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International

Is the US intelligence apparatus preparing the public for future election interference?

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From LifeSiteNews

By Doug Mainwaring

Is the warning perhaps not what it seems? Is it an attempt to provide camouflage — a strategy known as ‘pre-bunking’ — for future election interference sanctioned by the Washington political machine?

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) together with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released a joint statement ostensibly intended to assure U.S. voters in advance that the 2024 election that, despite anticipated attacks on the country’s voting systems that might make getting election information hard for citizens to obtain, election results would nonetheless be unaffected and election integrity would be maintained.

The FBI is responsible for investigating and prosecuting election crimes and malicious cyber activity targeting election infrastructure. The CISA plays a role in securing election infrastructure from physical and cyber threats.

The joint statement, however, has been met with skepticism based on the earlier roles of both agencies in past elections and their participation in massive suppression of conservative voices in social media.

As such, is the warning perhaps not what it seems? Is it an attempt to provide camouflage — a strategy known as “pre-bunking” — for future election interference sanctioned by the Democrat-powered Washington political machine — a.k.a., the Deep State — that wants to maintain control of the White House and Congress at any cost?

“CISA & FBI issue bulletin that upcoming cyberattacks may ‘prevent the public from receiving timely information’ about the 2024 election,” conservative commentator Emerald Robinson wrote on X.

“These same agencies told you: America’s voting machines were never connected to the Internet,” Robinson noted.

Jeanette Manfra, Acting Under Secretary for Cybersecurity and Communications at the Department of Homeland Security, told Congress in 2017 that America’s voting machines “are not connected to the internet.”

Manfra was responsible for the security of the nation’s voting system. Yet according to a 2020 report by NBC News, a team of 10 cybersecurity experts who specialize in voting systems and elections found nearly three dozen U.S. voting systems connected to the internet.

“We found over 35 (voting systems) had been left online and we’re still continuing to find more,” Kevin Skoglund, a senior technical adviser at the election security advocacy group National Election Defense Coalition, told NBC News at the time.

“We kept hearing from election officials that voting machines were never on the internet,” Skoglund said. “And we knew that wasn’t true. And so we set out to try and find the voting machines to see if we could find them on the internet, and especially the back-end systems that voting machines in the precinct were connecting to report their results.”

Can CISA be trusted?

“CISA has worked with Big Tech corporations to silence Americans since 2020,” noted Logan Washburn, writing at The Federalist last month. “A congressional report from last fall found it had become a “domestic intelligence and speech-police agency” whose behavior was ‘unconstitutional.’”

Last year, the Biden administration blocked the release of documents “revealing the extent to which deep state actors and their third-party allies interfered in the 2020 presidential election by pushing social media censorship,” according to a Breitbart report.

“The government seems particularly eager to stop the release of documents pertaining to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the closely linked Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), both of which are under intense scrutiny for their 2020 interference efforts,” Breitbart’s Allum Bokhari wrote.

Bokhari reported in May 2023 on the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee’s hearing on the government’s “laundering” of censorship through NGOs and private entities:

In the runup to the 2020 election, the consortium created a system whereby state actors including the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department could file “tickets” alongside news stories, flagging them so that Big Tech platforms could subsequently suppress or attach warning labels to them.

Beyond this blatant case of a private-public censorship coalition, the EIP also engaged in partisan politics, allowing the Democratic National Committee to file tickets through the system, as well as the Democrat-aligned groups Common Cause and the NAACP.

News outlets targeted by the EIP included Breitbart News, Fox News, the New York Post, and the Epoch Times, as well as the social media accounts of prominent conservatives Charlie Kirk, Tom Fitton, Jack Posobiec, Mark Levin, James O’Keefe, and Sean Hannity, amongst others.

President Donald Trump was also frequently flagged by the consortium, as well as his sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr.

In April, The Washington Examiner noted the connection of CISA and the suppression of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story just weeks before the election, which no doubt had a big impact on the election’s outcome, in favor of leftist Joe Biden and against incumbent Republican Donald Trump:

On Oct. 14, 2020, hours after the New York Post published a story based on Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop that Twitter blocked from being shared online, the State Department’s Global Engagement Center reached out to “misinformation” researchers behind the Election Integrity Partnership, a collaboration between universities, left-wing think tanks, social media companies, and the U.S. government to thwart alleged falsehoods online in the lead-up to the presidential election. That outreach from the GEC, a foreign-focused office Republican lawmakers are investigating for its ties to anti-speech projects in the United States, was apparently thanks to guidance from the DHS and its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, according to internal documents.

The newly unearthed coordination underscores the major role that CISA, an agency under scrutiny from the House GOP for allegedly colluding “with Big Tech and ‘disinformation’ partners to censor Americans” in 2020, played in the Election Integrity Partnership, or EIP. Both CISA and Alex Stamos, who directed the Stanford Internet Observatory, a Stanford University office behind the EIP, have appeared to downplay CISA’s role in the partnership despite some since-released records indicating a closer relationship than previously known, the Washington Examiner reported.

CISA and the FBI: paving the way for domestic election interference?

“With Election Day less than 100 days away, it is important to help put into context some of the incidents the American public may see during the election cycle that, while potentially causing some minor disruptions, will not fundamentally impact the security or integrity of the democratic process,” CISA senior advisor Cait Conley said.

“DDoS attacks are one example of a tactic that we have seen used against election infrastructure in the past and will likely see again in the future, but they will NOT affect the security or integrity of the actual election. They may cause some minor disruptions or prevent the public from receiving timely information,” Conley suggested.

“It is important to talk about these potential issues now, because nefarious actors, like our foreign adversaries or cybercriminals, could use DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) incidents to cast doubt on the election systems or processes,” Conley said.

“Congress is still exposing the extent of the detailed coordination platform between Big Tech platforms and the Censorship Industrial Complex,” noted Republican Rep. Darrell Issa of California, who sits on the House Judiciary Committee, in April. “Rather than promote free speech and free expression, this partnership was dedicated to denying it to those it did not favor.”

Questions remain: Did government agencies facilitate cheating and lie to the American people in 2020 in order to drag Biden across the finish line? Are they preparing to unconstitutionally install Kamala Harris in 2024?

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Doug Mainwaring is a journalist for LifeSiteNews, an author, and a marriage, family and children’s rights activist.  He has testified before the United States Congress and state legislative bodies, originated and co-authored amicus briefs for the United States Supreme Court, and has been a guest on numerous TV and radio programs.  Doug and his family live in the Washington, DC suburbs.

Business

Trump walks back tariffs on Mexico, Canada for another month

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From The Center Square

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Stocks sunk Thursday afternoon despite President Donald Trump’s decision to grant major exceptions to the 25% tariffs he put on Mexico and Canada earlier this week.

All three major U.S. market indexes were in the red by the time of Trump’s afternoon bill signing. Trump said Thursday in the Oval Office that steel and aluminum tariffs were on track for next week without modifications.

Trump shrugged off the stock losses, blaming the decline on “globalists.”

“I think it’s globalists that see how rich our country is going to be and don’t like it,” he said.

Trump has promised that his tariffs would shift the tax burden away from Americans and onto foreign countries, but tariffs are generally paid by the people who import the products. Those importers then have a choice: They can either absorb the loss or pass it on to consumers through higher prices. He also promised tariffs would make America “rich as hell.” And he’s used tariffs as a negotiating tactic to tighten border security.

Trump granted temporary tariff relief to both Canada and Mexico on Thursday by exempting goods under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement from tariffs until April 2.

On April 2, Trump plans to announce broader reciprocal tariffs against countries that impose tariffs on U.S. goods or keep U.S. goods out of their markets through other methods.

Since imposing his latest round of tariffs on top of trading partners this week, Trump has been paring them back. On Wednesday, Trump said the Big Three automakers – Ford Motor Co., General Motors Co. and Stellantis NV – would be exempt from his tariffs for a month.

In February, Trump took a step forward on his plan to put reciprocal tariffs on U.S. trading partners by signing a memo directing staff to come up with solutions in 180 days. Trump previously said he would put those tariffs in place on April 2 to avoid any confusion on April 1.

In his joint address to Congress on Tuesday, Trump said all countries would have to either make their products in the U.S. or be subject to tariffs.

“Whatever they tariff us, we tariff them. Whatever they tax us, we tax them,” Trump said. “If they do non-monetary tariffs to keep us out of their market, then we do non-monetary barriers to keep them out of our market. We will take in trillions of dollars and create jobs like we have never seen before.”

The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, governs trade between the U.S. and its northern and southern neighbors. It went into force on July 1, 2020. Trump signed the deal. That agreement continued to allow for duty-free trading between the three countries for products largely made in North America.

U.S. goods and services trade with USMCA totaled an estimated $1.8 trillion in 2022. Exports were $789.7 billion and imports were $974.3 billion. The U.S. goods and services trade deficit with USMCA was $184.6 billion in 2022, according to the Office of the United States Trade Representative.

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International

Pursuing world peace: Trump’s secret peace talks with Hamas a stunning break from decades of neocon policy

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From LifeSiteNews

By Frank Wright

The Trump administration is pursuing a clean break with the approach of the last 70 years. Perhaps the only hope for peace lies in breaking the rules of the old rules-based order.

As Donald Trump publishes a stark warning to Hamas, news emerges that his administration is also engaged in direct negotiations with the militant group to secure a lasting peace deal in Gaza.

A statement released on Trump’s Truth Social account and by the White House reads:

“Release all of the Hostages now, not later, and immediately return all of the dead bodies of the people you murdered, or it is OVER for you. Only sick and twisted people keep bodies, and you are sick and twisted! I am sending Israel everything it needs to finish the job, not a single Hamas member will be safe if you don’t do as I say.”

The statement followed Trump’s meeting at the White House with some of the Israeli hostages released following a deal brokered by his initiatives and led by Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff.

 

“We believe you have been sent by God to save us,” Trump was told. Israel media reported hostage relatives asking, “Why does Witkoff (Steve Witkoff, US Envoy to the Middle East) answer us but not our own ministers?”

Trump is credited by the released hostages and their families with saving their lives, whilst Israeli leader Netanyahu has been accused of having “sabotaged” every hostage deal for the past year, with his own national security minister saying Netanyahu “sacrificed the hostages for his own personal interests” in January. The deal to release the hostages was secured because Trump “pressured” Netanyahu into accepting it, Israeli sources say.

Donald Trump’s message to Hamas and to the people of Gaza was stark:

Yet an exclusive report from Axios yesterday showed the Trump administration is also engaged in secret and direct negotiations with Hamas.

“The Trump administration has been holding direct talks with Hamas over the release of U.S. hostages held in Gaza and the possibility of a broader deal to end the war, two sources with direct knowledge of the discussions tell Axios.”

The White House confirmed the historic move.

Direct talks with Hamas were described by Reuters as having broken a “long- standing diplomatic taboo,” with their report also noting the Israeli response to the news.

“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office issued a statement saying: ‘Israel has expressed to the United States its position regarding direct talks with Hamas.’ It did not elaborate but Israel, which along with many other countries considers Hamas a terrorist organization, refuses to negotiate directly with the group.”

The pursuit of direct bilateral talks with the “enemy” here mirrors the approach pursued by the U.S. in reopening and normalizing diplomatic channels with the Russians – suspended by the Biden administration for around three and a half years.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said earlier this week it was notable that “normal conversation” had resumed between his nation and the U.S.

 

The return of direct diplomacy is a signal that the Trump administration is serious about peace, and whilst stressing its power to respond with overwhelming in force in both theaters of war, has been willing to engage with the Russians and with Hamas to break the deadlock.

This is a significant departure from the decades of policy which produced escalation, emergencies, and periodic wars in place of rational compromise and peace.

Israeli commentator Ori Goldberg, a former academic in Middle East Studies, framed the situation as a choice between a leader who is for peace, and another who is for war.

 

Trump’s direct threats in public are partnered with direct negotiations in private, with the goal seemingly to return hostages and remove the leadership of Hamas from Gaza. It is likely these negotiations will feature the vastly higher number of Palestinian hostages held by the Israelis, whose appalling treatment has included rape with metal rods – a practice endorsed in the Israeli parliament and discussed favorably on Israeli daytime TV.

The ultimatum to Hamas follows Trump’s “Mar-A-Gaza” plan for the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip along the lines of a holiday resort, which would seemingly entail the mass expulsion of the Palestinian population.

In response to this proposal, which has been met with widespread condemnation and outcry, Arab leaders have produced an Egyptian-led counter-proposal for the future of Gaza, involving $35 billion of Arab-led investment. This plan, rejected by the Israelis, would see Egypt assume security supervision of Gaza in place of Hamas, and would permit the Palestinians to remain in Gaza as reconstruction is undertaken. U.S. national security spokesman Brian Hughes said the plan, which will be presented to Trump in the coming weeks, did not recognize that Gaza was now “uninhabitable.”

Meanwhile, the crisis flowing from Netanyahu’s actions – and inaction – undertaken to consolidate his grip on power continues to develop. Controversy over the failings of the Israeli government and army to prevent the October 7 attacks continues to deepen.

The new IDF (Israeli army) chief of staff, ignoring Netanyahu’s strong opposition, has ordered a “re-examination” of the army’s actions during the October 7 attacks. The previous army chief, Herzi Halevi, has resigned – citing his and the Netanyahu government’s failure to protect Israelis.

Netanyahu “dismissed” a warning from Shin Bet, the Israeli security service, issued five months in advance of the attacks, as Haaretz reports. Whether Netanyahu deliberately sabotaged the hostage deal, or refused to act on warnings about October 7, the Israeli leader is beset with questions he refuses to answer.

He is increasingly being seen, inside and outside Israel, as the main problem, being implacably opposed to any attempts to find solutions that would give several decades oppressed Palestinians any new rights and their own state.

Having been in power for most of the last 16 years, Netanyahu can be charged not only with corruption, but with having managed Israel into what has become an existential crisis the tiny nation has never before experienced to this degree. His political future, very similar to that of also corrupt, Jewish Ukrainian president Zelensky, appears to be staked on making any lasting peace impossible.

The reality behind the headlines once again reveals the development of a new geopolitical order beneath the sensational chaos of the current news cycle.

The Trump administration is pursuing a clean break with the approach of the last 70 years. That consistent pattern of repeatedly broken agreements, war crimes, propaganda, atrocities, and ruinous regime change has been part of the process intended to sabotage any chance of peace through periodic escalations and a permanent state of emergency punctuated by all-out war.

After decades of politics dominated by an ongoing death machine, perhaps the only hope for peace lies in breaking the rules of the old rules-based order and placing the protection of ALL innocent human lives as the top priority.

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