White House scrambles to salvage $1.75tn Build Back Better bill by Christmas . . . The White House is rushing to save its plans to pass Joe Biden’s $1.75tn Build Back Better bill by the end of the year, with time running low to win over Democratic holdouts worried about excessive spending and persistent inflation. On Monday afternoon, the US president spoke with Joe Manchin, the Democratic senator from West Virginia who has proved a frequent obstacle to passing Biden’s domestic agenda.
“The president and Senator Manchin had a good, constructive phone call and agreed to follow up with one another in the coming days,” Andrew Bates, a White House spokesperson, told the Financial Times. 

 

 

Biden’s ‘Yes’ to Racial Preferences . . . The administration takes Harvard’s side in a case involving Asian-Americans. A week into his presidency, Joe Biden issued a memorandum declaring “the Federal Government has a responsibility to prevent racism, xenophobia, and intolerance against everyone in America, including Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.”
Almost a year later, President Biden has now done an about-face. According to a brief by his solicitor general, Elizabeth Prelogar, the same federal government that Mr. Biden says should be fighting racism against Asian-Americans is OK with using race to discriminate against Asian-American college applicants. Even more significant, Ms. Prelogar’s brief urges the Supreme Court not to hear a lawsuit against Harvard University that seeks to have the use of race in college admissions declared unconstitutional. What gives? Wall Street Journal

 

 

Dems get tough on crime when it is Jan. 6 defendants behind bars . . . House Democrats who regularly call for criminal justice overhauls and a more lenient penal system are adopting a tough-on-crime attitude when it comes to those charged in connection with the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. Several lawmakers at the forefront of the left’s effort to make over the criminal justice system said the Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol must suffer the consequences of their actions. “They need to be held accountable, and there have to be consequences for the role that they played in an insurrection that brought great trauma, injury, loss of life here,” said Rep. Ayanna Pressley, a Massachusetts Democrat and a member of Congress’ far-left “Squad.” “Obviously, I support due process, but they should be held accountable.” Washington Times

 

Spectre of three wars poses danger to America’s dominance . . . For decades, American military planning was based on the idea that the US should be able to fight two wars, in different parts of the world, simultaneously. But even the gloomiest strategists did not plan for three wars at the same time.The administration of Joe Biden, however, is currently facing militarized crises in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Collectively, they amount to the biggest challenge to America’s global power since the end of the cold war. American officials have briefed that Russia is planning an invasion of Ukraine “as soon as early 2022.” Meanwhile, Lloyd Austin, America’s defence secretary, has warned that China’s military manoeuvres near Taiwan look like rehearsals for a full-scale invasion. Iran may also be weeks away from creating enough fissile material to manufacture a nuclear weapon — an outcome the US has spent decades trying to stop. Some analysts worry America may now be facing a co-ordinated global assault by revisionist powers. Financial Times

 

 

US, Israel defense chiefs to discuss mock joint military strike against Iran . . . Israeli’s defense minister Benny Gantz arrives in Washington on Thursday to discuss possible joint military exercises to prepare for diplomacy’s failure to disarm Iran’s nuclear program, Reuters reports. Mossad Chief Dan Barnea arrived earlier to update US officials on Israeli intelligence on Iran’s nuclear advances and its international campaign of terror. Gantz, in a post on Twitter, said: “We will discuss possible modes of action to ensure the cessation of (Iran’s) attempt to enter the nuclear sphere and broaden its activity in the region.” He did not elaborate. DEBKAFile

 

Tehran prepares to launch space satellite, maybe can mount effective warhead on a 2,000-km range ICBM . . . On Monday, while its emissaries pursued nuclear talks with world powers in Vienna, Tehran released images of heightened activity at its underground spaceport where one of four satellites, the low-orbit imaging Zafar 2, was said to be “in the final stage of preparation.”
DEBKAfile’s military sources say that if the Iranians can pull off a successful space launch, it would indicate that Iran may be closer than believed to the ability to mount a nuclear warhead atop an ICBM missile with a range of 2,000km. US and Israeli intelligence sources’ estimate hitherto is that the Iranians were at least two years away from developing the necessary technology for this critical stage in weaponizing its nuclear program. DEBKAFile

 

 

Documents link Huawei to China’s surveillance programs . . . The Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies has long brushed off questions about its role in China’s state surveillance, saying it just sells general-purpose networking gear. A review by The Washington Post of more than 100 Huawei PowerPoint presentations, many marked “confidential,” suggests that the company has had a broader role in tracking China’s populace than it has acknowledged. These marketing presentations, posted to a public-facing Huawei website before the company removed them late last year, show Huawei pitching how its technologies can help government authorities identify individuals by voice, monitor political individuals of interest, manage ideological reeducation and labor schedules for prisoners, and help retailers track shoppers using facial recognition. Washington Post

 

Biden’s Beijing Olympics boycott sputters as South Korea, other U.S. allies say no . . . President Biden’s diplomatic boycott of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games is struggling to find recruits just a week after its launch, with close U.S. allies around the world rejecting the effort and in some cases publicly bashing it. South Korea on Monday became the latest nation to say no, raising serious questions about America’s ability under Mr. Biden to rally its friends to a common cause against a prime Chinese national priority. The announcement also offered more proof of Beijing’s massive economic power in Asia and beyond. Its significant investments and construction projects around the globe have left some governments reluctant to join Washington in confronting the Chinese Communist Party head-on. So far, only Canada, Australia and Britain have joined the U.S.-led diplomatic boycott. The four nations will send their athletes to the games but keep dignitaries and government officials home.  Washington Times

 

Pfizer Says Its Covid-19 Pill Likely Works Against Omicron . . . Preliminary laboratory tests gave encouraging signs that Pfizer Inc.’s PFE 4.59% experimental Covid-19 pill for the newly infected could work against Omicron, the company said. Pfizer also said Tuesday that a final analysis of late-stage study results confirmed the drug, named Paxlovid, was 89% effective at reducing the risk of hospitalization and death in adults at high risk of severe Covid-19. The positive results come as the Food and Drug Administration reviews whether to clear use of Paxlovid in high-risk adults, a decision that could come before the end of the year. Wall Street Journal

 

 

Bill that Biden says pays for itself actually adds $3 trillion to deficit, CBO warns . . .  West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, a pivotal vote for the Democrats on the bill, calls the CBO's latest cost analysis "very sobering." President Joe Biden's sweeping spending bill, the Build Back Better Act, would add $3 trillion to deficits over 10 years if made permanent, according to a new Congressional Budget Office cost analysis.

Republicans requested the CBO analyze Biden's bill based on its policies being made permanent by Congress over 10 years, as opposed to the shorter timelines in the Treasury Department's cost analysis of the bill. The legislation contains universal pre-K, support for child care, home health care funding, Medicaid expansion, about $550 billion for climate change initiatives and more. The bill contains tax increases on corporations and those in the top income tax bracket. It also extends the expanded child tax credit of up to $3,600 and eliminates the federal cap on state and local tax deduction. Just the News

 

 

Middle Class Will Get Stuck With Bill for Biden’s Spending, Rep. Bryan Steil Says . . . As Americans experience inflation at a rate not felt in four decades, the Biden administration continues to promote a multitrillion-dollar social spending package. “Our spending is already out of control,” Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wis., says, adding that “new government spending is only going to exacerbate [inflation] and make it worse.” In an effort to get spending under control and inflation rates down, the second-term congressman says, lawmakers should “completely kill this bill.” 
The House passed the multitrillion-dollar spending package in November and Senate Democrats are working to gain the votes needed to pass it before the end of the year. Daily Signal

 

Commerce Secretary’s Husband Is Top Executive at Tech Firm Funded by Chinese Government . . . A venture capital firm backed by the Chinese government is a major investor in an artificial intelligence company that counts Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo's husband as a top executive, a potential conflict of interest as her agency works to counter China on the world stage. Danhua Capital, based in California but established with the financial backing of the Chinese Communist Party, is one of the main funders of PathAI, an artificial intelligence firm that employs Raimondo's husband, Andy Moffit, as its chief people officer. Danhua Capital has been invested in PathAI since at least 2017, when it joined five other funders to contribute $11 million worth of seed funding for the artificial intelligence startup. It is unclear how much Danhua Capital has invested in PathAI, a private company, but the Chinese firm lists PathAI on its website as one of its featured "biotech and health" investments. Washington Free Beacon

 

Tornado Death Toll Rises to 88, Including 74 Dead in Kentucky . . . A total of 88 people have been confirmed dead in this weekend’s tornadoes that tore through six states. The vast majority are in Kentucky, where at least 74 people died, Gov. Andy Beshear said Monday. “The age range is 5 months to 86 years,” he said, fighting tears. “Six are under 18.” He later added that 109 Kentuckians are still unaccounted for. In Illinois, six people were confirmed dead at an Amazon.com Inc. warehouse in Edwardsville, in the southwestern part of the state. The governors of Arkansas and Missouri said two people died in each of their states, while Tennessee officials confirmed four deaths. The tornadoes caused catastrophic damage across a broad section of the country, in a swath that at times was as wide as three-quarters of a mile. Wall Street Journal

 

Harvard’s ‘Lawfare’ Programs Are an Omen of Elections Decided Not at Polls—but in Court . . . Before the Donald Trump-inspired challenges of the 2020 presidential election, Democrats and liberals alleged fraud and formally contested the results of the 2000, 2004, and 2016 Republican-won presidential elections. Those earlier challenges spurred the creation of a network of election litigators on the left—what J. Christian Adams, a conservative ex-Justice Department attorney pitted against them, calls a “linear build-out” of “some 30 groups” responsible for a lot of sudden changes in election law last year amid the pandemic. For the closely fought 2020 presidential election, 29 largely Democrat-controlled states and the District of Columbia loosened voting laws, most expanding access to mail voting, according to the liberal Brennan Center for Justice. In response, after former President Trump’s efforts to contest his narrow loss, 19 largely conservative states tightened their voting laws, the Brennan Center reports. The latest changes have provoked a wave of litigation, overwhelmingly from the left. Epoch Times

 

Rudolph Changes Name To Rolanda, Dominates Female Reindeer Games . . . Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer received praise for taking a stunning and brave stance against outdated binary gender stagnation by changing his name to Rolanda and subsequently dominating every field in the North Pole’s annual Female Reindeer Games. “Rolanda is a shining beacon for young, female reindeer in more ways than one,” stated the president of the North Pole Reindeer Games Committee, Bob Chairman. “She has shattered records in every event she has entered, which says so much about the physical potential of all female reindeer.”

 

Rolanda The Red-Nosed Reindeer did indeed break records in all events of the Female Reindeer Games, including the Sleigh Pull, Flying, Landing, Oat Bag Toss, Gingerbread House Trampling, and the Giant Slalom. She struggled with the final event, Female Reindeer Feminine Ice Dancing, performing far worse than all other female competitors. The judges still awarded her the gold medal for being so stunning and brave. Babylon Bee