Category: Goobermint

BLUF
At this point, after multiple ignored corrections, it’s a stretch to pretend that the president’s misstatements are accidental; he obviously doesn’t care about their truth. What’s important to him and his supporters is achieving their policy goals, even if they have to lie to do so.

President Biden Lies About Guns. Again.
Amidst official hysteria over “misinformation,” the president continues to willfully misrepresent the facts on firearms.

Government lies aren’t new; political fibs have such deep roots in history that you could open a museum of official mendacity and have enough rotating exhibits to keep things fresh. But now, amidst much hysteria over “misinformation,” we see a resident of the White House misrepresent facts in pursuit of restrictions on legal ownership of firearms and ignore corrections. President Biden’s claim that bullets fired from AR-15’s are impossibly speedy is only the latest example of his continuing lies about guns.

“There’s no justification for a weapon of war. None. The speed of that bullet is five times that that comes out of the muzzle of most weapons. It can penetrate your vests,” President Biden huffed last week. “What in God’s name do you need an assault weapon for?” he added.

This wasn’t the first time the president insisted on the supposed superpowers of so-called “assault weapons” and especially of AR-15s, which are popular among gun owners.

“Do you realize the bullet out of an AR-15 travels five times as rapidly as a bullet shot out of any other gun, five times—is lighter—and can pierce Kevlar?” he insisted on August 30 while touting his administration’s “Safer America Plan,” which includes tighter firearms restrictions.

Really? Well, no.

“President Biden’s statement that a bullet shot from an AR-15 travels 5x faster than a bullet shot out of ‘any other gun’ is false,” Greg Wallace, a Campbell University law professor who focuses on Second Amendment issues, told The Washington Post early in September. As for bullets fired from AR-15s piercing Kevlar, “that is true of almost all centerfire rifle bullets. Body armor protection against rifle bullets require steel, ceramic, or composite plates.”

“Biden was clearly wrong in his statement this week,” the Post‘s Glenn Kessler concluded.

In fact, the 5.56x45mm round most commonly fired by an AR-15 (which can be chambered in multiple calibers) is faster than many rifle rounds with a muzzle velocity of roughly 3,100 feet per second, but slower than others (a few exceed 4,000 fps). And speed only partially measures the lethality and utility of a cartridge. Military types, hunters, and enthusiasts are forever debating the issue. So is Biden.

“A 9mm bullet blows the lung out of the body,” the president improbably claimed in May about the popular handgun cartridge, again while touting gun restrictions. Knowledgeable people had fun pointing out that Biden seemed to have confused the round with a cannon. But Biden lies about cannons, too.

“When the amendment was passed, it didn’t say anybody can own a gun and any kind of gun and any kind of weapon,” Biden insisted with regard to the Second Amendment in February. “You couldn’t buy a cannon in—when the—this—this amendment was passed.”

“As other fact-checkers noted when Biden made versions of this claim at least twice before, nothing in the Second Amendment said that citizens could not own cannons, and there is no evidence that any federal or state laws barred possession of the weapons at the time,” the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s FactCheck.org pointed out.

Biden had been called out on precisely that point the previous year, by The Washington Post, and in 2020 when PolitiFact rated his claims as “false.” So, the fibs appear deliberate, not just slips of the tongue. So are his misstatements about legal protections for the firearms industry.

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BLUF
The fact that so many things once deemed “conspiracy theories” have turned out to be true harms the credibility of the scientific community, especially those working in or in league with the federal government. To turn that around, there needs to be honesty and transparency. You aren’t going to get that from the Biden administration, though.

Another COVID-19 Vaccine Claim Collapses, No Apologies to Be Found

Over the course of the last several years, there have been a series of claims about the COVID-19 vaccines that have collapsed in light of various studies.

Most infamously, the idea that the vaccines stop the transmission of the virus permeated all the way to the highest levels of government, including the President of the United States. Those false assertions then formed the basis of federal mandates, including a vicious campaign against the “unvaccinated” that never made any scientific sense.

Unfortunately, there’s another example to add to the list after it was revealed that prior claims about mRNA not being transferred through breast milk were false. That despite “fact-checks” back in 2021 asserting that wasn’t possible.

Here is the summary of the study, which gives the nod to the vaccines before noting that breastfeeding mothers were never tested by the CDC to see what was being transmitted.

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BLUF
It’s about those “weapons of war” the violence monopolists are trying to swindle the people into turning their backs on and surrendering. It’s about tricking Americans into thinking it’s all about hunting (which they then regulate through licensing, restrictions, and lead ammunition bans that are extended to the non-sporting gun owner population). And by appointing known prohibitionists and masking their affiliations, the Hunting and Wildlife Conservation Council is doing its part to help spread the deception.

Hunting Council Masks Hostility to Founding Intent with Gun Banner’s Appointment

U.S.A. – -(Ammoland.com)- “The Hunting and Wildlife Conservation Council’s purpose is to provide recommendations to the Federal Government, through the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Agriculture, that (a) benefit wildlife resources; (b) encourage partnership among the public; sporting conservation organizations; Federal, State, Tribal, and territorial governments; and (c) benefit fair chase recreational hunting and safe recreational shooting sports,” the Council declares on its website.

A name included among primary council members raises a red flag, particularly in how it is presented:

“Ryan Busse (Unaffiliated) representing shooting sports interests”

“The appointment of Ryan Busse to the Hunting and Wildlife Conservation Council, a federal advisory committee, is a farce and demonstrates the contempt the Biden administration holds for lawful gun owners who hunt on America’s public and private lands,” Mark Oliva, the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s Managing Director of Public Affairs tells AmmoLand News. Busse was listed as ‘unaffiliated,’ but that is not true. He is not an unaffiliated shooting sports interest expert.”

“He is an advisor for the Giffords gun control group and has openly advocated the ban on the most popular selling centerfire rifle in America – the Modern Sporting Rifle (MSR),” Oliva explained. “He has published a book advocating radical gun control policies.”

“Glaringly absent, however, is any representative from the firearm and ammunition industry even though the industry is responsible for the vast majority of conservation funds through the Pittman-Robertson excise tax,” Oliva continued. “To date, the firearm and ammunition industry has provided over $15.3 billion to wildlife conservation since 1937 and over $1.1 billion of the conservation funds apportioned to the states last year was directly tied to taxes paid by firearm and ammunition manufacturers.”

“The Biden administration has politicized this advisory council to legitimize Busse and the far-left gun control policies he and the gun control group he represents,” Oliva concluded. “This is a sham and doesn’t come close to representing the interests of lawful gun owners who hunt and are faithful stewards of the precious wildlife resources our nation enjoys.”

Readers here are well aware of Busse and the danger he represents to the right to keep and bear arms. Once a highly compensated industry insider, he now masks his (that is, his Giffords benefactors’) citizen disarmament goals with the obligatory big “but” qualifier:

I believe in the Second Amendment but…

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How the US Squandered Its Strategic Minerals

  • While China has been relentlessly pursuing self-reliance when it comes to raw materials — especially strategic ones such as titanium, tungsten and cobalt, which are used in the defense industry — the US for the past several decades has been selling off huge chunks of the strategic minerals stockpile to the extent that the National Defense Stockpile is reportedly reaching insolvency.
  • By comparison, China, as of 2020, was the world’s third-largest exporter of titanium, while the US was the number one destination for the Chinese titanium exports.
  • It is China’s growing influence in Africa, especially through its Belt and Road Initiative, the global infrastructure and economic development project that the Chinese Communist Party launched in 2013, that has helped China achieve such near monopolies when it comes to precious resources and raw materials.
  • The rare earths dependency on China stems in part from the fact that extracting rare earth minerals is an extremely polluting process that China has been willing to undertake, while most other countries have not, including the US, which ironically prides itself on having extremely strict environmental regulations in place.
  • The US, according to Reuters, has only one rare earths mine and no capability to process rare earth minerals. If China were to stop exporting them to the US, the country would fast run out of the basic building blocks required to produce the military hardware that the US needs, not to mention all the other items where rare earth minerals are needed.
  • At present, 40 out of Africa’s 54 countries participate in China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
  • “Beijing has increased its control of African commodities through strategic direct investment in oil fields, mines, and production facilities, as well as through resource-backed loans that call for in-kind payments of commodities. This control threatens the ability of U.S. companies to access key supplies.” — U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, 2020 Report to Congress.
While China has been relentlessly pursuing self-reliance when it comes to raw materials — especially strategic ones that are used in the defense industry — the US for decades has been selling off huge chunks of its strategic minerals stockpile. Pictured: A front-loader shifts soil containing rare earth minerals, to be loaded on ships at a port in Lianyungang, China, on September 5, 2010. (Photo credit should read STR/AFP via Getty Images)

“The PRC’s [Communist China’s] long-term goal,” the Pentagon wrote in 2020, “is to create an entirely self-reliant defense-industrial sector—fused with a strong civilian industrial and technology sector—that can meet the PLA’s needs for modern military capabilities.”

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Who’s our real president? Joe Biden — or the staffers who keep walking back his comments?

Is Joe Biden President? That’s the question to ask after staffers walked back Biden’s latest remarks on Taiwan.

During his rather uneven “60 Minutes” interview with Scott Pelley last weekend, Biden firmly and clearly announced that the United States would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion.

This was a dramatic statement, and a substantial shift from America’s traditional policy of “strategic ambiguity” on Taiwan, in which our response to Chinese saber-rattling over the island nation was essentially “fool around and find out.” Biden was not at all ambiguous: If China went to war with Taiwan, it would be war with the United States and its allies.

That departure made some sense. Back in February, Biden seemed to grant Vladimir Putin a green light to invade Ukraine. White House spokesmen quickly walked that back, but the green light, coming directly from Biden’s lips, apparently convinced Putin that he could launch an invasion without blowback.

That turned out to be wrong, of course, and now the United States is involved in a proxy war with Russia, while sanctions and export disruptions cause the world’s food and fuel markets to go crazy and have Europe looking at a long, cold winter of gas shortages and electrical blackouts. So firmness, this time.

But Biden’s firmness was short-lived. Within hours, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and other spokesmen were loudly proclaiming US policy had not, in fact, changed at all.

Gordon Chang writes: “This is the fourth time that Joe Biden as president, has publicly stated the U.S. will defend Taiwan. He made that pledge last August to ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos. The President repeated his words to CNN’s Anderson Cooper last October.

“Biden also said the same thing to a reporter in Tokyo in May. White House and administration officials, both anonymously and on the record, have contradicted the President all four times.”

In the Curtiss-Wright Export case, the Supreme Court declared the president the “sole organ” of the nation in foreign affairs, noting the importance of speaking with one voice when dealing with other nations. The formulation, and authoritative expression, of US foreign policy is supposed to come from the president.

Yet over and over again, Biden has been undercut by subordinates who basically said, “Pay no attention to the old man in the Oval Office.”

This won’t do. Either Biden is president, or he is not. If he’s president, then policy should come from him, and it’s the job of subordinates to make that policy work. If they’re doing otherwise, they’re engaged in a sort of coup against the duly elected commander in chief. That presents a serious problem.

If Biden is, instead, a dotard whose pronouncements on foreign affairs should be ignored in favor of the presumably more measured statements of unelected White House apparatchiks, then the office of president is effectively vacant. And that presents serious problems of its own.

A president incapable of serving should resign. There seems no chance Biden will do that. Failing that, he can be removed using the 25th Amendment. Though there was a lot of talk about that amendment under the previous administration, we’re not hearing much about it now.

Removal under the 25th Amendment is difficult and requires most of the Cabinet to go along. Worse, in our situation, it would mean replacing Biden with Vice President Kamala Harris, in whom most people have no more confidence. Harris’ political career was short, and her stint as vice president so far has been unimpressive. Her speeches are, if anything, even less intelligible than Biden’s.

(And next in line of succession is Nancy Pelosi, who, to put it mildly, isn’t a comforting prospect as chief executive.)

So at a time of crisis, our nation is effectively leaderless. Nor is this an accident. The 2020 election was, if not rigged, at least heavily tilted in favor of Biden. Media and Big Tech companies blacked out criticism and allowed Joe to campaign from his basement, where he faced no tough questions. Harris also got a pass, because of her historic status.

Shortly after the election, Time magazine bragged about how a “cabal” of business and media and government folks “saved” the election by ensuring that Biden took office.

Now America has to live with the consequences. Thanks, cabal.

Here’s the Latest Climate Change Projection That Was Totally Wrong

As if this is shocking news, the global warming Armageddon peddlers were wrong again. How many times have we heard that we’re all going to die if we don’t sacrifice economic growth to reduce global temperatures by an indiscernible amount? Democrats had a full-blown meltdown over the haggling about the latest spending bill when it seemed as if it were on life support. If we don’t pass the inflation reduction act, which quickly became a climate change bill—civilization will end. The New York Times had an op-ed declaring that the Democrats’ spending bill just saved the world.

The latest doomsday scenario to be proven incorrect is related to this past summer’s temperature, which was 1.5 degrees warmer than the 50-year average. Yet, it was way off the 5.4-degree projection cast by Professor James Hansen, one of the godfathers of the global warming hysteria. Hansen is known for his series of congressional testimonies in the 1980s that created public awareness. Steve Milloy used The Washington Post’s tool regarding temperature changes this past summer to expose the shoddy projection.

It’s a pattern that cannot be ignored. The climate change prognosticators said in 2007 that the Artic Ice Cap would melt by 2013. In 2013, the ice cap was intact and had grown by 538,000 square miles. That same year, it was the calmest hurricane season in almost 20 years. It was also the quietest tornado season that year in nearly 60 years. To flashforward to the present, the 2022 hurricane season is now the most undisturbed in almost three decades.

In the 1970s, people who predicted the total annihilation of humanity over global warming thought that ‘global cooling’ would create a massive food crisis as the North American continent would undergo another period of glaciation. That didn’t happen either, but we must listen to them now and waste trillions in economic output and growth to avert disaster. If we don’t heed their warnings, we could all be dead in 12 years or something. In other news, we have another great weekend of football, college, and professional. That’s much more important than anything these green people say since they’ve been wrong about everything.

Well, yes they can. And it’s not just by the GPS feature. That’s because the thing has to to continually communicate with a cell tower, that’s recorded and can be tracked.

Federal, State, and Local Law Enforcement Can Track You on Your Phone

It is hard to imagine that James Madison — who wrote the words of the Fourth Amendment, which limits the ability of the federal government to intrude upon the privacy of its citizens — would approve of it, but law enforcement from local police to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) can now track your every movement.

How? A data broker known as Fog Data Science, based in Madison’s home state of Virginia, is now selling geolocation data to state and local law enforcement. Federal law enforcement obtains its information on American citizens from other data brokers. Either way, law enforcement can track exactly where you have been at any time over the past several years.

Personal data is collected through the multitude of applications that Americans use on either their Android or iOS smartphones. Data brokers then sell that data to others, including Fog Data Science, which in turn sells it to local law-enforcement agencies across the country, including Broward County, Florida; New York City; and Houston. And it is not just big cities. Lawrence, Kansas, police use it, as well as the sheriff of Washington County in Ohio.

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It’s bizarre when a senile President actually seems to believe his own BS.
And I know a perfect rationale for owning ARs & AKs. The founders were very concerned about what our goobermint might turn into – SloJoe and his puppetmasters being a prime current example – and made the best provisions they could against such within the Constitution & Bill of Rights.

Joe Biden: Continued Sale of ‘Semiautomatic Weapons Is Bizarre’

During the September 18 airing of CBS News’s 60 Minutes, President Joe Biden described the continued sale of semiautomatic weapons as “bizarre.”

Scott Pelley conducted a wide-ranging interview with Biden, but when it turned to guns and gun policy, Biden pledged once again to ban “assault weapons.”

Biden suggested that “there is no rationale” for owning firearms like AR-15s, AK-47s, etc.

He talked of visiting Uvalde, Texas, after the May 24, 2022, school shooting, saying he not only visited there but “every one of those places.”

Biden observed, “The NRA continuing to push the sale of assault and semiautomatic weapons is bizarre.”

On August 26, 2022, Breitbart News noted that Biden renewed his pledge to ban “assault weapons” if Democrats manage to hang onto Congress after the November midterm elections.

The Washington Post quoted Biden saying, “I want to be crystal clear about what’s on the ballot this year … Your right to choose is on the ballot this year. The Social Security you paid for from the time you had a job is on the ballot. The safety of our kids from gun violence is on the ballot.”

He later added, “If we elect two more senators, we keep the House … we’re going to get a lot of unfinished business done.”

Biden stressed that banning “assault weapons” is part of the Democrats’ unfinished business.

SAF ‘Journalism Project’ Hits Biden White House with FOIA Request RE: Gun Control

The Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project has filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Biden White House in an effort to see how deeply imbedded the gun prohibition movement is within Joe Biden’s administration.

Biden stepped into the presidency with an acknowledged gun prohibition agenda. He wants to ban semi-automatic modern sport/utility rifles, and even acknowledged in 2021 he would like to ban 9mm pistols. While there have been published reports of his administration’s interactions with the gun control crowd, there is no indication he has reached out to any gun rights organizations.

The FOIA request was made by IJP editor Lee Williams, whose coverage of gun-related news appears in TheGunMag.com, a SAF-owned publication, as well as several other online news sites. Williams’ reports have occasionally at Liberty Park Press.

Via email, Williams told Liberty Park, “The Biden-Harris administration runs the least transparent White House in recent history. Everything is conducted in secret, behind closed doors. Through this Freedom of Information Act request, we will start holding the shot-callers accountable for their constant infringements on our Second Amendment rights. At the very least, we will find out who’s actually orchestrating their war on our guns.”

In a prepared statement to the media, SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb said the FOIA request was necessary in order to learn just how closely and under-the-radar the Biden White House is working with the gun prohibition lobby on legislation and other efforts that may impair Second Amendment rights.

However, this looks purely like a First Amendment issue.

“Joe Biden is a perennial anti-gun-rights politician and he has spent his entire career pushing various gun control schemes that would turn the right to keep and bear arms into a heavily-regulated privilege,” Gottlieb observed. “Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, we might be able to learn just how deeply entrenched the gun ban movement has become in his administration.”

The FOIA request seeks copies of all documents, including emails and visitor logs, between the White House and gun control and gun safety groups including, but not limited to, Everytown for Gun Safety, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, The Trace, Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, Third Way, Newtown Action Alliance, Gun Control Giving Fund, Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, Violence Policy Center, Gun Violence Archive, Sandy Hook Promise, March for Our Lives, Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, Alliance for Gun Responsibility and Guns Down America.

“If the Biden White House declines to produce the requested materials, we’re going to wonder why,” Gottlieb said, “and we will not be satisfied until we get some answers, even if it means a court fight.”

 

The Pandemic Is NOT Over, Says the White House
If Biden doesn’t represent the Biden administration, who does?

By now, the pattern is familiar: President Biden says something stupid and/or insane and/or contradictory to his administration’s stated policies, and his beleaguered staffers need to run around denying that he meant what he very clearly said. This might be the first time they’ve had to do so twice in one day, though.

First they had to walk back Grandpa Joe’s comments on Taiwan. And now, inevitably:

Twitter avatar for @betsy_kleinBetsy Klein @betsy_klein

President Biden told CBS the “pandemic is over,” but those comments do not constitute a change in the administration’s Covid-19 response policy, an official tells CNN White House says Covid-19 policy unchanged despite Biden’s comments that the ‘pandemic is over’ | CNN PoliticsThe Biden administration is largely downplaying President Joe Biden’s comments declaring the coronavirus pandemic “over,” suggesting his remarks signal a continuation of the White House’s evolving stance toward the pandemic over the past few months.cnn.com

September 19th 2022

Did you get that? The president of the United States doesn’t speak for the White House. Biden is not in charge of the Biden administration.

So… who is?

Who’s running the show? It sure isn’t Kamala. And Jill — excuse me, Doctor Jill — is just barely more lucid than her husband. Who’s the boss of that house? Ron Klain? Susan Rice? Ex-PFC Wintergreen? What the hell is going on?

“Crisis of Crimes”: New Orleans Becomes Murder Capital of America

Progressives in top city leadership positions have helped transform New Orleans into the murder capital of America.

WSJ reported the Louisiana city on the Mississippi River, near the Gulf of Mexico, recorded the highest homicide rate of any major city so far this year, with 41 homicides per 100,000 residents.

Metropolitan Crime Commission Inc., a nonprofit that works on crime-reducing strategies in the city, said the homicide rate is up 141% compared with the same period in 2019. It pointed out carjackings are up 210%, shootings 100%, and armed robberies up 25%.

“The homicide rate is on pace to surpass last year’s rate, which was the worst since Hurricane Katrina in 2005,” WSJ noted. 

The city’s alarming spike in the homicide rate comes at the same time as “progressive prosecutor” Jason Williams became the district attorney of the metro area in early 2021. He promised a “more selective” approach to prosecutions that goes “beyond punishment.”

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Joe Biden Delivers a Mess of a 60 Minutes Interview, Leaves His Handlers Scrambling

Joe Biden appeared on 60 Minutes on Sunday evening, and it was an absolute disaster of an interview. As I type this, stories are already coming out about how he blindsided officials in his administration and how his handlers are scrambling to clean up the mess.

In fact, within an hour of the interview premiering, the first clarification had already dropped regarding comments the president made about defending Taiwan from a Chinese attack. That was the second time in the last few months that the administration has had to walk back Biden’s comments on the subject.

Things didn’t get better as the topics changed. When asked about inflation, Biden gave perhaps the worst answer imaginable.

When it comes to bad economic news, there are two ways to handle it as a president. The right way is to admit the truth and then lay out a quantifiable plan for how to improve things. Americans are very forgiving of politicians who speak plainly to them. On the other hand, the wrong way is to simply pretend like everything is actually great and that anyone who doesn’t think so is an idiot. Guess which strategy Biden has chosen?

The dismissive snark about an 8.3 inflation rate that is crushing the poor and middle-class is just astonishing to witness. His skin is so thin you can see straight through it, and while I know Biden doesn’t have to live with any of the consequences of his policies, you’d think he could at least fake it a little. Besides, his excuse doesn’t even make sense. Who cares if the rate only went up “an inch” if the overall rate is still sky-high? Core inflation continues to rise, mainly driven by food and housing (including rent) prices.

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It must have finally dawned on them that it stopped working from them politically

Biden: ‘The pandemic is over.’

President Biden declared the coronavirus pandemic “over” in an interview that aired Sunday, pointing to the return of large events and the lack of masking and other public health measures in place nationwide.

“We still have a problem with COVID. We’re still doing a lotta work on it. It’s — but the pandemic is over. if you notice, no one’s wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape. And so I think it’s changing. And I think this is a perfect example of it.”

The United States is still recording an average of more than 400 deaths per day from COVID-19, according to New York Times data, and more than 1 million Americans have died from the virus since the pandemic began in early 2020.

Highly contagious variants have spread throughout the globe, making it nearly impossible to fully eradicate COVID-19.

As a result, the Biden administration has focused its messaging on the importance of getting vaccinated and receiving booster shots to increase immunity, as well as the wide availability of of antiviral pills and other forms of treatment for those who contract the virus.

Biden himself contracted COVID-19 in July, but experienced only mild symptoms, according to his doctor. Officials credited his mild case to being fully vaccinated and taking the antiviral drug Paxlovid.

The U.S. and much of the world has returned to hosting large events over the past year, like the auto show, and done away with requirements that attendees wear masks or provide proof of vaccination. The U.S. still requires foreign visitors to be fully vaccinated to come to the country by plane.

The World Health Organization (WHO) still categorizes COVID-19 as a pandemic.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, Biden’s top medical adviser on the pandemic, said earlier this year the U.S. was moving “out of the pandemic phase” with COVID-19, pointing to the manageable levels of hospitalizations and deaths in the country.

Biden has in the past argued that the United States had turned a corner on the pandemic, most notably during a speech on Independence Day in 2021, when he asserted the country had the tools necessary to “declare independence” from the virus.

But in the weeks that followed, the delta variant contributed to a surge in cases and deaths. And in late 2021 into early 2022, the omicron variant again led to a spike in cases and deaths. Newly available booster shots were designed specifically to shield Americans from severe cases of the omicron variant.

In the 60 Minutes interview, Biden said the “impact on the psyche of the American people as a consequence of the pandemic is profound.”

“Think of how that has changed everything. You know, people’s attitudes about themselves, their families, about the state of the nation, about the state of their communities. And so there’s a lot of uncertainty out there, a great deal of uncertainty. And we lost a million people. A million people to COVID,” he said.

“When I got in office, when I got elected, only 2 million people had been vaccinated. I got 220 million — my point is it takes time,” he added. “We were left in a very difficult situation. It’s been a very difficult time. Very difficult.”

Demand for private security is booming in Minneapolis.

In June 2020, the Minneapolis city council famously vowed to defund the police department. Though their plans fell through, the fully funded MPD is nonetheless struggling. More than 250 officers have resigned or retired since then. Earlier this year, the Minneapolis supreme court ruled that the city has a duty to staff the MPD with a minimum of 731 sworn officers, but the department is at least 100 officers short of that target. Meantime, crime has spiked, with 96 homicides in 2021—doubling the number in 2019 and tying a 1995 record.

Private security has stepped into the breach. The number of licenses approved for new private providers rose from 14 in 2019 to 27 in 2021, according to data from Minnesota’s Board of Private Detective and Protective Agent Services. Demand is exploding as businesses increasingly opt for private guards over off-duty cops.

Christopher Forest started his private security firm, Unparalleled Security, after the rioting of 2020. Today, he has 175 employees. Forest did not set out to start a private security firm, having previously worked as CEO of Minnesota’s largest valet-parking company. But after June 2020, his clients began approaching him with requests for security guards. These clients had once hired off-duty police officers for their security needs, but the MPD’s image after the George Floyd killing made that more difficult.

“I think it just had to do with the temperature in the room when you have a police officer in a venue versus an unarmed security guard,” Forest says.

Michael MacDonald, who runs a smaller private security firm called JomsVikings Protection and Security, agrees. “Stores do not want cops out in front because of the negative attention it can bring to their facilities,” says MacDonald. His license to operate was issued July 31, 2020. Today, he has 18 full-time and ten part-time employees.

High crime means that new clients, such as movie theaters, are entering the market for private security, says Richard Hodson, the chairman of Minnesota’s Board of Private Detective and Protective Agent Services. Hodson says he knows of a retired police officer who recently got a license to run his own private security firm but has had to turn down contracts because he cannot hire enough guards to staff them. Demand exceeds supply.

Businesses still fear negative publicity from taking an aggressive enforcement stance. Forest says retail clients instruct his guards not to confront shoplifters. “Retail is in a place where they do not want you to even address the person,” he says. “You are not to talk to them. You are not to approach them. You are not to ask to see the items in their bag. If they are purchasing something, you are asked to not look at the receipt. You are 100 percent visual deterrent, and that is all.”

That approach isn’t universal. MacDonald says that his guards sometimes confront shoplifters, but never aggressively. “When we zone in on the individual who is stealing, we go over there and we say, ‘Hey, man, we know you stole. Can you just put it back and then leave?’ We start with that approach. We don’t go right to the top,” he says. “I will only take a contract for a store if there is a clear understanding that we are strictly there for employee safety. We are not loss prevention.”

Should guards call police to stop crimes in progress? MacDonald’s personnel tend not to do so for shoplifting. Forest says that some of his guards who work for hotels do intervene if guests are engaging in illegal activities; in theory, they should call the police, but they usually don’t. “If it is not a life threatening situation, the police do not show up,” Forest says. “They let my guards de-escalate on their own.”

Even a nonconfrontational approach can escalate. MacDonald describes an incident that occurred in July: “A guy stole a bag of chips and shoved it down his pants. Our guy made an approach and was like, ‘You can keep the chips, but you still got to go.’ Well, the guy brandished a firearm out of his bag. So our guy pulled his firearm. And then the guy took off running. But our employee had the level of training to remember that he could still re-holster it, and he does not have to engage any further.” That incident merited a rare call to the MPD. “If it gets higher than a theft, like what happened with my employee, then the cops will actually come, because otherwise they are not coming,” says MacDonald.

Some Minneapolis residents still prefer to hire off-duty cops, whom the department makes available through what it calls the “buyback program.” The upscale Lowry neighborhood established the Minneapolis Safety Initiative for off-duty police to conduct patrols. Residents are trying to raise $210,000, suggesting a recurring contribution from their neighbors of $220/month for at least six months. The Minneapolis Safety Initiative attracted significant coverage, including criticism from some who argue that wealthier neighborhoods are purchasing scarce police hours.

Nevertheless, demand for private security is growing. MacDonald and Forest expect to see significant expansion in the year ahead. High crime and police shortages are changing the public-safety landscape in Minneapolis.