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President Joe Biden's first calls to foreign leaders went to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador at a strained moment for the U.S. relationship with its North American neighbors. Mexico's president said Saturday that Biden told him the U.S. would send $4 billion to help development in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala

The Republican Party in Arizona’s largest county voted Saturday to censure the widow of the late Sen. John McCain after she endorsed Democrat Joe Biden. The state GOP is planning a similar vote later this month. The Maricopa County GOP’s censure resolution called Cindy McCain a "troubled individual, with a past riddled with drug abuse and illegalities associated with such behavior." The measure also accused Cindy McCain of supporting "leftist causes" including gay marriage, larger government and "others that run counter to Republican values." Cindy McCain has acknowledged suffering a three-year addiction to pain medicine from 1989 to 1992 and...

Congress made it official on Christmas Eve: no COVID-19 stimulus money will be approved until next week at the earliest. Partisan gridlock resumed as Democrats sought to unanimously approve President Trump’s request that $600 stimulus checks be increased to $2,000, The motion was refused consideration under House policy because Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) had not consented. In a Wednesday night letter, McCarthy accused House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) of “selective hearing” of Trump’s objections, and asked for unanimous consent for the House to reconsider billions in foreign aid in a relief bill approved Monday by both chambers of Congress....

Washington, DC, hates us. They literally hate all of us useful idiots who are only here to fund their pet projects and advance the personal agendas of those in the swamp. And sadly, the vast majority of Americans have no idea. They will not read the 6000-page bill released by Congress. They won’t read a single word of it. All they’ll do is wait for their $600 checks and complain that they need more.The text of the COVID-19 “relief” bill is loaded with gigatons of pork that Americans know nothing about. Moreover, it’s so significant, so insulting, that mainstream media...

The Trump administration fired the heads of three federal agencies after the election, prompting one to claim he was retaliated against for disagreeing with some policy. The heads of the agencies that oversee the nuclear weapons stockpile, electricity and natural gas regulation and overseas aid were sent packing, NPR reported. The sudden departures included Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, who was forced to resign Friday. She was the first woman to oversee the agency in charge of the nuclear stockpile. Last year, she was on the president’s short list as a possible replacement for former National...

From being ostracised by the international community as the centre of the deadly coronavirus outbreak, China is seeking to reframe itself as a global expert that can help hard-hit regions battle the disease. Beijing is keen to reposition the virus as a global outbreak and not just a China malaise as it sends testing kits and experts overseas and translates treatment manuals into foreign languages. The deputy foreign minister said at a press conference Thursday that China had shared its treatment plan with “many countries”. An expert team has already been sent to Iran, where 92 people have died, along...

The newly released White House budget for 2021 proposes cuts to foreign aid, however aid to Ukraine is slated to remain at its 2020 level—a notable standout given how central a role military aid to Ukraine played in President Trump's monthslong impeachment trial. The Washington Post reported last week that the Trump Administration’s 2021 budget will contain $365 million in aid to Ukraine, including $250 million for military support. Though the White House has been accused of putting American security at risk for withholding funding to Ukraine last year, a comprehensive assessment exposes that the U.S. has no security interests...

How Christine Lagarde, Clinton and Nuland Funded a Massive Ukrainian Ponzi Scheme John Helmer Fri, Jul 5, 2019 | 3120 words 8,340 Comments The author is the longest serving foreign correspondent covering Russia. He published his fascinating memoirs in December of 2018. They are full of insights into what has really been going on in Moscow over the past 30 years. RI wrote about it here. He is the author of 12 books, 3 of them about Russia. When Igor Kolomoisky (image below, centre) financed anti-Russian units operating with the Ukrainian Army in the Ukrainian civil war, he was a staunch ally of Petro Poroshenko’s government in...

WASHINGTON — Democrats stepped up their calls on Sunday night for John Bolton to testify at President Donald Trump's impeachment trial after an explosive new report alleged that in his unpublished book, the former national security adviser said Trump personally tied Ukraine aid to an investigation of the Bidens — an account that conflicts with the president's. "John Bolton has the evidence," tweeted Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. According to the manuscript, as reported by The New York Times Sunday night, Trump told Bolton that nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine would not be released until that nation...

The Associated Press (AP) described the matter of Joe Biden’s leveraging of U.S. foreign aid to pressure Ukraine to fire a prosecutor investigating corruption at Burisma — a Ukrainian energy company upon whose board of directors Hunter Biden sat — in order to protect his second son as a “false narrative.” The AP echoed similar news media outlets’ mischaracterization of the above-mentioned event, including the New York Times, Snopes, NPR, USA Today, Vox, and the Washington Post. In a column identifying differing perceptions of political goings on being related to varying news media consumption patterns, the AP dismisses Joe Biden’s...

The impeachment proceedings against President Trump have fueled all manner of conjecture regarding the proper discharge of foreign policy, hidden motives behind both Trump’s phone call and the ensuing investigation, and everything from the dead-cat bounce of the Mueller Report to the Kurdish policy shift. But there are a number of questions that, while they should be asked, haven’t been. (Obligatory disclaimer: None of these questions are intended to either excuse or indict the actions of Trump, the impeachment-hearing participants, or anyone else.) 1. Why is the U.S. giving $400 million to Ukraine, anyway? It makes little sense. Europe is...

In early 2008, the company for which I was working won a small contract to manage the airport in Monrovia, Liberia. Before the Liberian civil war, Roberts Field had a storied history. Along with being Pan American Airlines’ main African station for many decades, aircraft from the U.S. Army Air Corps harassed and attacked the southern flank of Field Marshall Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps. The PanAm station chief ran the remote 5,000-acre airport and a Motel 6-like facility on the Farmington River, adjacent to the Firestone Plantation. For their transient aircrew, Pan Am had a two-story hotel on the beach...

No Excerpt due to USA Today. Link: https://news.yahoo.com/trump-administration-reduce-nato-aid-215515120.html

To be accurate, meme should say “connections to” Ukrainian companies as there is not enough direct evidence to say “working for” with all of them. Point is, they are all corrupt scumbags. Hunter Biden was paid more than $83,000 per month by a Ukrainian gas company because of his ‘powerful name,’ according to those familiar with the arrangement “The appointment of the vice president’s son to a Ukrainian oil board looks nepotistic at best, nefarious at worst.” Pelosi’s son: Nancy Pelosi’s son Paul Pelosi Jr. (who went to Ukraine in 2017) was a board member of Viscoil and executive at...

<p>The president sets foreign policy according to the Constitution. Appointments and treaties must be approved by the senate, of course, but the president sets the overall policy. The giving of foreign aid, military aid, etc, is part of foreign policy and is controlled by the president, with congressional approval for the funds.</p>

This is a great video about Foreign Aid and how to manage it. Nikki hits it out of the parkClick the pic link. Whose administration do you want handling foreign policy? This is what taking names is all about... pic.twitter.com/qhmiBNvdW7— Tom Maloney (@t2gunner) November 21, 2019

"Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace noted during a discussion with the president that William McRaven has said Trump's attacks on the media are the "greatest threat to democracy in his lifetime." Trump in response called McRaven a "Hillary Clinton fan" and "Obama-backer." "Wouldn’t it have been nice if we got Osama bin Laden a lot sooner than that, wouldn’t it have been nice?" Trump asked. "You know, living — think of this — living in Pakistan, beautifully in Pakistan in what I guess they considered a nice mansion, I don’t know, I’ve seen nicer. But living in Pakistan right...

Statement from the Press Secretary  FOREIGN POLICY    Issued on: October 12, 2019   Today, President Donald J. Trump released $50 million in stabilization assistance for Syria to protect persecuted ethnic and religious minorities, and advance human rights.  This funding will provide emergency financial assistance to Syrian human rights defenders, civil society organizations, and reconciliation efforts directly supporting ethnic and religious minority victims of the conflict.  It will also go toward increased accountability, removal of explosive remnants of war, community security for stabilization assistance, documenting human rights abuses and international humanitarian law violations, and support for survivors of gender-based violence...

President Trump said Tuesday that a decision on whether to try to suspend certain foreign aid funds would likely be coming within a week. "We’re looking at it, and we’re looking at it in different ways," Trump told reporters during a meeting with the Romanian president in the Oval Office. "We’re talking to Republicans and Democrats about it, and certain things we could save." "We have some things on the table very much and we’ll let you know over the next, probably sooner than a week," he added. The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has been working...

<p>NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. federal court documents show Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández and some of his closest advisers were among the targets of a Drug Enforcement Administration investigation.</p> <p>A document filed by prosecutors on Tuesday in the Southern District of New York mentions Hernández as part of a group of individuals investigated by the DEA since about 2013 for participating “in large-scale drug-trafficking and money laundering activities relating to the importation of cocaine into the United States”.</p>