Boeing and the Department of Justice have come to an agreement for a plea deal that will see the company pay a criminal fine of $243.6 million. The deal comes as a result of two fatal 737 Max planes that caused the deaths of 346 passengers and crew.
The deal has not been met with approval by the families of the victims, who were hoping for a criminal trial to bring the jet manufacturer to account. They called the deal a “sweetheart deal” that allows Boeing to essentially go virtually unscathed.
Boeing has agreed to plead guilty to a criminal fraud conspiracy charge after the US found the company violated a deal meant to reform it after two fatal crashes by its 737 Max planes that killed 346 passengers and crew.
The Department of Justice (DoJ) said the plane-maker had also agreed to pay a criminal fine of $243.6m (£190m).
However, the families of the people who died on the flights five years ago have criticised it as a “sweetheart deal” that would allow Boeing to avoid full responsibility for the deaths.
By pleading guilty, Boeing will avoid the spectacle of a criminal trial – something that victims’ families have been pressing for.
The company has been in crisis over its safety record since two near-identical crashes involving 737 Max aircraft in 2018 and 2019. It led to the global grounding of the plane for more than a year.
After the families of Sandy Hook shooting victims decided to cash in on their children’s deaths with a frivolous lawsuit funded by far-left insurrectionists, the corrupt court obliged, assuring there would be a guilty verdict for Alex Jones.
The jurors, handpicked for their anti-American leftist beliefs, gave a 4th amendment-violating “award” of over $1 billion to these opportunist families. Now, it appears Infowars will have to be shut down and sold, rewarding families who exploited their own children’s deaths for cash and insurrection.
Alex Jones’ Infowars media platform will be shut down, with the assets eventually going to families of the victims of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
A judge ruled earlier this month that the right-wing conspiracy theorist’s assets should be liquidated to help pay the $1.5 billion Jones owes those families after he was found liable of defamation for spreading false claims that the 2012 massacre was a hoax. According to an “emergency” filing Sunday in a federal bankruptcy court, there will now be an “orderly wind-down” of Infowars.
The consulting firm Klaros Group has conducted an audit of U.S. banks which shows 282 American banks are at risk of collapse as a result of the continued losses they are taking from commercial real estate loans, loans issued out a low interest rates before the rise of inflation and the spiking of the interest rate by the Federal Reserve. The figure represents 7 percent of U.S. banks.
Hundreds of banks around the United States are in danger of closing.
Consulting firm Klaros Group conducted an audit, which revealed that 282 banks are in danger of closing due to commercial real estate loans and losses connected to higher interest rates.
Brian Graham, the co-founder of Klaros Group, stated, “Most of these banks aren’t insolvent or even close to insolvent. They’re just stressed.”
The Klaros Group’s audit also noted the bank’s refusal to open new branches, implement technological innovations, and hire new staff mebers also will play a role in the bank’s potential closures.
Consulting firm Klaros Group analyzed about 4,000 🇺🇸 banks and found 282 banks (7%) face the dual threat of commercial #RealEstate loans and potential losses tied to higher #InterestRates. The majority of those banks are smaller lenders with less than $10 billion in assets.
For… pic.twitter.com/7kktMRWBW0
The International Monetary Fund released a report that shows the U.S. dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency is fast shrinking, especially in the last 20 years. The shrinkage is not coming from the rise of other world currencies like the yuan but from the rise of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.
In the report, IMF economists Serkan Arslanalp, Barry Eichengreen and Chima Simpson-Bell claimed “Strikingly, the reduced role of the U.S. dollar over the last two decades has not been matched by increases in the shares of the other ‘big four’ currencies—the euro, yen, and pound. Rather, it has been accompanied by a rise in the share of what we have called nontraditional reserve currencies, including the Australian dollar, Canadian dollar, Chinese renminbi, South Korean won, Singaporean dollar, and the Nordic currencies.”
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The U.S. dollar is suffering “stealth erosion,” according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) … [+] as the Federal Reserve is gearing up for a new global liquidity cycle that could boost the bitcoin price, ethereum, XRP and other cryptocurrencies.
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“Strikingly, the reduced role of the U.S. dollar over the last two decades has not been matched by increases in the shares of the other ‘big four’ currencies—the euro, yen, and pound,” IMF economists Serkan Arslanalp, Barry Eichengreen and Chima Simpson-Bell wrote in a report.
“Rather, it has been accompanied by a rise in the share of what we have called nontraditional reserve currencies, including the Australian dollar, Canadian dollar, Chinese renminbi, South Korean won, Singaporean dollar, and the Nordic currencies,” they wrote, pointing to “new digital financial technologies such as automatic market-making and automated liquidity management systems,” as powering that shift.
“This recent trend is all the more striking given the dollar’s strength, which indicates that private investors have moved into dollar-denominated assets,” the economists added.
Earlier this month, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York wrote a report outlining the narratives around “declining dollar shares in official reserves, and increasing roles for gold holdings by central banks,” which it says has been “inappropriately” generalized beyond “the actions of a small group of countries.”
“The Fed now admits some countries are moving to gold,” tech investor and former Coinbase chief technology officer Balaji Srinivasan posted to X, pointing to what the Fed says is a “small group” that “represents 3 billion people. So 37.5% of the world is moving away from dollars towards gold.”
The U.S. dollar decline comes as the Federal Reserve is gearing up to cut interest rates after a two-year war on inflation in the aftermath of historical Covid-era stimulus and money printing.
“Central banks around the world have already started to cut rates, which suggests a broader trend towards monetary easing,” analysts at the Bitfinex bitcoin and crypto exchange wrote in emailed comments.
Fed chair Jerome Powell this week indicated the Fed will cut rates at least once this year after the European Central Bank (ECB) moved to lower interests rates in the Eurozone earlier this month.
“It seems clear that the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve will follow suit in the coming months,” the Bitfinex analysts added. “The global liquidity cycle indicates that money supply is likely to increase, which can support asset prices, including cryptocurrencies.”
JPMorgan Chase has heard the concerns from its customers about its policies regarding debanking, a practice of closing accounts of clients based on their political and/or religious beliefs. The group leading the charge was Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), who secured from JPMorgan a promise to stop the debanking policy and assure that, in the future, the company honors the 1st Amendment rights of its customers.
ADF responded to the pledge by stating “No American should have to worry that their bank will punish or cancel them for their views. We have a long way to go in our efforts to guard against this threat, but the win at Chase is a timely reminder that while we may attempt great things for God, we can also expect great things from God.”
CV NEWS FEED // JPMorgan Chase has committed to honoring the free speech rights and religious liberty of its customers after legal nonprofit Alliance Defending Freedom spearheaded a campaign to protect bank accounts from religiously or politically motivated de-banking.
CatholicVote previously reported that over the last few years, Chase has on several occasions closed the bank accounts of religious organizations without warning. On at least one occasion, Chase demanded confidential internal information from a national religious organization in order to reopen the account.
To fight “de-banking,” Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) began a campaign that included developing the “Viewpoint Diversity Score Business Index” to measure companies’ respect for free speech and religious freedom.
ADF also began meeting with Chase leadership, additionally gathering support from 19 state attorneys general and 14 state financial officers, who wrote to Chase expressing their concerns about de-banking.
“Our goal was to bring about meaningful change at Chase. And by God’s grace, we did,” ADF stated in a June 11 news release.
ADF continued:
By the fall of 2023, Chase’s payment processor WePay removed its problematic “social risk” policy, which had banned “hate” and “intolerance” and [had] been applied against conservative groups in the past.
Pritzker could sign mandate prioritizing diversity in nonprofit leadership
The governor could soon sign a law mandating nonprofits disclose the demographic data of their board members.
The measure, according to the bill’s sponsor State Sen. Adriane Johnson, would only apply to larger nonprofits, those that provide $1 million or more in grants. Johnson said the goal is to give nonprofits an opportunity to have more diverse leadership.
“[With this bill] we will build upon the General Assembly’s previous efforts to highlight and elevate leadership, diversity, equity and inclusion in Illinois,” said Johnson. “This bill requires non profit organizations that provide $1 million in grants each year to report the demographic data on their public-facing website.”
State Sen Jil Tracy opposed Senate Bill 2930 on the floor and said this would be a burden on nonprofit organizations especially considering most board members are volunteers.
Tesla and SpaceX chief Elon Musk has advised against the use of electronic voting machines (EVMs), citing concerns about their potential vulnerabilities to hacking. His remarks come amidst growing debates over the security of EVMs worldwide, especially following allegations of irregularities in Puerto Rico’s recent primary elections.
“We should eliminate electronic voting machines. The risk of being hacked by humans or AI, while small, is still too high,” Musk posted on X.
We should eliminate electronic voting machines. The risk of being hacked by humans or AI, while small, is still too high. https://t.co/PHzJsoXpLh
Milwaukee Democratic Mayor Cavalier Johnson defended his city, which is set to host the Republican National Convention this summer, after former President Donald Trump called the city “horrible” in a closed-door meeting with House Republicans earlier Thursday.
“This is a great place, and the former president and every Republican who’ll have the chance to come to our great city, they’ll see that when they’re here on the ground in Milwaukee for the convention,” Johnson told CNN’s Laura Coates Thursday night.
Johnson added that insulting the home of tens of thousands of Republican voters in Wisconsin, a swing state, could be politically costly for the former president as he seeks to return to the White House.
Donald Trump has hit back at billionaire Illinois governor JB Pritzker, who branded him a ‘felon’ in an interview earlier this week as the pair’s war of words escalates
Donald Trump has unleashed a scathing attack on governor JB Pritzker on Sunday, calling him “rotund,” “sloppy” and “pathetic” after the Illinois governor labeled the ex-president a “felon” earlier in the week.
The billionaire Democrat, who holds the title of America’s wealthiest elected official, makes no effort to conceal his contempt for the 77-year-old presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Nineteen minutes after Trump’s conviction on all 34 felony counts in his criminal hush money trial last month, Pritzker denounced the former president as a racist, homophobe, and a con artist.
Pritzker, 59, is a loyal supporter of president Joe Biden and is driven to “fight to keep him in the White House,” thereby keeping Trump at bay, he wrote on X on Friday.
JB Pritzker called Trump a ‘felon’ on Wednesday(Joel Angel Juarez/ZUMA Press Wire/REX/Shutterstock)
“I can’t mince words when it comes to talking about who Donald Trump is,” Pritzker told The New York Times on Wednesday. “It’s important, I think, for people to really refocus on the idea that: Do they really want a president who is a felon who faces jail time?”
Trump didn’t waste any time hitting back as their feud escalated, taking several low blows at Pritzker’s physical appearance, business achievements, and political acumen, reports the Mirror.
“Sloppy J.B. Pritzker, the Rotund Governor from the once great State of Illinois, who makes Chris Christie look like a male model,” Trump wrote, while also throwing shade at the Republican ex-governor of New Jersey in a fiery Truth Social tirade on Sunday.
Despite Pritzker’s estimated $3.5 billion fortune, as reported by Forbes, the former president alleged that his family “wanted him out of the business” – the global hotel chain, Hyatt – before he doubled down on his “pathetic” business acumen.
After Trump’s initial barrage of insults about his business ventures, he proceeded to criticize the senior Democrat’s politics. The incumbent has been a longtime financial supporter of the Democratic Party and has served since 2019 as the 43rd governor of Illinois.
JB Pritzker was the latest Democrat in Donald Trump’s crosshairs(AFP via Getty Images)
However, the ex-president accused Pritzker of presiding “over the destruction and disintegration of Illinois at levels never seen before in any State,” he claimed.
Trump concluded: “Crime is rampant and people are, sadly, fleeing Illinois. Unless a change is made at the Governor’s level, Illinois can never be Great Again!”
Pritzker has long been critical of Trump’s inflammatory language and staunch conservative stance on women’s rights.
“It’s President Biden who is fighting to restore reproductive rights or Trump who bragged about overturning Roe v. Wade,” Pritzker stated last month at The Democratic National Convention.
Flashback to November and he also accused Trump of using descriptions mirroring those of Nazis in the 1930s.
“The rhetoric that’s being used by Trump, by some of the Maga extremists, is rhetoric that was used in the 1930s in Germany [and] I am very concerned about the direction of the country if we see policies like what Donald Trump is espousing come to light,” he expressed on MSNBC’s Inside with Jen Psaki.
“And I’m deeply concerned about his predilection for revenge and what that will mean for groups of people that didn’t support him in the 2024 election if he gets elected.”
In recent years, Elon Musk appears to have gone from lightly flirting with politics to having a full-blown love affair with growing his influence in Washington.
As the presidential election inches closer and the billionaire businessman continues teasing the idea of a Trump endorsement, it’s becoming clear that Musk has a lot at stake depending on who next leads the country.
While Musk hasn’t publicly endorsed any candidate, Business Insider previously reported he bonded with fellow billionaires over a shared distrust of Democrats and privately discussed how best to defeat them in this year’s election.
According to a recent report from The Wall Street Journal, Musk has also talked with the Trump campaign about taking on a potential advisory role if the former president returns to the White House.
On Sunday, former President Trump targeted Illinois Democratic governor J.B. Pritzker, who has been considered a rising star in the Democratic Party but who has presided over the state while natives flee.
Pritzker was inaugurated as governor of the state in January 2019; between July 2021 and July 2022, over 142,000 people left Illinois. The only state that had a faster rate of population decline during that same time period was New York.
“Sloppy J.B. Pritzker, the Rotund Governor from the once great State of Illinois, who makes Chris Christie look like a male model, and whose family wanted him out of the business because he was so pathetic at helping them run it, has presided over the destruction and disintegration of Illinois at levels never seen before in any State. Crime is rampant and people are, sadly, fleeing Illinois. Unless a change is made at the Governor’s level, Illinois can never be Great Again,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Detroit — Former President Donald Trump warned of increases in illegal immigration, weakened global policy and a struggling economy under another Biden term as he courted both Black voters at a Detroit church and conservative stalwarts at a convention at Huntington Place.
The former president dinged the leader of United Auto Workers, Shawn Fain, as doing an “absolutely terrible job” and warned of environmentally-friendly emissions limits implemented under Biden.
“We can’t let these people destroy our country like this,” Trump said. “They’re going crazy.”
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Almost all U.S. hospitals were hurt financially by the cyberattack on United Health Group’s Change Healthcare unit earlier this year, according to a survey from the American Hospital Association (AHA).
The AHA said that 94% of hospitals reported damage to cash flow and more than half reported significant or serious financial damage due to Change’s inability to process claims.
“While this event had disparate impacts on providers, all communities felt the effects in some way,” the AHA wrote in a letter to leadership of the U.S. Senate Finance and House Energy and Commerce committees.
The association, which represents almost 5,000 hospitals and healthcare systems in the United States, sent the letter on Monday ahead of Wednesday’s Congressional hearings on cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the healthcare sector.
Elon Musk’s brain-implant startup Neuralink Corp. forced an employee to work with monkeys that carried the Herpes B virus in conditions in which the animals scratched her bare skin, according to a complaint filed Friday in state court in California.
The employee, Lindsay Short, said that once she transferred to the company’s Fremont, California, site in August 2022, she encountered “a work environment fraught with blame, shame, and impossible deadlines.” She said she was later fired after telling her supervisors that she was pregnant.
Short sued the company for retaliation, wrongful termination and discrimination based on her gender among other issues.
Neuralink didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the suit.
An Arizona man who planned to commit a mass shooting at an Atlanta rap concert as a way of inciting a “race war” has been indicted by a federal grand jury on hate crime and firearm charges.
The man, Mark Adams Prieto, hatched a plan in several discussions with two people working with the F.B.I. who posed as racist extremists to carry out a mass shooting targeting Black people and other people of color at a concert in Atlanta on May 14 and May 15, the Justice Department said on Tuesday.
Mr. Prieto intended for the shooting to incite a “race war” before the presidential election, prosecutors said in a news release.
Mr. Prieto, 58, was reported to the authorities last year by an acquaintance who said he had made concerning comments calling for mass shootings targeting Black people and others, according to officials.
The number of Kenyans relocating to the US grew at the fastest pace in a decade in 2022, signalling growing opportunities for skilled and semi-skilled labour in the world’s largest economy.
Data from the American liberal think-tank Migration Policy Institute (MPI) indicates that Kenyan immigrants to the US in 2022 stood at 168,915, a 9.6 percent jump from the 154,062 recorded in 2021 when global economies were recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic.
The jump was the highest since the 15.9 percent recorded in 2011 when the number stood at 102,561 up from the 88,519 that had relocated in 2010.
The drift also comes as a result of a shrinking job market in the local economy, which has compelled labour providers to seek openings abroad.
Deal sealed between Disney and Disney World governing district with approval by DeSantis reps
Orlando, Fla. — Gov. Ron DeSantis’ appointees on Wednesday gave final approval to an agreement that buries the hatchet between Disney and the governing district for Walt Disney World, which the Florida governor took over after the company two years ago publicly opposed a state law critics dubbed “Don’t Say Gay.”
The five DeSantis-appointed board members to the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District unanimously voted to approve a 15-year development deal in which the district committed to making infrastructure improvements in exchange for Disney investing up to $17 billion into Disney World over the next two decades.
The agreement followed a detente in March in which both sides agreed to stop litigating against each other in state court and work toward negotiating a new development agreement and a new comprehensive plan no later than next year. The district provides municipal services such as firefighting, planning and mosquito control, among other things, and was controlled by Disney supporters before the takeover by the DeSantis appointees.
Labour could win ‘freak majority’ bigger than Blair’s and Thatcher’s combined
Boris Johnson has warned Britain faces a Labour “freak majority” bigger than that of Sir Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher combined unless Tories turn out to vote at the election.
The former prime minister also claimed that Sir Keir Starmer gaining a supermajority would be “dangerous” and lead to “the least-merited election triumph in history”.
His remarks in his Daily Mail column came as he intervened in the general election campaign for the first time by starting to produce video endorsements for Tories standing for re-election.
There was some criticism that Mr Johnson appeared to be choosing to support those former MPs who had been most loyal to him.
But a source close to him told The Telegraph: “Every Conservative MP who has asked for a digital endorsement from him will get one.”
Trump ridicules special counsel’s gag order request in new filing in classified documents case
The attorneys continued, comparing the request to the gag order Trump is under in a separate case in New York, adding, “Like Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Smith seeks to restrict President Trump’s campaign speech as the first presidential debate approaches at the end of this month.”
The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (AFT) regulation that effectively bans bump stocks by declaring them a machine gun. Even the wording of the regulation suggested that far more than bump stocks could be banned, as it considered anything that improves the trigger performance to be the same as a making the gun a machine gun.
The Supreme Court disagreed, with 6 Americans voting to strike down the measure and the 3 die-hard anti-Americanist judges predictably voting for it, given their awareness of the fact that without an unarmed population, their dystopian leftist nightmares can never full take hold in these STILL American lands. It goes without saying that an American congress would long have removed these anti-American judges, not just on SCOTUS, but throughout our infested court system.
“A bump stock does not convert a semiautomatic rifle into a machinegun any more than a shooter with a lightning-fast trigger finger does,” Thomas wrote in his opinion. “Even with a bump stock, a semiautomatic rifle will fire only one shot for every ‘function of the trigger.’”
An anti-American, anti-capitalist foreign judge could defy the people and deny Tesla CEO Elon Musk a bonus of $56 billion even though 75 percent of the shareholders voted for it. Delaware Judge Kathaleen McCormick, the one who originally nixed the 2018 deal that led to this payoff, called the amount “an unfathomable sum,” a phrase that could only be used by a Marxist.
The Judge’s argument for nixing the deal was that the board had vested interests in Musk’s success and thus were not voting for the company, but for Musk. Now that the shareholders have voted 75 percent to 25 percent, the anti-Capitalist judge’s faulty logic has even less credibility than it did before. The shareholders also voted to move the company out of the now-Marxist-controlled state of Delaware to an American one, Texas.
Tesla boss Elon Musk let Delaware know it can eat cake as the company reportedly put in paperwork to shift its incorporation from the First State to the Lone Star State.
Nearly 90% of shareholders on Thursday voted in favor of the move, leading Musk to quip on his social media site X that he was sending a cake to Delaware “as a parting gift.”
The post included an image of a vanilla-frosted sheet cake with the words “Vox Populi, Vox Dei” – Latin for “the voice of the people is the voice of God” – written in red letters, along with a big heart.
Nearly 90% of shareholders on Thursday voted in favor of the move, leading Elon Musk to quip on his social media site X that he was sending a cake to Delaware “as a parting gift.”
Musk initiated the move from Delaware to Texas in January after Delaware judge Kathaleen McCormick struck down his $56 billion pay package that was approved in 2018, calling the massive compensation “an unfathomable sum.”
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is claiming American plane manufacturer Boeing and European plane manufacturer Airbus may have fault planes that are flying ticking time bombs thanks to the defective titanium they purchased from China.
The FAA is claiming the faulty titanium came from Spirit AeroSystems, who built plane parts using titanium bought from China. They possess faked certification documents that show the company was sending out titanium parts that had not been properly certified as being up to industry standards. The FAA stated it has begun an investigation to determine the scope of the problem. The Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 door that came off during flight had parts on that door manufactured by the same company.
Airliners manufactured by Boeing and Airbus have components made from titanium that was sold with fake documentation.
The Federal Aviation Administration revealed the problem after Boeing reported it to the agency when it was notified by parts supplier Spirit AeroSystems.
Spirit is the same company that made the door on the 737 Max plane that suffered a door blowout on January 5 and began Boeing’s recent spate of problems.
Faked documentation certifying the authenticity of the titanium could mean it was not up to standard or tested to withstand the rigors of air travel.
The FAA said it was ‘investigating the scope and impact of the issue’ and how it could affect the safety of the unknown number of planes using the parts.
… Sources told the New York Times that the issue dates to 2019 when material supplier Turkish Aerospace Industries bought the batch of titanium from a Chinese supplier, and sold it to several other suppliers.
Boeing’s latest potential scandal is out of this world – literally.
Its Starliner spacecraft – which carried two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) last week – is unable to undock after several faults were found on the ship.
The astronauts were set to return on June 14, but that has been delayed until June 22 while Boeing and NASA scramble to fix issues, leaving the astronauts stranded until then.
Now, experts have said that NASA could be forced to launch a rescue mission that would be a highly embarrassing blow for the embattled Boeing which is dealing with spate of issues plaguing its commercial jets.
Its Starliner spacecraft – which carried two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) last week – is unable to undock after several faults were found on the shipTeams have discovered five different leaks in the craft’s thruster systems which would allow it to navigate through space as it returns to Earth
Mark Zuckerberg is one of the most successful entrepreneurs in history. The creator of Facebook and owner of Meta (the company that also includes the social network Instagram) has managed to establish himself as one of the wealthiest men of our time, which is why he indulges in luxuries that most mortals can only dream of.
To celebrate his 40th birthday, the American has decided to give himself a luxury yacht called “Launchpad”, which is valued at 300 million euros. With this vessel, Zuckerberg plans to sail around much of the world while enjoying extreme comfort and glamour within reach of a few.
The state of Indiana has passed a bill to end the sale of land to the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party, a bill that was passed and signed after a CCP-connected company was caught trying to buy land. The company that was identified was Fufeng who had just attempted to purchase land in Grand Forks, North Dakota but had to exit the deal after the U.S. Air Force issued a memo referring to the company as a “significant threat to national security.”
The exposure led to more discoveries of CCP purchases of land in Indiana that seems to have resulted from an intentional concentration on the state by the CCP. The network of CCP-connected companies was built under the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, The website openly states it exists to connect Chinese American entrepreneurs with Chinese-owned businesses to come in partnership with one another.
Indiana’s speedy passage of House Bill 1183 in March, prohibiting certain land sales to companies from China and other adversarial countries, has halted a pending real estate deal with the China-owned company Fufeng, according to LaPorte County Assessor records. Fufeng was looking for real estate in Indiana after being booted out of Grand Forks, North Dakota, following a U.S. Air Force memo that called it a “significant threat to national security.”
Fufeng managed to implant itself in North Dakota with a land purchase before being tarred and feathered out of the state. Fortunately, it was legislated out of Indiana — for now.
Fufeng’s short-lived appearance in Indiana was a smoking gun. What else is going on? The Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC), an unelected upgrade to the traditional commerce department, helps select and develop businesses in Indiana. The IEDC has set up many China-owned companies in the state, including 25 currently operational, according to the IEDC general counsel.
The trend of China-based companies in Indiana has not developed organically but through centralized planning with the help of a Chinese Communist Party-linked nonprofit. A contract on the IEDC’s website shows that it has been paying the America China Society of Indiana (ACSI) to facilitate deals with China-owned businesses. The contract outlines IEDC’s interest in “identifying and creating a pipeline of [foreign direct investment] prospects in China” and preparing trip itineraries, among other tasks.
A state contract to fill a requested “pipeline” of China-owned businesses wishing to engage in foreign direct investment, including the purchase of U.S. land, is concerning. The 2017 National Intelligence Law of the People’s Republic of China directs that “any organization or citizen shall support, assist, and cooperate with the state intelligence work” and “state intelligence work institutions shall collect and handle the acts or acts of foreign institutions, organizations, and individuals….”
In other words, China-owned companies operating in the United States are expected to collect intelligence on the United States. Further, most large Chinese companies, especially those allowed to expand into the United States, have CCP members or even party committees within them ensuring loyalty to the CCP’s goals.
Beyond the concerns with Chinese companies taking root in the United States, an organization such as ACSI introduces additional issues when attached to state-level government. ACSI has implemented a series of influence operations and public relations events that may have compromised state decision-making through pressure, gain, or both.
You Will Know Them by Their Fruits
ACSI’s 2018 board of directors paints a picture of the IEDC’s exposure to CCP influence.
A member of the IEDC is on the board, guaranteeing that the IEDC is not only aware of, but actively has influence in, ACSI’s activities.
Westfield Outdoors is one of the China-owned businesses that ACSI brought in as part of the “pipeline.” Westfield Outdoors, along with other China-owned businesses, is one of ACSI’s member sponsors, which in turn influence businesses ACSI recommends to Indiana.
Dr. Zao (Joe) Xu, founder of the Confucius Institute at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, was on the ACSI board until 2018. The U.S. government defunded Confucius Institutes (CI) following expert testimony identifying CI as part of a CCP influence operation. The Confucius Institute at IUPUI closed in 2019 along with nearly all others in the United States.
A board that convenes Indiana government representatives alongside CCP-linked influence operators and oversees a society whose members include China-owned businesses with an intel-gathering mission is a recipe for compromised decision-making.
The Deepening
In 2019, Indiana Governor and IEDC Board Chairman Eric Holcomb took a trip to China likely arranged by ACSI “to renew the Indiana-Zhejiang sister-state relationship” established back in 1987. The Indiana legislature has since banned sister-city agreements with China, so Holcomb had to sign a bill that deeply criticizes the same kind of agreement he celebrated just five years ago.
During that trip, Holcomb visited with the president of the China People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC), known as the “‘public face’ of the CCP’s United Front Work Department.”
In contrast to ACSI’s description of CPAFFC as “focused on deepening international friendships,” the CPAFFC’s mission in its own words is “to make the foreign serve China.” This stunning whitewashing is readily available on Wikipedia.
Why did Indiana’s governor meet with the leader of the part of the CCP’s influence operation concerned with making other countries serve China? ACSI would have added the CPAFFC stop to the itinerary as part of its role arranging IEDC’s China-bound trips, at the direction of the CCP. It is possible that Holcomb thought he was innocently “deepened” by a nice lady with a panda plate. But from the CPAFFC’s and CCP’s point of view, he declared his subservience.
‘Mask Diplomacy’
During early Covid days, China hoarded masks while companies like MyPillow diverted production to manufacturing masks for donation. Then China decided it was time to share. ACSI worked diligently to ensure Indiana participated in the geopolitical phenomenon later coined “Mask Diplomacy.”
Mask diplomacy, the CCP’s effort to look generous and deflect suspicions that Covid came from the Wuhan Lab, involved distributing small quantities of masks for a photo op. Indiana was among the favored states and countries to receive the honor of free masks, per the July 2020 news story on ACSI’s website.
In reality, this publicity stunt was a favor the CCP called in, likely among those trusted partners who have pledged allegiance to the CCP’s head of foreign submission (the CPAFFC) and could be counted on to promote this effort. With both the general public and the carefully selected recipients, the self-serving “favor” was an investment that would be expected to produce a return.
To the recipients, it was likely a nuisance. In context, 100,000 masks is a very small number. The IEDC reported in 2020 with macabre glee that it took fiduciary charge of spending $49 million on 27 million masks for the state, the smallest order of which was 1 million masks. The Chinese gift came with a very detailed receipt — the only mention of this event on IEDC’s website:
The IEDC likely had little “desire” for such a small quantity of masks, other than to satisfy the CCP’s desire to give masks and take credit. But in doing so, the state of Indiana (through its contractor ACSI) accepted a public gift from the Zhejiang Provincial Government of the CCP with an approximate value of nearly $200,000. What are the odds that the CCP would parlay that “favor” into a return gesture?
Far-Flung Fufeng
These are some of the more interesting elements within a long pattern of CCP-linked business development activities, advertised little if at all by the IEDC. It may also explain why the IEDC accepted the disgraced Fufeng earlier this year after its Department of Defense-directed expulsion from North Dakota.
Will the IEDC cancel its contract with ACSI for a “pipeline” of China-based companies in light of the HB 1183 restrictions? Do other states have similarly low-profile links to the CCP buried deep within unelected departments? The nearly two-thirds of all U.S. states currently advancing anti-China bills similar to HB 1183 may be doing so at odds with influence operations hidden within their own governments.
Vanessa Battaglia is a defense engineer with experience designing software, hardware, and airborne systems for the Army, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, Special Operations Command, and the Federal Aviation Administration.
Following the retail apocalypse of 2023, 2024 is looking to be even worse, with the year-over-year comparison showing a 5.2 percent increase in store closures this year over last year.
The retail apocalypse of 2023 has continued in 2024, with thousands of stores across the United States set to shut their doors. Under President Joe Biden’s administration, the economic strain on the retail sector has only deepened, leading to a retail bloodbath.
Major retailers, including Macy’s, Walgreens, CVS, Family Dollar, Walmart, and 7-Eleven, have announced significant closures. A staggering 2,599 store closures are planned for this year, marking a 2.5% increase from the same period last year, according to the DailyMail. The closures reflect the persistent struggles brick-and-mortar stores face amid rising costs and shifting consumer habits.
Family Dollar and the bankrupt 99 Cents Only stores are among the hardest hit, with discount retailers particularly vulnerable in the current economic climate. The discount sector, often seen as a lifeline for low-income families, is reeling from the losses. The 99 Cents Only chain’s bankruptcy has already led to the planned shuttering of numerous stores, though a recent acquisition by Dollar Tree has saved 170 locations from closure.
Waterford, Pennsylvania, USA August 1, 2023 Two storefronts together, a Family Dollar and a Dollar Tree in a strip mall on a sunny summer day
Retail experts point to a variety of factors contributing to the closures, including increased competition from online retailers, rising operating costs, and changing consumer preferences. However, the Biden administration’s economic policies have exacerbated the situation, creating an environment where traditional retailers struggle to survive. The planned closures represent lost jobs, deserted shopping centers, and communities grappling with reduced access to essential goods and services. For many Americans, the closure of the stores is a reminder of the challenges facing the retail sector and the economy.
“A lot of this year’s closures are related to bankruptcies of chains that have been in trouble for a while, like Rite Aid and Rue21,” Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData, said to CBS. “We’re also seeing several retailers, like Family Dollar, take action to weed out underperforming locations.”
This year has already seen nearly 3,200 retail store closures, a 24% increase from last year, as reported by CoreSight, a firm that monitors retail activity in the U.S. In contrast, store openings are down by 4%, with many major chains holding back on expansion plans.
New Hartford, New York – Nov 23, 2023: Rite Aid Pharmacy storefront, is a well-known American pharmacy chain that provides a range of health and wellness products with over 2500 locations nationwide.
Driving these closures are several factors, including shifts in consumer behavior, management difficulties, and a spate of bankruptcies affecting companies like Rite Aid and Rue21. Notably, Dollar Tree announced the closure of over 600 Family Dollar stores, attributing the decision to inflationary pressures on shoppers and a rise in shoplifting incidents. While some retailers are still planning to open new locations, the overall trend points to a more cautious approach in the industry.
Amid the highest inflation rates seen in decades, many consumers have felt the financial squeeze. “Persistent inflation and reduced government benefits continue to pressure the lower-income consumers that comprise a sizable portion of Family Dollar’s” customer base, CEO Rick Dreiling said on a Wednesday call.
As the retail landscape continues to evolve, the impact of some closures could be felt across the country.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics has released a report that shows 637,000 non-Americans are working in America during a period of time when 300,000 Americans lost their jobs. Economist E.J. Antoni is also claiming native-born jobs are still millions below pre-pandemic levels while foreign-born jobs have increased by millions since Feb. 2020.
Antoni stated, “No wonder Americans view economy so terribly: they aren’t the ones [with] the jobs; native-born employment is not only millions below pre-pandemic trend, but even below pre-pandemic level, while millions more foreign workers are employed today than Feb ’20, and back to trend.”
A new report finds that Joe Biden’s “great jobs” have mostly gone to illegal aliens and more illegals have gotten jobs than American citizens.
The latest Bureau of Labor Statistics report released last week told us that there are 637,000 non-American citizen workers in the country. Yet nearly 300,000 native-born Americans lost their jobs during the most recent period.
Economist E.J. Antoni told The Federalist that the government has added a significant amount of jobs that are primarily only held by foreign-born workers, leaving Americans struggling to look for jobs.
