Why Did The IRS Let Biden Off The Hook For His Sketchy Tax Filings? Republicans Should Investigate
Congressional Republicans need to start asking why politicians with such questionable tax records get off scot-free.
Ivanka Trump, the popular eldest daughter of former President Donald Trump, recently traveled to Poland to meet with Ukrainian refugees and deliver food to families.
The former president’s daughter shared the experience with her followers on social media, the New York Post reported.
She said, “Grateful to have spent the last few days in Krakow & Warsaw to meet Ukrainian and Polish faith leaders who have shown so much compassion & love to Ukrainian families in need & for the opportunity to bear witness to the love, strength & resilience within each of these families.”
Grateful to have spent the last few days in Krakow & Warsaw to meet Ukrainian and Polish faith leaders who have shown so much compassion & love to Ukrainian families in need & for the opportunity to bear witness to the love, strength & resilience within each of these families.pic.twitter.com/nq3ZD5ORRo— Ivanka Trump (@Ivanka Trump) 1653225533
Ms. Trump shared photos of her playing the guitar alongside a young girl, chatting with teenage refugees, and standing with a mother and her newborn child.
Her trip materialized through an invitation from CityServe, a non-profit organization that has been delivering food and aid to refugees.
The Daily Mail reported that a spokesperson for the organization said, “There [Ivanka Trump] met with dozens of pastors serving Ukrainians on the frontlines, many of which helped support the one million meal distribution in March.”
“This week, they brought meals, financial support and toys to dozens of Ukrainian families seeking both short-term and long-term refuge in Poland until they can safely return to Ukraine,” the spokesperson added.
Reportedly, Ms. Trump has been involved in several efforts to provide relief to Ukrainians in need since March. CityServe says that she has purchased and helped distribute one million meals into Ukraine and was vital in delivering several cargo planes worth of requested medical supplies that will be distributed among hospitals and clinics throughout Ukraine.
Ms. Trump is just the latest high-profile American figure to visit the Ukrainian people.
In late April, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to discuss the U.S. federal government’s role in providing the Ukrainian military with more than $300 million in financing. In early May, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a delegation of Congressional Democrats met with Zelenskyy to show support for the Ukrainian government. Shortly after Pelosi’s trip to Ukraine, First Lady Jill Biden made a surprise trip to Ukraine and met with her Ukrainian counterpart, Olen Zelenska.
About a week after the first lady’s trip to Ukraine, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell led a delegation of Congressional Republicans to meet with Zelenskyy in Ukraine’s capital city of Kyiv.
There are currently no known plans for President Joe Biden to visit Ukraine or host Zelenskyy.President Joe Biden’s approval rating fell in May to its lowest point since he took office.
According to a poll published by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Research, only 39% of adults in the U.S. approve of Biden’s performance as president.
Overall, only about two in ten adults believe the U.S. is heading in the right direction or that the economy is in a good condition. Fox News reported that in April, about three in ten adults believed both. These drops in favorability were largely concentrated among Democratic voters with just 33% of the president’s own party believing that the country was headed in the right direction, down from 49% in April.
Among Democrats, Biden’s overall approval sits at 73% which indicates a drop from 82% in the same poll from last year. In 2021, Biden never dropped below 82% approval.
Last year, a similar poll conducted by the Associated Press showed Biden had an approval rating of 63% which is 24 points higher than his current approval rating.
Biden’s handling of the economy is one of the largest reasons for his dismal poll numbers as two-thirds of Americans are saying they disapprove of the way his administration has presided over the situation.
According to the poll, only 18% of Americans say that Biden’s policies have helped the economy more than they have hurt it, which is down from 24% in March. At the same time, 51% of Americans say that his economic policies have hurt the economy more than they have helped and 30% of respondents say that Biden’s policies have not made a difference on way or the other.
Biden’s performance in the polls has been slipping since January as several polls conducted across the political spectrum indicate Americans are increasingly frustrated with a wide range of issues stemming from record high gas prices and historic levels of inflation to a nationwide baby formula shortage.
Biden’s poll numbers have suffered hits from constituencies that have historically been reliable voting blocs for Democrats. A recent Quinnipiac poll suggested that Biden’s approval among Hispanics has fallen to 26%, but whether this will affect voting trends remains to be seen. The same Quinnipiac poll conducted a year ago had Hispanic support for Biden at 55%.
The plummeting approval numbers are not confined to Biden, however. Recent polls indicate that Americans are prepared to oust Democrats from Congress. 39% of respondents favored generic Democratic candidates with 46% of respondents favoring generic Republican candidates.
Rashida Tlaib, a Democratic congresswoman from Michigan and member of the Squad, introduced a resolution Monday calling for U.S. recognition of the “Nakba,” a term translating to “catastrophe” commonly used by Palestinian activists to refer to the establishment of the state of Israel.
The resolution, titled “Recognizing the Nakba and Palestinian refugees’ rights,” was submitted a week and a half after Israeli Independence Day, which coincides with the Palestinian Nakba Day, Fox News reported. Tlaib’s resolution calls for the U.S. to “commemorate the Nakba through official recognition and remembrance,” while also claiming that the Nakba “refers not only to a historical event but to an ongoing process of Israel’s expropriation of Palestinian land and its dispossession of the Palestinian people that continues to this day.”
Referring to the year of Israel’s creation, U.N. recognition of Israel’s creation, and ongoing U.S. support of Israel on Twitter, Tlaib said, “The Palestinian people since the 48 Nakba have been living under oppression and violent racism. Silence + blank checks enables more death and violence.”
The resolution claims that Palestinians opposed the U.N.’s 1947 recommendation to partition the region of Palestine into two states, one for Arabs and one for Jews. Tlaib’s resolution states that prior to Israel declaring its independence on May 14, 1948, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced to flee their homes “often after attacks by Zionist militias.” Tlaib’s resolution does not make any reference to attacks by Arab peoples on Jews or historic Jewish communities.
The resolution does not include a single mention of “anti-Semitism,” and its only use of the term “Jewish state” is in reference to a claim that Israel’s formation displaced “at least 750,000 Palestinian refugees.”
The congresswoman’s resolution also characterizes the situation differently than the State Department’s Office of the Historian, which states that after the U.N. resolution, “[f]ighting began with attacks by irregular bands of Palestinian Arabs … against Jewish cities, settlements and armed forces.”
Tlaib is a daughter of Palestinian immigrants and submitted the resolution on behalf of herself and her peers in the left-wing Squad, which commonly takes anti-Israel policy stances. In total, the resolution was submitted on behalf of Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Cori Bush, Jamaal Bowman, Marie Newman, and Betty McCollum.
Tlaib has a history of making anti-Semitic comments, having previously accused lawmakers who support Israel of having dual loyalty, and has very deep ties to anti-Semitic organizations through groups funding and supporting her during her congressional campaigns.
A subcommittee in the U.S. House of Representatives will be holding an open congressional hearing next week about unidentified flying objects (UFOs) for the first time in more than 50 years.
Andre Carson, a Democratic representative from Indiana, said that the House Intelligence Committee will be leading the charge, Vice reported.
He said, “Congress hasn’t held a public hearing on unidentified aerial phenomena (UFO's) in over 50 years. That will change next week when I lead a hearing in @HouseIntel on this topic & the national security risk it poses. Americans need to know more about these unexplained occurrences.”
The hearing is currently scheduled for Tuesday, May 17, and it will take place in front of a subcommittee of the House Intelligence Committee that is currently chaired California Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff.
Schiff said that the committee is holding the series of hearings to explore “one of the great mysteries of our time and to break the cycle of excessive secrecy and speculation with truth and transparency.”
At the time of writing, two officials currently serving in the Pentagon are scheduled to testify at the hearing.
After the New York Times published a 2017 article about the existence of a project called “the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP)” in the Pentagon that was focused on the identification of UFOs, official government disclosures about UFOs have come with increasingly rapidity.
In 2021, the Pentagon released a report about its UFO program that detailed more than 140 sightings of aerial objects that could not be explained between 2004 and 2021. The report was considered to be relatively underwhelming at the time, because much of the information had already been disclosed and much of the report was simply concerned with securing additional funding for the Pentagon.
The Black Vault, a government transparency organization, was able to obtain a classified version of this report earlier this year. Reportedly, this version of the report contains more fascinating details but still has considerable parts of it redacted.
Since the 2021 report was released, various outlets have obtained hundreds of pages of reports and research on futuristic technology funded by the government under the auspices of the AATIP and a sister program called the Advanced Aerospace Weapons System Application Program.
The Barack Obama Presidential Library has also said that it has thousands of pages of documents pertaining to UFOs.
Republicans currently hold the lead on the generic congressional ballot test for the first time in nearly a decade.
According to a new NPR/Marist poll, Republicans are well-positioned to retake both chambers of Congress in the 2022 midterms as they enjoy a healthy lead on the generic congressional ballot for the first time since 2014.
A press release from Marist said, “With the 2022 Congressional Midterm Elections a little more than six months away, U.S. registered voters give Republicans (47%) the advantage over the Democratic candidates (44%) nationally.”
The press release indicated the plurality of Americans believe the Republican Party is best fit to address the issues the country is currently facing.
“On the economy, controlling inflation, crime, national security, and gun policy, pluralities of Americans perceive the Republican Party to be the party who would be better able to handle these issues. Americans express these views as President Joe Biden’s job approval rating remains upside down, and his ratings on the economy and the crisis in Ukraine take on water.”
Polling cited by Marist indicated that registered independents favor substantially favor Republicans for the primary race, as well.
The Marist press release said, “Independents break 45% for the Republican candidate and 38% for the Democratic candidate on the generic congressional ballot. A notable 10% are unsure.”
Data gathered in the polling process indicates that notable pluralities believe Republicans can better handle issues affecting the everyday person's quality of life such as national security (43%), the economy (42%), controlling inflation (41%), gun policy (41%), and crime (39%).
The data indicated that the Democratic Party is perceived to have a tighter grip on handling social issues such as LGBTQ rights (48%), climate change (45%), and abortion (41%).
There appears to be little consensus, however, about which of the major parties could better handle immigration. Republicans were favored by 37% of respondents to address the issue while Democrats were favored by 34%.
According to the poll, 57% of adults registered to vote disapprove of how President Joe Biden “is handling the economy.” When asked which party they “think would do a better job” in managing the economy, respondents favored the Republican Party (42%) over the Democratic Party (26%).
Currently, the GOP has an 85% chance of retaking the House of Representatives and a 73% chance of retaking the U.S. Senate in the 2022 midterm elections.