White House Dossier's

Biden's Gift to Putin . . . With a stroke of his pen, President Biden on Tuesday walled off from development nearly a million acres of land that includes some of America’s richest uranium deposits. This is another monument to the Administration’s destructive energy policy.

The Antiquities Act of 1906 lets Presidents set aside federal land for national monuments to protect historic objects.  On Tuesday Biden declared a national monument on 1,562 square miles in Arizona called Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni, meaning “where tribes roam.” The monument will conserve “landscape sacred to Tribal Nations and Indigenous peoples and advance President Biden’s historic climate and conservation agenda,” the White House says.

The statement omits that the land also includes America’s only source of high-grade uranium ore that is economically competitive on the global market. The U.S. imports about 95% of uranium used for nuclear power reactors, mostly from Kazakhstan, Canada, Russia and Australia. Russia is the U.S.’s third biggest uranium source. Mr. Biden banned imports of Russian fossil fuels by executive order last spring, but U.S. nuclear plants continue to rely on Russian uranium for 12% of their fuel supply. The new national monument—the fifth of the Biden Presidency—will make it that much harder for the U.S. to replace Russian uranium. Vladimir Putin sends his thanks. Wall Street Journal

During the exchange, the DOJ indirectly revealed that Hunter Biden may still be under investigation for a potential violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. And now, two weeks later, according to banking documents released by the House Oversight Committee, it has been revealed that members of the Biden family and their business associates received over $20 million in payments from foreign sources. Real Clear Politics

The Senile State . . . Our politicians are not too old—but their ideas are. Does America have a gerontocracy problem? A look at the leading contenders for the White House in 2024 might suggest that it does. When Joe Biden was inaugurated at 78 he was older than Reagan was when he left office after eight years. In 2024, Biden will be 81 and Trump 78. A Biden-Trump rematch in 2024 would be a showdown between geezer gladiators. The problem of gerontocracy is easy to exaggerate, however, because Biden and Trump are not typical of recent presidents. At their inaugurations, Obama was 47, George W. Bush 54, and Bill Clinton 46. And the U.S. House of Representatives is getting younger. While the median age in today’s Senate is higher than ever at 55.3 years, the median age of members of the current 118th Congress is 57.9 years, down from the 117th’s median of 58.9. Moreover, elderly presidents, senators, and members of the House do not have elderly staffs. In the current Congress, the average age of Senate staffers is 33 and the average age of House staffers is 32. Tablet

Trump says he won’t sign RNC loyalty pledge ahead of first debate . . . Donald Trump said Wednesday he will not sign a pledge to support the eventual Republican nominee — an RNC requirement for participation in the first primary debate. The former president rejected signing the pledge during an interview with Newsmax’s Eric Bolling, adding that he would announce next week whether he plans to attend the first debate on Aug. 23. Politico

Trump says he's made decision on attending first Republican debate and will announce next week . . . Former President Donald Trump said that he has made his decision on whether or not to attend the first Republican presidential debate, but he said he won't announce it until next week. In his first interview since being indicted in a third case, Trump announced to Newsmax's Eric Bolling that he had already made his anticipated decision as to whether or not he would attend the first primary debate and that he would make it next week. The former president and Bolling talked over the upsides and downsides of attending or not, with Trump seemingly giving thought to both options. Washington Examiner

Newsmax Ends Trump Interview With Super Awkward Disclaimer . . . Donald Trump’s interview Wednesday night with Eric Bolling on Newsmax came with a surprise ending: a disclaimer. The former president repeated his debunked claims that the 2020 election was “rigged.” “I believe I won that election by many, many votes, many, many hundreds of thousands of votes,” he said. “That’s what I think.”

After the interview, Bolling came back on camera with his disclaimer.

“All right, folks, now just to note: Newsmax has accepted the election results as legal and final,” he said. Newsmax

Several FBI offices contributed to anti-Catholic memo, refuting Wray’s testimony, GOP says . . . House Republicans say FBI documents they've obtained prove that several field offices contributed to a memo that targeted traditionalist Catholics as "potential terrorists," conflicting with recent sworn testimony from FBI Christopher Wray. Republican leadership on the House Judiciary Committee revealed in a letter sent to Wray on Wednesday that said the document they subpoenaed from the agency details how "both FBI Portland and FBI Los Angeles field offices were involved in or contributed to the creation of FBI’s assessment of traditional Catholics as potential domestic terrorists." Fox News

Nikki Haley Calls to End Taxpayer Aid to Taliban-Controlled Afghanistan . . . The Biden administration’s $2.35 billion investment in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan is emerging as a flashpoint in the 2024 presidential race, with Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley vowing to cut all U.S. aid to the country. "When I’m president, we won’t send one penny to terrorists and countries that hate America," former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley told the Washington Free Beacon on Wednesday. "Nearly two years after Joe Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, he continues to add insult to injury by throwing taxpayer dollars at the Taliban-controlled country. This is a terrorist regime that killed our troops and tortures its own people." Free Beacon

With AI, Hackers Can Simply Talk Computers Into Misbehaving . . . ChatGPT’s ability to respond quickly and effectively to simple commands has attracted more than 100 million users, and a few hackers along the way. Johann Rehberger, a security researcher, is one of them. Using plain English, he recently coaxed OpenAI’s chatbot to do something bad: Read his email, summarize it and post that information to the internet. In the hands of a criminal, this technique could have been used to steal sensitive data from someone’s email inbox, Rehberger said. ChatGPT “lowers the barrier to entry for all sorts of attacks,” Rehberger said. “Because you don’t really need to be able to write code. You don’t have to have that deep knowledge of computer science or hacking.” The attack wouldn’t have affected most ChatGPT accounts. It worked because Rehberger was using a beta-test feature of ChatGPT that gave it access to apps such as Slack, Gmail and others. Wall Street Journal

LARRY KUDLOW: 'Bidenomics' is really just a ploy to destroy American energy . . . House Oversight Chair James Comer just released a new batch of Biden business bank records, showing the Biden family business received over $20 million from Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan while Papa Joe was Veep.  This is on top of the earlier Comer unveiling of two tranches of Biden business records, that came to at least $10 million from various schemes in Romania and China. You have nine Biden family members getting paid from foreign business influence peddling. Biden says he wants to stop all drilling on the coasts and the Gulf of Mexico. But the courts got in the way.  Actually, he just wants to stop all drilling. Period. In fact, Bidenomics is really just a ploy to destroy American energy.  

If you think about it, Russia, China, Ukraine and Kazakhstan, who all contributed to the Biden family coffers, are all producers of fossil fuels: coal, oil and gas.  Why not let them do it? That'll help bury American national security altogether, wouldn't it? All for $30 million bucks. Fox Business

I'm beginning to wonder if America will survive the reign of the Biden Crime Family.

Yandex co-founder condemns ‘barbaric’ war in Ukraine . . . The co-founder of Russian tech giant Yandex has spoken out against the “barbaric” war in Ukraine, placing him among the few of the country’s leading businessmen to do so since Vladimir Putin ordered the full-scale invasion 18 months ago. “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is barbaric, and I am categorically against it,” Arkady Volozh said in a statement published on Thursday. “I am horrified about the fate of people in Ukraine — many of them my personal friends and relatives — whose houses are being bombed every day.” Putin’s war has roiled Yandex, Russia’s answer to Google, as the company has sought to negotiate a complex restructuring with the Kremlin while Volozh and other top executives grappled with the consequences of the war. Financial Times

How Much Firepower Does Russia Have Left? . . . Some 200,000 people are thought to have been killed in fighting between Russia and Ukraine since February 24, 2022. But for all the pain Ukraine's resolute defenders have inflicted on the Russian invaders, Moscow's war goes on. The slow and costly nature of Kyiv's ongoing counteroffensive speaks to the resolve of the Russian military, even after suffering staggering losses. Putin, meanwhile, shows no sign of backing down. Europe's largest conflict since World War II has become a war of attrition. Newsweek

An Israel-Saudi deal isn’t imminent . . . There sure is a lot of excitement about a potential U.S.-brokered Israel-Saudi Arabia deal, but even the Biden administration insists an agreement isn’t close to happening. The hubbub stems from headlines and news stories playing up the discussions around such a pact. The U.S. and Saudi Arabia have a handshake understanding on the “broad contours” of an accord. In effect, Israel’s hard-right government would offer concessions on Palestinian statehood. Saudi Arabia would receive security guarantees from the U.S. — especially against Iran — while promising to limit its growing relationship with China. All this would be in service of the ultimate prize: Jerusalem and Riyadh normalizing relations with one another, ending decades of enmity and giving President JOE BIDEN a major foreign policy win. Politico

Money

Dollars to Dining: Bank records show proximity of Joe Biden meetings to son's foreign payments . . . Dollars to Dining: Bank records show proximity of Joe Biden meetings to son's foreign payments/ Money changed hands mere weeks or days before Joe Biden’s dinners with son’s clients, Congress alleges in explosive new memo. In the weeks before she dined with Joe Biden at a swanky Washington D.C. restaurant in April 2014, Russian oligarch Yelena Baturina deposited $3.5 million into a bank account tied to Hunter Biden’s businesses and also committed to invest in a New York City real estate project with Biden's partners, bank records collected by Congress and emails among the younger Biden's business partners show. Just the News
 

Joe Biden’s Office Devised Talking Points About Burisma Executive Right After Hunter ‘Called DC,’ Emails Show . . . Then-Vice President Joe Biden’s office sent talking points to the State Department about Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky days after Hunter Biden “called D.C.” from the site of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma’s board meeting, emails show. The State Department received talking points about Zlochevsky from then-VP Biden’s communications staffer Kate Bedingfield on Dec. 6, 2014, according to internal emails released by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs. Daily Caller

US set to unveil long-awaited crackdown on real estate money laundering . . . The U.S. Treasury Department will soon propose a rule that would effectively end anonymous luxury-home purchases, closing a loophole that the agency says allows corrupt oligarchs, terrorists and other criminals to hide ill-gotten gains. The long-awaited rule is expected to require that real estate professionals such as title insurers report the identities of the beneficial owners of companies buying real estate in cash to the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). Reuters

Culture

The future of vaping looks a lot like cigarettes . . .  Disposable vapes are becoming the near-perfect product: cheap, addictive and available everywhere. What will that mean for our kids? Disposables are sold everywhere. Free of tobacco’s stricter licensing regulations, vapes can infiltrate almost any retail environment. Mobile phone shops are becoming vape shops. Hairdressers and hardware stores sell them on the side. Fried-chicken outlets across the country are not beyond asking, after sliding a box of wings over the counter, if you want a vape with that. Supermarkets, which are required by law to keep tobacco products behind sliding doors, may freely display all the vapes of the rainbow. Financial Times

Hawaii wildfires kill 36 as 'apocalypse' hits Maui island resort city . . . At least 36 people have died after wildfires, fanned by winds from a faraway hurricane, devastated much of the resort city Lahaina on Hawaii's Maui island, the Maui County said in a statement late on Wednesday. Multiple neighborhoods were burnt to the ground as the western side of the island was nearly cut off, with only one highway open and thousands to evacuate as officials told of widespread devastation to Lahaina, its harbor and surrounding areas. Some people fled into the ocean to escape the smoke and flames. Reuters
 

Lady Gaga’s dad rallies NYC neighbors in fight to ‘manage’ unruly migrants at hotel: ‘Basically taken over’ . . .Lady Gaga’s dad is leading the charge against unruly migrants living near his Upper West Side home and restaurant — griping they’re flooding the ritzy neighborhood with a constant stream of hookers and other bad behavior. “If it was like this when my girls were growing up, I wouldn’t be living in New York,” said Joe Germanotta, 66, who is compiling a list of local residents’ concerns to take to lawmakers, the NYPD, and the homeless services in protest. Germanotta has lived in The Pythian building on West 70th Street for 35 years — it’s where he raised his two daughters, including the “Born This Way” singer.

He also opened up a restaurant in the community in 2012. About six weeks ago, the city quietly and quickly transformed the Stratford Arms Hotel — a residence hall for the American Musical and Dramatic Academy (AMDA) down the block from Germanotta’s home — into a shelter for hundreds of migrants. New York Post

Layoffs begin in the film industry, as Hollywood strikes continue . . . Two of the biggest labor unions in Hollywood are now on strike, with the Writers Guild of America beginning in May and the Screen Actors Guild joining picket lines in July. The Hollywood strike has now extended into its fourth month, with no resolution in sight. Hollywood's writers and actors have since grounded entertainment production to a halt, and businesses thousands of miles away from Hollywood are beginning to feel the pinch. "The business has been impacted greatly. 98% of our orders are gone," said Cindy Gano, owner of Gano Inc. in Doraville, Georgia. "Hence why I had to make the decision to let my people go." Fox Business

Bear crashes Colorado wedding, raids the dessert table . . . A Colorado couple's wedding started with monsoon rains and ended with an uninvited guest -- a bear -- raiding the dessert table. Cailyn McRossie-Martinez and Brandon Martinez shared photos from their Boulder County wedding, which took an unplanned turn when monsoon rains began to fall right before they exchanged vows.

"So by the time it started pouring rain on us in the middle of the ceremony, us and all of our guests were soaking wet. But it was awesome. It was totally awesome," McRossie-Martinez told KUSA-TV.

The next surprise came during the reception, when a bear showed up and started eating all of the desserts. UPI