If the number of bills submitted in the Missouri House of Representatives and the Senate is any indication, lots of time will be devoted to debating taxes during the next legislative session starting Jan. 5, 2022.
Approximately 10% of the 1,020 bills filed contain the word “tax” in the description. Senators filed about 40 bills and joint resolutions while representatives filed approximately 60.
More than 50 bills cover taxation and general revenue.
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Rosemarie Westbury’s life was turned upside down on April 9. Armored vehicles carrying federal agents equipped with fully-automatic rifles and battering rams were looking for her son.
It was 6:30 in the morning and Rosemarie was on her way to work as the sole breadwinner of the family. Her 62-year-old husband, Robert, has had eight strokes.
She received a terrifying call from one of her sons: the FBI was at their door.
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Since taking office as Commissioner for the Florida Department of Agriculture, Nikki Fried (D) has made numerous moves backing LGBT advocacy issues. One LGBT advocacy group, Equality Florida, has been a large player in Florida’s progressive politics and receiving an official endorsement can lead to major financial contributions.
Equality Florida previously endorsed then-Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum (D) against Ron DeSantis (R) in 2018. As election day drew nearer, the Human Rights Campaign, another pro-LGBT group, bought more than half a million dollar ad buys encouraging voters to support Florida’s Democrats, including Gillum.
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Twitter suspended the account of Just the News founder John Solomon for sharing an article about the legal distinctions between Pfizer’s fully approved and emergency use authorization (EUA) COVID-19 vaccines, which could affect the legality of vaccine mandates.
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A bill that aims to exempt additional voter registration data from Florida’s public records laws was introduced Sunday by State Representative Cyndi Stevenson of St. Augustine.
In addition to data such as a voter’s social security number and address that were already exempt, Stevenson’s bill (HB 983) looks to shield the public from a voter’s date of birth, telephone number, e-mail address, and party affiliation.
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Joe Biden, first as a candidate and then in the White House, from the outset saw the COVID-19 pandemic mainly as a means of leveraging political support, from the manner in which the lockdowns allowed him to run a virtual campaign from his basement to equating Donald Trump with the COVID-19 virus.
Like many on the Left, Biden was overt in such cynicism. So were Hillary Clinton, Gavin Newsom, and Jane Fonda—who claimed that COVID was a “never-let-a-crisis-go-to-waste” moment. Panic and lockdowns could help achieve single-payer health care, or a recalibrated capitalism, or the end of Donald Trump himself.
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Iran fired missiles in a provocation toward Israel and invited Venezuela’s socialist leader for a visit as it continued to antagonize the West in the midst of slow-moving negotiations to stop Tehran’s nuclear program.
The official IRNA news agency reported the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps fired 16 surface-to-surface missiles Friday at the end of five days of military drills in the desert, airing footage of the missile launches and suggesting it was a warning to Israel.
“These exercises were designed to respond to threats made in recent days by the Zionist regime,” Major General Mohammad Bagheri told the state television network.
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Thousands of flights were delayed or canceled on multiple airlines across the United States over the holiday weekend, leaving thousands of travelers frustrated and stranded, according to FlightAware.
Sunday saw a total of 5,936 delays and 1,387 cancellations of flights within, or out of the United States on Sunday. United, Delta, and JetBlue blamed the flight disruptions on staff shortages due the highly transmissible Omicron variant, US News reported.
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Six party committees have raised a combined $716 million over the first ten months of the 2022 election cycle. In November, the committees raised $54 million, according to recent filings with the Federal Election Commission. This was the lowest cumulative fundraising month of the 2022 election cycle.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) raised $12.6 million and spent $6.4 million in November, while the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) raised $7.3 million and spent $7.9 million. So far in the 2022 election cycle, the DCCC has raised 6.8% more than the NRCC ($130.8 million to $122.1 million). November was the fifth consecutive month where the DCCC outraised the NRCC.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) raised $8.4 million and spent $8.0 million, while the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) raised $6.8 million and spent $4.5 million. So far in the 2022 election cycle, the NRSC has raised 14.3% more than the DSCC ($93.6 million to $81.1 million). This was the 10th consecutive month where the NRSC outraised the DSCC.
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The world’s three largest auction houses reported record sales of over $15 billion in 2021, highlighting a surge in global wealth and more first-time, young collectors entering the market, multiple sources reported.
Christie’s reported total sales of $7.1 billion in 2021 on Monday, marking the highest figure in five years, according to CNBC. Sotheby’s saw sales surge to $7.3 billion in 2021, the company announced Wednesday, the best year in its 277-year history, and Philips said its sales hit a record high of $1.2 billion.
“Every single category is outperforming,” Guillaume Cerutti, chief executive of Christie’s, told CNBC.
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Roughly 6-in-10 parents are concerned about the current quality of American education, according to a survey conducted by an education advocacy group.
An overwhelming number of parents believe they should be able to determine what their kids are taught in the classroom, according to a Free to Learn (FTL) poll. Concerns over COVID-19 mitigation measures, Critical Race Theory (CRT), gender ideology and virtual learning have been on the rise since the start of the pandemic.
CRT holds that America is fundamentally racist, yet it teaches people to view every social interaction and person in terms of race. Its adherents pursue “antiracism” through the end of merit, objective truth and the adoption of race-based policies.
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The 1619 Project Creator said she doesn’t understand the argument “that parents should decide what’s being taught” to their children in school on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday.
The 1619 project was created by Nikole Hannah-Jones, a writer for The New York Times, and it promotes the idea that America’s ‘true founding’ occurred when slaves arrived in the colonies, framing the history of the country around race and slavery.
“I don’t really understand this idea that parents should decide what’s being taught,” Hannah-Jones said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I’m not a professional educator. I don’t have a degree in social studies or science,” she said.
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On Tuesday, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it would be permanently extending the early release of thousands of federal inmates who were set free due to a spike in COVID cases, as reported by the New York Post.
In doing so, the DOJ reversed an order previously made by President Donald Trump in January that would have seen such prisoners eventually returned to confinement. Instead, over 5,000 prisoners will now either remain in home confinement or be allowed to roam completely free.
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Our politics is currently overwhelmed with identity. Rights, votes, participation, all understanding of one’s place in the country is said to be based on one’s “identity.” The one identity that people shy away from is that of the American citizen. Who precisely is this person?
The American Constitution speaks in the voice of “We the People,” but never defines who that people might be, even if they already existed in 1787, even before the establishment of a “more perfect Union.” Who are these Americans? Who, as an individual, is an American? On the one hand, this is a simple question to answer. There is a legal definition of citizenship based on birth or naturalization, and some people simply are Americans and others are not. It is a matter of paperwork.
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It’s no secret that there is an obsession with race among our nation’s colleges.
On every campus, there seems to be another multicultural center for BIPOC students, or a class on how to be woke, or a bias response team.
And while the country is finally waking up to just how far left American society has drifted recently, such politics have been the norm on college campuses for years.
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Astronomers with the European Space Agency have proposed a new astrophysical model in which black holes formed directly after the Big Bang, a postulation which, if true, may explain the current structural formations present throughout much of the present-day cosmos.
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Recently-released surveillance video from inside the lower west terrace tunnel at the Capitol building from last January 6 confirms what American Greatness has reported for months: law enforcement officers from the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department and U.S. Capitol Police led a brutal assault against Trump supporters trapped inside that tunnel during the Capitol protest.
The three-hour clip offers one angle of what happened between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. in the tunnel, the site of the most violent clashes between police and protesters. It also is the location where Rosanne Boyland, a Trump supporter from Georgia, died.
One clip shows the attack on Victoria White, a Minnesota mother of four who was viciously beaten by at least two D.C. Metro officers including a supervisor:
The video supports what White told me in a series of interviews earlier this month; she was repeatedly beaten on the head with a baton and punched directly in the face numerous times by police. One officer grabbed her by the hair and shook her head side to side. Government charging documents, however, claim White—who is 5’6”, weighs 155 pounds, and had no weapon—was the aggressor:
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In the current day and age, energy security is a prerequisite for national security. When America became energy independent in 2019, it freed us from the political whims of unstable countries. But dogmatic leftists across the world have made it clear that they will sacrifice energy security for their idea of necessary climate policy, seemingly undisturbed by the transfer of that security to communist and authoritarian regimes in China and Russia. As a result, the world might see a Red Revolution before it ever sees a Green one.
While in recent years the US has embraced its liquified natural gas (LNG) boom, European countries steered the other way, ramping down fossil fuel production and increasing their dependence on fossil fuel imports. They have justified this as a “necessary” sacrifice until solar and wind deployment catches up. They are seemingly unconcerned that Russia has become the EU’s largest supplier of fossil fuels, supplying around 40% of the EU’s LNG and coal.
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Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., is leading a coalition of Republicans in Congress to sponsor legislation that would ban federal funding to states or localities that allow foreigners to vote in U.S. elections.
The new legislation, dubbed the Protecting Our Democracy by Preventing Foreign Citizens from Voting Act, was introduced after many liberal municipalities from San Francisco to New York have moved in 2021 to allow non-citizens to cast ballots in local elections
“It’s ridiculous that states are allowing foreign citizens to vote,” Rubio said. “However, if states and localities do let those who are not U.S. citizens to vote in elections, they shouldn’t get U.S. citizen taxpayer money.”
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Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly and the Legislature’s Democratic leadership on Thursday released a draft bill to get rid of the food sales tax in the state.
Known colloquially as the “Axe the Food Tax” bill, the legislation would eliminate the state’s 6.5% sales tax on food. The draft bill also includes a full exemption on state and local taxes for items bought at farmers markets.
Senate Minority Leader Dinah Sykes, D-Lenexa, and House Minority Leader Tom Sawyer, D-Wichita, helped craft the legislation and are formally looking for co-sponsors.
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Pennsylvania was by far one of the most contentious battleground states in the 2020 election, but new analysis shows even in Philadelphia Democrats are only treading water.
In 2020, both Democrat and anti-Trump groups dumped millions into Philadelphia and surrounding suburbs, with roving food vans that would extract votes out of people in exchange for a meal, or the use of “street money” to incentivize election-day door knockers to push people to the polls.
Despite these borderline-bribery efforts to drag people out to vote against Trump in 2020, Democrats gained less than 20,000 votes in Philly compared to 2016 numbers.
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by Paul Gottfried In a widely noted analysis of wokeness at The American Conservative, Scott McConnell indicates that there’s good news ahead. Woke culture may soon be a spent force. It may be following the paths of other attempted revolutions like communism and Jacobinism, which reached a high point in power…
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The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has scheduled a time when it will hear a challenge to a Florida law that bans 18 to 20-year-olds from purchasing rifles and shotguns. The court will hear the arguments during the week of March 21, 2022.
The law in question is the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act, named after the school where the Parkland school shooting took place. The assailant was underage and used a modern sporting rifle during the shooting.
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The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided on Wednesday to not hear a case relating to “medically fragile” children being placed in nursing homes. A three-panel judge in 2019 ruled in favor of a U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) authority to pursue a lawsuit against the State of Florida.
The issue originally began after the DOJ found Florida was institutionalizing children with severe medical conditions in nursing homes in 2012 and that Florida’s Medicaid program put more children at risk of being put into a home.
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For many years, the U.S. military has been among the most trusted of American institutions, certainly the most trusted part of the U.S. government. It has maintained that status despite its failure to achieve success in the post-9/11 wars. Americans seem to have accepted the argument that this failure has more to do with the political constraints placed on the military than on the military’s doctrine, planning, and execution. They have continued to accept the military’s self-image as a profession rather than a self-interested bureaucracy, and have supported its professional ethos understood as duty, honor, and sacrifice.
But attitudes toward the military seem to be changing. According to a recent survey conducted by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, the number of Americans who express a great deal of confidence and trust in the military has dropped from 70 percent to 45 percent in just the past three years, including an 11 percent drop since February.
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Inflation, “softness” in the White House, and pandemic uncertainty make up some of the biggest risks to the U.S. economy in 2022, according to a Washington consulting firm.
“Every quarter, I take a macro look at trends driving politics and policy looking both backward and forwards and identify where key political risks may lurk and where political opportunities may present themselves,” Bruce Mehlman, former assistant secretary of Commerce in the George W. Bush administration, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “The most recent analysis targets 2022 and identifies the emerging risks business and government leaders should anticipate and prepare for.”
A founding partner of the Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm Mehlman Castagnetti Rosen & Thomas, Mehlman advises prominent companies to understand and prepare for emerging trends and risks critical to the ever-evolving policy environment.
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The Biden administration proposed giving bonus payments to physicians who acknowledge systemic racism as the primary cause of health differences between racial groups and incorporate so-called “anti-racism” into their medical practices.
The move to pressure healthcare professionals to repeat the claim that racial health disparities are caused by racism and not lifestyle choices is part of a broader, years-long push to hardwire “race Marxism” into the medical field. The effort stretches from medical schools and research institutions to patient care and medical administration, with potentially devastating effects for patients and the healthcare system as a whole.
“Race Marxism,” analogous to “anti-racism” as popularized by Ibram X. Kendi, seeks to promote equal outcomes across racial groups, as opposed to a “colorblind” approach which favors equal opportunity and does not take race into account.
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The U.S. will establish a new government program that will investigate unidentified aerial phenomena, also known as UFOs, TODAY reported.
The National Defense Authorization Act called for the creation of the permanent office and was a part of a bipartisan effort spearheaded by Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York. “I really see this as trying to know what is knowable and not having a head in the sand perspective on this,” she told TODAY.
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A network of social media accounts spreading Chinese state propaganda is thriving on tech platforms despite social media companies’ attempts to crack down on foreign influence campaigns.
Over 2,000 accounts are involved in a coordinated propaganda campaign to spread Chinese regime talking points on U.S. social media platforms, according to a report from Miburo, a research collective that studies disinformation campaigns. The accounts disseminate false or misleading claims including the denial of China’s ongoing mistreatment of Uyghur Muslims in the Xinjiang region of China, as well as criticism of Guo Wengui, a Chinese dissident and financial backer of U.S. social media site Gettr.
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A company that specializes in creating military dog tags has sued the Department of Defense over a ban on its products, the Daily Caller reports.
Shields of Strength, a company that has produced dog tags for over twenty years, was first issued a cease-and-desist order back in 2019. That order was filed by the left-wing Military Religious Freedom Foundation, which accused Shields of Strength of producing “sectarian proselytizing merchandise” whenever its merchandise included religious themes.
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Desmond Tutu, the Anglican archbishop who won the Nobel Peace Prize for fighting apartheid in South Africa, has died at age 90.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced Tutu’s death on Sunday, as leaders around the world mourned the passing of an uncompromising voice for racial equality.
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On Tuesday, the U.S. Air Force announced that it had rejected approximately 2,130 requests from service members for a religious exemption from the COVID-19 vaccine mandate, as reported by the Daily Caller.
“More than 10,000 requests from across the Total Force have been received,” the Air Force’s statement read, “of which approximately 2,100 have been disapproved due to military readiness considerations.”
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Elected officials and like-minded activists across the country are refusing to cooperate with ongoing efforts to thwart voter fraud and promote the integrity of future elections, lambasting such efforts as antidemocratic campaigns to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
The apparent resistance of mostly Democratic and some Republican figures to investigating allegations of election fraud and supporting reforms to decrease its likelihood comes at a time when millions of Americans say they don’t have faith in the country’s electoral process.
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Just a day after taking the Moderna booster shot, a New York Times editor unexpectedly died of a heart attack.
“This is Carlos’s wife, Nora. It’s with deepest sorrow that I have to share with you that Carlos passed away last night of a heart attack. I’ve lost my best friend and our kids lost a truly great dad. I will be off social media for awhile,” Carlos Tejada’s wife announced on his Twitter account on Dec. 18.
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United Airlines employees who have been granted exemptions to the company’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate are allegedly being placed on indefinite unpaid leave, unable to seek employment elsewhere within the industry, access their 401(k) retirement savings, or file for unemployment.
United Airlines Capt. Sherry Walker, who has been placed on indefinite unpaid leave, told Just the News that United employees seeking reasonable accommodation regarding the company’s vaccine mandate for religious or medical reasons are being placed on indefinite unpaid leave and cannot leave their job for another airline because of the noncompete clause in their contracts.
Walker is cofounder of Airline Employees 4 Health Freedom (AE4HF), which represents 4,000 airline employees, about half of whom are with United.
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Low wind power generation is largely to blame for Europe’s ongoing energy crisis and scramble to import more fossil fuels, according to a Reuters report.
Wind farms across Europe produced just 14% of their capacity from July-September compared to the previous average of 20-26%, market data from Refinitiv showed, according to Reuters. As a result, European energy providers have been forced to purchase more coal and natural gas which have skyrocketed in price as demand has increased.
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One of the biggest complaints the American people have about the federal government is that Washington, D.C. is infected with cronyism and special-interest favoritism. In the area of tax policy, the corporation with the best tax lobbyist usually gets preferential treatment.
Look at the Professional Golfers Association of America (PGA) as a case study in how wealthy, professional golfers are getting a subsidy from the federal government to make even more money. Just like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the PGA enjoys tax-exempt status as a 501(c)(6) nonprofit organization.
This tax status has been a big moneymaker for the PGA. ESPN reported back in 2013, that “the PGA Tour’s nonprofit business model has allowed it to avoid paying up to $200 million in federal taxes over the past 20 years, and its tournaments—designed to benefit local charities—operate in ways that fall short of acceptable charitable practices.” While the Biden Administration is intent on soaking the middle class for more taxes, apparently wealthy sports organizations don’t make that list. Just goes to show you, yet again, how unfair the U.S. tax system is; the middle class gets soaked while the well-connected elites game the tax code to add tens of millions annually to their bottom lines.
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The Biden administration approved two solar projects, and it is nearing approval of a third, that will power hundreds of thousands of homes in California.
Construction of the Arica and Victory Pass solar projects — the two that received administration approval — will begin immediately on a large swath of land in Riverside County, California, the Department of the Interior (DOI) announced on Tuesday. Together, the projects will cost $689 million, be able to produce 465 megawatts of electricity, store 400 megawatts of energy and power 132,000 homes.
Oberon, the third solar project mentioned in the announcement, would be built on 2,700 acres of public lands in Riverside County if approved, according to DOI. The project would generate 500 megawatts of electricity and power an additional 142,000 households.
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As Texas and Missouri attorneys general ask a federal court to require the Biden administration to immediately resume building the border wall with funds allocated by Congress, the Department of Homeland Security announced it was using the funds on environmental projects instead.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt sued the administration in October. In November, they filed a motion for a preliminary injunction to require it to resume building the border wall using funds already appropriated by Congress to do so.
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A majority of Americans don’t trust major social media platforms, including TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram, to keep their data safe, according to a new poll.
Over 70% of American internet users say they don’t trust Facebook to responsibly manage their personal information or data related to their internet activity, according to the results of The Washington Post/Schar School poll released Wednesday. Similarly, 63% say they don’t trust TikTok to handle their data and 60% say they don’t trust Instagram.
Amazon and Apple were deemed the most trustworthy major tech companies, with just 40% of Americans saying they distrust the tech giants, according to the poll results.
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The U.S. life expectancy dropped to its lowest level since World War II in 2020, multiple sources reported.
Life expectancy fell from 78.8 years in 2019 to 77 years in 2020, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report, NBC News reported.
The average life expectancy for males fell 2.1 years from 76.3 in 2019 to 74.2 in 2020, NBC News reported. Women’s average life expectancy decreased 1.5 years from 81.4 in 2019 to 79.9 in 2020.
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The first book I ever read on public policy was Compassion Versus Guilt. A collection of columns by the great Thomas Sowell, it was what I regularly referred to on all questions economic toward the end of high school, in college, and well beyond. I have it to this day, and it informs my thinking to this day.
In many ways Sowell’s collection is a look back in time. Thanks to the internet, these kinds of compilations aren’t as common nowadays. This is unfortunate, but at the same time some writers are so prominent and popular that they still rate this kind of publication. Washington Post columnist extraordinaire George Will is one of them. Thank goodness. His latest collection of essays, American Happiness and Discontents: The Unruly Torrent 2008-2020 is nothing short of spectacular. Though a little under 500 pages, I read it in a few sittings so unputdownable was it. Every column had me wanting more, which meant a few late nights and early mornings in a very short, very busy 8-day stretch.
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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent explosive comments about Western elites and their notions about climate policy are not surprising to anyone who has been closely observing the opposition of India and China to western pressure for policies contrary to the two countries’ economic objectives.
“The colonial mindset hasn’t gone,” Modi said at a Constitution Day event. “We are seeing from developed nations that the path that made them developed is being closed for developing nations . . . If we talk about absolute cumulative [carbon] emissions, rich nations have emitted 15 times more from 1850 till now . . . The per capita emission is also 11 times more in the U.S. and the EU.”
Senior ministers in the past have called out the colonial nature of climate politics. This is the first time, however, that Modi has publicly recalled in this context the colonialism of the 18th and 19th centuries, when Western countries denied basic rights and autonomy to India and other colonies.
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Ahead of the turn of the new year and the 2022 legislative session that begins on January 11th, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced his appointments for the first three of five seats in the Florida Gaming Control Commission (FGCC) on Wednesday.
The three appointments include Secretary of the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation, Julie Imanuel Brown, Chief of Staff at the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation, Michael Yaworksy, and Founder and President of Drago Professional Consultants, Charles Drago.
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The Florida Supreme Court is set to take up a legal battle regarding “Marsy’s Law,” which is a 2018 constitutional amendment passed by voters that shields the identities of victims of crimes. An official date has not yet been set.
The City of Tallahassee and several news organizations are appealing a decision by the 1st District Court of Appeal backing the law and protecting the identities of Tallahassee police officers when they utilized use-of-force in more than one shooting incident. The law enforcement officers maintain they were the victims and felt compelled to use deadly force.
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In a recent Washington Post op-ed, three retired generals, Paul Eaton, Antonio Taguba, and Steven Anderson warn of a supposedly impending coup should Donald Trump be elected in 2024.
The column seemed strangely timed to coincide with a storm of recent Democratic talking points that a reelected Trump, or even a Republican sweep of the 2022 midterms, would spell a virtual end of democracy.
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Electric truck manufacturer Nikola announced Tuesday it had settled fraud charges with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), agreeing to pay the regulator $125 million.
The settlement is in response to allegations by the SEC that Nikola’s founder and former chief executive Trevor Milton misled investors about Nikola’s products and technological progress in order to boost the company’s share price. The SEC alleged that Milton misrepresented the anticipated costs and sources of electricity for its truck venture.
Milton was indicted by the Department of Justice in July on fraud charges, to which he pleaded not guilty.
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In a recent Washington Post op-ed, three retired generals, Paul Eaton, Antonio Taguba, and Steven Anderson warn of a supposedly impending coup should Donald Trump be elected in 2024.
The column seemed strangely timed to coincide with a storm of recent Democratic talking points that a reelected Trump, or even a Republican sweep of the 2022 midterms, would spell a virtual end of democracy.
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West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin told the White House last week that he was willing to endorse some type of billionaire tax in President Joe Biden’s domestic spending package before coming out against it days later, The Washington Post reported.
Manchin said that a tax on billionaires’ wealth could be a means to pay for the package, according to the Post, citing three people familiar with his offer to the White House. The outlet reported that it was unclear whether Manchin provided an estimate of how much money the provision would raise.
Programs in Manchin’s $1.8 trillion counteroffer included universal pre-K for ten years, expansions to the Affordable Care Act and billions of dollars for climate change mitigation measures, according to the Post, but it did not include the child tax credit, which many Democrats have touted as one of the single biggest policy achievements of the year.
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At least nine Republican U.S. senators are continuing to pressure the Department of Homeland Security for answers over its vetting process of Afghan evacuees entering the U.S.
Three Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee members sent a letter last week to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and to Secretary of State Antony Blinken requesting information about Afghan evacuees. This week, six additional senators sent a letter to DHS asking for an overdue report they were supposed to have received Nov. 30.
Their letters followed news reports that the State Department didn’t have reliable data on everyone who evacuated Afghanistan and what types of visas they qualified for, and after a convicted rapist on an evacuation flight reached Washington-Dulles Airport. The letters also were sent after assaults and arrests were reported at military bases in New Mexico and Wisconsin where evacuees were being housed, and after several of the senators expressed concerns at a senate committee hearing in September.
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