JPMorgan Chase Closes Account of Religious Freedom Group, Demands Donor List: Report

JPMorgan Chase has reportedly closed the account of a religious freedom-focused non-profit group and demanded it hand over a list of its donors to secure the account’s reinstatement.

Former Kansas Republican Gov. Sam Brownback, the founder of the National Committee for Religious Freedom (NCRF), told Fox News that the group’s account was closed with no explanation.

“We went into a Chase branch in the District of Columbia to open an account, no problem,” he said, per the outlet. “Then, several weeks later, I went to put another deposit in the account, and they said, ‘Your account has been canceled, we’ll be sending your money back to you.’“

A spokesperson for the bank said the bank did not close the account on the basis of the group’s political and social leanings. [Yeah Riiiight.]

“Of course, I’m not able to speak about confidential client matters. But what I can say is we have never and would never exit a client relationship due to their political or religious affiliation,” the spokesperson told the outlet.

Brownback, however, alleged that other groups had suffered similar treatment. “We’ve just heard of way too many groups and entities, particularly religious-associated ones, that have been canceled by their providers… And we want to start seeing some of these cases investigated.” His organization plans to appeal to state attorneys general to get involved,” he said.

The former lawmaker has requested that CEO Jamie Dimon explain the closure and address concerns that the firm may be closing accounts on the basis of faith or politics. “We are concerned that religious institutions, houses of worship, and people of all faiths are at risk of having their business, credit, or even personal or private bank accounts terminated for any or no reason at all,” he wrote, per the outlet.

Well, alrighty then

Liberals are Getting Vasectomies to Protest Overturning Roe v. Wade

The overturning of Roe v. Wade is forcing more men to take responsibility for their actions.

Those who are not ready to be fathers can no longer rely on their unborn babies being aborted, especially in the South and Midwest where many states now protect – or are fighting in court to protect – unborn babies’ lives.

So, many are choosing to be sterilized instead.

In a new Associated Press report, doctors across the country confirmed that they have seen a noticeable increase in men seeking vasectomies since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health in June.

According to the AP, Dr. Esgar Guarin is working with the Planned Parenthood abortion chain to provide free and reduced-costed vasectomies in November in Missouri and Iowa. He told the news outlet that female sterilization is more common, but vasectomies are cheaper and easier to perform.

“It’s a very particular moment in reproductive rights in the United States. And we need to talk about it,” Guarin said.

Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri reported an increase in both male and female sterilizations compared to last year, doing 42 vasectomies in one month compared to 10 that month in 2021.

Doctors in Florida and Texas, states that restrict or ban the killing of unborn babies in abortions, said they also have been seeing more male patients request sterilizations.

Here’s more from the report:

Dr. Doug Stein, a urological surgeon in the Tampa-St. Petersburg, Florida, area, said patient registrations for his practice tripled immediately after the Dobbs decision, with many patients under the age of 30.

“I think everybody is busier since the Dobbs decision,” said Stein, who co-founded World Vasectomy Day. …

In Texas, Dr. Koushik Shaw said his Austin Urology Institute saw a spike when the state enacted a strict abortion law last year and another, larger one after the U.S. Supreme Court decision, so that it’s now doing 50% more procedures. He said many are for men who don’t want children and saw access to abortion as another option should birth control not work as planned.

“I think people are afraid, No. 1, about abortion not being accessible, which is a very real and legitimate fear and in the reality for a large part of folks in our country. And then I think people are also really afraid that what else might be next,” Dr. Margaret Baum, the medical director of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri, told the AP.

Baum and other abortion activists have been raising baseless claims that pro-lifers want to ban birth control next, which is not true. The goal of the pro-life movement is to protect and value every human being and their right to life, and abortions have destroyed more than 63 million unborn babies’ lives in America alone in the past 50 years.

Pro-life advocates want men and women who do not want to be parents to take responsibility for their actions by abstaining from sex, using birth control or getting sterilized. And the overturning of Roe appears to be prompting more to do so.

It is interesting to hear certain kinds of people insist that the citizen cannot fight the government. This would have been news to the men of Lexington and Concord, as well as the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan. The citizen most certainly can fight the government, and usually wins when he tries. Organized national armies are useful primarily for fighting against other organized national armies. When they try to fight against the people, they find themselves at a very serious disadvantage. If you will just look around at the state of the world today, you will see that the guerillero has the upper hand. Irregulars usually defeat regulars, providing they have the will. Such fighting is horrible to contemplate, but will continue to dominate brute strength. –Jeff Cooper

BLUF
There is not going to be a national divorce. There is going to be a national backlash, a backlash against the stupid, corrupt, and evil ideology of the left. We normal people are not going anywhere. We’re not chopping up our country any more than we are going to tolerate these monsters chopping up our little kids. We will not divorce them. We will defeat them. And it will be glorious.

Instead of a National Divorce, How About a National Backlash?

Dumping the libs and their garbage, blue cities – figuratively throwing their junk out on the lawn just in time for the sprinklers to go off – is so tempting and sounds so sweet. If only we could wave a magic wand and make the weirdos, losers, and mutations of the left just go away, along with annoying states like New Jersey. After all, they are pretty much a significantly less hot Amber Heard, and they are figuratively doing to America what she did to Johnny Depp’s bed.

Pack your stuff, libs, and get out. You’re someone else’s problem now.

But as much fun as it is to simply wish our pinko ex would just disappear and that we in red America could buy a Porsche, rent a condo, lose some weight and get some hair plugs, then hook up with an eager actress/model/whatever half our age, that doesn’t work out when middle-aged accountants do it, and it won’t work out for us if we try it as a country. The devil is in the details, and the details get really, really devilish.

I discuss a national divorce in my most recent non-fiction book, “We’ll Be Back: The Fall and Rise of America,” but I show the consequences of one in my seventh and latest novel in the “People’s Republic” series, the just-released “Inferno.” Beyond all the new book’s gunplay and shooting – there’s a lot – and its cruel mockery of woke, liberal nonsense – there’s a lot of that too – “Inferno” gets into the weeds about what happens when you split a country in two.

The answer is not a lot of good.

When was the last time you heard of a happy divorce, especially when the exes have to live next door to each other? And they would – right next door to us. A national divorce means splitting up the country. This state goes blue, that one red. Some places are easy to take – yeah, blues, Chicago is all yours. But what about the rest of Illinois? Once you get out of Beetlejuice’s hellhole, you are mostly among normal Americans who like America, know which bathroom to use, and don’t murder each other with gleeful abandon. What, are we going to leave them behind the lines?

That’s not going to work well, especially when the blue rulers decide to turn blue America into a giant college campus and mandate that everyone sits to pee as a Harrison Bergeron-esque nod toward urination equity.

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BLOOMBERG HOST TO BIDEN ECON. ADVISER: ARE YOU ‘PUTTING THE POLLS BEFORE AMERICA’S ENERGY SECURITY?’
‘You’ve drained the SPR to its lowest level in four decades’

EXCERPT: [which starts at 1:06 in the vid]

FERRO: “You say it’s a prudent use of the asset. Other people are very worried about this. You’ve drained the SPR to its lowest level in four decades. There’s some accusation that you’re using — you’re putting the polls before America’s energy security. Brian, the Saudis themselves said this morning, that the U.S. requested a one month delay to the OPEC+ output. I wonder why that would be? Brian, can you tell me whether you did ask the Saudis for a one month delay to that decision? Are they telling the truth?”
DEESE: “Look, we clearly — we clearly communicated our views to OPEC members that we thought it was short sighted to for them to take the action that they were contemplating and they announced. With respect to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, this was a calibrated decision to address the real issues in the market. We talked to U.S. industry last winter, we identified that there was about a million barrel a day gap between what they were producing this winter and what they said that they could get production to by late this fall. That million barrel gap was what we calibrated to make the decision on the use of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. And people should feel confident that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve continues to be an asset that we can deploy to address our economic and national security needs. That’s always what has dictated the president’s decision making on this and that’s what will dictate his decision making on this going forward.”

The truth about Michael Bloomberg’s militia fetish

If you don’t control your mind, someone else will. Jim Morrison said that, and it’s as true today as it was when The Doors front man first uttered those prophetic words. When it comes to the right to keep and bear arms, there is no one who wants to control minds more than former New York City mayor and multi-billionaire Michael Bloomberg.

Bloomberg, 80, funds a vast array of anti-gun propagandists who operate across multiple digital and print platforms. Some, such as Bloomberg News, are accepted by the mainstream media as a legitimate news source. Others, such as The Trace, masquerade as journalists but are nothing more than well-paid anti-gun activists with access to unlimited print and pixels.

Bloomberg turned to his loyal staffers at Bloomberg News to launch his latest assault on our gun rights, by trying to change how we define a militia.

The former mayor wants the public to believe that the National Guard is the “well regulated militia” mentioned in the Second Amendment, which is “necessary to the security of a free state.” Therefore, if the public accepts that it’s the National Guardsmen whose right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, our individual gun rights can be eliminated, Bloomberg hopes.

This misinterpretation of the Second Amendment, while laughable, is nothing new. We are the true militia the framers had in mind – everyday Americans who possess modern firearms, ammunition and the skills to use them proficiently.

Here are some recent examples of Bloomberg’s attempts to redefine militia:

  • A Bloomberg News story published July 1 states that the New York Governor signed a law extending property tax relief to veterans who served at least 10 years “in the U.S. Armed Forces or in the organized militia of the State of New York.”
  • A Bloomberg News story published June 29 examined a labor dispute involving active-duty Ohio National Guardsmen – those serving an Active Guard and Reserve, or AGR, tour. “The US Supreme Court accepted the Ohio National Guard’s request to consider whether the agency that oversees federal-sector labor relations also has jurisdiction over state militias,” the reporter wrote.
  • A Bloomberg News story published Aug. 17 profiled an Ohio National Guard unit comprised of high-tech computer specialists including several civilians. It was headlined: “Modern-Day Militia Ready for Fight Against US Election Hacking.”

Telegraphing an attack

These confusing headlines and word-salads were not accidental. They were carefully designed, and they betray the propagandists’ true intent: Change the public’s mindset because another attack on our gun rights is coming.

Fortunately, we have case law and several strong Supreme Court decisions that protect an individual’s right to keep and bear arms. Therefore, in my humble opinion, Bloomberg’s attack will not be a legal one – at least not yet.

This is propaganda, which is designed to alter public opinion and perception, and Bloomberg’s propagandists have always played the long game. They seek to change minds first, which will make it easier to change laws later.

Keep in mind what we’re dealing with: “I don’t know why people carry guns. Guns kill people,” Bloomberg once said, while surrounded by a heavily armed personal security detail, probably.

His attitude and his billions make him our most formidable anti-rights opponent. At least this time we know something is coming

Didn’t President Trump get impeached over something like this?

Did Joe Biden Try to Blackmail the Saudis To Interfere With the Midterms?

As you may recall, a few years ago Joe Biden’s son Hunter got a lucrative board position at Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings, despite having zero relevant experience. So, when Burisma Holdings was being investigated by Ukraine’s then-Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in aid to Ukraine (which is illegal) unless they fired Shokin. This wasn’t mere accusation, as we have video of Biden bragging about his quid pro quo—implicating Barack Obama in the scandal as well.

It looks like Joe Biden is up to his old quid pro quo habits.

Saudi Arabia says that Joe Biden is trying to get the Kingdom to delay a cut in oil production by a month. Why a month? Well, take a look at the calendar and you’ll see that in a month, the midterm elections will be over. Isn’t that convenient?

According to a statement by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, they reject accusations made after OPEC+ cut production of oil describing the decision as the Kingdom “taking sides in international conflicts” and being “politically motivated against the United States of America.”

The Kingdom insisted that OPEC+ decisions are made by consensus, not by a single nation, and that these outcomes are based solely on economic considerations that aim to maintain oil market balance and limit volatility that harms consumers and producers.

The Government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia would also like to clarify that based on its belief in the importance of dialogue and exchange of views with its allies and partners outside the OPEC+ group regarding the situation in the oil markets, the Government of the Kingdom clarified through its continuous consultation with the US Administration that all economic analyses indicate that postponing the OPEC+ decision for a month, according to what has been suggested, would have had negative economic consequences. [emphasis added]

Here’s the full letter:

NJ proposal would require insurance for carry permits

Following the Bruen decision, a lot of states suddenly found their gun control laws null and void. Since these were anti-gun states, it’s unsurprising that many are trying to find new rules that they believe will conform to the ruling.

But New Jersey’s latest proposal has serious issues. Why? An insurance requirement, that’s why.

New Jersey residents hoping to carry guns in public would first be required to buy insurance and complete gun-safety training under a measure to be introduced by legislative leaders on Thursday — steps that, if enacted, would represent some of the strictest gun rules in the country.…
William J. Castner, an adviser to Gov. Philip D. Murphy on firearms issues, said the legal challenges that the New York law is facing will be instructive as New Jersey finalizes its legislation.

“New Jersey at least now has the benefit of crafting this law with an eye toward defending new requirements on training, mandatory insurance, disqualifying offenses and sensitive places where guns will not be allowed at all,” Mr. Castner said.

One novel element in the proposed legislation is the statewide requirement that gun owners applying for permits to carry weapons in public also purchase liability insurance. In January, San Jose, Calif., will begin requiring all gun owners to carry liability insurance, but no state has mandated insurance as a condition of gun ownership.

Except there are issues with the comparison to San Jose.

For one thing, it turns out San Jose’s requirement is basically just homeowner’s insurance. It doesn’t require a specially-crafted policy.

However, mandating liability insurance for people who want a concealed carry permit actually does. There’s no such insurance on the market and, with New Jersey’s population, it’s not likely to create enough of a demand for anyone to actually develop it.

While I have no problem imagining New Jersey officials deciding to do something like this before even looking to see if such a policy exists, I also suspect they already know.

For them, it’s a feature, not a bug.

They can’t be accused of denying people permits if the problem is that no one can meet the requirements, now can they?

Too bad for them that yes, we can.

That’s because it’s one thing if someone is just unable to meet the requirements but quite another if it’s physically impossible for anyone to meet the requirements.

And one like this isn’t likely to survive a legal challenge anyways.

Let’s say, for example, such an insurance policy was created to meet this new demand. If that were the case, then this new requirement would amount to a poll tax. Those have long been declared unconstitutional as you cannot be charged such a fee in order to exercise a basic right.

However, some already think there’s a rebuttal for that:

“Every car on the road is required to have insurance,” said Nicholas Scutari, the Democratic president of the Senate, who is sponsoring the legislation. “We’re going to allow people to have weapons and carry them around with them without insuring them? They’re taking on a lot of responsibility.”

First, driving is categorized as a privilege, not a right.

Second, the roads are basically government property and so the government can create rules for using those roads. If I’ve got private property with sufficient area for me to drive on, I don’t need insurance, a license, or a tag to drive there. No one will say or do anything so long as I stay off public roads.

Then we get into the fact that car insurance is for accidents, not criminal acts. No insurance covers an individual acting criminally. While accidents can happen with guns, they’re a tiny fraction of the issue and are extremely rare when you consider how many guns there are in this country.

What this is, though, has nothing to do with public safety.

New Jersey wants to punish anyone who wants to carry a gun. They want to make it as hard as possible and as expensive as possible to get a concealed carry permit.

Which is what New York was basically doing before Bruen.

This will go about as well for New Jersey as Bruen went for New York.

Anti-gun advocates were formerly able to foist this off on the people because accessing a lot of the original writings had to be done by reading the actual hard copy. “But, thanks to the digitization of old texts on Google Books and Google Scholar, access to second-generation American viewpoints is easier now than ever before.” The internet and its search engines have finally been able to put the lie to this ‘collective right’ BS.

BLUF
The common assertion that the individual-right interpretation of the Second Amendment is a gun-lobby myth invented in the latter half of the 20th century is, to repurpose Justice Brennan’s famous quote, “one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American People by special interest groups that I have seen in my lifetime.” The historical record shows that 19th-century Americans, whatever other disputes they had about the provision, widely viewed the Second Amendment as protecting an individual right.

Analysis: Historical Texts Show Individual Right to Keep and Bear Arms Isn’t an NRA Invention

For anyone who frequently discusses the Second Amendment, there is no avoiding the debate over whether it protects an individual or collective right. The prevailing view accepted by the Supreme Court in 2008 is that the amendment protects every individual’s right to keep and bear arms. But many detractors, especially gun-control advocates, still argue it only covers a collective or militia right.

When the individual right view started to gain ground (or, rather, regain ground) in the late 20th century, a common line of attack was that the pro-gun side was essentially making it all up. And it’s one that’s been repeated even at the highest levels of the legal profession.

“The gun lobby’s interpretation of the Second Amendment is one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American People by special interest groups that I have seen in my lifetime,” Former Chief Justice Warren Burger said in a 1991 PBS interview.

Gun-control advocates still use this argument, with The Intercept asserting in a June 2022 article that “no law review article from 1888 (when they were first indexed) through 1959 ever concluded the Second Amendment guaranteed an individual right to a gun.”

There are three ways to test the claim that the NRA and other gun-rights advocates created the individual-right view in the last several decades: What did the founders say? What did older case law say? And what did prominent second-generation American legal scholars and elected officials say?

The courts and the public writ large have already deeply examined the first two options.

Continue reading “”

See the source image

Majority Of Democrats Now ‘Concerned’ About Biden’s Mental Health, Poll Finds.

Finally, Democrats are starting to get it.

After yet another mental gaffe by President Joe Biden, a new poll has found a majority of Democrats are at least “concerned” about his mental health.

The Issues & Insights/TIPP survey of 1,376 adults released Monday showed 64% of Americans are either “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned,” a 5-point jump from its last poll in August.

But the percentage of Democrats now concerned about Biden’s mental lapses leaped 13 points in two months.  “Virtually all of October’s gain came from Democrats, who went from just 39% expressing ‘concern’ over Biden’s mental health in August, a high number in itself, to 52% in the latest poll,” the pollsters wrote.

“Is Biden’s mental infirmity a danger to this country? Is it time for the president, who turns 80 next month, to be tested by competent medical experts and have the results openly released to allay public fears?” said the pollsters.

“Recent video snippets show Biden wandering off stage, apparently lost, after speaking briefly; forgetting the name of the Declaration of Independence, the nation’s founding document; not remembering that a congresswoman he was honoring at a ceremony was in fact dead, asking Where’s Jackie (Walorski)?’; invoking the possibility of nuclear ‘Armageddon’ after Vladimir Putin’s military suffered setbacks in Ukraine; and so on.”

On September 28, Biden delivered a speech at the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health in Washington, D.C. He recognized those involved in the effort, including Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-IN).

In his shout-outs, Biden said: “Jackie, are you here? Where’s Jackie? She must not be here.”

She wasn’t there because Walorski is dead. She died, along with three others, in a head-on car crash on August 3.

Biden, 79, had clearly forgotten that Walorski had died, even though on the day of her death, the White House released a statement from the president mourning her.

“Jill and I are shocked and saddened by the death of Congresswoman Jackie Walorski of Indiana along with two members of her staff in a car accident today in Indiana,” Biden said at the time. He also ordered the U.S. flag at the White House to be lowered for two days.

What made the whole mess worse is that the White House decided to lie about Biden’s confusion, implying that he knew Walorski was dead but that she was simply “top of mind.”

“So, of course, she was on his mind. She was of top of mind for the President,” Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters the next day. “He looks — very much looks forward to discussing her remarkable legacy of public service with them when he sees her family this coming Friday.”

Reporters lashed out at Jean-Pierre, who simply repeated her scripted lies. But Fox News’ Peter Doocy delivered a zinger, telling the flack: “Karine, I have John Lennon top of mind just about every day, but I’m not looking around for him anywhere.”

Biden would eventually apologize to Walorski’s family when he met with them for a bill signing in the Oval Office two days later.

Maybe he should apologize to all Americans for being president.

‘plays’? He is old and ugly. He’s also stupid.

Joe Biden Plays the Old Ugly American
Having shut down America’s oil-producing abilities, Biden believes that he can strongarm his enemies to send us more of such taboo energy that we won’t produce ourselves.

The Left used to accuse imperialist, resource-hungry Yanquis in Washington of cutting selfish deals with illiberal dictatorships in Latin America to grab their natural resources.

How odd then that Joe Biden is now begging the despicable Maduro regime in Venezuela—corrupt, murderous, and anti-American—to produce more of its oil solely to send northward to America.

Biden is quite willing to ease sanctions and condone the human rights abuses of Maduro—if his dictatorship will just open its oil spigots before the November midterm elections.

Biden in 2020 campaigned on the supposed evil nature of the Saudi Arabian monarchy. Yet after vainly entreating Venezuela, Iran, and Russia, it was inevitable that Biden would once again supplicate the Saudis to pump more oil.

Biden even pleaded with OPEC to increase its output and thus lower the world price of energy—again before the midterm elections.

Biden, remember, has a bad habit of bragging that he lowered gas prices at the pump when the natural volatility of the petroleum markets leads to a fractional decrease. But once prices spike, he is utterly silent about his own role in limiting U.S. oil and gas output.

So, was it any surprise that the Saudis became the fourth non-democratic regime to refuse Biden’s entreaties? During the 2020 campaign, when gas prices were dirt cheap, and when then candidate Biden was demagoguing about ending fossil fuel, he opportunistically libeled the Saudis a “pariah” state.

Biden also claimed that his opponent Donald Trump had cozied up to these supposedly awful Saudi royals. That accusation was especially ironic given that Trump was the first American president who had no need for Saudi oil.

His administration had managed to make the United States the largest producer of gas and oil in history— precluding any energy dependence on illiberal regimes abroad.

Trump was the first U.S. president whose interest in Gulf State monarchies was not energy-driven.

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New York’s new concealed carry law can remain in effect for now, court rules

A federal appeals court has agreed to let New York’s concealed gun law remain in effect until a three-judge panel weighs in on a court ruling that blocked parts of the restrictive gun measure.

In a two-sentence ruling, 2nd Circuit Court Judge Eunice Lee referred New York state’s request for a stay of the temporary restraining order to a three-judge panel while the state appeals the merits of a ruling blocking the enforcement of part of the law.

The court also granted the state’s request to pause the temporary restraining order from going into effect pending the result of the panel review.

Last Thursday, a federal court issued a temporary restraining order which would have prevented enforcement of parts of the “Concealed Carry Improvement Act.” The law was enacted in the wake of the Supreme Court decision this summer striking down a New York gun law that placed restrictions on carrying a concealed handgun outside the home.

The measure enacts a strict permitting process for concealed-carry licenses and it requires background checks for ammunition sales. It also restricts the concealed carry of firearms in locations such as government buildings.

But the plaintiffs in the case at hand, including at least one individual who wants to carry his firearm in church, argue the state is violating their Second and 14th Amendment rights by denying them the right to self-defense.

Nationwide, in the three months since the 6-3 Supreme Court decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, scores of new lawsuits have been filed against gun restrictions at the federal, state and local levels.

Though the Supreme Court case concerned a type of gun permitting regime embraced by just a handful of states, the conservative majority used the Bruen decision to provide new instructions for how courts are to assess the constitutionality of gun laws nationwide.

The decision was the first major Supreme Court guns ruling in more than a decade, and it came after Justice Clarence Thomas — who authored the majority opinion — had previously complained that the high court had allowed the Second Amendment to be treated as “a disfavored right.”

Six Takeaways From WSJ’s Investigation Into the Stock Trades of Government Officials.

A Wall Street Journal investigation revealed that thousands of officials across the U.S. government’s executive branch disclosed owning or trading stocks that stood to rise or fall with decisions their agencies made.
Across 50 federal agencies ranging from the Commerce Department to the Treasury Department, more than 2,600 officials reported stock investments in companies while those companies were lobbying their agencies for favorable policies, during both Republican and Democratic administrations. When the financial holdings caused a conflict, the agencies sometimes simply waived the rules.
The Office of Government Ethics, which oversees the conflict-of-interest rules across the executive branch, is “committed to transparency and citizen oversight of government,” said a spokeswoman.
Among the findings of the investigation, which is the most comprehensive analysis of stock trading by officials in the executive branch of the government:
Numerous federal officials owned shares of companies lobbying their agencies:
More than 200 senior officials at the Environmental Protection Agency, or nearly one in three, reported that they or their family members held investments in companies that were lobbying the agency. EPA employees and their family members collectively owned between $400,000 and nearly $2 million in shares of oil and gas companies on average each year between 2016 and 2021.
Issues emerged at a wide array of agencies:
At the Defense Department, officials in the office of the secretary or their family members collectively owned between $1.2 million and $3.4 million of stock in aerospace and defense companies, on average, during years the Journal examined. Some owned stock in Chinese companies while the U.S. considered blacklisting the companies.
An EPA official reported purchases of oil and gas stocks. The Food and Drug Administration improperly let an official own dozens of food and drug stocks on its no-buy list. A Defense Department official bought stock in a defense company five times before it won new business from the Pentagon.
Some officials traded ahead of regulatory actions:
More than five dozen officials at five agencies reported trading stocks of companies shortly before their departments announced enforcement actions against those companies, such as charges or settlements.
Federal officials are big technology investors:
While the government was ramping up scrutiny of large technology companies, more than 1,800 federal officials reported owning or trading at least one of four major tech stocks: Meta Platforms Inc.’s Facebook, Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Apple Inc. and

Amazon.com Inc.

Some officials made large and risky trades:
About 70 federal officials or their family members reported using sophisticated techniques such as options trading and short selling, with some individual trades of between $5 million and $25 million. In all, the disclosure forms revealed more than 90,000 stock trades during the six-year period reviewed.
The husband of a Commodity Futures Trading Commission economist in a single year shorted nearly 3,000 stocks, betting on a drop in their price. Such trading is contrary to CFTC rules, but the agency waived them, fearing it could be sued.
The scope of the investigation was extensive:
The Journal obtained and analyzed more than 31,000 financial-disclosure forms for about 12,000 senior career employees, political staff and presidential appointees. The review spans 2016 through 2021 and includes data on about 850,000 financial assets and more than 315,000 trades reported in stocks, bonds and funds by the officials, their spouses or dependent children.
The federal government doesn’t maintain a comprehensive public database of the mandatory financial disclosures of all senior executive-branch officials. The Journal built its own.

Intruder shot, killed during Detroit home invasion

(WXYZ) — Detroit police say they are investigating a fatal home invasion near Stanley Street and Loraine Street in the city.

Police say the intruder had a relationship with the homeowner and was asked to leave. Officers say around 9 a.m. Wednesday morning, the man attempted to return to the home through a front window.

According to police, someone inside the home fired several shots at the man and he was struck and killed. Police are calling the incident “domestic in nature.”

Detroit police say two people were detained for additional questioning. It’s unclear if the victim had a relationship with was the shooter. Police also did not say if the two people detained will be facing charges.

Neighbors say they were surprised to hear about the shooting.

“I mean, it’s close to home. We got little kids on the block,” said one neighbor who did not want to be identified. “We’ve seen them there and we’ve never seen any arguments of fights since they’ve been there.”

Neighbors say the family that lived at the Loraine Street home moved in sometime this year and kept to themselves.

“It’s sad and I hate that it was them because they seemed like cool people for lack of a better word, but they were pretty good people,” said Fred Boyer who lives a few houses away from where the shooting happened. “I hate to think that they had an incident and it turned into somebody dying.”

The man who was killed is reportedly in his mid 30s. Police have not released the victim’s name. The investigation is ongoing.