Kash Patel Is Already Making Beltway Bandits Sweat

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

Kash Patel will soon be confirmed as director of the FBI. It can’t come quickly enough. Patel’s pending confirmation may be why the searches for “witness protection,” “erase iPhone,” and “paper shredder” have skyrocketed in D.C. since Jan. 20th.

The Beltway bandits are on the run.

Just last month Dems fantasized that they might block Patel, along with Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr. Trump’s surging popularity, now at the highest its ever been, destroyed any chance of that.

On Thursday, the former Department of Defense chief of staff cleared his first Senate committee on a vote of 12 to 10, putting him on track for a full Senate vote as early as this week.

Americans now know how deeply the deep state runs in Washington, D.C. The looming confirmation of Kash Patel will be the first reckoning at the FBI since the Church Committee’s 1975 probe in the wake of Watergate.

Since Trump’s first run at the White House in 2016, the FBI has been trying to take him down.

Patel led the investigation for Devin Nunes’ congressional probe into Russian interference, without which we might never have known that Hilary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee paid for the so-called Steele Dossier, which was essentially a smear campaign passed off as actual non-partisan intelligence.

The FBI and Justice Department then used that “dossier” as justification for a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) warrant to spy on the Trump campaign in 2016.

Think on that a hot second — a Democrat administration used the FBI and Justice Department to spy on a Republican campaign. It makes Watergate look like a parking ticket by comparison.

It gets worse.

Throughout Donald Trump’s first term, the FBI actively worked against the President. In fact, the FBI’s #2 official at the time, Andrew McCabe, confirmed to CBS that there were meetings at the Justice Department with the FBI on how they might remove the 45th President of the United States.

Having unsuccessfully tried to remove a sitting president, the FBI then went on to make sure Joe Biden won. During the 2020 campaign, the FBI laid the groundwork with the media and social media companies to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story. As the New York Post reported, the “‘FBI tipped us all off last week that this Burisma story was likely to emerge,’ an unidentified Microsoft employee wrote on Oct. 14, 2020.”

Instead of having its reporters hailed as modern day Woodward and Bernstein’s, the New York Post (the nation’s oldest newspaper) found itself censored and suppressed.

With Trump gone, the FBI then ran amuck, sending at least 26 agents to the Capitol on January 6th, most of which engaged in illegal activities, according to the long-awaited Inspector General’s report. It then dedicated 5,000 employees — more than 10% of its workforce — to prosecuting J6 protestors.

The FBI didn’t stop there. Biden’s G-men labeled angry parents as “domestic terrorists” and traditional Catholics as “violent extremists.” The FBI went to far as to propose infiltrating Catholic churches as “threat mitigation.”

After 10 years of abuses, the FBI’s judgement day of reckoning may arrive this week in the form of Senate confirmation for Patel.

What might day one look like?

First to go will be partisan agents bent on changing elections and subverting democracy.

Pundits have also speculated that Patel might shutter the FBI’s brutalist concrete headquarters building on Washington, D.C.’s famous mall and boot its 7,000 agents out into the heartland where they belong. It might happen.

But those who know Patel expect him to make the Bureau get back to basics: FBI agents being cops, not intelligence agents.

The core mission of the bureau is to protect Americans from crime and defend the U.S. Constitution from domestic threats. Patel will likely target the top 10 cities for violent crime and work closely with the Department of Homeland Security and Tom Holman to extradite illegal aliens. Expect him to redirect gumshoes to come down on cyber criminals and state actors who commit 800,000+ cybercrimes and ransomware attacks each year.

He’ll also likely be working closely with newly confirmed Health and Human Services Director, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to investigate racketeering and collusion among big pharma, medical boards, and medical journals.

What worries Washington most? In Patel we’ll have an FBI director who is serious about investigating corrupt public officials.

In an age where senior lawmakers are literally accepting gold bars as bribes and lawmakers making $200k a year have net worth’s north of $50 million, Americans are asking questions.

Expect the FBI’s new director to start finding answers.

Morgan Murphy is military thought leader, former press secretary to the Secretary of Defense and national security advisor in the U.S. Senate.

Related Topics:#DailyCaller #MorganMurphy FBIDirector KashPatel

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Former Trump Advisor Says US Must Stop UN ‘Net Zero’ Climate Tax On American Ships

Published on October 15, 2025

Todayville

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Stephen Moore

Later this week the United Nations will hold a vote on a multi-billion climate-change tax targeted squarely at American industry. Without quick and decisive action by the White House, this U.N. tax on fossil fuels will become international law.

This resolution before the International Maritime Organization will impose a carbon tax on cargo and cruise ships that carry $20 trillion of merchandise over international waters. Roughly 80% of the bulkage of world trade is transported by ship.

The resolution is intended to advance the very “net zero” carbon emissions standard that has knee-capped the European economies for years and that American voters have rejected.

This tax is clearly an unnecessary restraint on world trade, thus making all citizens of the world poorer.

It is also an international tax that would be applied to American vessels and, as such, is a dangerous precedent-setting assault on U.S. sovereignty. Since when are American businesses subject to international taxes imposed by the United Nations?

The U.S maritime industry believes the global tax would cost American shippers more than $100 billion over the next seven years if enacted.

Worst of all, if the resolution passes, it will require the retirement of older ships and enable a multi-billion-dollar wealth transfer to China, which has come to dominate shipbuilding in recent years. China STRONGLY supports the tax scheme, even though, ironically, no nation has emitted more pollutants into the atmosphere than they have. Yet WE are getting socked with a tax that indirectly pays for THEIR pollution.

Despite the fact that we pay a disproportionate share of the tax, the U.S. has almost no say on how the revenues are spent. This is the ultimate form of taxation without representation.

Even if the United States chooses not to implement the tax on domestic shipping, it will still be enforced by foreign ports of origin or destination as well as by flag states. As a result, American importers and exporters will be required to pay the tax regardless of domestic policy decisions.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, and Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy have jointly stated that America “will not accept any international environmental agreement that unduly or unfairly burdens the United States or our businesses.” They call the financial impact on the U.S. of this global carbon tax “disastrous, with some estimates forecasting global shipping costs increasing as much as 10% or more.”

The U.S. maritime industry complains that although American vessels carry only about 12% of the globally shipped merchandise, U.S. flag vessels would bear almost 20% of this tax. No wonder China and Europe are for it. The EU nations get 17 yes votes to swamp the one no vote out of Washington.

Unfortunately, right now without White House pressure, we could lose this vote because of defections by our allies.

To prevent this tax, the White House should announce a set of retaliation measures. This could include a dollar-for-dollar reduction in U.S. payments to NATO, the U.N., IMF and World Bank.

At a time when financial markets are dealing with trade disputes, the last thing the world — least of all the United States — needs is a United Nations excise tax on trade.

Stephen Moore is co-founder of Unleash Prosperity and a former Trump senior economic advisor.

Business

Finance Titans May Have Found Trojan Horse For ‘Climate Mandates’

Published on October 14, 2025

Todayville

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Audrey Streb

Major global asset managers including BlackRock and Blackstone have been looking to buy power utilities across America in a move that some industry insiders warn could harm consumers, raise electricity costs and advance a climate-driven energy agenda.

In recent months, Blackstone reportedly sought regulatory approval to buy utilities in New Mexico and Texas all while a BlackRock-led group won approval Friday to purchase a major utility in Minnesota. While BlackRock and other huge asset managers have distanced themselves from environmental, social and governance (ESG) investment practices in recent years, some energy experts and consumer advocates that spoke to the Daily Caller News Foundation are concerned that buying up utilities may represent a new frontier of financial giants orchestrating “climate mandates.”

“BlackRock isn’t just influencing utilities anymore, they’re buying them. After years of ESG-driven coercion that pushed utilities to abandon reliable energy in favor of China-dependent renewables, BlackRock is now taking direct control. The result will be more of the same: higher costs, weaker grids, and millions in unpaid bills, all driven by the very climate mandates they lobbied for,” Jason Isaac, CEO of the American Energy Institute, told the DCNF. “Minnesotans should brace for more unreliable power, rising rates, and a media narrative that blames Trump for ending taxpayer-funded handouts instead of holding the woke politicians and Wall Street elites responsible for the crisis.”

Electricity demand is on the rise after years of stagnancy as the artificial intelligence (AI) race ushers in the build out of power-hungry data centers. Utility costs are also spiking as demand takes off in a trend that dates back to the Biden administration.

Against this backdrop, private investment titans like BlackRock and Blackstone are reportedly moving to buy power utility companies and invest in data center expansions and startups.

Minnesota recently granted the BlackRock-led group known as Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) approval to buy one of the state’s major power utilities, Allete. GIP is also reportedly on the cusp of acquiring the major energy company, AES, according to sources familiar with the matter that spoke with Reuters. The Financial Times reported that the deal may be for $38 billion.

BlackRock referred the DCNF to Allete’s statement on regulators approving its partnership with GIP and declined to comment further for this story.

Allete’s statement notes that the impending partnership with the BlackRock-led group includes “guaranteed access to capital to fund ALLETE’s five-year plan for advancing transmission and renewable energy goals [and a] $50 million Clean Firm Technology Fund to support regional clean-energy projects and partnerships.”

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) renewed BlackRock’s ability to own up to 20% of utility voting shares in April, with former FERC Commissioner Mark Christie stating that BlackRock “pledged not to use its holdings to influence utility management” and that utilities need the access to capital.

Christie also warned in September 2024 that “this is an issue that deserves much greater scrutiny” and that “the influence that large shareholders, BlackRock or otherwise, can potentially exert across the consumer-serving utility industry should not be underestimated.”

Blackstone has reportedly sought regulatory approval to buy out the Public Service Company of New Mexico and Texas New Mexico Power Co. recently, according to The Associated Press. The asset management giant also secured a 19.9% stake in a Northern Indiana public utility for over $2 billion in January 2024.

“Blackstone’s sustainability strategy prioritizes accelerating decarbonization by investing in the energy transition and driving value accretive emissions reduction in our portfolio,” Blackstone’s 2024 sustainability report states. “We believe the transition to cleaner energy creates meaningful investment opportunities for private capital. For over a decade, we have pursued attractive investments in companies and assets that are part of the global energy transition as part of our broader energy investing strategy.”

Blackstone also announced on Sept. 15 that private equity funds affiliated with Blackstone Energy Transition Partners will acquire the Pennsylvania-based Hill Top Energy Center natural gas plant for almost $1 billion. The company also announced in July that funds managed by Blackstone Infrastructure and Blackstone Real Estate would invest over $25 billion to help build out Pennsylvania’s energy infrastructure to support the AI “revolution.”

“Renewable” energy goals and ESG investment tend to align with emissions-reduction targets, with some power companies, utilities and states that set goals to cut emissions striving to retire conventional energy sources like coal plants. Isaac added that companies like American Electric Power, in which BlackRock owns a significant stake, have been decommissioning coal plants and replacing them with intermittent sources like solar.

“What happens is when the wind stops blowing and the sun stops shining, then you have to ramp those generational assets back up, and that’s when price spikes happen,” Isaac said.

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professor of finance Greg Brown told the AP that the reason behind these buyouts are “very simple. Because there’s a lot of money to be made.”

Other experts devoted to consumer protection like Executive Director of Consumers’ Research Will Hild told the DCNF that investment companies like BlackRock stand to gain more than just a profit from these purchases.

“There is no world in which BlackRock’s ownership of American energy benefits ordinary American consumers,” Hild told the DCNF. “This is the same firm that proudly brought us the radical ESG rules and Net-Zero nonsense that forced all our energy bills to skyrocket. We wouldn’t have the scourge of woke capitalism without Larry Fink, who already controls nearly $13 trillion in assets and has been sued for violating anti-trust laws.”

ESG investors weigh a company by its social and environmental choices as well as its finances in a move that critics say bogs down businesses with new costs while doing little to combat climate change. One August 2023 InfluenceMap report showed that as Republicans at the state level and in Congress ramped up their opposition to ESG-focused practices, BlackRock and other major U.S. asset managers decreased their support for climate-related resolutions.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink also said in June 2023 that he no will no longer use the term ESG because it has been “politicized,” less than a year after he noted that climbing energy prices are “accelerating” the green energy transition.

“BlackRock has backpedaled on its ESG messaging and its aggressive, unapologetic imposition of ESG on everything they touch. But the leopard hasn’t changed its spots,” President of the Heartland Institute James Taylor told the DCNF. “It still has the same management group with the same values, and it’s still doing whatever it can to impose ESG on everything it touches, in actuality, if not in name.”

Taylor argued that whether BlackRock buys or acquires a large stake of a utility, it “can now assert itself over legislatures in dictating energy policy.”

Notably, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) threw their weight behind an antitrust lawsuit against major asset managers that alleges the firms colluded to tank coal production with their embrace of zero-emissions goals in May.

The lawsuit, backed by 11 state attorneys general, alleges that BlackRock and multiple other asset managers used their market power to suppress coal production, thereby hurting consumers by causing the price of coal to climb.

The DOJ and FTC’s “support for this baseless case undermines the Trump Administration’s goal of American energy independence,” a BlackRock spokesperson previously told the DCNF. “As we made clear in our earlier motion to dismiss, this case is trying to re-write antitrust law and is based on an absurd theory that coal companies conspired with their shareholders to reduce coal production.”