Libs of TikTok Twitter account was suspended from Twitter Wednesday for “hateful conduct,” its owner said on her website. The account will be locked for seven days, according to Chaya Raichik, who runs the account. She views the suspension as an attempt to deplatform her and threatened to sue Twitter if the company permanently bans her. “Twitter claims I have violated their ‘hateful conduct policy,’ but like my last suspension, they have provided no explanation as to how I violated this policy,” she wrote. “Was it hateful to expose an all-ages drag show where a stripper performed in front of children? Was it hateful to expose a drag queen who allowed a small child to repeatedly rub their crotch?” (RELATED: ‘I’ll Never Forgive Myself’: Women Share Abortion Regrets On TikTok) The Libs of TikTok account gained online notoriety for resharing videos liberals posted to TikTok in which users made bizarre and offensive statements about political and social issues, and in th

 Political Insider: Already this fiscal year, the U.S. has seen record-breaking numbers of illegal immigrants crossing the border. So far, over 2.1 million encounters with one month to go. We’ve seen border states attempt to shame the Biden administration into doing something about it by sending illegal immigrants to northern, liberal areas. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) has another idea. He’s introducing a bill that would allow individual states to enforce federal immigration laws, and deport illegal immigrants. ... Biden is AWOL on border enforcement and it is on purpose.  The border wall would be completed and if Biden will not enforce the law the states should be allowed to do so.  See, also: EXCLUSIVE: House Republicans Introduce Legislation To Redirect Funds From IRS To Border Patrol

 Fox News Fentanyl crisis continues to ravage US communities as border drug trafficking hits new records: memo The amount of fentanyl seized at the US southern border so far this year could kill the entire US population eight times over ... Those who have witnessed activity at the border believe the crisis at the border and the fentanyl crisis are correlated. "Yeah, I've never seen anything like this. The numbers, the organization, the movement. And the federal government is doing a masterful job of keeping it on the down-low as much as possible — sanitizing it as much as possible," retired Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agent and Texas congressional candidate Frank Lopez Jr. told Fox News Digital. CBP agents seized an unprecedented 10,500 lbs. of the deadly drug in 2021, and seizures have already surpassed 12,000 lbs. so far this year — the most fentanyl ever seized in a single year in the United States. That much fentanyl could kill the entire U.S. population eig

 Mark Galeotti: While the Ukrainians are fighting a conventional war on their own territory, Russia and the West are engaged in an unconventional one fought by economic pressure, political subterfuge and dirty tricks. The apparent sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines seems just the latest example. Both of these lines linking Russia to Germany have sprung devastating leaks. The cause, according to seismological readings, was a series of explosions off the Danish island of Bornholm, too directed (and powerful enough to breach two inches of steel and a thick concrete mantle) and too synchronized to be any kind of an accident. There are those in Russia who, predictably enough, are blaming the Ukrainians. Given that the Russians took their last working submarine in 2014, though, this is implausible even by their standards. While some are instead seeing an American plot behind the leaks, the most credible answer for now is that the Russians dunnit. But why sabotage their own pipelines,

 ISW: Russian milbloggers discussed Ukrainian gains around Lyman with increased concern on September 28, suggesting that Russian forces in this area may face imminent defeat.[1] Several Russian milbloggers and prominent military correspondents claimed that Ukrainian troops advanced west, north, and northeast of Lyman and are working to complete the envelopment of Russian troops in Lyman and along the northern bank of the Siverskyi Donets River in this area.[2] Russian mibloggers stated that Ukrainian troops are threatening Russian positions and lines of communication that support the Lyman grouping. The collapse of the Lyman pocket will likely be highly consequential to the Russian grouping in northern Donetsk and western Luhansk oblasts and may allow Ukrainian troops to threaten Russian positions along the western Luhansk Oblast border and in the Severodonetsk-Lysychansk area. ... Russian authorities continue to send newly-mobilized and undertrained recruits to directly reinforce seve

 Washington Examiner: Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX) said he has told President Joe Biden many times that the United States needs to take more aggressive action at the southern border as illegal immigrants head into Texas and other states. Cuellar said many illegal immigrants are evading border officials, adding the U.S. needs to be more aggressive in its response if it wants to stem the surge that has been underway since Biden took office. BROKEN BORDER: ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION ARRESTS UNDER BIDEN EXCEED OBAMA'S EIGHT YEARS "If you don’t deport people, they will see the border as a speed bump," Cuellar said on The Faulkner Focus. "We have to deport people. We have to deport people who aren’t supposed to be here." He said the number of deportations under former President Donald Trump was less than the number of deportations under former President Barack Obama "because of the repercussions." "You have to have the right repercussions," he added. ... B

 Washington Examiner: The largest law enforcement agency in America has a suicide problem. Over the past 15 years, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has lost 146 employees to suicide. Senior officials became especially concerned this year because deaths spiked early on. "We were sitting at five suicides, and that was alarming," said acting CBP COO Benjamine “Carry” Huffman in an exclusive interview with the Washington Examiner. In the midst of a humanitarian and national security crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border , CBP leadership needed to reform its approach to the well-being of its 60,000-strong workforce. The federal agency became the first government entity to add a "suicidologist" to its ranks in the first half of 2021. Dr. Kent Corso works in the commissioner’s behavioral safety and risk management office and has spent more than a year quietly working on the issue, spurring major changes to the agency's culture. ... Frustration among agents in the Borde

 Washington Examiner: ... Ari Fleischer , the former White House press secretary for the Bush administration, is cautioning that a bulk of the midterm polls being eyed by analysts lean too heavily on registered voters instead of likely ones, thereby including troves of those who are unlikely to cast their vote. "Registered voters don't vote. Voters vote. And so you need to switch to likely voters. Likely voters always vote more Republican than registered voters. And right now, the media is still using an overbroad pool of people called registered voters," Fleischer told Fox News's Laura Ingraham. Republicans began the summer as the favorite to surf a red wave and win the midterm elections against the backdrop of Democrats being dogged by historical trends, unbridled inflation, soaring gas prices, lackluster approval ratings for President Joe Biden, and an uptick in crime. ... However, Fleischer contends that underlying polling, like the ones used in many of those fo

 Streiff: ... The Ukrainian government also set up a phone number that Russians could call to arrange their safe surrender. But, much to their surprise, they got calls from  Russians who’d received a conscription notice  but had not yet been inducted into the army. Instead of getting at least two weeks of training, many are sent  immediately to the front . There are reports of Russian troop trains being hit by artillery fire while on the way to their destinations. Mobilized soldiers have already started turning up as prisoners. While I have no insight into Putin’s strategy, it is clear that time and regime stability are two key factors. Shipping off 300,000 men to almost certain death or captivity in Ukraine will buy him some time. They may be little more than a collection of bollards and speedbumps, but they can fill the gaping holes in some units, and some percentage will turn out to be competent soldiers. To what end is Putin buying time? I can’t hazard a guess. If, as expected, he