In recent days, veiled threats by House Minority Leader Rep. Calvin Schrage against Speaker Cathy Tilton and Senate Majority Leader Sen. Cathy Giessel against Senate President Gary Stevens might be chalked up to careless hyperbole during a heated debate.
Schrage made an “if-then” threat against Tilton, and Giessel menaced the Senate president by saying that if her amendment didn’t pass, his house would get broken into. The statements came close to coercion.
But there’s another possible form of coercion going on in the Capitol: Horse trading run amuck. In the halls of the building, members of the body are saying that Sen. Bill Wielechowski is holding the House hostage by not allowing as many as nine bills to come to the floor — unless the House passes Sen. Scott Kawasaki’s rewrite of House Bill 129, which originally was a bill from Rep. Srarah Vance to clean up Alaska’s voter registration rolls.
Kawasaki hijacked HB 129 by by inserting multiple bills into it, with election ideas from the Democrats, including having the government pay for the stamps on mail-in ballots.
The terms of the deal Wielechowski is said to offering the House is that it either concurs with the new bill version or the House bills won’t be heard; as Rules chair, Wielechowski has the power to enforce that.
Vance already told the Senate Finance Committee on Monday that she would not be able to get concurrence on the bill, after Kawasaki completely gutted it and made it into a different bill.
Wielechowski is a political ally of Kawasaki. Both are Democrats — Wielechowski is from Anchorage, Kawasaki is from Fairbanks. They’re both part of the Democrat majority in the Senate. Both want to increase vote by mail, which is what Kawasaki’s rewrite of Vance’s bill does, in party.
When horse trading become coercion, then the aspect of public corruption is a concern, because it requires a legislator to vote in a certain way — in a way they would not normally vote — in order to have their own bills moved. That is a concern now being expressed in the hallways of the Capitol.
According to WalletHub, Anchorage is in the top 10 cities for experiencing inflation. It’s at No. 8, right between Miami and Los Angeles.
The U.S. inflation rate hit a 40-year high during the first two years of the Biden Administration, but has since started to flatten.
“The year-over-year inflation rate sits at 3.4% as of April 2024, which is still above the target rate of 2%. Various factors, such as the war in Ukraine and labor shortages, drive this higher than average inflation. Despite the country not meeting its target yet, it’s possible the Federal Reserve could even cut interest rates this year rather than raising them further,” WalletHub reports.
According to the AP, three rate reductions were suggested for 2024, starting in June, “But given the persistence of elevated inflation, financial markets now expect just one rate cut this year, in November, according to futures prices tracked by CME FedWatch.”
WalletHub compared 23 major metropolitan statistical areas across two key metrics related to the Consumer Price Index, which measures inflation. Honolulu Hawaii got a total score of 71.83, putting it at the top of the list for inflation, with Detroit closely following.
Source: WalletHub
WalletHub compared the Consumer Price Index for the latest month for which Bureau of Labor Statistics data is available to two months prior and one year prior to get a snapshot of how inflation has changed in the short and long term.
Legendary dog musher Rick Mackey died in Fairbanks on Monday, after a battle with cancer. He was 71. From the legacy mushing family of Dick Mackey, who first won the Iditarod Sled Dog Race in 1978, Rick was raised in the world of sled dog racing and won the Iditarod in 1983. Rick’s brother, Lance Mackey, won Iditarod and younger brother Jason Mackey has raced for several years.
Rick’s passing was shared by his daughter, Brenda Mackey, on Facebook. She noted that he died on May 13, and that the number 13 was the bib number that the Mackeys so often drew. Rick wore No. 13 bib in his 1983 Iditarod win.
Rick had been suffering from cancer for the past 19 month and it had spread to his bones and spine; he was in pain for several months, Brenda wrote.
Brenda Mackey’s Facebook announcement of Rick Mackey’s passing.
The Iditarod Sled Dog Race website biography of Rick states:
“Rick Mackey, born in Concord NH on May 1, 1953, came to Alaska in 1959. Helping his father, Dick Mackey, prepare for the first Iditarod race in 1973, Rick has always been a part of the Iditarod and sled dog racing has always been a part of him.
“Racing dogs since 1964, the 2004 Race will be his 22nd Iditarod Race. Rick won the 1983 Iditarod and has placed in the top ten numerous times. He is known for taking excellent care of his team and having a very strong team of dogs. He has won the award for the fastest time between Safety and Nome five times.
“There is a time for every season” and this seasoned veteran musher is ready to go. After taking a two-year break from racing the Iditarod he is ready and willing to cross the finish line in Nome. Rick Mackey has been married to Patty for 30 years and is the father of two children, Brenda 25, and Roland 7.
Rick was the owner of a sled dog kennel and worked in lumber when not training with his team or managing the kennel business. Across four decades, he completed 22 races, and is one of six mushers to win both the Iditarod and the Yukon Quest. He also won two Kuskokwim 300 races.
The polls closed at 8 p.m. and the ballot drop boxes were locked. The first batch of ballots were run and the results look grim for Mayor Dave Bronson.
With 50,967 ballots counted in the runoff between Bronson and Suzanne LaFrance, the totals are:
– Bronson: 22,997, 45.12%
– LaFrance: 27,970, 54.88%
Ballots cast on Tuesday were not included, as they have to be checked to ensure people didn’t vote earlier. About 50% of the expected vote has been counted.
LaFrance is the former chairwoman of the Anchorage Assembly and is a favorite of the Democrats. If her lead holds, she will be sworn in July 1.
A bill that is meant to help meet the teacher’s shortage was hijacked by Sen. Cathy Giessel on Tuesday and made into an entirely different bill, which passed the Senate before she ended up withdrawing the amendment. Word in the Capitol is that her move to force her own bill into another had made her very unpopular with the Democrat-majority caucus that she has joined.
Giessel, working at the behest of the AFL-CIO and Alaska Public Employee Association, inserted the entire contents of the failing Senate Bill 88 — a return to a defined pension plan for public employees in Alaska — into House Bill 230.
Sen. Bert Stedman, who was a key lawmaker in dismantling the old pension plan, which became unaffordable for the state budget, spent 40 minutes on the Senate floor speaking against Giessel’s amendment. Next was Sen. Shelley Hughes, who agreed with Stedman, and then came Sen. David Wilson, who also agreed.
“This is a 52-page bill being shoved into a one-page bill. This has become one of those tur-duck-ens” said Shower. (Tur-duck-en is a turkey stuffed with a duck, stuffed with a chicken).
“When the State cuts a check for a defined contribution plan, it’s gone. That liability for future generations is gone, not on the books. However, on a defined benefit plan, then you have something where we [the State] are assuming the risk. That is something that is not insignificant in this debate,” he said.
Shower said Alaska’s children, grandchildren and their grandchildren are going to assume the liability and that today’s workers want to move around, and do not want to stay in jobs for dozens of years.
In addition, “we have billions of dollars that we are trying to make up for the previous plan,” Shower said.
HB 230 addresses the current situation in which teachers are allowed to count eight years of out-of-state teaching experience, if they have a masters’ degree, and six years of out-of-state teaching experience, if they have bachelors’ degree, for the purpose of determining the correct placement on a district’s salary scale, even if they taught out of state for much longer. Repealing these onerous conditions is a recommendation from the “2021 Teacher Retention and Recruitment Action Plan,” a product of the governor’s working group on teacher retention and recruitment that was established in 2020.
Districts across Alaska are having an extremely difficult time filling teaching positions, the governor’s working group said. First day teacher vacancies in Alaska have increased from about 155 in 2019 to about 394 in 2022 according to the Department of Education and Early Development and this shortage impacts both urban and rural districts. With the passage of this bill, state statute will no longer inhibit districts from hiring the most experienced out-of-state candidates, and in turn teachers will be fairly compensated for their experience.
During her closing remarks, Giessel mentioned to President Gary Stevens that he has a house in Kodiak, and his house might get broken into because there are not enough police. It was not a threat, but it was on the boundary of what is considered appropriate.
Voting in favor of the amendment were Senators Click Bishop, Jesse Bjorkman, Matt Claman, Forrest Dunbar, Cathy Giessel, Elvi Gray-Jackson, Scott Kawasaki, Jesse Kiehl, Kelly Merrick, Loki Tobin, and Bill Wielechowski.
Vote on Amendment 1, cramming a 52-page amendment into a one-page bill.
Voting against the bill were the two co-chairs of Senate Finance Committee, Stedman and Donny Olson, as well as Lyman Hoffman, Shelley Hughes, James Kaufman, Robb Myers, Mike Shower, Gary Stevens, and David Wilson.
The 52-page hostile amendment by Giessel transformed the governor’s bill into her own bill.
The amendment was later withdrawn after Stedman removed his name as a cross-sponsor of the bill. The original bill then passed the Senate.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed Wisconsin Rep. Tom Tiffany and Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert’s “Trust the Science Act,”House Resolution 764, which would remove the gray wolf from the list of endangered species and prevents a judicial review of the delisting.
Rep. Mary Peltola of Alaska voted against the measure, which passed on a vote of 209-205. The bill gives individual states and their wildlife management agencies the right to manage gray wolf populations within their borders. It’s a states’ rights issue.
Alaska is home to an estimated 7,000-11,000 wolves and is the only state in which wolves were never included on the Endangered Species List. Many Alaskan hunters consider wolves to be a problem, especially in Southeast Alaska, where the carnivorous canines kill deer.
“Wolves do have an impact on moose and caribou populations, and this impact, in combination with factors such as severe winter weather or bear predation, can depress moose and caribou populations to very low levels leaving little harvestable surplus for humans,” according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, which occasionally thins out wolf populations so that humans can have access to wild meat.
“These programs are designed to reduce predation by wolves or bears and increase moose, caribou, or deer populations that are a needed food source for Alaskans,” Fish and Game says on its website.
Wolves can also be a problem the Lower 48 for ranchers, and elk and deer hunters. Sheep ranchers in Washington State are finding that they are essentially growing livestock to feed wolf packs. One rancher reported that wolves had killed 22 of his 2,000 sheep.
“There have been repeated, documented wolf kills; non-lethal methods have not stopped the predation; the attacks are likely to continue, and the livestock owner has not done anything to attract the wolves,” one state wildlife official said in 2019, as the state approved the killing of wolves in Stevens County. There are 260 known wolves in 42 known packs in Washington State.
“The science is clear, the gray wolf has met and exceeded recovery goals. Today’s House passage represents an important first step towards restoring local control over the skyrocketing gray wolf population in Wisconsin. I will continue to fight to get this legislation through the U.S. Senate to protect livestock and pets from brutal wolf attacks,” said Rep. Tiffany of Wisconsin.
“There have been numerous gray wolf attacks in Wisconsin’s Seventh District over the last few years. You can view some examples here, here, and here (warning of graphic content),” Tiffany wrote on his official page. And yes, the links are pretty gory.
Gray wolves were put on the endangered species list in 1974, but they are no longer considered endangered, although only 13 states have wolf packs, mostly in the north.
During the Trump Administration, the Department of the Interior and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service delisted the gray wolf in the lower 48 United States after reviewing the science. But a California judge reversed the ruling in 2022.
Among groups supporting the bill was Hunter Nation, an advocacy group for hunters.
The recovery of the gray wolf is a remarkable conservation success, and the time has long since passed to manage their exploding population based on science,” said Keith Mark, founder and president of Hunter Nation. “This is an important achievement for American hunters, game animals, pets, livestock, and wolves. Keeping liberal activist judges out of wildlife management decisions is an important component to this legislation.”
“The delisting of the gray wolf reflects sound science and will bring balance to the habit and carrying capacity in those areas that have been decimated by unmanaged wolf populations,” said Ted Nugent, spokesman for Hunter Nation.
Peltola deflected, writing on social media: “The Second Amendment is integral to the Alaska way of life. For many households, hunting is their only way to guarantee food security. That’s why I’m doing everything possible to protect 2A and make sure our rights aren’t eroded by politicians living thousands of miles away.”
The decline of traditional metropolitan “objective” media outlets has affected the news landscape dramatically. Those outlets were more liberal and less objective than they pretended, and their business model, which relied on advertising, has collapsed as online advertising has soared. This had led to targeted partisan journalism on the left and right, for business as well as political reasons. But while traditional outlets like the New York Times have moved further leftward, they and other national outlets have lost the trust of most Americans, who now place much more trust in state and local media.
In response, left-wing foundations have made massive investments in nonprofit journalism and related efforts. Most recently, liberal foundations led by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation have staked $500 million over five years in hopes of fundamentally upending the local news marketplace and buying the trustworthiness of local news to use as camouflage for left-wing propaganda. Thus, the Left continues to expand its existing state-level “nonprofit newsrooms” that distribute ideological agitprop.
The largest is States Newsroom network; another is the Courier Newsroom. States Newsroom, spawned from the Arabella Advisors network, operates in 38 states and in 2021 spent $13.2 million, four times the closest center-right analog, Franklin News Foundation. Another right-leaning analog, Star News Digital Media, is even smaller.
The Left also works to boost its talent pipelines feeding into the media environment by focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and leftist-aligned “communities”—an emphasis that strengthens the internal mobs at major outlets who brook no dissent from the radical line. Further leftward pressure comes from the NewsGuild–Communications Workers of America union, active in many prestigious outlets and far-left even by “social justice unionism” standards. It recently endorsed “Solidarity with the Palestinians from the river to the sea.”
Nonprofit efforts like ProPublica feed investigations picked up by larger outlets. These, too, have a strong leftward effect, as intended by ProPublica’s donors who fund, for example, not only numerous investigations into conservative Supreme Court justices (and no investigations into liberal justices) but also fund advocacy groups that demand court packing. ProPublica donors include the Sandler Foundation, which also funds Demand Justice; the Hewlett Foundation, which also funds Fix the Court; and Ford; Open Society; and others. This investigative journalism is a double-edged sword, one side sharpened to attack enemies, the other blunted to protect friends.
Social media are another avenue where the Left hopes to control information, but Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter/X has hindered this crusade. In response, Pierre Omidyar has backed the phony “Facebook Whistleblower,” and Media Mattershas launched pressure campaigns against Twitter’s advertisers.
Fact-checking groups assist with control of social media and political narratives. Here as everywhere in the media landscape, the Left enjoys more groups and more money than conservatives. Harvard’s Nieman Lab says, “Publishers hope fact-checking can become a revenue stream. Right now, it’s mostly Big Tech who is buying.” Nonprofit support comes from the usual suspects, including Soros, Tides, Ford, and Carnegie.
In 2022, the Democratic National Committee released a 5,000-word action plan for aggressive censorship, a.k.a. “combating online misinformation.” Social media statistics indicate earlier changes by Facebook and other platforms resulted in significant boosts for “mainstream” media outlets and equivalent losses for their competitors. Elon Musk’s “community notes” model for fact-checking on Twitter/X, which crowd-sources the work, is a dramatic improvement.
A related effort, NewsGuard, is suffering multiple federal lawsuits because of its likely illegal collusion with the federal government to suppress speech. NewsGuard provides an app for web browsers that puts labels next to news sources in online search results. The labels rate on a 0 to 100 scale, with nearly all “mainstream” outlets like the New York Times and NPR receiving 100s, despite their egregious misinformation on Russian collusion, COVID origins, and Hunter Biden’s laptop. Conservative outlets rate mediocre to bad.
The strategy, beyond working with federal agencies to suppress speech they dislike, is to spread NewsGuard into libraries and schools for use with mandatory “media literacy” courses. NewsGuard’s largest investor is Publicis Groupe, the world’s largest conglomerate of marketing agencies who already use a separate NewsGuard product that channels their ads away from disliked outlets to favored ones. Thus can investors protect their clients, just as the government protects itself from unwanted speech. But federal and state legislators could consider bans on governmental use of such third-party censorship schemes.
The Hub Project is another left-wing effort to use media for political purposes. Launched through the Arabella Advisors network with cash from foreign national Hansjörg Wyss, it aims to create “research-based messages frames” to “drive measurable change” and achieve “significant wins” that lead to “implementations of policy solutions at the local, state, and federal level”—cagey language designed to permit 501(c)(3) entities to fund and carry out much of this political work. This hidden scheme was exposed by the New York Times, with help from Capital Research Center. Outlets like Politico and The Atlantic credit it with significant “damage” to conservative political causes.
Despite all the Left’s money and groups, on the conservative side of the media landscape for-profit and nonprofit opportunities remain. Indeed, some of the best work exposing governmental malfeasance has recently come from left-leaning writers, many of them refugees from the corporate regime media, who have shifted to new, independent platforms where they cannot be cancelled by the powerful people and institutions they challenge. These voices may be called “government-” or “power-skeptical.”
Existing conservative efforts include the Franklin News Foundation and its Center Square. The foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, but it also owns two for-profit enterprises, the Illinois Radio network providing sports and statehouse coverage for 84 affiliates, and the Franklin Media Group, a marketing firm. Their profits subsidize the nonprofit news effort, whose supporters include the Scaife, Bradley, Searle, and Thomas W. Smith foundations.
Other conservative efforts are legally for-profit but likely require considerable annual subsidies (as does Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post), including the Washington Free Beacon (reported to be largely funded by Paul Singer), the Washington Examiner (reported to be owned by Phil Anschutz), and the New York Post (owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp). The RealClear websites are also owned by a for-profit firm.
A different, more revolutionary approach would be to seed writers on Substack, a fast-growing enterprise that combines social media, multimedia, podcasting, and blogging for independent content creators. Those creators keep roughly 80 percent of email subscription fees they charge, which are typically around $50 per year. That means 2,000 subscribers would yield an independent creator $80,000 annually. Already some power-skeptical writers like Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss have such large subscription bases, generating hundreds of thousands of dollars, that the creators have plowed revenues into hiring less famous journalists to join their originally solo Substack outlets. This resembles the way earlier talk radio entrepreneurs like Rush Limbaugh created new business models that had widespread political effect and were self-sustaining. Other existing Substack successes include Christopher Rufo and the Twitter/X celebrity known as Libs of TikTok. Donors could fund new voices with a program similar to MacArthur’s famous “genius grants,” which guarantee quarterly income across several years.
Another intriguing strategy involving established local newspapers is being mulled by Dave Smith, the executive chairman of Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which owns roughly 200 television stations. Sinclair has multiple stations in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, North Carolina, and Georgia and it has local news departments in about 70 cities. It currently owns no radio or newspaper properties, though Smith personally bought the Baltimore Sun in January 2024.
Any paper he runs will follow the same model as his TV newsrooms: Focus on local crime, local political corruption, and local public schools’ failure, and teach reporters how to do the investigative reporting that breaks these stories. This model has worked in cities like Seattle, where he purchased the last-ranked station and within two years it was number-one. Smith is open to working with other investors in other cities and believes newspapers can remain self-sustaining without subsidies.
Still living in his native Baltimore, Smith says he wants to help poor and middle-class citizens suffering in our dysfunctional cities, and he also believes that improving their lot will also mean weakening the corrupt left-wing establishment that controls those cities and, through those cities, wields political power it does not deserve.
In sum, the Left is taking journalism seriously. Is the Right?
Scott Walter is president of Capital Research Center. He served in the George W. Bush Administration as Special Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and was vice president at the Philanthropy Roundtable, editing Philanthropy magazine and producing donor guidebooks on assistance to the poor, school reform, public policy research, and other topics. Walter has written for and been quoted in such outlets as the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and Chronicle of Philanthropy. A Georgetown graduate, he served as a senior fellow at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and as senior editor of AEI’s flagship publication. He lives in Virginia with his wife and four children. This is the introduction to a forthcoming CRC special report Nonprofits and Journalism: An Analysis of the Shifting Information Landscape and Potential Growth Opportunities.
The Senate Finance Committee on Sunday stripped funding for the completion of the Port MacKenzie rail extension project.
The committee removed a $58 million bonding authority section meant to complete the rail to Port MacKenzie, which is in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough on the opposite shore of Knik Arm from the Don Young Port of Alaska.
The committee retained the original bill, which was authority to issue up to $75 million in revenue bonds to replace the aging Seward dock and facility with a pier system to better handle Alaska’s 41-foot tides.
House Bill 122‘s funding for the Mat-Su project had been placed into the bill during House committee proceedings, but it had some Senate Finance Committee members skeptical because the previous funding, $184 million, has left the rail project uncompleted, and because the port itself is not completed.
Port MacKenzie has direct access to major road corridors to the Mat-Su Valley, north to Fairbanks, and south to Anchorage. It is still not utilized fully because it lacks rail access, but it’s the only port in Alaska with such massive potential, boasting 9,000-acres (14 square miles) available for commercial and industrial development. It has deeper draft capacity than the Port of Alaska in Anchorage, and is set up for the export of cargo that includes natural resources.
One of Alaska’s greatest champions who moved the project forward with previous state awards was former Department of Transportation Commissioner Joe Perkins, who passed away in 2019 while working on behalf of the Mat-Su Borough to complete the ambitious rail and port project. After his passing, the project slowed to a near standstill.
“The railroad is supportive of the Port Mackenzie rail extension project and rail extension in general,” said Bill O’Leary, president and CEO of the Alaska Railroad, testifying by phone to the committee. “We think that rail and rail infrastructure is key to unlocking many parts of Alaska and the resources that are otherwise trapped and can be a key part in moving the Alaska economy forward.”
Funding for the Seward dock facility will cost the state nothing in cash. Royal Caribbean Group has disembarked cruise passengers for two decades, including 188,000 passengers in 2023. O’Leary said the debt for the Seward project would be paid by future cruise customer use and the 30-year berthing agreement with Royal Caribbean.
But the Port MacKenzie project would still need customers before the railroad could even get bonding for the completion of the rail line. In an era when Alaska can’t seem to get the Ambler Mine or Donlin Mine permitted, and as environmentalists make Alaska coal unfeasible for export, it’s not clear who the customer would be that would make bonding for the rail expansion possible.
Sen. Olson said to O’Leary that the Don Young Port of Alaska “is going to be competing” with Port MacKenzie, “and we know some of the issues we’ve had with the Anchorage port [Port of Alaska] that’s gotten on the wrong track on a couple of occasions.”
The Don Young Port of Alaska is owned by the Municipality of Anchorage and moved 5.2 million tons of fuel and freight in 2022, including containers, liquid bulk, dry bulk, break bulk.
About half of all Alaska inbound cargo crosses Port of Alaska docks, about half of which is delivered to destinations outside of Anchorage, including Southeast. But it has aging piers and docks. Port of Alaska’s Modernization Program is a dock replacement program that would replace aging docks and related infrastructure before they fail. It has been a priority of the Mayor Dave Bronson Administration. It’s a project that may cost as much as $2.2 billion.
The Port MacKenzie project could be a backup dock for the Anchorage port. The railroad has been working on a federal grant that requires the state match — that effort will likely have to be sacked without the Alaska Legislature’s support.
Looking ahead, Sen. Bert Stedman emphasized the need for a comprehensive review of rail expansion projects in the 2025 legislative session, prioritizing initiatives that maximize statewide benefits. With the fate of the Port MacKenzie extension provision uncertain, the Alaska Railroad’s future development trajectory awaits further legislative scrutiny.
HB 122, sponsored by Rep. Frank Tomaszewski of Fairbanks, is now back to what it was in the beginning — funding to make the Seward dock usable in future years. After it is voted on by the Senate, it will be back a the House for a concurrence vote.
Do you shop at Cabela’s, Bass Pro Shop, or Dick’s Sporting Goods? Your bank may be passing your purchase information to the federal government, especially if it can link you to support for Donald Trump or the term “MAGA.”
Many banks are surveilling their account holders, not because of criminal records or conduct, but because of their core political and religious expression, the House Judiciary Committee and Select Subcommittee said in a new report.The banks are alerting themselves to specific terms and transaction, sometimes involving the purchase of firearms.
Last year, the Committee and Select Subcommittee received testimony from retired Federal Bureau of Investigation Supervisory Intelligence Analyst George Hill. Hill testified that, following the events at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Bank of America , voluntarily and without legal process, provided the FBI with a list of names of all individuals who used a BoA credit or debit card in the Washington, D.C. region between the dates of Jan. 5-7, 2021.
Further, Hill testified that this Bank of America “data dump” of customer information included a list of individuals who had ever used a BoA credit or debit card to purchase a firearm, regardless of when or where it was purchased.
That would include anyone who has an Alaska Airlines Visa credit card, which is associated with Bank of America and is carried by many Alaskans.
“The Bank of America, with no directive from the FBI, data-mined its customer base. And they data-mined a date range of 5 to 7 January [of 2021] any BOA customer who used a BOA product. And by ‘BOA product,’ I mean a debit card or a credit card. They compiled that list. And then, on top of that list, they put anyone who had purchased a firearm during any date. So it was a huge list …,” Hill told the committee.
Many Alaskans reading this article may fall into the dragnet. In fact, the author may, as well.
Hill’s testimony was confirmed by former senior FBI official Joseph Bonavolonta.
The Committee and Select Subcommittee has since requested documents from Bank of America and six other national financial institutions about the provision of Americans’ private financial information to federal law enforcement without legal process.
In the months since that request, the Committee and Select Subcommittee’s oversight has uncovered ben more of law enforcement’s access to private financial records of U.S. citizens.
The documents show that following the events of Jan. 6, 2021, federal law enforcement officials from the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and the FBI initiated multiple discussions with financial institutions.
These meetings included some of the largest financial institutions in the United States, including Barclays, U.S. Bank, Charles Schwab, HSBC, Bank of America, Paypal, KeyBank, Standard Chartered, Western Union, Wells Fargo, Citibank, Santander, JPMorgan Chase, and MUFG.
The meetings were geared toward discussing options for financial institutions to share customer information voluntarily with federal law enforcement outside of normal legal processes.
Committee documents shows how law enforcement and private institutions shared intelligence products in the aftermath of January 6 through a web portal run by the Domestic Security Alliance Council. The DSAC is a public-private partnership led by the FBI’s Office of Private Sector and the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis.
The DSAC promotes the “exchange of security and intelligence information” between the federal government and its 650 “member” companies, which represent about two-thirds of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product and 35 million employees.
Following Jan. 6, the FBI shared an intelligence product titled “Domestic Violent Extremists Likely Emboldened in Aftermath of Capitol Breach,” prepared by the FBI, DHS, and the National Counterterrorism Center, with financial institutions to alert them to individuals that may fit the profile of criminal and domestic violent extremists.
This FBI intelligence product, along with other materials shared by federal law enforcement, detail the extent to which federal law enforcement derisively viewed American citizens.
One report shared with financial institutions noted that those Americans who expressed opposition to firearm regulations, open borders, Covid-19 lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and the “deep state” may be potential domestic terrorists.
Federal law enforcement used the report and materials like it to commandeer financial institutions’ databases and ask the financial institutions to conduct sweeping searches of individuals not suspected of committing any crimes.
For example, the committee said, federal law enforcement suggested that banks filter Zelle payments using keywords like “MAGA” and “TRUMP” as part of an ostensible investigation into the events on Jan. 6, 2021, and also warned that “the purchase of books (including religious texts) and subscriptions to other media containing extremist views,” could be evidence of “Homegrown Violent Extremism.”
FinCEN also distributed materials to financial institutions instructing them on how to use Merchant Category Codes (MCCs) to search through transactions to detect potential criminals or “extremists.” These MCCs use keywords to comb through transactions, such as “small arms” purchases or recreational stores such as “Cabela’s,” “Bass Pro Shop,” and “Dick’s Sporting Goods.”
Americans doing nothing other than shopping or exercising their Second Amendment rights were being tracked by financial institutions and federal law enforcement, said the committee report.
Despite the transactions having no criminal nexus, FinCEN seems to have adopted a characterization of these Americans as potential threat actors and subject to surveillance.
Without the FBI whistleblowers’ disclosures to the Committee and Select Subcommittee, these documents would not have come to light, the committee report said.
“While it is alarming enough that federal law enforcement and Bank of America used January 6, 2021, as a pretext for surveilling potentially thousands of Americans without a warrant, the documents received by the Committee and Select Subcommittee show a pattern of financial surveillance aimed at millions of Americans who hold conservative viewpoints or simply exercise their Second Amendment rights. This raises serious concerns and doubts about federal law enforcement’s and financial institutions’ commitment to respecting Americans’ privacy rights and fundamental civil liberties,” the report stated.
On Wednesday, May 15, the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government will hold a hearing on at 10 a.m. on the use of lawfare tactics to weaponize the rule of law. Witnesses include:
Robert Costello, Partner, Davidoff Hutcher & Citron
James Trusty, Former Federal Prosecutor
Gene Hamilton, Executive Director, America First Legal
The Biden Administration’s Energy Department has put out another solicitation to buy oil to replenish the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a national security priority. But it’s only going to buy 3.3 million barrels for delivery in October, when it thinks the price will be around $79 per barrel.
Last month, as the Administration has done numerous times in the past two years, the Department of Energy canceled purchase agreements to replenish the nation’s emergency supply. It refused to award contracts for 3 million barrels of crude oil in Augusts and September, because the price was more than $84 a barrel for West Texas Intermediate.
Since Biden took office, he has sold off the nation’s strategic oil reserve to the point where it reached the lowest level in its history earlier this year — 346 million barrels. Since then, the Administration has put back a net 20 million barrels into the storage units at an average price of $76.98. But it’s a drop in the bucket.
The deadline for offers to sell petroleum to the Department of Energy is May 14, for delivery in October, but there’s no guarantee the price will be below $77. Saturday’s price for West Texas Intermediate was $78.26 for a 42-gallon barrel.
In December of 2022, the department said it would start refilling the empty tanks at a price below $96 a barrel. Then it said it would buy oil lower than $72 a barrel. It has canceled numerous announced purchases, however.
Biden continues to blame his draining of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve on the war by Russia on Ukraine.
