Pence, Trump tensions rise, raising questions about a break . . . Mike Pence will be in the spotlight on Friday afternoon when the former vice president is expected to address ex-President Trump’s most recent attacks on his handling of the 2020 election.
It’s unclear exactly how far Pence will go, but tensions between Pence and Trump are on the rise as the 2024 campaign season edges closer and both men flirt with the possibility of running for the nation’s highest office. A preview of the Federalist Society event in Florida says that Pence “will deliver remarks about constitutional principles and the rule of law,” but aides said Trump’s comments about overturning the election will likely come up. Pence was the consummate loyalist to Trump as vice president, but the Jan. 6 riot has emerged as something of a breaking point as he charts his own path into 2024 and beyond. The Hill

 

 

 

 

 

EXCLUSIVE: Trump on Durham Probe: ‘I Hear There’s a Lot Coming’ . . . Former President Donald Trump has heard that “there’s a lot coming” from the wide-ranging investigation led by Special Counsel John Durham, who is probing the origins of the FBI’s investigation into Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
“I hear there’s a lot coming,” Trump told former top aide Kash Patel on The Epoch Times’ “Kash’s Corner.” The interview will premiere at 8 p.m. Eastern on Feb. 7 on EpochTV.com.
“We’re gonna see what happens. But what he’s doing is one of the most important jobs being done right now in America.”
Attorney General William Barr assigned Durham on May 13, 2019, to investigate the origins of the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign, codenamed Crossfire Hurricane. In October 2020, with the presidential election approaching, Barr designated Durham as a special counsel to protect the criminal investigation in case of a change of guard at the White House in 2021. Epoch Times

 

 

U.S. Sees Iran’s Nuclear Program as Too Advanced to Restore Key Goal of 2015 Pact . . . The Biden administration expects a restored nuclear deal would leave Iran capable of amassing enough nuclear fuel for a bomb in significantly less than a year, a shorter time frame than the one that underpinned the 2015 agreement, U.S. officials familiar with the matter said.
Administration officials concluded late last year that Iran’s nuclear program had advanced too far to re-create the roughly 12-month so-called breakout period of the 2015 pact, the U.S. officials said.
Despite the change, the U.S. is pushing ahead with talks. A revised deal needs to be reached soon, the officials said, to leave the U.S. and its allies with enough time to respond to an Iranian nuclear buildup. Wall Street Journal

 

Undermanned D.C. police look to high schools for next generation of officers . . . The Metropolitan Police Department has relaunched its high school cadet program in a bid to encourage young people in the District of Columbia to join a force that has had trouble filling open positions. The department has 3,525 officers, down from the 3,700-strong force in 2020 — the year that anti-police protests locally and across the country prompted a wave of resignations and retirements. D.C. leaders responded to the local “defund the police” movement by freezing recruiting efforts and cutting $15 million from the police budget.  In 2021, the nation’s 10th-largest police department, which typically trains more than 250 new officers each year, added 42 officers. Washington Times

 

 

Xi backs Putin’s opposition to Nato expansion at summit that underlines closer ties . . . China has joined Russia in opposing further expansion of Nato, a significant step up in Beijing’s backing for Moscow as the leaders of the two countries agreed to deepen co-operation across a range of security, political and economic areas. Presidents Xi Jinping of China and Vladimir Putin of Russia said they “oppose further enlargement of Nato”, in a joint statement released by the Kremlin after the two leaders’ meeting in Beijing on Friday. With the west opposing Russia’s military build-up on the Ukraine border and China’s treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, Putin and Xi presented a united front in talks just hours before the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics. They also cemented bilateral ties with a smattering of agreements including a new gas supply deal. China had signalled backing for Russia in its stand-off with the US and Nato in recent days. Financial Times

 

State Department Spokesman Ned Price Gets Into Shouting Match With Reporter, Accuses Him Of Believing Russia Over US . . . State Department spokesman Ned Price got into a full-blown shouting match with Associated Press diplomatic reporter Matt Lee at a press briefing Thursday. Price opened the briefing with a statement on the U.S. government’s allegation that Russia has planned to stage a false flag on video to use as a pretext for invading Ukraine. According to the State Department, Russia recruited crisis actors to stage a false explosion that would appear to destroy military equipment and locations, and Washington is publicizing the plan in an attempt to deter Russia from using it. Neither the State Department nor the Pentagon released direct evidence of the plot, with officials claiming that doing so would compromise their sources and methods. Price said at his briefing that the actions showed Russia is not serious about engaging diplomatically to solve the Ukraine issue, but Lee pressed him on what those “actions” actually were. “You made an allegation that they might do that. Have they actually done it?” Lee asked, demanding that Price clarify what actual actions Russia had taken, as opposed to just plans. “What activity?” Daily Caller 

 

 

 

 

On Ukraine, Many Russians Have No Doubt: It’s the Fault of the U.S. . . . Regarding the simmering conflict between Russia and the West over Ukraine, many Russians feel that Russia is under attack again. “America badly wants to start this war,” said Olga A. Petrova, a retiree. “NATO wants to bring its troops to our borders, they looked for our weak spots and they found Ukraine,” she said, adding that Americans “don’t even know where Ukraine is on the map.” Mrs. Petrova’s conviction that the United States is fomenting war between Russia and Ukraine reflects the thinking of many Russians, including her companion, Tamara N. Ivanova, who watches the two main talk shows on the country’s state-run television channels. It is a message hammered home daily by the Kremlin’s propaganda machine. The key message is: If war does come, it will be the Americans’ fault. New York Times

 

 

 

 

Whether the "Ukraine sovereignty" project is worth sacrificing American lives and treasure, risking war with nuclear Russia, is for the American people to decide. But it is the ruling class that decides which foreign wars to get involved in and send someone else's boys and girls in uniform to fight. Brain food to ponder about.

 

Loudoun County Educators Allege ‘Hostile Work Environment’ As Districts Threaten To Terminate Maskless Teachers . . . Educators in Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) are alleging a “hostile work environment” after some teachers were threatened with disciplinary action, including termination, for refusing to comply with the district’s mask mandates, according to correspondence obtained by the Daily Caller. John Ray, a teaching assistant at Belmont Ridge Middle School in LCPS, told his school’s principal he would no longer wear a mask while teaching, following Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s executive order rescinding school mask mandates. Administrators pushed back against Ray in a Jan. 25 email that threatened termination for noncompliance. Belmont Ridge Principal Katie Johnson emailed Ray stating that “the expectation at this time is that school staff report to work and wear a mask.” Staff who fail to comply with the mask mandate will be charged “Leave Without Pay,” per Johnson’s email. Ray received a letter stating that he could be terminated or face disciplinary action if he does not provide “extenuating circumstances” for why he refuses to mask by Feb. 8. Daily Caller

 

Inflation hits Amazon: Price of Prime memberships going up . . . Amazon announced Thursday that it would be boosting the price of its Prime membership for U.S. customers, citing rising costs as the reason behind the decision.
In a letter to investors outlining its fourth quarter earnings, the company stated that increased wage and transportation costs along with its expansion of membership benefits has led the online retail giant to increase its Prime fees for the first time since 2018. Fox Business

 

Oil Frackers Brace for End of the U.S. Shale Boom . . .  The end of the boom is in sight for America’s fracking companies. Less than 3½ years after the shale revolution made the U.S. the world’s largest oil producer, companies in the oil fields of Texas, New Mexico and North Dakota have tapped many of their best wells. If the largest shale drillers kept their output roughly flat, as they have during the pandemic, many could continue drilling profitable wells for a decade or two, according to a Wall Street Journal review of inventory data and analyses. If they boosted production 30% a year—the pre-pandemic growth rate in the Permian Basin, the country’s biggest oil field—they would run out of prime drilling locations in just a few years.

Shale companies once drilled rapidly in pursuit of breakneck growth. Now the industry has little choice but to keep running in place. Many are holding back on increasing production, despite the highest oil prices in years and requests from the White House that they drill more. Wall Street Journal

 

Biden’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure spending hamstrung by his own bureaucratic red tape . . . President Biden’s zealous regulatory regime threatens major delays for his $1.2 trillion infrastructure program, according to experts, despite his heralding of the swift impact of creating jobs and improving Americans’ quality of life. Making climate change policy an “all-of-government agenda” resulted in a flurry of new regulations. Mr. Biden also ordered more stringent enforcement of previous rules, which critics say layers bureaucratic burdens on state and local governments and private companies. “It’s a compounding effect, all of which is going to result in a lot more evaluation and a lot less actual delivery of infrastructure dollars and resources to projects on the ground,” said David Bernhardt, who served as interior secretary under President Trump. Washington Times

 

Truckers are starting a working-class revolution — and the left hates it . . .  So we’re finally seeing a genuine, bottom-up, working-class revolution. In Canada, and increasingly in the United States, truckers and others are refusing to follow government orders, telling the powerful that, in a popular lefty formulation, if there’s no justice, there’s no peace. Naturally, the left hates it. For more than a century, lefties have talked about such a revolt. But if you really paid attention, the actual role of the working class in their working-class revolution was not to call the shots — it was to do what it was told by the “intellectual vanguard” of the left. A working-class revolution led by the working class is the left’s worst nightmare because the working class doesn’t want what the left wants. The working class wants jobs, a stable economy, safe streets, low inflation, schools that teach things and a conservative, non-adventurous foreign policy that won’t get a lot of working-class people killed. It’s not excited about gender fluidity, critical race theory, “modern monetary theory,” foreign adventures and defunding police. New York Post

 

Lawmakers Investigate Biden Admin Over Database Containing One Billion Gun Sale Records . . . A coalition of Republican lawmakers is investigating the Biden administration over its stockpiling of nearly one billion records detailing Americans’ firearm purchases, according to a copy of the investigation that accuses the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) of planning to "sweep up records of every gun sale in America." The probe, spearheaded by Rep. Michael Cloud (R., Texas) and backed by 35 of his colleagues, comes on the heels of a Washington Free Beacon report detailing how the ATF maintains a database of 920,664,765 firearm purchase records—far more than has previously been publicly disclosed. The massive number of records, most of which are digitized in a searchable database, sparked concerns the Biden administration is violating federal laws that bar the government from maintaining a national gun registry. Washington Free Beacon