(breitbart) – Monday, FNC’s Tucker Carlson warned of the consequences of the so-called “woke” trend underway becoming more prevalent in the U.S. military.

Carlson pointed to examples of the push against meritocracy in the name of diversity and inclusion in the U.S. Armed Forces, which could be accelerated under a Biden administration.

Transcript as follows:

CARLSON: If you’re a sane person, it’s easy to dismiss woke activism as a kind of childish sideshow that plays out mostly on college campuses and public radio shows, the cringing self-hatred, the hair on fire hysteria, the total obliviousness to historical reality.

The whole thing is like an adolescent rage fit that goes on forever. Honestly, it’s kind of hilarious.

At the University of Wisconsin last month, child activists convinced administrators to move a bolder on campus because they claimed it represented bigotry. It was a racist rock. That actually happened along with countless other things like it.

Our grandchildren going to read about this moment, and they’re going to laugh in disbelief. That’s been our assumption anyway.

But what if the current lunacy turns out to be more than a passing phase? What if woke race obsession is not a fad, but instead an incurable brain virus that’s infected our country’s entire leadership class? If that’s the case, then we’re in trouble.

Our grandchildren won’t laugh about what’s happening right now. In fact, at this pace, a lot of Americans won’t have grandchildren.

Over the weekend, MSNBC assembled a panel of the usual highly credentialed geniuses to plan Joe Biden’s presidential candidate. Watch this and notice the criteria they’re using to staff your Federal government.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I know this is the first time so far that there has not been an Asian-American, Pacific Islander with the Secretary title. But there have been some Cabinet-level positions named.

Where do you stand on the representation issue when it comes to the Biden Cabinet?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We need to make sure that this is a Cabinet that like every single administration for the past 20 years, has a Secretary in the Cabinet that is Asian-American.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So it makes sense that that Attorney General would be a black person who models the value as we move past this dependency, this reliance on the carceral state.

JANET MURGUIA, PRESIDENT AND CEO, UNIDOSUS: I will say as it relates to Latino and Latinas, another factor is that we need to see gender — there’s diversity within our diversity. And for us, it’s going to be very important in the Hispanic community see a Latina in the Cabinet.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: My tribe. No, my tribe. No, mine, mine, mine. This is what late-stage identity politics looks like once you strip away all the euphemisms.

Notice there was no mention whatsoever of competence, or expertise, or any other quality that might actually help our country. Got the relevant background to run, say the Energy Department? Who cares? You’re the wrong color. No dice.

When it comes to hiring Cabinet Secretaries, outdated ideas about the common good no longer play a role. This is the ugliest kind of race politics dividing up the spoils along color lines. If you want the job, you had better look like me.

How did the country as impressive as ours get to a place this low? As with all journeys, the answer is slowly and then all at once. But we’ve definitely arrived.

To our leaders, identity is all that matters. That’s official.

Watch America’s highest-ranking guilty white guy, explain how he is hiring the people who run the Federal agencies.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: Today, the announcement we will make, the sixth African-American — the sixth of African-American members of our Cabinet, which is a record.

After today, our Cabinet won’t just at be one of or two precedent breaking appointments, but 12, including today’s long overdue appointment of a first Native American Cabinet Secretary.

Already, there are more people of color in our Cabinet than any Cabinet ever, more women than ever.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Again, Joe Biden isn’t even bothering to try to convince you that he is choosing the most competent people for key jobs. Instead, he is telling you what they look like. Their appearance is what matters. It’s all that matters.

So it turns out your mother was wrong. You can judge a book by its cover. In fact, you’re now required to.

What are the consequences of this kind of thinking? Over time, identity politics will destroy our country. No nation can remain unified for long if people are encouraged to think of themselves as members of competing ethnic groups, first; and citizens, second.

Countries need a reason to hang together. Unity doesn’t happen by accident. The fixation on race that has seized leadership class guarantees disunity – – permanent disunity. It’s terrifying if you think about it. But actually, it could be worse than that.

What if the woke brain virus began to infect the last remaining meritocracy in this country, the bedrock guarantee of our safety and our freedom? That’s the U.S. military. If that happened, it would be a legitimate disaster.

The military, we have all been told since childhood doesn’t care what you look like. They don’t care what your parents did. They don’t care where you’re from. Your identity is irrelevant to the Armed Services.

The U.S. military cares about your performance. That’s it. That’s why the U.S. military is impressive. That’s why they’ve been able to keep us from being invaded because they only care about what matters and what matters is protecting the United States. Not anymore.

Last week, the Acting Secretary of Defense, a man called Chris Miller announced that the U.S. military will be changing its standards from top to bottom, not to create a more effective fighting force to save your children from China or other foreign domination, no.

In order to conform to policies formulated by the Pentagon’s so-called Diversity and Inclusion Board — and you can imagine what those policies are — strict affirmative action, hiring and promoting by appearance, the elimination of objective standards.

According to Secretary Miller — who should be ashamed of himself — extremists left-wing social engineering is, quote, “A moral imperative in the Armed Forces.” He did not explain why this was a moral imperative.

Not long ago, an Air Force psychologist called Ryan Warner gave us a glimpse into the thinking behind decrees like this. Warner, whose job it is, keep in mind, to keep America free and safe, instead spends his time pondering the death of a man called George Floyd in Minneapolis.

He has decided that something called microaggressions are to blame. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RYAN WARNER, AIR FORCE PSYCHOLOGIST: … an innocent human being, they may not seem like a big deal and stuff, but as we see in today’s society, similar to what happened to George Floyd, those microaggressions, those unconscious bias can ultimately lead to more dangerous and severe impact.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Like Secretary Miller, Ryan Warner should be ashamed of himself. Neither one is, of course, both men are merely symptoms of a larger long-brewing problem that unfortunately, the rest of us have ignored for a very long time.

While the rest of the country is focused on the remarkable heroism of, for example, SEAL Team 6 we’re focusing on, much of our military’s leadership was moving in another direction. They have now come to resemble the Anthropology Department at Wesleyan.

Three years ago in September 2017, for example, a General called Jay Silveria went on this rant after a supposedly hate crime took place at the Air Force Academy. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LT. GEN. JAY SILVERIA (RET), U.S. AIR FORCE: You may have heard that some people down on the Prep School wrote some racial slurs on some message boards. If you haven’t heard that, I wanted you to hear it from me.

If you’re outraged by those words, then you’re in the right place. That kind of behavior has no place at the Prep School, it has no place at USAFA, and it has no place in the United States Air Force.

And if you can’t treat someone from another race or a different color skin with dignity and respect, then you need to get out.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Settle down, tough guy. The hate crime was a hoax like so many hate crimes that are reported in the media. It never happened.

The U.S. military, by the way, has a long — very long history of treating everyone with respect and dignity because it was a meritocracy and a meritocracy is designed to treat people with respect and dignity.

It treats them on the basis of how they behave, not on the basis of how they look.

But this man, the General you just saw apparently has forgotten that, he is mouthing the words to him written by the hard left and no one stopped him or many like him, and so the brain virus spread throughout the U.S. military.

This summer, the U.S. Army’s so-called Operation Inclusion instructed soldiers that the phrase Make America Great Again, was a form of quote, “Socially acceptable covert white supremacy.”

A presidential campaign slogan was white supremacy, according to the Army. Yet, no one did anything about that.

Now, according to the Army’s Equity and Inclusion Agency, and yes, they have one, the phrases, “All lives matter,” “American exceptionalism” and “The celebration of Columbus Day” are racist. This is from the Army, the people who should be protecting you.

The head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lieutenant General Robert Ashley recently encouraged his employees to read the lunatic track “White Fragility” by Robin DiAngelo, a book that is inherently bigoted, and also stupid.

Again, this is the military supposed to be protecting you, instead, they’re reading “White Fragility.”

Over the summer, Kaleth Wright, the Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force at the time, proclaimed on Twitter that his greatest fear was that one of his airmen might be killed by a racist cop, not killed by the Chinese military, but by American racism, and so on.

Where does this end? Can you protect a nation with a military like this?

breitbart.com/clips/2020/12/22/tucker-carlson-what-if-the-woke-brain-virus-began-to-infect-the-military/

(breitbart) – Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) told Breitbart News on Saturday that mask mandates — ostensibly issued for public health purposes — “are all about submission,” offering his remarks in an interview with Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow at Turning Point USA’s Student Action Summit in West Palm Beach, FL.

Partial transcript below:

MARLOW: You have a terrific speech … and you started with something that I wasn’t anticipating, but I absolutely loved, and that’s some actual science about the mask mandates. You broke it down in a very clear way. Talk to us about it. 

PAUL: It’d be one thing if we were told you have to give up your liberty, you have to give up your freedom, we’re going to save your life. But what if you have to give up all your freedoms and they’re wrong on the science? 

Every one of the mandates — and you look in country after country, state after state — you look at when the mask mandates went in — the incidents went up exponentially after the mandates. Restaurants, nobody can eat in a restaurant, there’s no science behind any of that.

Middle seat missing on the airplane, you really think you’re like 12 inches from the other guy instead of six inches, it really makes a difference?  None of it really makes any sense, and there’s no epidemiological evidence. You know, it’s like, ‘Wash your hands, stand six feet apart.’

There’s no evidence that that slowed down the [spread]. … The trajectory of the virus hasn’t been altered at all by any of these things. I think the vaccine will, and this is why I really despise people like the CNN Doctor [Sanjay] Gupta, who I think is committing television malpractice by saying,  ‘Oh, your mask is a much better thing than the vaccine.’ Well, no, it isn’t. The masks aren’t working at all. The thing’s going through the roof and people are dying. Why would you want to discourage someone from taking a vaccine and say,  ‘Oh wear the mask.’?

And the masks are different, too. The N95 mask actually does work to a certain extent, if worn properly and used [with] sterile technique. In the hospital, our doctors — I have a brother and sister who are doctors, they wear the N95 mask, and it’s kept them from getting infected — but there’s no value to the cloth mask, at all. 

It’s like wearing your underwear. You might as well cut your underwear up and wear your underwear as protection. It doesn’t work. 

MARLOW: That’s why I call it a face diaper. So you’ve got a public who has accepted this, though, by and large, because we’ve been told by everyone we have to accept it. Have we lost track of the Constitution? Have we forgotten about the Constitution?

PAUL: Well, that’s why I like this youth group here. What are they asked to give up? They’re being asked to give up their graduation from high school, their graduation from college, their wedding, and if we’re not careful, it’s gonna be their five-year wedding anniversary or their ten-year anniversary. We’re still gonna be wearing masks.

Paul highlighted Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci’s ongoing advocacy for mask-wearing as a protective measure for public health.

“If Fauci has his way, you’ll never give up on the mask,” warned Paul. “It’s all about submission. They want you to submit to their will, whether there’s any science. In fact, like on schools, I’ve been telling Fauci for six months, the evidence is that if you open schools, you will not get a surge. The whole world accepts it, except for Dr. Fauci. He finally accepted it last week, six months after I started showing him the evidence.”

Last week, CNN published an article entitled, “Why a Covid-19 vaccine doesn’t mean that you can stop wearing a mask.” CNN’s top medical reporter, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, described the coronavirus as “especially deadly” while advising people to “double the usual six feet [of distancing] to 12 feet” in gyms due to “heavy breathing.”

Democrats and the broader left regularly advocate for continuation and expansion of assorted and arbitrary lockdowns and shutdowns against businesses, religious organizations, and particular political demonstrations.

breitbart.com/clips/2020/12/20/exclusive-rand-paul-masks-are-all-about-submission/

(breitbart) – During a press conference on Monday, Attorney General Bill Barr agreed with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s assessment that the cyberattack on the federal government was carried out by the Russians and that the culprit in the attack “certainly appears to be the Russians.”

Barr said, “From the information I have, I agree with Secretary Pompeo’s assessment. It certainly appears to be the Russians. But I’m not going to discuss it beyond that.”

breitbart.com/clips/2020/12/21/barr-cyberattack-certainly-appears-to-be-the-russians-agree-with-pompeo/

(informationliberation) – The bipartisan $900 billion coronavirus aid bill is just one giant F-you to American taxpayers.

“Family members of unauthorized immigrants are now eligible to get stimulus checks under the $900 billion deal reached last night,” the Wall Street Journal’s Michelle Hackman reported Monday. “That eligibility is retroactive, so adults excluded last time could get up to $1800 now.”

Family members of unauthorized immigrants are now eligible to get stimulus checks under the $900 billion deal reached last night. That eligibility is retroactive, so adults excluded last time could get up to $1800 now https://t.co/UEyVqvPd4f

— Michelle Hackman (@MHackman) December 21, 2020

“Mixed-status households, where some people are ineligible noncitizens, would get payments based on the number of eligible people in the households, as opposed to being shut out as they were in the first round,” the WSJ reported.

The consolidated appropriations package, which in total comes to some $2.3 trillion, contains $500,000,000 for Israel.

The new COVID relief bill contains $500,000,000 for Israel. pic.twitter.com/oWJlLm1MzC

— Walker Bragman moved to Threads and BlueSky (@WalkerBragman) December 21, 2020

Israel is already slated to get $38 billion from the National Defense Authorization Act.

If this is not pure, in your face, naked corruption, I don't know what is.

On what planet is Congress living.

While average Americans struggle, politicians in Congress have just voted to send another $4 billion to wealthy Israel.

Sack them all! https://t.co/VaQwUQoucu

— PalMedia (@PalBint) December 19, 2020

Israel currently holds $53.3 billion in US treasuries which they purchased with our money and now lend back to us with interest.

Americans are lined up at food banks across the nation but Israel needs another $38 billion to add to their reserves!

Other nations are also receiving millions in foreign aid:

The Stimulus Bill:

The gov't closes the economy. You lose your job. You face eviction.

$600 for all your troubles.

Meanwhile they send:

$135 million to Burma
$85.5 million to Cambodia
$1.4 billion for "Asia Reassurance Initiative Act"
$130 million to Nepal

They hate you. pic.twitter.com/95U2Qt4uNa

— Techno Fog (@Techno_Fog) December 21, 2020

The new stimulus bill appropriates $3,000,000 for Hong Kong rioters pic.twitter.com/PX3PmBFKeM

— Alex Rubinstein (@RealAlexRubi) December 21, 2020

It also demands a report identifying all of Alyaksandr Lukashenka's assets and those of his family, plus "identification of the most significant senior foreign political figures in Belarus, as determined by their closeness to Alyaksandr Lukashenka." pic.twitter.com/K3hGRElHag

— Alex Rubinstein (@RealAlexRubi) December 21, 2020

There’s other piles of garbage included:

While rejecting hazard pay for essential workers, refusing to assist desperate local governments and haggling down checks to ordinary Americans to $600, Congress more than doubled the budget for their own private boutique health care clinic. By @lhfang https://t.co/UpHcPY2ava

— Leighton 明 Woodhouse (@lwoodhouse) December 22, 2020

The Covid relief bill also includes $10 million for “gender programs” in Pakistan pic.twitter.com/7kivucCjvY

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) December 21, 2020

If you own a racehorse, the coronavirus stimulus legislation has a tax break for you pic.twitter.com/WauMijyfzP

— Lee Fang (@lhfang) December 21, 2020

The PPP bailout money for small business originally covered payroll and rent — the new stimulus legislation now says PPP can cover "cloud computing" services, which potentially means the gov is now picking up the tab for automation. pic.twitter.com/nfvJCfRt6K

— Lee Fang (@lhfang) December 21, 2020

The cloud computing bit will no doubt be well received by Amazon, Microsoft and Google, who are the biggest providers of cloud services.

The bill also includes a bunch of giant handouts to Weinstein’s pals in Hollywood.

https://twitter.com/THR/status/1341106003581030404/photo/1

https://twitter.com/emily_esque/status/1341124167085809667

The bill is some 5,600 pages and it’s pretty much guaranteed our corrupt congress will just shove it right through.

We can expect a vote on a 5,600 page bill this evening. Can anyone read 1,000 pages in an hour? Asking for a few friends on the Hill and the American people.

— Warren Davidson 🇺🇸 (@WarrenDavidson) December 21, 2020

Our ruling class are traitors.

The interests of the American people no longer factor in to any of their decisions and they’ll hardly even pay us lip service!

[This article has been updated and expanded with additional goodies from the bill. The headline was changed to clarify the checks reportedly going as high as $1,800 will go to households with illegals, who were rightly shut out from the previous stimulus.]

informationliberation.com/?id=61964

(breitbart) – The Senate joined the House on Monday evening in passing a coronavirus relief and stimulus bill nearly 6,000 pages long.

Given that the standard ream of paper contains 500 pages and stands 2.5 inches tall, the total height of the bill is 2.5 feet.

The bill, which contains $900 billion in coronavirus spending and $1.4 trillion to fund the government, also contained a variety of provisions that had nothing to do with the COVID-19 pandemic, and were inserted to benefit special interests.

As Breitbart News noted earlier:

The bill, which included $1.4 trillion in stopgap spending to prevent a government shutdown, was ostensibly the result of bipartisan negotiations that reached an agreement less than 24 hours before. It includes $600 stimulus checks for American households and a temporary expansion of federal unemployment benefits by $300, half the amounts paid earlier this year.

But the legislation also includes many hidden provisions completely unrelated to coronavirus, many of which appear to be the work of individual legislators, acting at the behest of specific lobbyists and interest groups who seized the opportunity.

The bill includes tax benefits for racehorse owners; hundreds of millions of dollars in economic aid to the Palestinians; and a congressional statement on U.S. policy on the succession of the Dalai Lama in Tibet, among many other obscure provisions.

Given six hours between the release of the bill, and an average reading pace of roughly 5 minutes per page of technical material, members of Congress could have been expected to read about 72 pages, assuming no meals or bathroom breaks.

The Senate vote was 91-7. The bill now heads to President Donald Trump’s desk.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His newest e-book is Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

breitbart.com/politics/2020/12/21/senate-passes-6000-page-coronavirus-relief-and-stimulus-bill/

(breitbart) – Turns out that one of the Democrats’ star witnesses in their sham impeachment of President Trump – former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie “Masha” Yovanovitch – seemed to have been shading the truth. Are you at all surprised?

We just received 210 pages of records from the State Department showing that Yovanovitch had specifically warned in 2017 about corruption allegations against Burisma Holdings. However, during her November 2019 testimony in the impeachment proceedings, Yovanovitch told lawmakers that she knew little about Burisma.

We obtained the records in response to our FOIA lawsuit filed in January 2020 seeking records of communications from the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv mentioning Burisma (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:20-cv-00229)).

On October 4, 2017, Michael Polt, a former ambassador to Estonia and Serbia and who until October 2020 was Senior Director at the McCain Institute, emailed Yovanovitch regarding the McCain Institute’s plan to conduct leadership development training for Ukrainian prosecutors that would be funded by Burisma. The idea was suggested to Polt by Sally Painter, Burisma’s lobbyist at Blue Star Strategies, and a Burisma executive. In the email, Polt notes that he was introduced to Painter by U.S. special envoy to Ukraine, Kurt Volker. Volker was also a Trump impeachment witness.

Polt emails Yovanovitch on October 4, 2017:

Dear Masha: Greetings from the home front and all the best for your complex assignment in Kiev! I wonder if I could pick your brain on a leadership development we have been asked to run for Ukrainian public prosecutors here at the McCain Institute. Kurt cannot get involved with this, due to his other role as Special Envoy. Sally Painter of Blue Star Strategies, whom Kurt introduced to me and then stepped aside, together with Vadym Poharskyi of the Burisma Group have asked us whether we could provide a two-week Leadership Development and Professional Capacity Building program for Ukrainian public prosecutors proposed to us by the Ukrainian Chief Prosecutor. Burisma would fun this. We are prepared to do this, as we have done for similar groups from the DRC [Democratic Republic of the Congo] and from Pakistan. I would greatly appreciate your view if you know Burisma and/or Vadym or others.

Yovanovitch, in her response, warned Polt about Burisma, writing:

Mike: Sorry not to have responded more quickly. I will get back to you with a fuller response, but I would urge caution in dealing with the Burisma Group. It is widely believed that the owner was the beneficiary of the corrupt justice system here and I think –to the extent that anyone is aware that Burisma is funding the training –there would be raised eyebrows in Kyiv over the irony of Burisma training prosecutors and to what end.

I’d also note that the PGO [Prosecutor General’s Office] is one of the entities here that remains resolutely unreformed. After a year and a half of trying, we pulled out and reprogrammed our resources into other areas in the justice sector that were ready for change. Wish I had better news and will get back to you with more details.

In a November 7, 2017, email to Yovanovitch, Polt indicates that he is taking her “sage advice” and “not moving forward” with Burisma’s funding of the training.

During her November 15, 2019, testimony before the House Intelligence Committee in the impeachment proceedings, Yovanovitch said she didn’t have much knowledge about Burisma, and noted that she only learned of its connection to the Biden family through “press reports” she read while preparing for her Senate confirmation hearing.

The new production of records from the State Department also includes several emails regarding the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv’s response to John Solomon’s reporting for The Hill. The emails are almost entirely redacted, as are the names of the officials involved. In one email regarding this effort, an unidentified official cites a report by the George Soros-funded Anti-Corruption Action Center defending itself against the reporting as a “useful reference point.”

The U.S. Embassy in Kyiv closely monitored media and social media reaction to many conservatives and journalists in potential violation of federal law.

Marie Yovanovitch knew much more about Burisma than what she revealed in her testimony at the sham impeachment hearings. We will continue our efforts to unearth the shady details in the Burisma-Biden scandal that is not going to go away.

We have been busy uncovering other details of this scandal.

In October we received records from the State Department that included a briefing checklist of a February 22, 2019, meeting in Kyiv between Yovanovitch and Painter. The briefing checklist noted that Painter also planned to meet with Foreign Commercial Service (FCS) Officer Martin Claessens “regarding the Burisma Group energy company.”

At the time of the meeting, Hunter Biden, son of former Vice President Joe Biden, was serving on the board of directors for Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy firm, despite having no previous experience in the energy industry. Biden served on the board of Burisma until his term expired in April 2019.

In September 2020 we made public records that show George Kent, the Obama administration’s deputy assistant secretary of state in charge of Ukraine policy, which was copied to Yovanovitch, highlighting Russia-linked media “trolling” Joe Biden over “his son’s business.”

In a related case we uncovered records showing the U.S. embassy in Ukraine monitoring, in potential violation of law, Donald Trump, Jr., Rudy Giuliani and major journalists on Twitter on their commentary on Ukraine, “Biden-Burisma 2020,” and George Soros. The search terms flagged to be monitored by State Department officials on social media included Yovanovitch, Ukraine Ambassador, Ukrainian Ambassador, Ukraine Soros, Clinton campaign, and Biden-Burisma.

With Hunter Biden’s admission this week that the FBI is investigating him, the Burisma scandal is a fetid mess. And no matter what corrupted FBI and compromised DOJ do, you can trust Judicial Watch to keep on battling in court for the truth about Biden family corruption.

breitbart.com/politics/2020/12/18/fitton-impeachment-star-witness-was-aware-of-burisma-corruption/

(dailyconservative) – Republican Chairman Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma and Democratic ranking member Jack Reed of Rhode Island released a joint statement Thursday evening stating that the massive cyberattack on several federal agencies “has the hallmarks of a Russian intelligence operation.”

“The U.S. government must do everything possible to counter it,” they said, despite the fact that officials are still unsure of the extent of the attack and said it “appears to be ongoing.”

The Homeland Security Department agency warned that the attack “poses a grave risk to the Federal Government and state, local, tribal, and territorial governments as well as critical infrastructure entities and other private sector organizations.”

The Russian government has denied responsibility for the attack. Inhofe and Reed have said that President Donald Trump needs to sign the Defense Authorization Act, which includes protections against cyberattacks.

Trump wants to veto the bill because it doesn’t include a repeal of Section 230 liability protections for big tech platforms, but Congress may be able to override his veto because the bill has bipartisan support.

dailyconservative.com/daily-blog/breaking-russia-attacks-nation-in-shock.htm

(breitbart) – Senate Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-WI) on Wednesday blasted Democrats for their hypocrisy over election integrity, citing their resistance to accepting the 2016 results and blaming The election’s outcome on Russia.

In his last hearing as chairman, Johnson examined issues of voting integrity in the 2020 election and noted that he has been attacked by Democrat colleagues for simply holding the hearing.

“This hearing should not be controversial. It really shouldn’t be. This is something I think we all should want to restore the confidence in our election system,” he said.

He noted that a large percentage of Americans do not believe the election results are legitimate, which he said is partly the fault of Democrats.

“There are many reasons for this high level of skepticism. It starts with today’s climate of hyper-partisanship, which is only exacerbated by the persistent efforts that delegitimize the results of the 2016 election,” he said.

“The corrupt investigation and media coverage of the Russian collusion hoax reduce faith in our institutions, and the ongoing suppression and censorship [of the] conservative perspective by biased media and social media adds fuel to the flames,” he added.

He also pointed to the establishment media’s suppression of the Biden family’s foreign financial entanglements and its effect on the election. He called it both “amazing and galling” that “all of a sudden, post-election, this has become a news story and a scandal worthy of investigation.”

He said oversight on voting should be bipartisan, but he has only been attacked by Democrats.

“We must restore confidence in the integrity of our voting system…this effort should be bipartisan,” he said. “Unfortunately, Sen. Schumer and Peters ignored my statement and instead chose to politically attack me and this hearing.”

“As I commented in last Thursday’s hearing on early treatment of COVID, close-mindedness is a root cause of many problems we face,” he said.

He said voting irregularities found in the 2020 election “raise legitimate concerns” and “do need to be taken seriously.”

He said fraudulent voting “did occur,” although the conclusion has “collectively been reached” that the level of fraud would not alter the outcome of the election.

But he said that lax enforcement of laws, denying effective bipartisan observation of the complete election process, and failure to have full transparency or reasonable audits has led to heightened suspicion. According to Johnson:

The most difficult allegations to assess involve vulnerabilities in voting machines and the software used. In order to effectively determine the extent to which voting machines were subject to nefarious intrusion or other vulnerabilities, computer science experts must be given the opportunity to examine these allegations.

Johnson also cited three separate letters since 2018 written by Democrat senator colleagues questioning voting equipment integrity.

He cited a March 7, 2018, letter sent by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (MN) and Jeanne Shaheen (NH) asking major machine vendors whether they had allowed Russian entities to scrutinize their software.

He also cited a March 26, 2019, letter from Sens. Klobuchar (MN); Mark Warner (VA); Jack Reed (RI), and Gary Peters (MI) that said the vulnerabilities in old legacy machines and newer systems “present a problem for the security of our democracy and they must be addressed.”

Finally, he cited a December 6, 2019, letter from Sens. Elizabeth Warren (MA), Klobuchar, Ron Wyden (OR), and Rep. Mark Pocan (PA) that said they were “particularly concerned that secretive and trouble-plagued companies” owned by private equity firms and responsible for maintaining voter machines “have long skimped on security in favor of convenience, leading to voting systems across this country prone to security problems.”

Johnson concluded:

Now again, those were three letters from Democrat members of Congress. Now, maybe I missed it, but I don’t recall the media or anyone else accusing these eight congressional Democrats of indulging in ‘quackery and conspiracy theories’ or … a ‘ridiculous charade’ as Sen. Schumer did when he used those exact same words attacking me and this hearing on the Senate floor.

“The fact that our last two presidential elections have not been accepted as legitimate by large percentages of the American public is a serious problem that threatens our republic,” he said.

“I do not say that lightly. This hearing is part of what should be ongoing congressional oversight that is meant to transparently address that serious problem,” he said.

breitbart.com/politics/2020/12/17/ron-johnson-blasts-democrat-hypocrisy-over-election-integrity-citing-russia-hoax/

(breitbart) – Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D) refused to testify before legislative oversight committees Tuesday investigating allegations of fraud during the 2020 general election.

State Rep. Matt Hall (R), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, had invited Benson to appear, but she told the committee in a letter that she will not participate.

“I am aware of the hearings the Committee has conducted, and am concerned [t]hat contrary to your desire to ‘get to the bottom’ of election questions, they are instead amplifying already debunked conspiracy theories and previously disproven claims of people who lack basic knowledge of election administration, and in doing so undermining the integrity of the election and wounding our democracy,” she said.

Benson claimed a recent hearing, which featured President Donald Trump attorney and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, was “mocked on national comedy shows” and therefore, was “a clear waste of taxpayer dollars.”

Benson called the 2020 election “settled” and said she would “look forward to having a conversation with any willing lawmakers about reforms and improvements we can make going forward for future elections.”

The Secretary of State said, for example, that clerks should have more time to process absentee ballots, and would like to see military members be able to “securely return their ballots electronically.”

“Thank you again for the invitation to meet with the Committee,” Benson concluded, “but at this time, given the concerns expressed above, I cannot in good conscience accept.”

“Secretary of State Benson said she would be willing to testify before the people’s representatives when it made a good talking point for her and got her good press. But when the rubber met the road and it came time to answer questions about her work, she refused to take questions,” Hall said in a statement.

“The electoral votes for Michigan have been submitted. But people in Michigan still have questions about their state’s elections and those questions deserve answers. I fear we are headed for more distrust in the future if people are denied clarity and transparency from officials who head up the process,” he said.

State Rep. Mary Whiteford (R) said she supports giving the committee subpoena power to compel Benson or other relevant witnesses to testify about the 2020 election.

“People deserve answers, and I am fighting hard to make sure a fair and honest investigation is conducted into each and every irregularity that occurred. To accomplish that, we must have a full and thorough statewide audit and we must give our Oversight Committee the subpoena power it needs to hold the Secretary of State accountable,” she said in a news release.

Currently, Hall only has subpoena power pertaining to documents.

breitbart.com/politics/2020/12/16/michigan-secretary-of-state-jocelyn-benson-refuses-to-testify-to-legislative-oversight-committees/