RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week August 26 to September 2, 2023 In RealClearInvestigations, S.A. McCarthy reports that the Biden administration is fraying relations with some allies and generating pushback from Congress by spending millions to promote woke ideology abroad.
In a "national security memorandum," Biden has ordered all federal agencies with dealings abroad not only to protect LGBT rights in the face of bias and violence but to actively advance them: As a result, U.S. ambassadors champion LGTB rights in countries that oppose them; fund performances that feature drag queens; and hold diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) seminars. A tally by RealClearInvestigations found 118 U.S. embassies tweeted or retweeted posts celebrating Pride Month in June. U.S. senators including Republican J.D. Vance of Ohio are holding up appointments of ambassadors over concerns about exporting “woke” ideology. Republican scrutiny this year pressured the State Department to cancel drag shows it had been hosting on U.S. military bases. The State Department would not provide details of its programs, including how much money it is spending. For LGBT programs alone, estimates put spending abroad at nearly $5 million. Among the initiatives are a $10,000 grant in Portugal for a film festival featuring drag performances, incest, and pederasty, and $20,000 for drag shows in Ecuador. The U.S. ambassador to Poland, Mark Brzezinski, participated in Warsaw’s Pride parade, despite the nation’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. Last year, in what critics called a move to politicized hiring of foreign service officers, the State Department announced it was de-emphasizing testing on written and language skills, world history, and U.S. history. Waste of the Day by Adam Andrzejewski, Open the Books Taxpayers Long-Hauling Yellow's Red Ink, RCI Study of Why Kids Like Japanese Comics, RCI $7K Per Call for Oregon Addict Hotline, RCI $7K Per Call for Oregon Addict Hotline, RCI $50K to Study Colombians Exiting for U.S., RCI Biden, Trump and the Beltway Biden Staffers, Jack Smith Aides Met Pre-Trump Indictment, NY Post Fired Ukraine Prosecutor: Joe Biden on the Take, Fox News Nat'l Archives: VP Biden Used 5,400 Pseudonym Emails, Just the News Hunter Biden Helped Devise Plan to Squelch Burisma Probe, Daily Mail George Santos' Nonconservative Past in Brazil, Washington Post Other Noteworthy Articles and Series Federal authorities have been investigating nearly 5,000 pilots suspected of falsifying their medical records to conceal that they were receiving benefits for mental health disorders and other serious conditions that could make them unfit to fly. This article reports that the pilots are military veterans who told the Federal Aviation Administration that they are healthy enough to fly, yet failed to report – as required by law – that they were also collecting veterans benefits for disabilities that could bar them from the cockpit. Experts said that the inquiry has exposed long-standing vulnerabilities in the FAA’s medical system for screening pilots and that the sheer number of unreported health problems presents a risk to aviation safety. While pilots must pass regular government-contracted health exams, the tests often are cursory and the FAA relies on aviators to self-report conditions that can otherwise be difficult to detect, such as depression or post-traumatic stress, according to physicians who conduct the exams. Many veterans minimize their ailments to the FAA so they can keep flying but exaggerate them to VA to maximize their disability payments, physicians and former officials at the aviation agency say. The article reports that about 600 of the pilots under investigation are licensed to fly for passenger airlines. Most of the rest hold commercial licenses that allow them to fly for hire, including with cargo firms, corporate clients or tour companies. The southern border not only remains porous but it also appears to be far more dangerous. CNN reports: The FBI is investigating more than a dozen migrants from Uzbekistan and other countries allowed into the US after they sought asylum at the southern border with Mexico earlier this year, a scramble set off when US intelligence officials found that the migrants traveled with the help of a smuggler with ties to ISIS, according to multiple US officials. While the FBI says no specific ISIS plot has been identified, officials are still working to “identify and assess” all of the individuals who gained entry to the United States. Meanwhile the New York Post reports: Migrant smugglers are growing increasingly desperate and violent – heavily arming themselves, donning body armor and even firing at US border agents – to get their illegal customers from Mexico to California. The recent uptick in drastic tactics by coyotes, or people-smugglers for hire, includes an Aug. 18 incident in which a Border Patrol agent tried to stop a group of migrants crossing into California through the Otay Mountain Wilderness, US authorities said. A suspected smuggler fired multiple shots at the agent, US Customs and Border Protection said in a statement, claiming the criminals’ desperation is being driven by the agency’s efforts to crack down. Many of the aquifers that supply 90 percent of the nation’s water systems are being severely depleted, threatening irreversible harm to the American economy and society as a whole, a months-long investigation by the New York Times has found. Groundwater loss is hurting breadbasket states like Kansas, where the major aquifer beneath 2.6 million acres of land can no longer support industrial-scale agriculture. Corn yields have plummeted. If that decline were to spread, it could threaten America’s status as a food superpower. Fifteen hundred miles to the east, in New York State, overpumping is threatening drinking-water wells on Long Island, birthplace of the modern American suburb and home to working class towns as well as the Hamptons and their beachfront mansions. Around Phoenix, one of America’s fastest growing cities, the crisis is severe enough that the state has said there’s not enough groundwater in parts of the county to build new houses that rely on aquifers. In other areas, including parts of Utah, California and Texas, so much water is being pumped up that it is causing roads to buckle, foundations to crack and fissures to open in the earth. And around the country, rivers that relied on groundwater have become streams or trickles or memories. The conclusion is troubling: “There is no way to get that back,” Don Cline, the associate director for water resources at the United States Geological Survey, said of disappearing groundwater. “There’s almost no way to convey how important it is.” Amtrak’s decades-old monopoly on intercity passenger rail travel is slipping as private companies, states and the federal government look to fast trains as environmentally friendly alternatives to traffic-clogged highways, while developers promise speeds rivaling those in Europe and Asia. This article reports that Brightline, the only private passenger railroad in the country, is slated to open its newest station this year, providing a train connection between Orlando International Airport and South Florida in three hours. Meanwhile, work is progressing on high-speed projects in Western states and Texas. Launching with no federal help, the modern debut of private passenger rail connecting two major metropolitan areas will come to fruition when Brightline riders arrive in Orlando from downtown Miami. The Federal Railroad Administration expects to sign off within days, triggering a three-week testing period before Brightline carries passengers. The company will then set its sights on a $12 billion high-speed railway from Las Vegas to Southern California, a massive undertaking that could put trains traveling at 186 mph on America’s tracks by 2028. Amtrak, however, will not relinquish its monopoly without a taxpayer-funded fight. The railroad is also eyeing its biggest expansion in 52 years thanks to the infrastructure law that has begun pumping $66 billion into the nation’s aging rail network. This article grabs readers form the start: “Dylan Stone-Miller took a 9,000-mile road trip this summer to see some of his 96 children.” The saga of Stone-Miller, “a prolific 32-year-old sperm donor,” is both a personal story – his quest started months after he and his wife split when he received a message of thanks from the mother of a child he had fathered. That the woman was able to track him down illuminates the broader, changing terrain of pregnancy and family: Days after that initial contact, he asked the woman if he could join a Facebook group of parents called Xytex 5186 Offspring, named after his sperm bank ID. The relative ease of finding the identity and whereabouts of sperm donors is remaking traditional views of what comprises a family. Parents say introducing a biological father to their children carries potential rewards, as well as the risk of hurt feelings and failed expectations. More than a million Americans have been conceived through artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization; the number born of sperm donors isn’t tracked. Sperm donation, long shrouded in secrecy, had already changed by the time Stone-Miller began. He gave permission for the sperm bank to reveal his identity to any of his biological children after they turn 18. Joining the Facebook group opened the door years early. “I wanted to watch the children grow up,” he said. Some parents decided they wanted nothing to do with him. Those who have welcomed him to their home are trying to figure out his role – a biological father, a donor dad, a visitor or special friend. Neither parents nor Stone-Miller are certain where to draw the line. |