White House Dossier's

Who Would Trump Pick for VP in 2024? . . . The Field Is Wide Open. Former President Donald Trump and many of his supporters say he has locked up the race for the Republican nomination even with the first contests months away. That has prompted early jockeying among top Republicans to potentially be his running mate. Possible vice-presidential candidates range from staunch loyalists in Congress such as Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia to other popular party figures, including former Arizona television host Kari Lake. One prominent critic, Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, has been warming to the idea of supporting Trump and serving alongside him, people familiar with her thinking say. Trump has also indicated he could tap a current 2024 rival for the job. He hasn’t committed to attending the first GOP presidential debate later this month and posted on social media: “Let them debate so I can see who I MIGHT consider for Vice President!” Wall Street Journal 

Anthony Fauci’s Deceptions . . . A trove of emails, Slack messages, and other documents reveal Fauci’s behind-the-scenes involvement. ‘Tony doesn't want his fingerprints on origin stories.’ On April 17, 2020, with much of the country still in some form of lockdown and news of overwhelmed hospitals dominating the headlines, Dr. Anthony Fauci, then a member of the President’s Coronavirus Task Force, was asked a question toward the end of a White House press briefing: Was there a possibility that this novel virus came from a lab in Wuhan, China? “There was a study recently,” Fauci said confidently, “where a group of highly qualified evolutionary virologists looked at the sequences there and the sequences in bats as they evolve, and the mutations that it took to get to where it is now is totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human.” In other words, it wasn’t from the lab. Fauci, who was the face of the public health community during the crisis, pushed the idea that the evidence strongly indicated that the virus was just a tragic, natural occurrence. He insisted, repeatedly, that an epidemic that started in Wuhan was unlikely to have been the result of an escape from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). Free Press

Bring on the Counterrevolution . . .  By Christopher F. Rufo. Conservatives need a national agenda that reclaims American institutions from the Left. A blueprint exists, from a surprising source. 

America is trapped in the loop of 1968. The politics of that fateful year have set the patterns and bounds of our national life for decades.

It’s as though we have lived an endless recurrence: the Black Panther Party reappears as the Black Lives Matter movement; the Weather Underground pamphlets launder themselves into academic papers; the Marxist-Leninist guerrillas trade in their bandoliers and become managers of an elite-led revolution in manners and mores. The ideology, narrative, and aesthetics of the left-wing social movements of that earlier time, though now often degraded through cynicism and repetition, have maintained the position of a jealous hegemon.

The cultural revolution that began a half-century ago, now reflected in a deadening sequence of acronyms—CRT, DEI, ESG, and more—has increasingly become our new official morality. Many conservatives have made an uneasy peace with this transformation of values, even as the culture around them has, in many places, collapsed. This attitude no longer suffices. It is time to break the loop of 1968. We need a counterrevolution. City Journal

'Extortion': Attorney flames report Jack Smith deputy tried to 'flip' Trump valet . . . A former federal prosecutor called out a reported filing made by an attorney for former President Donald Trump's valet – a co-defendant in the Mar-a-Lago special counsel case – and said the allegations amount to "extortion." James Trusty, a former chief of the Justice Department's organized crime unit, said both Trump's case and the state of allegations against the Biden family from whistleblowers "speak volumes" about the integrity of the current DOJ. Fox News

Lawyers say DOJ wants to ‘censor’ Trump . . . Former President Trump and his lawyers on Monday accused the Justice Department of proposing to “censor” his rights to be able to publicly disclose evidence, including witness information, in the government’s case against him in its 2020 election conspiracy case.  Trump wants modifications, but he’s also exploiting his supporters’ belief that President Biden’s Justice Department is targeting the former president for political gain. The Hill

Hunter Biden business associates close with replacement Ukrainian prosecutor . . . After then-Vice President Joe Biden succeeded in pressuring Ukraine to remove its prosecutor general Viktor Shokin, the next person to hold the job had ties to Hunter Biden.

Yuri Lutsenko, the prosecutor general who took over for Shokin after his ouster in 2016, had relied on the same lobbyists representing Ukrainian energy company Burisma and its chief executive for years, State Department emails suggest. Hunter Biden personally brought those lobbyists into the Burisma deal in 2015 for the purpose of shutting down investigations of Burisma’s chief executive, according to his own emails. In 2015, Hunter Biden arranged for Sally Painter and Karen Tramontano of the lobbying firm Blue Star Strategies to begin working for Burisma and its chief executive, Mykola Zlochevsky. A Burisma executive said “the ultimate purpose” of the contract with Blue Star Strategies would be “to close down for any cases/pursuits against Nikolay in Ukraine,” using an alternate spelling of Zlochevsky’s first name. Washington Examiner

'Money guy': This Hunter Biden business partner could blow the lid off Biden family's business dealings . . . Following Devon Archer’s bombshell congressional interview last week alleging President Biden’s deep involvement with Hunter Biden’s business dealings, a new light is being cast on his son’s longtime business partner who stands to know even more. Eric Schwerin visited the Obama White House and then-Vice President Biden’s residence at least 36 times between 2009 and 2016, likely to make him the next target of the House Oversight Committee’s investigation into the Biden family’s business dealings. Schwerin was the founding partner and managing director of Hunter's now-dissolved firm Rosemont Seneca Partners when he was appointed by then-President Obama to the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad, an independent U.S. government agency, in early 2015. Fox News

Devon Archer and the crumbling Biden defense . . .  By Newt Gingrich. It is clear after Devon Archer’s detailed July 31 testimony in front of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee that President Biden’s original story simply does not survive the facts. His testimony has proved that the president lied to the American people. In fact, his testimony combined with the collapse of the Hunter Biden plea deal in federal court has virtually guaranteed that there will be an expanded impeachment inquiry. It is important to distinguish between an impeachment inquiry and an actual motion of impeachment. Launching the inquiry allows the House to ask wider-ranging questions and expands the range of investigation powers House Republicans can bring to bear. It may or may not lead to an act of impeachment. Washington Times

Up for debate: Trump, DeSantis, and other 2024 GOP hopefuls' stance on the impeachment of Joe Biden . . . Republican members of the House Oversight Committee suggested that an impeachment inquiry was necessary after Devon Archer, a business associate of Hunter Biden, testified behind closed doors with the committee.But the movement has divided more moderate Republicans who represent districts that Biden won and would face tough reelection bids in 2024 if impeachment charges were brought up, threatening the Republican House majority. Senate GOP members have signaled they have less of an appetite for impeachment. “Staying focused on the future and not the past is in my view the best way to change the direction of the country and that’s to win an election,” Senate Republican Whip John Thune (R-SD) said. Some of the Republicans running for president have not hesitated, however, to support the more conservative wing of their party in moving to impeach Biden. Fox News

China's Plan to Rule the World Through Its Smart Devices, FCC Urged to Act . . . When police, firefighters and other first responders across the U.S. rush to emergencies, they rely on special devices to avoid overwhelmed public networks. Chinese spies could be listening in. Chinese-made components in devices certified for use on the federally managed FirstNet public safety network are designed to be able to send information back to servers in China and it's not clear how effective the security measures to prevent that are, according to engineers and industry sources with knowledge of the equipment who spoke to Newsweek. The components, or cellular connectivity modules, are generally used to connect objects, whether cars or medical equipment, to the internet. Newsweek

Who are these morons who allow Chinese and Russian assets deployed on US critical systems? The lowest bidder approach clearly presents a major security threat to US homeland.

The US government, in its infinite wisdom had Moscow-based, KGB-linked Kaspersky Lab "anti-virus" software deployed on federal networks. Until former President Trump ordered the government agencies to remove Kaspersky products. What do you think that "cybersecurity" software's primary mission was? 

During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon was buying Russian, rather than US transport helicopters and was even using Russian satellites for certain missions. Granted, new US Black Hawks couldn't compete with with older Russian choppers in those particular conditions but it's a huge security risk. You can't make this stuff up. 

Chinese exports suffer worst fall since start of pandemic . . . China’s exports and imports fell more sharply than expected in July, adding to a prolonged trade slump that is fuelling concerns over growth prospects for the world’s second-largest economy. Exports declined by 14.5 per cent year on year in dollar terms, official data showed on Tuesday, the steepest fall since the outset of the coronavirus pandemic in February 2020. Imports tumbled 12.4 per cent, the biggest decline since a wave of infections hit the mainland in January and one of the worst in recent years. Financial Times

Ukraine arrests woman in alleged foiled Russian assassination plot against Zelenskyy . . . Ukraine says it has foiled a fresh assassination attempt against President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and arrested a woman believed to have been acting as an informant for Russia. In a statement Monday, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) alleged the woman was trying to "establish the time and list of locations" of where Zelenskyy would be during a trip of the southern Ukrainian region of Mykolaiv, in order to help Russia carry out a "new mass airstrike" there. In the early days of the war against Russia, Zelenskyy reportedly was targeted for assassination three times. The report stated that the Wagner Group, a Russian backed paramilitary mercenary force, was behind two of the attempts. Fox News

Ukraine declares war on Russia’s Black Sea shipping . . . Russian ports and ships on the Black Sea — including tankers carrying millions of barrels of oil to Europe — could justifiably be attacked by the Ukrainian military as part of efforts to weaken Moscow's war machine, a senior Kyiv official warned Monday in the wake of two recent attacks on Russian vessels. "Everything the Russians are moving back and forth on the Black Sea are our valid military targets," Oleg Ustenko, an economic adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, told POLITICO, saying the move was retaliation for Russia withdrawing from the U.N.-brokered Black Sea grain deal and unleashing a series of missile attacks on agricultural stores and ports. PoliticoEU

Blinken backs West African efforts to restore Niger’s constitutional order . . . US secretary of state Antony Blinken said Washington supported West African efforts to restore constitutional order in Niger, whose neighbors have threatened military action unless the new ruling junta reverses last month’s coup. Niger’s democratically elected president Mohamed Bazoum was deposed last month by the head of his own presidential guard, General Omar Tchiani, the latest coup in a volatile region that removed one of its few pro-western leaders. Financial Times
 

Money

MIT Took Chinese Money To Research AI . . . The Massachusetts Institute of Technology took funding from a twice-sanctioned Chinese company to advance aspects of facial recognition technology that the Chinese have reportedly used to track and imprison Uyghurs, a Washington Free Beacon review found. China's largest facial recognition startup, SenseTime—founded by an MIT graduate, Xiao'ou Tang, who now resides in mainland China—donated an undisclosed amount of money to MIT in 2018, the university said in a press release at the time. A year later, in 2019, the New York Times reported that SenseTime's technology is part of a "vast, secret system" the Chinese use to "track and control Uyghurs." The Trump administration went on to blacklist SenseTime in the fall of 2019, after MIT had accepted the money, citing the company’s role in the "repression, mass arbitrary detention and high-technology surveillance" of the country’s Muslim minority in Xinjiang. Free Beacon

Chayyna, Chyayyna, Chayyna. The Donald certainly gave CHICOMs  a run for their money.

'Bidenomics' in action: Democrats' excessive spending, mounting debt earn US credit downgrade . . . Shortly after President Joe Biden started taking credit for “Bidenomics” and how it’s “benefiting” the country, the United States got a credit rating downgrade. It's only the second time that confidence in the federal government's ability to manage its debt has been officially reduced. So it’s a big deal. It turns out Democrats’ unlimited appetite for spending and their refusal to address growing deficits isn’t sitting well with close watchers of our economy, and this should serve as a warning that inaction is no longer acceptable. USA Today

Champagne sales are booming. But its taste could soon change forever — thanks to climate change . . . Champagne has been a hallmark of celebrations and luxury living for centuries. But Europe's soaring temperatures and increasingly volatile weather are sparking fears that France's Champagne region could become unsuitable for its production. More than 325 million bottles of champagne were shipped from Champagne in 2022, surpassing 6 billion euros ($6.6 billion) in sales for the first time, according to champagne trade association Comité Champagne. The biggest markets are the United States, Britain and Japan. The committee suggested a "prudent outlook" for 2023, though it said growers and houses in Champagne "remain confident in the basic health of their business." CNBC

Culture

Trump slams US Women’s soccer team for not singing the National Anthem . . . And for losing. Have a look. Many or most of the women did not sing the anthem or put their hands over their hearts. It’s sad for those who did, and sad that they get to represent the United States. White House Dossier

Charlie Kirk on Megan Rapinoe: How Do You Handle Rooting For Players That Hate The Country? . . . How do you handle a sports team that has the American jersey but it is infiltrated by anti-American woke activists. That is the U.S. Womens National Team and the top leader is Megan Rapinoe, who kneels during the national anthem, who by all public commentary hates the country, she's the team captain. She doesn't even sing the anthem. If you're going to be an anti-American activist and appropriate the American jersey like you're Ms. Pro-America when in reality you are a left-wing social justice warrior campus activist with your purple hair talking about how trans things in sports don't exist. Well, guess what? I'm glad you missed the kick and I can do better than you and I'm not very good at soccer at all...Real Clear Politics

Most women who abort say they would rather not. Congress can help them . . . Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa) recently introduced a bill, which deserves bipartisan support. The Iowa congresswoman’s Providing for Life Act is a comprehensive pro-family legislative package that values life at all stages, including after birth. It provides the support that mothers and children need through a public-private partnership that builds, block by block, a culture of life. 
 

Hinson’s bill, sponsored by Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) in the Senate, would save countless babies and mothers from the heart-wrenching choice of abortion.  We know this bill will save babies because it reflects the latest research on why women have abortions. Most women experiencing a crisis during pregnancy do not want an abortion, but obtain one out of desperation. A May 2023 peer-reviewed study surveyed 1,000 women who had abortions and found that a staggering 60 percent said they would have carried their child to term if they had greater emotional or financial support, or both. The Hill

Kids almost NEVER transmitted Covid in schools, a major new study shows . . . Children almost never passed Covid infections in school, a study published Friday reveals. In fall 2021, in four Massachusetts school districts with 18,000 children, researchers found 44 potential cases of in-school transmission. You read that right.

18,000 students. 34 schools. Four months. And 44 Covid infections - including no infections of teachers or other staff members. Throughout 2020 and 2021, as parents pressed with increasing urgency to reopen classrooms, teachers unions and Democratic politicians warned in-school Covid transmission would lead to waves of death. “Teachers are so worried about returning to school that they’re preparing wills,” CNN infamously wrote on July 16, 2020. In reality, schools were among the safest possible places for students and teachers during Covid, this study suggests. Substack

Ex-FBI agent in Russia collusion probe may change plea to charges he aided Russian oligarch . . . Former FBI agent Charles McGonigal may change his plea from not guilty next week on charges of allegedly violating U.S. sanctions by working with a Russian oligarch, according to the judge in the case. Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York indicted McGonigal on five counts in January related to services he allegedly provided to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, whom McGonigal investigated for the FBI over the since-discredited allegations that the Trump 2016 campaign colluded with Russia. Just the News

Every single government apparatchik who participated in the covert election interference operation known as the Russia-Trump collusion hoax, orchestrated by US spy agencies must be jailed. If they go unpunished, they will do it again and again and again.

A Simple Law Is Doing the Impossible. It’s Making the Online Porn Industry Retreat . . . On June 15, 2022, a freshman legislator in Louisiana’s House of Representatives accomplished something no other lawmaker or activist in the country could claim: She passed a law that is changing the online porn industry. If you think this was the result of a bitter culture war battle, think again. “Pornography is creating a public health crisis and having a corroding influence on minors,” asserts the bill that state Rep. Laurie Schlegel introduced. Almost no one in the capitol in Baton Rouge disputes the statement; the bill sailed through the Louisiana House 96-1 and the State Senate 34-0.  The bill holds pornography websites liable unless the websites “perform reasonable age verification methods” — in short, requiring users to show government ID to prove they are 18 or older. Politico

I say, outlaw online porn all together. If someone really needs it, they can go buy a magazine.

Tesla CFO and company veteran Zach Kirkhorn quits . . . Zach Kirkhorn, one of Elon Musk’s closest lieutenants at Tesla, has stepped down unexpectedly as chief financial officer as the electric-car maker grapples with cutting costs and defending its profit margins following a spate of price cuts. He was replaced in the top finance job on Friday by Vaibhav Taneja, who had been chief accounting officer since 2019, the company said in an official filing on Monday. It added that Kirkhorn would stay on until the end of the year to help with the transition and thanked him for his “significant contributions”. Financial Times

Sheep gets loose on field at CFL football game . . . A Canadian Football League game in Saskatchewan took a wild turn when an escaped sheep ran out onto the field during halftime. The sheep had been brought to the stadium for a youth rodeo as part of the Saskatchewan Roughriders' Country Night, but the animal got loose during halftime of the Roughriders' game against the Ottawa Redblacks. The sheep led stadium staff on a chase around the field before being contained. The Roughraiders identified the sheep as a ewe, but the animal was dubbed the "rally ram" by some fans online after the team scored a touchdown moments after the sheep was corralled. UPI

Poor little sheep, just running frantically, seeming scared and confused.