Joe Biden Drained America's Emergency Oil Reserve and Now Iran Is Making Us Pay the Price

 Deplorable Daily  

"America went into the worst energy crisis in decades with an emergency stockpile that was half what it should have been, because the previous president raided it for midterm votes."

. . . "Joe Biden sold 180 million barrels of America's emergency oil reserve to buy himself a midterm election.

"Now Trump is fighting a war in the Middle East with the stockpile Biden left half-empty.

"And this week it fell below 300 million barrels – the lowest level since Ronald Reagan was in his first term.

"The SPR was never meant to be a campaign prop.

"Gerald Ford signed it into law in 1975 after OPEC cut off America's oil during the Yom Kippur War – the idea being that if hostile nations ever tried to strangle us again, we'd have a cushion.

"For decades, the reserve sat near capacity – 726 million barrels at its peak in 2009.

"Biden inherited 638 million barrels.

"He left office with less than 400 million – after draining the reserve in 2022 at the precise moment Democrats needed to hold Congress." . . .

"Biden sure wasn't running one.

His plan was to sell the reserve to 2022 voters at $75 a barrel, pocket the political goodwill, and leave the consequences for whoever came next.

"Whoever came next was Donald Trump.

"That is Joe Biden's legacy on energy security – not wind turbines or solar panels or the rhetoric.' . . .  More...

Pete Hegseth Just Watched America Burn a Drone With a Laser and Everything Is About to Change

 Deplorable Daily  

The Pentagon has simultaneously awarded contracts to Lockheed Martin and nLight worth up to $847 million for the Joint Laser Weapon System – targeting cruise missile defense for Trump's Golden Dome – with systems scaling from 150 kilowatts up to 500 kilowatts.

   The Army is on the verge of fielding its first operational laser weapon system — a directed-energy platform designed to shoot down enemy drones at the speed of light without burning through expensive interceptors.

The service is nearing a contract award for the enduring high… pic.twitter.com/Yl3Ukspxsh

— Fox News Politics (@foxnewspolitics) August 6, 2026

"Pete Hegseth stood at White Sands and watched a laser weapon kill a target.

No defense secretary had ever done that before – and China has been doing it for years.

Now the Army is weeks away from the contract that gives US soldiers their first operational laser weapon in history.

Obama and Biden Burned Billions and Got Nothing

The Pentagon has been chasing laser weapons since the 1970s.

Every decade brought a new program.

Every program brought the same result: canceled before fielding, billions burned, nothing in soldiers' hands.

The Airborne Laser – killed.

The Self-Protect High Energy Laser for fighter jets – killed.

The Air Force's High-Energy Laser Weapon System – years of Air Force testing, then scrapped without a fielding commitment.

More...

Navarro Went To Prison For Less Than Fauci's Bogus 5th-Pleading

The witness who appears and stonewalls needs an objectively valid excuse; Fauci’s blanket Fifth is not one.

 The Federalist   

"The statute Congress wrote already draws the line. The witness who appears and stonewalls needs an objectively valid excuse; Fauci’s blanket Fifth is not one. The witness accused of willful default must be shown to have known his conduct was unlawful; Navarro’s jury was never even allowed to hear why he believed the opposite."

"One hundred and eleven. That is how many times Anthony Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment before a congressional committee this week, reading the same canned sentence no matter what he was asked.

"Four. That is how many months Peter Navarro spent in federal prison under the very same statute, after telling Congress exactly why he believed he could not comply: President Trump had invoked executive privilege, and the privilege was not Navarro’s to waive.

"The two contempt-of-Congress cases could not be more different, and the difference is not politics. It is written into the text of the statute on contempt of Congress, which Congress split into two distinct crimes with two distinct standards. Understanding that difference tells you two things at once: why a contempt charge against Fauci might actually stick — and why Navarro’s conviction should not survive the appeal now.

"If Fauci is charged with contempt of Congress, it will be under 2 U.S.C. § 192 — the same statute the Biden Department of Justice charged Navarro with. After someone receives a subpoena from Congress compelling his testimony, Section 192 prohibits two different actions: (1) “willfully” defaulting (that is, neither producing requested documents nor showing up for the hearing); and (2) refusing to answer relevant questions without a justifiable excuse.

"Fauci would be charged under the second clause, refusal to answer relevant questions. While the prosecution would have to prove that this refusal was deliberate rather than accidental, that would be easy here. Fauci deliberately and intentionally refused to answer nearly every question put to him on matters big or small.

"The only defense available to Fauci under the second clause would be if he had a justifiable excuse for refusing to answer questions. The Supreme Court has said that the Fifth Amendment, properly invoked, trumps the investigative powers of Congress. So if Fauci properly invoked the Fifth Amendment, he would defeat a Section 192 charge.

Fauci’s Improper Use of the Fifth 

"But Fauci did not properly invoke the Fifth Amendment, for three reasons. . . . More

Fauci's Refusal To Answer Congress Puts His Pardon In Jeopardy

Fauci’s Private Diary Contradicts His Public Claims

 Victor Davis Hanson

"He’s the most important famous man in the nation, maybe the world, on and on and on. It’s just unfiltered egomania unchecked. He’s also unscientific. Remember, he told us that, “I remain the science.'” 

"By the time you hear this, Anthony Fauci has testified before Rand Paul’s senatorial committee, and he’s going to be extensively cross-examined. Why now? Because Anthony Fauci had come under a lot of controversy for his role as Donald Trump’s unofficial COVID czar between 2020 and ’21, and Joe Biden’s czar from ’21 all the way up to the end of the Biden term, and he had communicated through emails, but he was very careful usually to say, “Erase this email,” or not to be candid. 

"But for some reason, he kept a diary, and he did so on government files, government property. It was very hard to find. It was on 11 different servers. But Rand Paul’s team compiled some 1,100 pages since 2019, right on the eve of the COVID pandemic, and it is completely at odds with what he was telling you, the public, telling the President of the United States, and telling colleagues in the scientific community. 

"What does one learn about Anthony Fauci? I must say at the beginning, it is kind of unfair to expose someone’s inner thoughts. I’ve never kept a diary, but I suppose that people who do vent sometimes, they exaggerate, they let off steam, and we don’t know to what effect he was doing that, but we do have an incriminating record written by Fauci himself. 

"He is a narcissist. While 9,000 to 10,000 people are dying a day, he’s talking about whether he’s going to be eating with Jake Tapper that night. That’s against Fauci’s own rules of social distancing and in-house quarantine. You can’t go out. Remember, you couldn’t go out for Thanksgiving or Christmas. 

"And like Gavin Newsom and like Nancy Pelosi, we see the architects of these policies. Fauci, in particular, is violating them. But he talks about all the awards he could get, how he could angle to get a million here, five hundred thousand there, what type of exemption he could get, how wonderful he was on CNN or MSNBC, how Trump is impressed by him. 

"He’s the most important famous man in the nation, maybe the world, on and on and on. It’s just unfiltered egomania unchecked. He’s also unscientific. Remember, he told us that, “I remain the science.” But in his own admission, he calls in 12 expert virologists, and he asks them, given the genetic imprint of the SARS-2 virus, where did this come from? " . . .More...

Fifth Amendment Fauci’s Narcissism Destroyed Faith in Scientific Methodology | The American Spectator    

. . . "The Atlantic, in a post-hearing article, noted that Sen. Rand Paul had published Fauci’s pandemic-era diary with the writer declaring Fauci “was spending part of his time cataloguing his own growing fame with the excitement of a child star who had been asked to sign an autograph for the first time,” calling it “embarrassing to an excruciating degree.” It speaks volumes that his home office in 2022 was shown with a huge portrait of him, plus two separate images … and a Fauci bobblehead. His diary notes he was particularly proud of the toy." . . .

The Confession of Joe Biden

Jonathan Turley  

"The record is now largely complete. So is the inescapable conclusion: Biden lacked clarity on most everything but his alleged crimes. His deception and culpability were established in both the Zwonitzer and Hur interviews. Biden gave Hur a virtual confession, and Hur gave him a pass.

 "Below is my column in The Hill on the release of the tapes from former President Joe Biden’s interview with his biographer. The Biden team fought for years to keep the public from hearing the tapes. We now know why. Here is the column:"

"For years, former President Joe Biden has fought to prevent the release of tapes acquired by former special counsel Robert Hur in his investigation. After those efforts collapsed this month, it became clear why Biden and his aides were so determined to keep the public from seeing the evidence.

"In addition to showing Biden’s mental diminution even before he was elected president, the tapes show that Biden effectively confessed to the crimes Hur would later excuse on the grounds of his mental infirmity.

"Biden’s interviews with his biographer, Mark Zwonitzer, conducted four years before he would be elected president, show that Biden was already having trouble remembering names and dates.

"Hur was tasked with determining whether Biden had committed the same crimes that led later to charges against President Trump — retaining classified material, mishandling such material, and related crimes.

"It turns out that Biden had already admitted to these alleged crimes, years before the documents were found in various offices and the garage of his home.

"Despite all the evidence of knowledge and use of the classified materials, Biden and his aides suggested that no one had been aware of its removal and repeated transfer. In the meantime, after the raid on Mar-a-Lago to search for classified material removed by Trump, the Justice Department granted Biden and his team every possible accommodation.

"Then came the searches of his home, with the pictures of files in his garage, office, and other locations. These included clearly marked classified material." . . .More...

Fauci’s diary details blooming outrage toward ‘far right,’ softness toward Biden and China

Our COVID-Induced Near-Progrom

"I don’t make this comparison to diminish the Holocaust.

"There are few moments in human history when the collective human soul was so thoroughly blackened as it was under Nazism, and nothing that happened during COVID approaches the industrialized extermination of millions of human beings. My comparison is about something different: the darker political impulse that precedes atrocities—the intoxicating belief that frightened people can be divided into the righteous and the unclean, and that government may do almost anything to the latter in the name of protecting the former.

"Watching Saint Anthony of Fauci’s dramatic reading of the Fifth Amendment before Congress reminded me how much of that spirit surfaced during COVID.

"Covid authoritarians had the want, even if they lacked the will, authority, or opportunity to carry it to its ugliest conclusion.

"Emails, internal discussions, subsequent testimony, and the changing public-health guidance showed something we should never forget: behind closed doors there was uncertainty, disagreement, evolving evidence, and debate. In public, however, uncertainty was too often converted into certainty. Scientific judgment became “The Science,” and questioning government policy became indistinguishable from questioning science itself.

"What disturbed me most about the COVID era wasn’t simply that governments made mistakes during the pandemic, it was how quickly supposedly free societies rediscovered the pleasures of coercion." . . .More...

 Washington Examiner    Key takeaways

• Far-Right Criticism: Fauci repeatedly criticized the far right, describing their attacks as conspiracy theories and saying they left him "stressed beyond the limit." He dismissed concerns about Wuhan lab research as politically motivated.
• Biden Administration Support: Fauci highlighted strong backing from President Biden and Vice President Harris, noting no pushback on media appearances and personal encouragement, including Biden telling him he was "behind you 1000%."
• China & COVID Origins: Fauci expressed willingness for a good faith partnership with China to investigate COVID-19 origins, stating it was unlikely China was hiding substantive information, though U.S. political toxicity made collaboration difficult." More...

Fauci's Body Language At That Hearing Said Everything His Mouth Didn't

. . . "As I watched Dr. Anthony Fauci appear before the Senate, the hearing was clearly political. Some senators challenged him directly, while others defended him and used their time to criticize political opponents. My focus, however, was on Dr. Fauci’s changing body language as the questions became more pointed." . . .More...

Anthony Fauci’s Fifth Amendment Strategy May Not End the Investigation |

 Miranda Devine: Anthony Fauci was the ‘big head’ of COVID response

"As the global death toll mounted, Fauci’s diary shows he was increasingly preoccupied with his rising media profile and reveling in the admiration, especially the praise from celebrities, all of which he meticulously ­recorded."

Cartoon - American Thinker Fauci emerges from the diary entries as a frivolous narcissist, possibly corrupt and
 a really bad speller (for example, “dyswaded” for dissuaded).

The American Spectator | USA News and Politics

"And remember, that pardon only covers Fauci’s conduct through last January. Once he’s forced to testify … anything he says is fair game for examination as perjury."

. . . "Litigating the order to compel Fauci’s testimony and force him to stop invoking the Fifth Amendment gets interesting right away. The Fifth only holds as a protection against the committee’s subpoena where Fauci has a reasonable fear of prosecution. If Biden’s pardon is worth the paper it’s printed on, then there is no self-incrimination argument and Fauci has to testify.

"What would be highly interesting is if Fauci’s lawyers were to argue that Biden’s pardon of their client is problematic based on the fact it was an autopen pardon from a non compos mentis president — my characterization, obviously, but theirs would have to read somewhat similarly. That would be their most direct defense of his Fifth Amendment privilege, but it would also be politically devastating for the Democrats, and at that point it would start to be interesting to see who might turn on him. I am not suggesting they would do this, but it’s conceivable — especially if Camp Fauci thinks that his contradictory statements put him at a greater disadvantage than does his underlying conduct.

"Either way, in this scenario, you get a ruling from the judge, and the wheels begin to turn. Clearly, Fauci’s Fifth Amendment invocation isn’t appropriate when Sen. Josh Hawley asks what color his tie is, so there is almost certainly going to be a ruling compelling some testimony not covered by Fifth Amendment privilege." . . . More...

Omertà - Don Surber  

. . . "So the rule of law is Democrat presidents can go after political enemies, while protecting lawbreaking Cabinet officials from facing justice. Republican presidents face dealing with passive-aggressive Republican Congresses whose members would rather be in the minority than actually do the work of a majority Congress.

Which leads to Wednesday’s Senate committee hearing—chaired by Senator Rand Paul—into the trillion-dollar covid catastrophe caused by Tony Fauci, whom Reagan brought to Washington to find a cure for AIDS. Over the course of 40 years, Fauci built a bureaucratic empire and ingratiated himself among the politicians, celebrities and press gaggles of DC. Barbra Streisand had him on speed dial.

(People. People who need fascists are the ugliest people in the world.)

Fauci never did find that cure—despite torturing beagles such s having Tunisian sandflies bite them and cutting off their vocal cords, a debarking, a cordectomy. But he retired to a pension larger than a presidential salary and pocketed all sorts of deals including a $5 million book advance for a book that sold less than 100,000 copies.

"Rand Paul is no dummy. He knew that Fauci is a liar who would never talk under oath even with the prosecutorial immunity of a presidential pardon—regardless of who actually signed it."

More...

Denying the Holocaust: Deborah Lipstadt, Revisited

"Written 30 years ago, the modern Democrat party is making the information as relevant as ever."

“Get it all on record now - get the films - get the witnesses -because somewhere down the road of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened.” ― Dwight D. Eisenhower

American Thinker  

"What revisionism cannot do, Lipstadt affirms, is change the facts, ignore the truth, or lie about the evidence itself. Holocaust deniers routinely engage in those vile practices.

"Over 30 years ago, historian and social critic Deborah Lipstadt wrote a powerful book, Denying the Holocaust, warning the public about the dangers of this pernicious ideology. This year, I was drawn to this book because debates are raging again, this time amplifying across social media, about the truth of World War II, what happened in the death camps, and how we sift out the truth from the lies.

"I wasn’t expecting to agree with her on everything. She’s an unabashed liberal, progressive, even. Her ideological bent was crystal clear when President Joe Biden nominated her as U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism in 2022, for which she received unanimous confirmation. During her confirmation hearing, Republican members confronted her over a number of incendiary, inflammatory, even libelous statements that she had published about them as well as then former president Donald Trump. One of her targets, Wisconsin U.S. Senator Ron Johnson, confronted her about her nasty remarks directed at him over the January 6th incident. She didn’t look very good trying to defend the indefensible, and she eventually apologized.  She ultimately got the job because Democrats controlled the Senate at the time, and no one wanted to appear opposing the fight against antisemitism, no matter the appointment.

"Despite her current left-wing bent, Lipstadt is a fierce defender of freedom of speech. During an Oxford Union speech in 2016, she declared that Holocaust deniers should have the freedom of speech, including the right to lie about history. However, historians must have the right to call them out for their dishonesty, too.

"Even though Lipstadt wrote the book three decades ago, her research into the Denialist industry and the tactics used by the Deniers come off as very current. Indeed, underneath the surface of seeming scholarship and respectability, one finds a morass of bitterness and bigotry against a group of people. Their relentless determination to blame Jews for all the ills of the world comes out page after page among Holocaust deniers, even if they have Ph.Ds. and claim that their works are exhaustive research.

"Before talking about specific deniers—institutions and individuals—Lipstadt announces in her first chapter that she refuses to debate Holocaust deniers. They are repugnant not merely for holding noxious views, but for their deliberate refusal to recognize the copious archives, research, and data affirming the horrific systemic slaughter of six million Jews under Hitler’s Third Reich. In her view, a debate with a denier is to legitimize their views as serious scholarship or opinion.

"Throughout her book, I reflected on that notion, and I found that it does have some merit. You don’t debate people who have no serious regard for truth, evidence, integrity, or process. Why give them a platform? Then again, the survivors, the historians, the archivists all have a responsibility to debunk the lies and keep telling the truth." . . . More.

Dwight D. Eisenhower Took Extra Measures to Ensure the Holocaust Was Never Forgotten | War History Online

Combating Holocaust Denial: Origins of Holocaust Denial | Holocaust Encyclopedia

Pete Buttigieg Wants to Pack Supreme Court With 13 Justices

"The Court has had 9 seats since 1869, and every serious attempt to alter that number has been understood as an effort to capture the Court for political ends"

 Legal Insurrection

Pictured in this post; those who could have chosen America's expanded Supreme Court Justices:

"Former Biden Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg went on Fox News Friday to pitch a plan that would hand politicians four new seats on the Supreme Court and to argue that the institution needs to be fundamentally restructured.

"Carrie Severino of the Judicial Crisis Network called out what Buttigieg is really doing, including the clip of him making his case on Fox News.

Pete Buttigieg is doubling down on his proposal for Supreme Court "reform" by calling for court packing in an attempt to undermine the Court.

The Democrats are upset that this Supreme Court isn’t a forum to impose its radical agenda. pic.twitter.com/pA6gG8tza1

— Carrie Severino (@JCNSeverino) July 24, 2026 

“The legitimacy of the Supreme Court is, I believe, the lowest it’s ever been in the eyes of the American people. It’s come to feel like a nakedly partisan institution. We could do some things about that. At a minimum, term limits so that you know for each presidential term how many Supreme Court appointments are going to go with it. I also think we would be better off with a court that has something like 13 justices that would match the number of districts that we have in the federal system, and ideally appoint them in a way

that isn’t so partisan.”

"There is an immediate factual problem with Buttigieg’s pitch. The federal system does not have 13 districts. It has 94 federal judicial districts and 13 appellate courts; 12 regional circuits and the Federal Circuit. Buttigieg confused the district courts with the appellate circuits while arguing for a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s highest court.

"That error is not even the biggest problem with the proposal.

"Increasing the number of justices from nine to 13 is court packing, regardless of how Buttigieg dresses it up. The Constitution does not set the size of the Court, so Congress technically has the power to change it, but the Court has sat at nine seats since 1869, and every serious attempt to alter that number has been understood as an effort to capture the Court for political ends.

"Buttigieg also endorsed term limits and expressed interest in a so-called “balanced bench.” Under one version of that plan, the Court would expand further still, to 15 members. Five seats would be tied to Democratic appointments, five to Republican appointments, and those ten justices would then unanimously select five more. The effect would be a court designed by politicians, for politicians."  . . . More...

Senate Republicans Unveil First-of-Its-Kind Plan To Eliminate Fuel Economy Standards That Cost Americans Billions

"Sen. Mike Crapo's legislation would save consumers billions of dollars and prevent future administrations from pursuing a 'de facto electric vehicle mandate'"

Thomas Catenacci   

Update 4:04 p.m.: This piece has been updated to remove mention of the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, which did not endorse the bill.

"Sen. Mike Crapo (R., Idaho) is preparing to introduce first-of-its-kind legislation that would scrap fuel efficiency rules for vehicles, regulations that Republicans say have cost consumers billions of dollars, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.

"Crapo's bill would end a decades-old program requiring the federal government to set environmental fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks. Crapo, the Senate Finance Committee's chairman, says the bill would save Americans money and ensure the federal government is unable to use the so-called corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) program to implement a "de facto electric vehicle mandate" or other broad climate objectives.

"The bill is not a symbolic one. It has five Senate cosponsors, all Republicans, and strong backing from major industry groups. It's also being introduced in time to clear Congress before any shift of control in January.

"The Biden administration finalized CAFE standards in 2024 that would have doubled fuel efficiency requirements in new cars, something automakers said was unachievable, costly, and designed to incentivize purchases of expensive electric vehicles. Last year, President Donald Trump reset the CAFE standards, calling the Biden-era regulations "ridiculously burdensome" and "horrible."

"Congress created the CAFE program to limit fuel consumption during the 1970s oil crisis, when Arab nations implemented an oil embargo against the United States and other nations that had supported Israel militarily. The United States has since shed itself of dependence on Arab oil, but the CAFE program has persisted and been reimagined as a tool to achieve the left's environmental goals.

"While advocates argue the program saves consumers money in the long run by decreasing their spending on fuel, an increase in CAFE standards of just 1 mile per gallon costs consumers an estimated $24.1 billion and automakers an estimated $5.5 billion over 10 years, even when accounting for fuel spending, according to a 2022 report from the right-leaning Mackinac Center for Public Policy. That's because higher fuel efficiency creates high compliance costs that automakers then pass on to buyers." . . .More...

ICE arrests 10,000 in five days as Trump's deportation efforts surge

Cleaning up after Biden.

 Sharyl Attkisson  

After Noem was fired, her successor at Homeland Security, Markwayne Mullin, suggested he’d be taking a more low-profile approach to immigration enforcement and he aimed to get the department out of the headlines.

"US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested approximately 10,000 people over a five-day period at the end of June, marking a significant increase in immigration enforcement as the Trump administration continues its deportation efforts.

The figures, obtained by the Associated Press from a person familiar with the data, average roughly 2,000 arrests per day. ICE does not routinely release arrest statistics, making direct comparisons difficult, but the pace represents a notable increase over earlier this year.

According to the report, the administration has shifted away from highly publicized immigration sweeps in major cities and toward a lower-profile enforcement strategy while continuing to increase arrests.

The Dept. of Homeland Security said ICE remains focused on arresting and removing criminal illegal immigrants.

“Since Day One, DHS law enforcement has been delivering on President Trump’s promise to the American people to arrest and deport criminal illegal aliens including murderers, rapists, pedophiles, gang members, and terrorists,” the agency said.

DHS added:

“Our message is clear: if you come to our country illegally, we will find you, we will arrest you, and we will deport you.”

The report also notes that the number of people held in ICE detention facilities climbed to about 39,000 in June, up from roughly 30,000 per month earlier in the year. Data analyzed by the Associated Press found the recent arrest rate exceeded previous daily averages reported during the Trump administration.

For more information, read the full article here.