Kushner confessed that he did attend the highly politicized meeting with Donald Trump Jr., a Russian attorney, and other officials, but left the meeting after determining that his “time was not well-spent at this meeting.” “In looking for a polite way to leave and get back to my work,” Kushner recalled, “I actually emailed an assistant from the meeting after I had been there for ten or so minutes and wrote ‘Can u pls call me on my cell? Need excuse to get out of meeting.’”

He also vehemently denied the allegation that there was contact between him and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the campaign. His alibi? After Trump won the election, Kushner asked Kislyak who in the Russian government he ought to reach out to (i.e., someone who has direct contact with Russian president Vladimir Putin). “The fact that I was asking about ways to start a dialogue after Election Day,” Kushner said, “should of course be viewed as strong evidence that I was not aware of one that existed before Election Day.” Ultimately, Kushner denied that he or anyone in the meeting with Kislyak suggested creating a secret back channel between the Trump team and the Russian government.

Read More at National Review

The post Kushner’s Russia Statement Is Plausible — But Is It Enough to Convince Congress? appeared first on Austin R. Yack.

Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is a drilling technique in which high-pressure liquids are blasted into rock, allowing for the extraction of oil and natural gas that was previously impossible to reach. The technology is the main reason that the U.S. has moved toward energy independence in recent years, and it could potentially allow Europe to break its dependence on Russian oil and natural gas. Which, naturally, makes it a threat to the Kremlin’s interests.

In 2012, Bulgaria issued a shale-gas license to Chevron. Immediately, activists pounced, peddling hyperbolic warnings that fracking pollutes drinking water. (In reality, the practice carries a minimal risk of groundwater pollution when done properly.) Protests erupted, and the Bulgarian government caved, banning fracking entirely. Gazprom, Russia’s state-run energy company, proceeded to give the Bulgarian government a 20 percent discount for signing a ten-year contract for the provision of natural gas.

One year later, Romania fell victim to a similar campaign, believed to be spearheaded by Putin. The Pungesti commune, in the northwest, “became a magnet for activists from across the country opposed to hydraulic fracturing,” the New York Times reported. Russia “is playing a dirty game” to “keep this energy dependence,” concluded Iulian Iancu, the chairman of the Romanian Parliament’s industry committee.

And why wouldn’t it? European countries that are dependent on Russian oil and natural gas — especially those in the east — help keep Russia’s economy, and thus Putin’s regime, afloat. Gazprom supplies 30 percent of the European Union’s natural gas, which means that the Kremlin has the power to turn off much of Europe’s energy supply at any time. In fact, it already did so once, during the coldest months of 2009.

Read More at National Review

The post Russia’s Financial Support for Anti-Fracking Groups Is No Coincidence appeared first on Austin R. Yack.

In January, just two weeks after the Marines officially switched to the polymer Magpul PMAG GEN 3 magazine, Republican senators Joni Ernst, Tom Cotton, Jim Inhofe, David Perdue, and Johnny Isakson wrote a letter to Army chief of staff Mark Milley demanding to know why the Army hadn’t yet made a similar change. The PMAG had “zero magazine-related stoppages through all of the tests,” the senators noted, and it “reduce[s] damage to the chamber face and feed ramps when using M855A1 ammunition.” In addition, it is not affected by extreme temperatures — a vital advantage for military personnel in both the Army and the Marines.

In his response to the letter, General Milley agreed to move forward with more testing of polymer magazines and release the results in the next six to twelve months. But to many, another year of testing seems rather pointless. “I’m just concerned that the Army is going through a lot of testing all over again for a magazine that is already in use in the same rifle in the Marine Corps,” Ernst tells National Review. “We are duplicating what has already been done.”

Read More at National Review

The post The Army’s Substandard Ammo Magazine Needs to Go appeared first on Austin R. Yack.

Trump administration officials have sought to suspend admission of all refugees to the U.S. for 120 days, to cap the number of refugees in fiscal year 2017 at 50,000, and to refuse permission for anyone to enter the U.S. from the six Muslim-majority nations — Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen — all deemed “countries of concern” in the fight against terrorism.

The post Trump’s Travel Ban, With Limitations, Will Be Implemented Tonight appeared first on Austin R. Yack.

Meanwhile, as federal judges continue to limit federal immigration policy, the Trump administration has come to rely on Republican state attorneys general to take a stand at the state level. Indeed, many of them are spearheading their own legal fights against lax immigration policies, particularly with sanctuary cities and the temporary travel ban.

“The Trump administration is slowly understanding the benefits they can get from working with Republican attorneys general across the country,” Louisiana attorney general Jeff Landry tells National Review. Trump needs these diligent officials to ensure that his agenda becomes reality. They are some of his most important allies.

On June 6, for example, Landry joined Texas attorney general Ken Paxton and signatories representing 14 other states in filing an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court; the coalition argued in support of Trump’s temporary travel ban. Trump seeks, among other travel restrictions, to suspend admission of all refugees to the country for 120 days, cap the number of refugees in fiscal year 2017 at 50,000, and not allow anyone to enter the U.S. from the six Muslim-majority nations — Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen —deemed “countries of concern” in the fight against terrorism.

“The States have a significant interest in protecting their residents’ safety,” Paxton and his coalition wrote in the amicus brief. And since “the President’s power to limit alien admission is authorized, not only by §1182(f), but also by” the Immigration and Nationality Act’s “separate delegation to the President of power to control refugee admissions,” each state “must generally rely on the federal government to set the terms and conditions for whether aliens may enter the States.”

Paxton tells National Review that he and his colleagues are in support of Trump’s travel ban because they “are about defending the law” in light of President Obama’s eight-year assault on the Constitution. “Had Donald Trump not won the election and appointed Neil Gorsuch” to the Supreme Court, Paxton adds, “we would be in post-constitutional America.”

Read More at National Review

The post On Immigration, GOP State Attorneys General Echo Trump appeared first on Austin R. Yack.

During Mrs. Sanders’s seven-year tenure as president of Burlington College, a now-defunct liberal-arts college, the college sought to expand its campus by purchasing 33 acres of land near Lake Champlain for $10 million. But Burlington College had nowhere near $10 million to spend; its total annual budget was less than $4 million. As a result, Vermont’s Educational and Health Buildings Finance Agency offered Burlington College $6.5 million in tax-exempt bonds, and People’s United Bank agreed to give Burlington College a $6.5 million loan to purchase the bonds. That bank loan was contingent on Sanders’s promising that she had secured $5 million in donations and $2.4 million in confirmed pledges (i.e., donations that Burlington College officials had not yet received but that would be coming soon).

Despite her promise, it seems that Sanders had not secured these funds before accepting the loan.

“Burlington College ran into trouble almost immediately after the loan repayments were due,” Politico reports. “For the first fiscal year after the deal was signed, Jane Sanders signed documents that confirmed pledges of $1.2 million. But according to Burlington College financial records obtained by VTDigger, the college received only $279,000.”

The FBI is currently investigating whether Mrs. Sanders committed fraud when she told People’s United Bank that she had confirmed pledges. One confirmed pledge of $1 million, it turned out, was to be paid after the donor’s death, not in the next few years, as Sanders had stated. It is also possible that Senator Sanders will find himself under FBI investigation for involvement in securing the bank loan. In a letter sent to federal prosecutors in early 2016, Brady Toensing, an attorney and former chairman of Trump’s Vermont campaign, “alleged that Senator Sanders’ office had pressured the bank to approve the loan application submitted by Jane Sanders,” Politico reported. It is “a serious ethical violation” for a sitting U.S. senator to pressure a bank, the letter concluded.

Read More at National Review

The post Senator Sanders’s Wife Lawyers Up after Allegations of Bank Fraud appeared first on Austin R. Yack.

Upon catching unaccompanied minors at the border, U.S. Border Patrol agents have 72 hours to bring the minor to the Justice Department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). From there, he or she is placed with a sponsor. According to the Washington Times, “That usually leaves the children with no federal supervisions once they are released to sponsors — where they are often prime recruiting targets.”

In a Senate judiciary committee hearing on Wednesday, Republican senator Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the committee, grilled officials from U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and the Justice Department’s ORR.

“No one takes responsibility for these children after they are placed with a sponsor,” Grassley said. “Your agencies repeatedly pass the buck to each other. As a result, children are allowed to disappear. When these children disappear without any supervision, they are vulnerable to join dangerous gangs like MS-13.”

MS-13 is increasingly recruiting unaccompanied minors who are heading to the U.S. According to ORR, 39 of the 138 unaccompanied minors who are being held by the U.S. at secure facilities — nearly 30 percent — are affiliated with MS-13 and other gangs. And just last week, 41 alleged MS-13 gang members were arrested in Nassau County, N.Y. Nineteen of the 41 arrested came to the U.S. as unaccompanied minors.

Read More at National Review

The post Trump Administration Must Reform Flawed System Allowing MS-13 to Recruit Unaccompanied Minors appeared first on Austin R. Yack.

Summarily, the high school’s administrators stripped him of his new position, and, to add insult to injury, gave him detention. Why? Because Krause delivered a satirical campaign speech that channeled Donald Trump’s presidential campaign rhetoric and, in jest, claimed his opponent was a Communist. It was “harassment,” the principal concluded.

After Krause’s classmates chanted “speech, speech,” he gave an impromptu speech that kept his fellow classmates laughing for well over a minute. “I am for freedom, equality, and liberty,” he said. His opponent? Well, she wants to “advance Communist ideals,” he smirked. “She will raise taxes to 80 percent!”

Krause also suggested in jest that his opponent supports their rivals at the nearby high school, whereas he would “build a wall” between the two schools — and make their rival pay for it.

No one thought Krause was serious. The room, full of honors students in U.S. History, seemed to be well aware of the parallels Krause was making between his campaign speech and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign speeches. The teacher allowed the off-the-cuff speech to continue, and there wasn’t any reaction by students inside the classroom but laughter.

Nevertheless, the speech not only disqualified Krause from taking up the reins as class president, it also added “harassment” to his school record. “The administration took my speech out of context and said I was harassing a student,” Krause tells National Review.

“It was a joke the whole way through.”

Pacific Legal Foundation, a conservative public-interest law firm, is representing Krause in an attempt to remove the harassment claims from his school record. It also seeks to reinstate Krause as class president. “It was pure political speech and obviously humorous,” explains Mark Miller, Krause’s attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation, to National Review. “It’s clearly protected in First Amendment speech.”

In a letter sent to Mark Rendell, the superintendent of the school district, Miller argued that “if a student gives a speech that is lewd, vulgar, or profane, then the school can sanction him.”

“But that is not remotely the case here,” Miller retorted. Satirically claiming that an opponent in a class election wants to raise taxes, advance Communism, and implement a dress code is certainly not “lewd, vulgar, or profane” — it’s a joke.

Read More at National Review

The post Violating the First Amendment, High School Punishes Student for Satirical Campaign Speech appeared first on Austin R. Yack.

After searching Winner’s home, government officials found Winner’s hand-written notes: “I want to burn the White House down . . . find somewhere in Kurdistan to live,” she wrote in one note. In other notes, Winner sympathized with Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour.

As Jim Geraghty wrote in this morning’s Morning Jolt: “Dear National Security Agency, if somebody like Reality Winner got through your interview process, who the heck are you not hiring?”

The prosecution also found evidence leading them to believe that Winner had leaked classified information in the past. According to Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Solari, “This was not the first time” that Winner mishandled classified information. Solari alleged that there is reason to believe that, while on active duty in the Air Force, Winner stole classified information through a USB drive; the USB drive in question has yet to be recovered.

Read More at National Review

The post Intelligence-Leaker Reality Winner Allegedly Sympathized with Terrorists, Wanted to ‘Burn the White House Down’ appeared first on Austin R. Yack.

Democratic senator Ricardo Lara, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, co-authored the bill and advocated its passage, but failed to explain how the proposal’s $400-billion price tag will be financed.

The bill represents a key progressive goal, and yet, it will almost certainly never be signed into law — even though Californians have elected Democratic majorities to both legislative chambers and a Democratic governor. Why not? Because it’s absurdly expensive. This year’s entire state budget is $180 billion. The single-payer system called for in 562 costs more than double that.

“We don’t have the money to pay for it,” Republican state senator Tom Berryhill said. “If we cut every single program and expense from the state budget and redirected that money to this bill, SB 562, we wouldn’t even cover half of the $400-billion price tag.”

Proponents of Lara’s bill claim that half of the $400 billion in question would be covered by the existing healthcare funds doled out at all levels of government, and the other $200 billion would be raised through increased tax revenues.

But for even this plan to be feasible, the Trump administration would have to approve a waiver allowing California to redirect all funds from Medicare and Medi-Cal to the proposed healthcare system. This is especially unlikely, as California Democrats seek to grant illegal immigrants who reside in California the right to use the state-funded healthcare system, and the Trump administration opposes that. Moreover, California’s legislators haven’t exactly built up a rapport with the new administration. In January, Democratic legislators hired former U.S. attorney general Eric Holder to represent them in lawsuits resisting the Trump administration’s political agenda.

Read More at National Review

The post California’s Single-Payer Healthcare Bill Isn’t Based in Reality appeared first on Austin R. Yack.