International
Out soon? Biden faces growing calls to withdraw 2024 White House bid
From The Center Square
By
President Joe Biden faces a growing tidal wave of opposition and calls for him to leave the presidential race from his own party, with more elected Democrats coming out against him seemingly every day.
Meanwhile, unconfirmed media reports from multiple outlets have suggested Biden is considering bowing out of the race and could make the announcement in the coming days.
Despite those reports, Biden’s campaign released a statement Friday saying that the president will resume campaigning next week.
U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., released a statement on Friday calling for Biden to step aside so that another Democrat can take on former President Donald Trump in November.
Heinrich is the third elected senator to do so, joining dozens of House Democrats and other party leaders. This kind of revolt within the party is highly unusual, though Biden does have publicly voiced support from about 75 Democrats, according to a tally from the New York Times.
Most Democrats questioning Biden have made a similar argument: Biden has a great legacy, but he probably can’t beat Trump in November.
A leading Democrat in the House, U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff of California, made that argument earlier this week when he called on Biden to step aside.
“A second Trump presidency will undermine the very foundation of our democracy, and I have serious concerns about whether the President can defeat Donald Trump in November,” Schiff said.
Freshly certified Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance took a shot at Biden on Friday, questioning his cognitive decline and questioning if Biden should leave the White House altogether.
“If Joe Biden doesn’t have the cognitive function to run for re-election, then he certainly doesn’t have the cognitive function to remain as Commander-In-Chief,” Vance wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “How can any Dem pushing him to drop out of the presidential race, argue in good faith that he should stay on as POTUS?”
Biden’s woes gained steam after his disastrous debate performance at the end of last month put his campaign on defense as traditionally liberal media questioned his fitness and Democrats began calling for him to leave the race.
Trump narrowly survived an assassination attempt last weekend, further rallying his base and making him more sympathetic to Independents. Even before the assassination attempt, Trump led Biden nationally in polling and in nearly every key battleground state.
Biden has so far publicly insisted he will remain the party’s nominee. Since the assassination attempt and Biden began quarantining for his COVID-19 infection, the pressure has ramped up even more.
If Biden does drop out, a key question will be whether he decides to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris or to leave the Democratic National Convention in August open for other likely contenders, such Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, California Gov. Gavin Newsom or others to make a play for the nomination.
Meanwhile, Republicans and Trump’s fiercest supporters have been propelled by Trump’s wins, his attempted assassination survival, and seem more confident than ever about November.
“The Democrat party is in more chaos than ever,” U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “While they try to force out a feeble old man who refuses to give up the wheel, they remain unified on disastrous policies that have ravaged our country. Will Biden drop out? Maybe.
“Will it matter? No.
“The American people need Donald Trump, and in November, we’re sending him back to the White House,” she added.
espionage
Breaking: CSIS warned Health Canada of “insider threat” from Wuhan Institute-tied scientist Dr. Qiu Seven Months Before Lethal Ebola Shipped to China
Sam Cooper
In an explosive admission, Parliament’s Canada-China Committee has confirmed that Canada’s spy agency, CSIS, issued a direct and unheeded warning to senior health officials in August 2018, raising concerns about “insider threat activities” linked to Dr. Xiangguo Qiu and her husband, Keding Cheng.
This alert, delivered seven months before the couple’s network—with connections to the highest levels of Chinese biological weapons research—coordinated the shipment of live Ebola and Henipah virus samples from Canada’s high-security National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), highlighted risks posed by their continued access to sensitive materials.
“CSIS held a briefing for personnel responsible for security at [Public Health Canada],” in August 2018 that “focused on foreign interference and included possible indicators of insider threat activities, as well as other security risks,” according to CSIS’s submission to the Committee. In CSIS’s presentation, “student programs were identified as being one of these possible threat vectors,” prompting “[Public Health Canada] to flag two scientists to CSIS, Dr. Cheng and Dr. Qiu,” the Committee report, released Tuesday, states.
Despite these explicit warnings, no immediate restrictions were placed on Qiu, Cheng, or their Chinese students’ access to Canada’s sensitive research materials. In December 2018, Public Health Canada authorized a fact-finding investigation into the concerns, but the delayed response effectively allowed them to continue their operations, further endangering Canada’s security.
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The Committee report also finds—like the ongoing Hogue Commission—that Justin Trudeau’s government, including senior bureaucrats and ministers, showed a reluctance to act on or even acknowledge urgent alerts from CSIS, exposing a stark divide between CSIS’s view of Chinese threats and Trudeau’s.
Dr. Qiu’s associations with China’s military and scientific programs had deep roots. She began her work at the Winnipeg NML in 2003, followed by her husband’s employment there in 2006.
As early as 2013, Keding Cheng filled out an application for the PRC’s “Science and Technology Innovation Talent Program of Henan Province,” requiring applicants to “passionately love the socialist motherland [PRC]” and maintain Chinese citizenship.
By 2016, Dr. Qiu was nominated for an award by a senior military official from the Chinese Academy of Military Medical Sciences, recognizing her collaborations with Major-General Chen Wei, a leading figure in China’s biological weapons research. CSIS investigations revealed that Dr. Qiu and Major-General Chen collaborated on multiple research projects dating back to 2012.
Dr. Qiu’s use of Canada’s facilities to benefit China was well recognized in Beijing. An award nomination for Dr. Qiu noted that she “used Canada’s Level 4 Biosecurity Laboratory as a base to assist China to improve its capability to fight highly pathogenic pathogens … and achieved brilliant results.”
In October 2016, Dr. Qiu co-authored a paper with Major-General Chen and other scientists affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Military Medical Sciences, further deepening her connection to Chinese military research. By this time, Qiu had also been recruited into China’s Thousand Talents Program—a PRC initiative aimed at harnessing international scientific expertise—and these affiliations, conspicuously absent from her Canadian curriculum vitae, made her a person of interest to CSIS, especially as her work increasingly intersected with China’s biosecurity research.
Concerns over Qiu and Cheng’s activities continued to mount at the NML. In October 2018, Cheng, accompanied by a restricted visitor, attempted to exit the lab with two Styrofoam containers, claiming they were empty. By January 2019, Cheng breached security again by using another employee’s passcode to enter the NML.
On March 23, 2019, Public Health Canada received its fact-finding report, which advised administrative investigations into Qiu and Cheng. Yet, only days later, on March 31, live samples of Ebola and Henipah viruses were shipped from the NML to the WIV, highlighting critical lapses in Canada’s security protocols.
In response to these revelations, the Committee’s report outlines recommendations to safeguard Canada’s scientific resources from similar threats in the future. Chief among these is a call for the Government of Canada to immediately terminate all research collaboration with PRC-affiliated entities in sensitive fields, such as artificial intelligence, aerospace, and advanced digital infrastructure.
A key recommendation is to designate the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Thousand Talents Program as Named Research Organizations under Public Safety Canada, subjecting them to enhanced scrutiny and restricted partnerships due to their potential security risks. Furthermore, the Committee suggests that Canada explore constitutionally compliant legal measures to prevent individuals under national security investigation from leaving the country. Despite RCMP investigations, the couple was able to leave Canada.
As investigations mounted, irregularities in the WIV shipment were noticed, and it was only in January 2021 that Public Health Canada terminated the couple’s employment. Nathalie Drouin, Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council, acknowledged with evident understatement, “it is a timeline that needs to be looked at.” However, Richard Fadden, the director of CSIS from 2009 to 2013, testified that the timeline “was too long” and the viral shipment to WIV “should not have happened.”
In his opinion, the incident at the Winnipeg NML revealed a deep cultural issue long present in Canada’s federal administration. “I don’t think the culture in this particular lab and in large parts of the public service had caught up with the change in facts as we understand China,” Fadden said. His comments emphasize a notable gap between CSIS’s understanding of the Chinese threat and that of Trudeau’s administration.
“This gap in the understanding of risk between national security and science sectors at the federal level, particularly with regard to the threat to Canadian interests posed by actions of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), was illustrated in testimony before the Special Committee,” the report says.
On one hand, Minister of Health Mark Holland noted that “countries such as China are implicating themselves in our domestic processes in a way that would have been unimaginable just five years ago” and are “potentially willing, in this instance, to use pathogens that threaten humanity in order to advance their geopolitical agenda.” But Fadden pointed out that “CSIS was already aware of concerns about the PRC’s actions,” noting that since Xi Jinping’s rise to power in 2013, the institutionalization of espionage and interference techniques by the CCP has intensified.
Adding to these concerns is the Trudeau government’s controversial denial of access to related records, noted by the report, raising questions of transparency and whether there may have been a cover-up of key details surrounding the case.
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Censorship Industrial Complex
Freedom of speech tops list of concerns for Americans
From The Center Square
By
“Republicans trust Republicans to protect their speech, and Democrats trust Democrats. But the true test of commitment to free speech is whether politicians protect dissenting speech. No matter who’s in charge”
Freedom of speech is a critical issue for most Americans, over crime, immigration, and health care, a new poll says.
Despite bipartisan agreement on its importance, there is disagreement on who will safeguard our First Amendment rights – a question the outcome of the presidential election may soon answer.
A new poll from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE, conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago finds a majority of Americans rate free speech as very important to their vote in 2024, second only to inflation.
When asked about a host of issues in context with the upcoming election, 1,022 Americans were most concerned with inflation – 68% said increasing costs were “very important,” with 91% calling it at least “somewhat important.”
Free speech followed, with 63% saying it was “very important” and 90% said it was at least “somewhat important.”
“Higher prices might be the top concern for Americans, but a very close second is the increasing cost of speaking your mind,” said FIRE Research Fellow Nathan Honeycutt. “The message is clear: Americans want their free speech rights respected.”
Although at least 90% of both major parties rate it “somewhat important,” 70% of Republicans are more likely to rate it “very important,” as opposed to 60% of Democrats.
The report says Democrats and Republicans both express very low confidence the opposing party will respect their free speech – and Independents don’t trust either party to do so.
It also states that Republicans were more likely to respond that they were somewhat concerned about their ability to speak less freely today than they were four years ago.
“Republicans trust Republicans to protect their speech, and Democrats trust Democrats,” said FIRE’s Chief Research Advisor Sean Stevens. “But the true test of commitment to free speech is whether politicians protect dissenting speech. No matter who’s in charge, FIRE will be there to keep them honest.”
The organization’s Senior Program Officer Marcus Maldonado told The Center Square that it was pleased to partner with the National Constitution Center and First Amendment Watch at NYU to bring the First Amendment Summit back to Philadelphia for the second year in a row.
“Featuring a keynote conversation about global free speech with Jason Rezaian of The Washington Post and panel discussions about free speech online and on campus, the National First Amendment Summit presented the public with a vigorous discussion of the state of free speech in America and around the globe,” he said.
Jonathan Turley, another panelist and author of The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage, said since the beginning of the republic, every generation believes they have some existential threat that allows them to silence their neighbors.
He added that technology and social media have created new free speech challenges, was critical of how Twitter and Facebook have restricted free speech and does not believe in trade-offs made to prevent “disinformation.”
Even though the technology is new, he said, “it takes a lot to get a free people to give up freedom. Since the beginning, fear and anger have caused rage rhetoric, which becomes an excuse for every government to crack down. And the question is whether each generation is willing to give up that part of their freedom.”
Turley asserted that “this is the most dangerous anti-free speech period in our history, because we’ve never seen an alliance with the government, media, academia, and corporations” like this one.”
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