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Can Russian And Chinese Agents Legally Vote In DC?

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By TERENCE P. JEFFREY

 

Suppose Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping made an agreement: All their personnel stationed in Washington, D.C., would vote for the same candidates running in Washington’s local elections.

How many votes would this hypothetical alliance deliver? Perhaps not many — but more than a few.

The New York Times reported last July that the number of Russians working at their D.C. embassy had dropped significantly.

“In recent years, as many as 1,200 Russian personnel worked in the embassy compound,” said the Times. “The State Department will not say how many remain — staffing levels here and at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow are now a sensitive topic — but in January 2022, Mr. [Anatoly] Antonov [the Russian ambassador] put the number at 184 diplomats and support staff members.”

The website of the Chinese Embassy in Washington does not appear to mention how many Chinese nationals are deployed there. But it does talk about the massive size of the embassy building. “It covers an area of 10,796 square meters with a floor area of 39,900 square meters,” it says.

So, how can the Chinese nationals who work there — for a communist government — get away with voting in an American election?

How can Russians, working at the direction of Putin, do the same?

The D.C. government enacted a law that allows it.

On Oct. 18, 2022, the D.C. Council voted 12 to 0 — with one member absent and not voting — to approve the Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act. Despite this one-sided vote, Mayor Muriel Bowser did not support it.

“Mayor Bowser expressed opposition by withholding her signature on the Act — something she has done only a handful of times over the course of her tenure,” said a report on the act published by the House Oversight and Accountability Committee.

The Washington Post also opposed it — in an editorial published a day before the Council vote.

“Voting is a foundational right of citizenship,” said the Post. “That’s why we oppose a bill, poised to pass the D.C. Council this week, that would allow an estimated 50,000 noncitizen residents to cast ballots in local elections.”

The Post also pointed out that this bill would allow both illegal aliens and foreign nationals working at foreign embassies to vote in D.C. elections.

“The proposal has been expanded to give voting rights in local elections to all noncitizen adults, regardless of whether they are in the country legally, so long as they’ve resided in the District for 30 days,” said the Post.

“There’s nothing in the measure,” the Post said, “to prevent employees at embassies of governments that are openly hostile to the United States from casting ballots.”

The House committee report repeated these points.

“On November 21, 2022, the District government enacted the Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act … which allows noncitizens, including illegal immigrants, to vote in D.C. local elections,” said the report. “The Act makes no exception for foreign diplomats or agents voting in the District. These individuals often have interests separate from, or opposed to, the interests of Americans. This D.C. Act dilutes the votes of American citizens and could have a ripple effect across other large U.S. cities.”

The D.C. Board of Elections has posted online instructions for how foreign nationals can vote in D.C. elections.

“Starting in 2024, qualified non-citizen District of Columbia residents may vote in local elections,” say the instructions.

“Specifically, under District of Columbia law, non-citizen residents may vote in District of Columbia elections held for the offices of Mayor, Attorney General, member(s) of the DC Council, member(s) of the State Board of Education, or Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner(s), or to vote on initiative, referendum, recall, or charter amendment measures that appear on District of Columbia ballots,” say the instructions.

“Non-citizens cannot vote for federal offices,” they warn.

In its editorial opposing the bill, The Washington Post had made a key point about this last provision.

“The U.S. Constitution does not explicitly prohibit what the D.C. bill seeks to do, but a law signed in 1996 by President Bill Clinton bans noncitizens from voting in federal contests,” said the Post. “The proposed law presents logistical nightmares that will require the Board of Elections to print separate ballots so that noncitizens don’t vote in federal races.”

Republican Rep. James Comer of Kentucky introduced a resolution in January 2023 to nullify this D.C. voting law. When it came up for a vote on Feb. 9, 2023, then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy spoke in support of it.

“Last year, Washington, D.C., passed a law that would give the vote to illegal immigrants,” McCarthy said on the House floor. “The law makes no exceptions for foreign diplomats or agents who have interests that are the opposite of ours. Under this bill, Russian diplomats would get a vote and Chinese diplomats could get a vote.

“The CCP is already infiltrating our culture, our farmland, and our skies,” said McCarthy, “but the D.C. council would let them infiltrate our ballot boxes.”

The resolution to nullify this D.C. law passed the House 260-162 — with 42 Democrats joining 218 Republicans.

But it went nowhere in the Senate.

On May 23, the House again approved a bill to stop noncitizens from voting in D.C. elections. This time the vote was 262 to 143 — with 52 Democrats voting for it.

Yet, this week, our nation’s capital had its first local primary election where Russian and Chinese agents could legally vote.

Terence P. Jeffrey is the investigative editor of the Daily Caller News Foundation. To find out more about Terence P. Jeffrey and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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Liberal reporter reveals Democrats secretly wonder who’s running America after seeing Biden

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From LifeSiteNews

By Calvin Freiburger

New York Magazine’s Olivia Nuzzi reveals that since January, Democrat insiders have been reaching out to her to convey the fears about who’s actually in charge of the federal government they’ve developed after seeing Joe Biden’s cognitive decline up close.

The fallout from incumbent President and presumptive Democrat White House nominee Joe Biden’s disastrous first 2024 debate with Republican predecessor and challenger Donald Trump continues, with liberal New York Magazine publishing perhaps the most scathing account yet of Democrats privately vindicating concerns about the president’s mental health that for years had been dismissed as partisan smears.

At age 81, Biden is the oldest president in U.S. history, and throughout his tenure he has been hounded by concerns that he has been suffering cognitive decline, based on increasingly frequent public instances of odd statements, incoherence, tripping, and apparent fatigue and confusion, with polls finding majorities considered him too old to effectively serve a second term.

Democrats and their allies in the mainstream press have largely dismissed such concerns as unfounded; as recently as June 21, left-wing “fact-checking” outlet PolitiFact attributed the narrative in large part to “videos of President Joe Biden that have been selectively edited or taken out of context.”

Just six days later, however, the narrative on the Left changed almost overnight with Biden’s performance against Trump in a debate hosted by CNN. LifeSiteNews’ Ashley Sadler described the president as “appear(ing) visibly unwell from the beginning of the debate, struggling with numerous answers (including, early in the debate, claiming to have ‘finally beat Medicare’), speaking with a hoarse voice, and frequently seeming vacant.”

Ever since, Democrat commentators, strategists, and activists have spoken openly about their fear and panic over winning the election if Biden remains their nominee, with the White House so far resisting calls for the president to bow out.

On June 29, Axios published a report detailing admissions from “current and former Biden officials” that the president is only “dependably engaged” between the hours of 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., outside of which “or while traveling abroad, Biden is more likely to have verbal miscues and become fatigued.”

On July 4, New York Magazine Washington correspondent Olivia Nuzzi published an even more damning story, about a “Conspiracy of Silence to Protect Joe Biden,” based on off-the-record conversations with Democrat insiders who had been reaching out to her since January to relay their concerns as to whether Biden could “even make it to Election Day” that they developed after interacting with or seeing him up close.

“Those who encountered the president in social settings sometimes left their interactions disturbed,” Nuzzi wrote. “Longtime friends of the Biden family, who spoke to me on the condition of anonymity, were shocked to find that the president did not remember their names. At a White House event last year, a guest recalled, with horror, realizing that the president would not be able to stay for the reception because it was clear he would not be able to make it through the reception. The guest wasn’t sure they could vote for Biden, since the guest was now open to an idea that they had previously dismissed as right-wing propaganda: The president may not really be the acting president after all.”

Who was actually in charge? Nobody knew,” she continued. “But surely someone was in charge? And surely there must be a plan, since surely this situation could not endure? I heard these questions posed at cocktail parties on the coasts but also at MAGA rallies in Middle America. There emerged a comical overlap between the beliefs of the nation’s most elite liberal Biden supporters and the beliefs of the most rabid and conspiratorial supporters of former President Trump. Resistance or QAnon, they shared a grand theory of America in 2024: There has to be a secret group of high-level government leaders who control Biden and who will soon set into motion their plan to replace Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee. Nothing else made sense. They were in full agreement.”

When seeing Biden at this year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Nuzzi says she was taken aback by him looking “not quite plausible.”

“I tried to make eye contact, but it was like his eyes, though open, were not on. His face had a waxy quality,” she wrote. “He smiled. It was a sweet smile. It made me sad in a way I can’t fully convey. I always thought — and I wrote — that he was a decent man. If ambition was his only sin, and it seemed to be, he had committed no sin at all by the standards of most politicians I had covered. He took my hand in his, and I was startled by how it felt. Not cold but cool. The basement was so warm that people were sweating and complaining that they were sweating. This was a silly black-tie affair. I said ‘hello.’ His sweet smile stayed frozen. He spoke very slowly and in a very soft voice. ‘And what’s your name?’ he asked.”

After the photo op, she added, other reporters “made guesses about how dead (Biden) appeared to be, percentage wise. ‘Forty percent?’ one of them asked.”

National polling aggregations by RealClearPolitics and RaceToTheWH indicate a widening popular vote lead for Trump since the debate, with the former president’s leads in swing states translating to a seemingly durable Electoral College advantage over Biden.

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Keir Starmer becomes new UK prime minister as Nigel Farage finally elected to Parliament

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From LifeSiteNews

By Frank Wright

Britain has a Labour government with a historic majority of over 150 seats, following exit poll projections of the U.K. general election. Thursday’s July 4 vote saw the second lowest voter turnout since 1885, with only an estimated 60 percent of registered voters taking part.

Former lawyer Sir Keir Starmer is set to become prime minister when announced by King Charles today, having purged his party of left-wingers in a successful move to mimic the electoral success of Tony Blair.

4 seats for 4 million votes

Current projections say the Labour Party won 9.6 million votes and an estimated 412 seats, with the Conservative Party second with 6.6 million votes and 120 parliamentary seats. Nigel Farage’s Reform UK took over 4 million votes, making his insurgent populist party the third force in U.K. politics by the popular vote.

Due to the workings of the British electoral system, however, Reform gained only four seats at the time of writing. This result still sees Nigel Farage finally enter Parliament as the MP for Clacton, having failed to win in previous elections.

Hopes for “zero seats” for a Conservative Party widely acknowledged to have conserved nothing were dashed, yet the Labour landslide – the greatest since 1945 – sees the Tories lose over 250 seats in what could be their worst result since their party was founded in 1830.

Winner takes all

Many constituencies saw Reform overtake the Tory vote. Conservative voters who turned to Reform have cost the Tories an estimated 124 seats in splitting the vote. This follows changes to election boundaries made last year.

The U.K.’s constituency boundaries were changed in 2023 to reflect population growth within them, and to arguably “equalize” the numbers of people voting per MP. The causes and demography of this population growth were not explained in reports, nor did any address the obvious mismatch between Welsh, Scottish, and English constituencies.

While the extreme left-wing Scottish National Party lost 37 seats, the eight it held onto were returned by only 666,000 votes. In Wales, the equally progressive Plaid Cymru won four seats with only 194,000 votes cast for the Welsh “nationalist” party.

As a result of this system, the liberal-globalist Labour Party will enjoy a record majority on a vote share lower than their right-liberal “conservative” and right-populist opponents.

Lower vote share, record low turnout?

The current Labour vote share is expected to be lower than that won by Corbyn, at around 36 percent of votes cast. Yet the overall number of votes is, according to one expert, expected to be one of the lowest in decades.

As the Hindustan Times reported, “Prof. Sir John Curtice, the psephologist who led the team that produced the exit poll, indicated that early results align with expectations of a low voter turnout.”

Speaking to the BBC, Curtice explained: “We may discover we are heading towards one of the lower turnouts of general elections in postwar electoral history.”

Curtice warned that the low turnout he expected was due to voter indifference – to what George Galloway has called the “uniparty” politics of the U.K.

“The Left are globalists now” said Galloway in a March 22 podcast, in which he called for an exit from NATO and condemned the U.K.’s involvement in the wars in Ukraine and in Gaza.

Curtice appeared to agree with the sentiment about establishment politics, concluding there was “not that much difference between Conservative and Labour in much of what they were offering the electorate.”

In recent days, former U.K. Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary David Cameron admitted on camera that the British policy on the Ukraine war was “fixed,” and that no change would come with a Labour victory. The power to change foreign policy is clearly outside that offered to the British by liberal democracy.

Whilst Galloway himself certainly offered a different choice, he lost his Rochdale seat to the Labour candidate. Parliament will be far less interesting due to his absence.

Notable losses

Parliament has lost its champion of the vaccine injured, however, as Andrew Bridgen lost his seat in a four-way race won by Labour. Other absences include former ministers and high profile Tory MPs.

Former Prime Minister Liz Truss lost her seat, as did Zionist Defence Minister and former B’nai B’rith youth leader Grant Shapps. Well known Catholic Jacob Rees-Mogg was defeated in Somerset. Many high profile Tories are now out of Parliament, with the former Northern Ireland Minister Steve Baker saying “Thank God I’m a free man” on losing his seat in Wycombe.

What the future holds

Labour under Starmer has promised a “mission-driven” government. This mission appears to be strongly globalist in flavor.

Starmer has removed candidates from his party who held strong left-wing and Israel-critical positions. He is widely believed to have moved the party to the “center” to secure a mandate to govern.

The program he has in store does not resemble an abrupt transition to socialism. There is talk of taxing non-state schools, and rumors Starmer will increase income and inheritance tax – to redistribute the wealth of the British to a voter base expanded by over 11 million immigrants since 2011.

A further 6 million are expected in the next 10 years.

The Labour Party under Starmer has a plan to “Change Britain.” This plan is expected to go beyond its 10 headline promises to transfer state power to globalist-aligned NGO-like structures and other bodies independent of Parliament, providing for a permanent continuity of policy. Labour under Starmer has been as fastidious in “purging” anyone who stands for its founding principles, as has the defeated Conservative Party.

The uncertain future of liberal globalism

What is notable about this landslide is that it comes as a result of voter disaffection, with a lower turnout overall, and mounting exasperation with the political settlement of “uniparty” politics.

As Europe – and especially France – risks political instability in its attempts to lock populists out of power, the future for Britain looks less like socialism and more like the last hurrah of business as usual.

Populists are now in Parliament, albeit in a capacity which fails to reflect their level of support across the country. It is their voice which will provide a meaningful opposition to the liberal-globalist agenda, whose power internationally is in terminal decline.

The same can be said of the Labour Party, whose power is purchased in a context of exasperation with establishment politics. This victory is the verdict of a broken system. How long it can prevail against the tide of the times is the question.

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