Kroger and Albertsons said Friday they will sell 413 stores, including Carrs and Safeway, along with other assets for about $1.9 billion.
This sell-off of assets would create more certainty for completing a merger that is opposed by major labor unions and Rep. Mary Peltola, who is in lockstep with the AFL-CIO.
The 413 stores will be sold to C&S Wholesale Grocers in a move that was clearly anticipated by the companies involved, even before the unions began vocally opposing the merger.
Kroger, which owns Fred Meyer, will also sell several of its other entities and private label brands. C&S will get eight distribution centers and two offices.
All fueling stations and pharmacies associated with the divested stores will stay with them as they are shed from the Kroger/Albertsons alliance.
Kroger offered $20 billion to buy Albertsons, and take on about $4.7 billion of Albertson’s debt. The deal is expected to close early next year, if the Federal Trade Commission does not cave into the unions trying to prevent the merger.
On Thursday, President Joe Biden ensured the emergency that began after Sept. 11, 2001 will extend another year, giving him broad powers over the organization of the military.
The proclamation, “The National Emergency with Respect to Certain Terrorist Attacks,” means the nation will be in a state of emergency for at least 23 years since Muslim terrorists attacked the country, killing nearly 3,000 people in New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania.
The one-year extension of President George W. Bush’s original Proclamation 7463 comes just four days before the 22nd anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
“Because the terrorist threat continues, the national emergency declared on September 14, 2001, and the powers and authorities adopted to deal with that emergency must continue in effect beyond September 14, 2023. Therefore, I am continuing in effect for an additional year the national emergency that was declared on September 14, 2001, with respect to the terrorist threat,” the proclamation says.
Biden will spend Sept. 11 traveling home from Vietnam, and will make a quick stop for fuel in Alaska, where he will take part in a brief ceremony at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson.
Aviators in Alaska will be observing a temporary flight restriction around Anchorage on Sept. 11, due to the president’s stopover.
Western Washington transit agencies promised to take steps to improve safety following a University of Washington report that found small traces of fentanyl and methamphetamine in the air and on surfaces of transit vehicles.
According to the report, out of 78 air samples collected by UW researchers, 25% had detectable fentanyl and 100% had detectable methamphetamine.
Out of 102 surface samples, 46% had detectable fentanyl and 98% had detectable methamphetamine.
Researchers collaborated with five transit agencies, which also provided funding: King County Metro, Sound Transit, Everett Transit and Community Transit in Snohomish County, and Tri-Met in the Portland metro area.
Sound Transit said it is taking several steps to enhance safety and security, including enforcement of transit code of conduct, more frequent and enhanced cleaning protocols, and improved filtration on light rail vehicles.
In a statement, King County Metro said that the report’s findings reaffirmed its strategies are the right ones. Metro’s strategies include discouraging or preventing drug use on transit as the first step in reducing drug levels in the air and on surfaces. The department has 120 transit security officers, and is budgeted to grow to 140.
King County Metro recently upgraded ventilation on its transit vehicles, and its buses are outfitted with MERV-11 and MERV-13 filters, which are considered the best possible filtration available for transit vehicles and capable of filtering airborne viruses and drug smoke particulates.
The agency said it is in the process of converting the remaining 448 buses from MERV-11 to MERV-13 filters in the coming weeks. Daily wipe-downs of high-touch areas and the driver’s area also will continue.
Community Transit, the public transit authority of Snohomish County, said it is expanding the agency’s Transit Security Officer program. Officers work closely with others, including the Transit Police Unit, social workers, service ambassadors and field supervisors.
The agency intends to upgrade air filters on its buses from MERV-7 to MERV-13 filters. Community Transit is working to complete installation of the new filters by the end of September.
Everett Transit said it is prioritizing developing an early and coordinated response to discouraging the impacts of illegal substance use on its public transit.
The State of Alaska took its fight against the U.S. Forest Service to court on Friday, contesting the Biden Administration’s repeal of President Donald Trump’s 2020 Alaska Roadless Rule. The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in Alaska, aims to restore the Trump-era rule, emphasizing its importance to Southeast Alaska’s economic and socioeconomic development.
Southeast Alaska once had a vibrant timber industry, but starting with the administration of President Bill Clinton, the timber companies have been locked out of any reasonable access to timber harvesting because they are not allowed to build roads in almost any part of the forested area of the national forest. Logging by helicopter in the small tracts provided by the Forest Service is uneconomic.
Court battles had continued for decades, and finally the Trump Administration had restored the ability to build limited access roads in the Tongass. Then came the Biden Administration, which almost immediately reinstated the Clinton roadless rule in the Tongass.
“Alaskans deserve access to the resources that the Tongass provides – jobs, renewable energy resources, and tourism. It’s not acceptable for a government plan to treat human beings within a working forest like an invasive species,” said Gov. Mike Dunleavy.
The Tongass National Forest, spanning almost 17 million acres, is the largest forest in the country, and is home to over 71,000 Alaska residents.
“The Tongass National Forest has robust environmental protections in place, and the Roadless Rule is both unnecessary and continues to cripple the future of Alaskan communities,” said Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor. “The State seeks to obtain a final and enduring win with this litigation, in what it hopes to be the final chapter of this long-running saga.”
California’s law that prohibits open carry of handguns without a license is on thin legal standing.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered a lower court to reconsider its ruling because the lower court had “abused its discretion” when it did not prevent the open-carry handgun law from being enforced while it is being challenged.
The Appeals Court instructed the lower court with language that will ultimately make it more difficult to uphold the ban.
The Ninth Circuit judges sent the ruling back to the district judge and provided instructions on how she should view the constitutional questions, giving the lower court judge side rails that make it more difficult for the state to prove its laws are constitutional.
The case involves two men — Mark Baird and Richard Gallardo — who want to exercise their right to openly carry handguns in California.
California says that in counties that have over 200,000 residents, open carry is prohibited without a license. Although Baird and Gallardo do live in counties smaller than 200,000, were not able to get open-carry permits from California.
The two men have been litigating the matter since 2019 and have asked the lower court on three different occasions to stop enforcing the law that criminalizes open carry.
The district judge, who is an Obama appointee, denied the men’s request for a preliminary injunction in 2020.
Baird and Gallardo took their case to the Ninth Circuit to get a reversal of that denial. A three-judge panel granted their wish on Thursday. The judges on the panel were two Trump appointees and a George W. Bush appointee, who found that the district court judge had abused the legal standard when she denied the preliminary injunction.
“This appeal presents the question whether, in a case in which a plaintiff alleges a constitutional violation, a district court can deny a motion for a preliminary injunction without analyzing the plaintiff’s likelihood of success on the merits,” Judge Lawrence VanDyke wrote in the ruling. “The answer to that question is clear: a district court may not do so.”
The panel gave the lower court judge instructions on how she must consider the law in her ruling. She will be required to determine if California’s sweeping open-carry ban is covered by the Second Amendment. She must also consider if the State of California can show that an open-carry ban was in place when the Second Amendment or the 14th Amendment was ratified.
The lower court judge must also determine if Baird and Gallardo are likely to win their appeal on the basic right to open carry.
On a 51-48 vote, the U.S. Senate confirmed Democrat Gwynne Wilcox to her second five-year term on the National Labor Relations Board. Both Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska, were the only Republicans to vote in favor. In a separate procedural vote, her confirmation was sealed 51-48, with only Murkowski and Sullivan voting with democrats, as West Virginia’s Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat, voted against Wilcox, and Democrat Sen. Cory Booker was absent.
The vote gives 15 more months to the board’s Democratic majority that hears unfair labor practice cases brought by unions, and also has oversight for union elections.
Wilcox’s confirmation maintains a 3-1 advantage that Democrats have on the board. President Joe Biden has not named a Republican to fill the Republican seat that has been vacant since last year, and he appears to be in no hurry to do so.
Murkowski told Bloomberg News that she had assurances from the White House that a candidate to fill the Republican vacancy at the NLRB has been sent to the White House and will receive Senate consideration.
Democrats objected Thursday afternoon to unanimous passage of Sen. J.D. Vance’s proposed legislation that would ban federal mask mandates through the end of 2024.
Without unanimous passage, Vance’s bill must work through Senate committees before possibly being returned to the floor for a vote.
Sen. Ed Markey, D-Massachusetts, objected on the Senate floor, saying the bill is a distraction and misleading, saying every health care option should be available to officials at the local level.
“This bill is a red herring. It’s a distraction. It’s misleading and it’s meant to distract what the GOP stands for right now, which is gimmicks,” Markey said. “They will make us less safe because they will be tying the hands of health care professionals.”
Vance, R-Ohio, said the legislation does not stop anyone from wearing a mask and allows local communities to make their own mask decisions. It would prevent a federal mandate.
“The legislation doesn’t prevent anyone from wearing a mask,” Vance said. “What I would like is for the freedom of a school child to not be thrown out of class because he doesn’t wear a mask. We are about to have some serious respiratory problems. We always do in the fall, and maybe it will be worse this fall and this winter than before. I think that what our children need is for us not to be chicken little about every single little respiratory problem. We cannot repeat the anxiety, the stress and the nonstop panic of the last couple of years.”
On Tuesday, Vance announced the proposed legislation that would stop any federal official, including the president, from implementing a mask mandate through the end of next year.
It would stop mandates for domestic air travel, public transit systems or primary and secondary schools, along with colleges and universities.
It would also stop airlines, transit authorities and educational institutions from refusing to serve anyone not wearing a mask.
Co-sponsors include Sens. John Barrasso, R-Wyoming; Josh Hawley, R-Missouri; Eric Schmitt, R-Missouri; Mike Braun, R-Indiana; Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyoming; Roger Marshall, R-Kansas; Ted Budd, R-North Carolina; Marsha Blackburn, R-Tennessee; and Katie Britt, R-Alabama.
THEY SHOULD JUST KEEP FLYING ON ADMINISTRATIVE HOT AIR
By SUZANNE DOWNING
The Biden Administration has been flying cabinet and subcabinet members to and from Alaska all summer. From Transportation Sec. Pete Buttigieg to Interior Sec. Deb Haaland, EPA Administrator Michael Regan, and Health Assistant Sec. Rachel Levine, it’s been an impressive parade of diversity, equity, and inclusion sock puppets who regurgitate the party line.
The Big Guy himself arrives in state on Monday to – oddly enough – commemorate the anniversary of the 9-11 terrorist attacks on the United States.
Biden’s trip through Alaska is merely an afterthought that is also a travel convenience for him, as he fits in a short wreath-laying ceremony on Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson because Air Force One needs to top off on its way back from communist Vietnam.
JBER has little-to-no actual connection to the events of Sept. 11, 2001, other than the fact that our military members were put on high alert, as were all military personnel across the nation. His plans are being criticized for being tone deaf.
While Biden is making nice with the new president of Vietnam, who is a Communist Party apparatchik, it’s worth remembering for a moment that the first firefighter to enter the burning Pentagon was a Vietnam War veteran, Alan Wallace, who had served as a medic during the Tet Offensive, working 24-hour shifts saving lives of the wounded as rockets fell around him on top of the hospital. Biden could not be bothered to return on time to honor the heroism of those like Wallace who rushed into the fire at the Pentagon to save lives, and to mourn the losses of the sons and daughters of America that day.
Biden’s visit to Alaska is also awkward for another reason. After this week’s latest economic attack by Biden on Alaska, he will not be warmly welcomed by most leaders of the 49th state. As far as elected and civic leaders are concerned, Biden should ride a dog-faced pony back to D.C. and leave the jet fuel to those who appreciate how it gets made in this world.
On Wednesday, the Biden administration drove a knife into the state’s fragile economy and its future hopes by yanking back already-signed leases for oil and gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s 1002 area. He’s bound and determined to shore up his environmentalist, one-issue-voter base, which has been threatening to leave him over an earlier decision this year to approve the ConocoPhillips’ Willow Project.
He also ordered no more oil and gas in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.
The Biden cancellation of these required leases brings the total to 55 executive orders and actions that have targeted Alaska’s economy since Biden took office.
Then, to make the slap sting even harder, the Interior Department announced it will hold a new ANWR lease sale … Insert your own laugh track here.
The Biden Administration is pretending to hold another lease in order to pretend to be meeting the letter of laws that require the federal government to hold lease sales. Joe Biden doesn’t intend to honor those lease sales any more than he did the last one. It’s Kabuki theater.
As Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan has asked: What investor in their right mind would invest in such a playacting lease, with the federal government jerking leaseholders around, like it does?
Rep. Mary Peltola, who won the right to represent Alaska after the death of Congressman Don Young, says she is “deeply frustrated” by the reversal of the lease agreements. This has been her modus operandi whenever the Biden Administration goes against Alaska’s best interests: She’s frustrated. Or sad. Or disappointed. But she backs Biden nonetheless in his bid for reelection.
What did Peltola do on the very day that Biden canceled Alaska’s economy? She held a Juneau fundraiser for her reelection campaign that featured special guests California Democrat Rep. Eric Swalwell and Michigan Democrat Rep. Dan Kildee, who co-sponsored a bill in 2021 to permanently ban energy development in the portion of Alaska’s Arctic set aside for oil and gas.
Biden and Peltola are two peas in a pod. While Biden is pleading with OPEC to produce more oil, and a few months ago gave Chevron permission to restart Venezuela oil sales, he’s destroying American energy independence with each passing day.
This is how you would bring America to its knees if you were bent on destroying free markets and prosperity, says Rick Whitbeck, Alaska director for Power the Future.
“You damage the ability for the country to respond to international changes in supply,” says Whitbeck. “Sudden geopolitical power plays create emergencies that will bite us hard if we don’t have a solid domestic energy solution.”
Biden, Peltola and the Democrats are playing games with Alaska and America’s future. They are advancing policies that run up the national debt, run down the private sector economy, weaken the military, and destroy our energy independence.
They are playing right into the hands of despots abroad in China, Russia and across the Middle East who cheer on these sock puppets who determined to erode America from within.
U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance says he plans to ask for unanimous passage today of his bill banning federal mask mandates until the end of next year.
If the move fails, Vance, R-Ohio, said it shows Democrats plan to bring back masks.
“Democrats insist they have no plans to mandate masking again. So, let’s hold them to their words and end the specter of Covid-19 tyranny for good,” Vance said in a news release. “Today, I will go to the Senate floor to request unanimous consent on my ‘Freedom to Breathe Act.’ That means if no one objects, the bill passes automatically. But if Senate Democrats block my legislation, they must be planning to reinstate mask mandates once again.”
On Tuesday, Vance announced the proposed legislation that would stop any federal official, including the president, from implementing a mask mandate through the end of 2024.
It would stop mandates for domestic air travel, public transit systems or primary and secondary schools, along with colleges and universities.
It would also stop airlines, transit authorities and educational institutions from refusing to serve anyone not wearing a mask.
Thursday morning, the freshman senator said Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN that Covid-19 cases are spiking and people should again begin wearing masks.
“We all know how this goes. It starts with mask mandates, then social distancing, and then forced lockdowns to ‘slow the spread,’” Vance said. “None of it works, but it costs us dearly. It robbed us of our basic freedoms and shattered our national unity amid a crisis. We cannot let it happen again.”
The most recent numbers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control show hospital admissions related to Covid-19 rose 15.7% from July 28 to Aug. 26.
In Ohio, those numbers increased 15%.
Ohio lifted its statewide mask mandate in June 2021, nearly a year after Gov. Mike DeWine issued it.
