"The Biden administration is endangering U.S. athletes who plan to travel to China for the 2022 Beijing Olympics amid a new warning from the Chinese Communist Party that it will punish foreigners for making political statements, former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley told the Washington Free Beacon on Wednesday.

"'No one should be the least bit surprised that China is threatening our athletes and warning them against criticizing their communist government,' Haley said. 'President Biden's diplomatic boycott means nothing to a regime that's timprisoning activists and committing genocide without consequences. Our athletes are at risk, and yet we've heard nothing from the administration on what they plan to do to protect them.' Haley, who served as ambassador to the United Nations during the Trump administration, has emerged in recent months as one of the most prominent critics of the Beijing Games and has repeatedly laid into the Biden administration for capitulating to China.

"Haley's comments to the Free Beacon come after a top CCP official warned on Tuesday that foreign athletes who travel to the communist country, including Americans, will face punishment if they engage in political speech during the games. This would include criticism of the Chinese government's ongoing genocide against the Uyghur ethnic minority, as well as its surveillance and police state.

"'Any behavior or speech that is against the Olympic spirit, especially against Chinese laws and regulations, are also subject to certain punishment,' Yang Shu, deputy director general of international relations for the Beijing Organizing Committee, was quoted as saying at a press conference."

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"Exactly a year after President Joe Biden took office, his administration desperately needs a reset. It will help if he begins governing as he promised during his campaign. ...

"To save his presidency and better serve the country, Biden must do after just one year what former President Bill Clinton did after two: tack to the center. Recognize that his party holds only the barest of congressional majorities. Press procedural reforms that really can be bipartisan rather than ones seeking obvious partisan advantages for Democrats. Break mammoth bills into bite-sized chunks and do the hard work of building bipartisan supermajorities for them. ...

"There was a time when, despite his other flaws, Biden at least knew how to make political shifts to follow public opinion. Even if only to provide for the defect of better motives, Biden should still be pure politician enough to see that his political viability lies near the center, not the angry Left, of today's political world."

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"With drama and fury, President Joe Biden declared to the nation on Martin Luther King Jr. Day that state laws requiring voter ID or banning mass mailing of absentee ballots amounted to an 'assault on our freedom to vote,' especially for minority Americans.

"Four days earlier, a poll in Michigan told a different story: Three-quarters of the battleground state voters supported ballot ID requirements, with black voters expressing the highest support at 79%.

"Those findings have been confirmed in national polls as well, exposing a dilemma for Democrats in Washington who are making a last-ditch effort to pass legislation gutting many state and local controls of elections in favor of federal standards.

"Those standards -- like banning voter IDs, imposing no excuse absentee voting and making it harder to clean outdated voter rolls -- are not what the majority of Americans are seeking.

"'A recent national survey found that four key election reforms are supported by more than 80% of voter,' pollster Scott Rasmussen recently wrote in an article highlighting the disconnect. 'These include removing people who have died or moved from voter registration lists; requiring all voters to show photo ID before casting a ballot; wanting all ballots received by Election Day; and, having all voting machines made in the United States."

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"According to the election calendar, Joe Biden has three years remaining in his term. According to political reality, his presidency is over, kaput, finished.

"It ended last week because of an accumulation of serious wounds, most of them self-inflicted. The final blow came from a boomerang after the president who campaigned as a decent man and uniter declared his opponents traitors and racists.

"Included in that category were Democrats as well as Republicans, leading even members of his own party to concede Biden had gone too far. ...

"This is not a drip-drip-drip. This is a fast-paced hemorrhage of support, and there is no reason to believe Biden is capable of turning things around."

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"Now Schumer is up for re-election in 2022. He can't be a Senate Majority Leader who manages like he has a tied Senate because he has upstart progressives like AOC nipping at him in New York. If he manages the Senate as he should, they would primary him and might just defeat him. So he has to manage the Senate like he is part of the Squad and it is about to cost him the Majority Leader position he coveted. He'll lose his precious to the filthy hobbits of the GOP because he cannot manage the Senate responsibly and run for re-election.

"Chuck Schumer literally has to force a vote on the filibuster that he knows he will lose in order to save face with progressives who will otherwise work to make sure he really loses.

"He wanted the job. He got it. And now he's on the verge of losing it because to keep it he'd have to manage it in a way that would cost him his seat. Damned if he does. Damned if he doesn't.

"I pity the man, but oh my gosh I find it all hilarious."

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"Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser is set to require photo identification and a vaccine passport to dine out or work out in the nation's capital -- even as her party vows parliamentary scorched earth to power through a national ban on requiring photo ID -- or any documentary proof of identity -- to vote absentee.

"Effective Saturday, Washington, D.C. institutes one of the most restrictive COVID-19 mandates in the nation, requiring all patrons over the age of 18 to show photo identification, while ages 12 and up must show proof of vaccination before visiting most indoor establishments.

"The D.C. photo ID requirement comes into effect just as President Biden has endorsed scrapping the Senate filibuster so that his party can force through on a party-line, 51-50 vote election overhaul legislation outlawing requirements 'to submit any form of identifying document as a condition of obtaining or casting an absentee ballot.'"

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"...while Biden spent the speech attacking Republicans and singing of the glories of voting rules expanded on an emergency basis due to a pandemic, its real target were those recalcitrant Democrats who haven't signed on to his progressive agenda. ...

"Here's the truth: Biden isn't mad at Manchin and Sinema because of voting rights. He's mad because they are the reason he won't get his multitrillion-dollar Build Back Better bill through.

"And because BBB is basically dead, and because his COVID administration is incompetent, and because inflation is going bananas, Biden is staring political catastrophe in the face. He's looking at a political year very much like the past six months -- a time in which almost nothing good has happened for him and almost everything he does seems to deepen the hole he's been digging for himself.

"And so here it is -- the pivot! Pivot to voting rights! Scare base Democratic voters, especially African Americans, into turning out in November 2022 by saying what he said in 2012 about Mitt Romney and the GOP -- that they want 'to put y'all back in chains.'"

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"At least $5.6 million in state and local taxpayer funds will be used to bankroll lawyers for illegal immigrants fighting deportation this year, according to an immigration reform group report released on Tuesday.

"Following a review of local and city governments that partnered with a group that seeks to provide counsel to noncitizens, the Immigration Reform Law Institute found that at least $5.6 million in taxpayer funds from state and local communities was earmarked for these deportation defense programs, which it described as 'a conservative estimate [that] does not include numerous other localities that fund their own independent anti-deportation programs.'

"'These programs are an insult to every law-abiding American citizen and legal resident,' said Dale L. Wilcox, executive director and general counsel of IRLI, in a statement. 'Our laws clearly state that noncitizens charged with civil offenses do not have a right to legal representation. Yet we have radical anti-borders groups starting these programs and sticking unknowing citizens with the bill. It's ourageous.'

"The findings highlight the growing state-level efforts to combat federal immigration enforcement, and the extent to which these campaigns are supported by taxpayer money. IRLI said its investigation also raised questions about whether state and local governments are providing adequate supervision of these legal aid centers, which are often funded in collaboration with outside nonprofit groups."

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"If you thought the first year of the Biden economy was bad, you haven't seen anything yet.

"The December jobs numbers that the Bureau of Labor Statistics released Jan. 7 were the worst of the year so far and the worst of Joe Biden's presidency. With only 199,000 net jobs created, the 2021 economy truly went out with a whimper, not a bang.

"Fully 3.1 million workers found themselves without work in December because their employers had closed or lost business due to pandemic restrictions. And it is unclear so far how many workers lost jobs because of choices employers made in anticipation of Biden's vaccine mandate taking effect.

"To make matters even worse, the data that went into the December report were gathered before the omicron variant of the novel coronavirus had stricken the country. Between omicron and its associated damaging economic restrictions and lockdowns, things are likely to get much worse in January."

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"Newly elected Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg recently issued his 'one day' memo, setting forth prosecutorial guidelines that will govern in New York County. The memo was titled 'Achieving Fairness and Safety,' but Bragg's new policies, which involve de-prosecuting entire categories of crimes and slashing sentences, are a recipe for violence and disorder. The determination of new mayor Eric Adams to erase the lawless years of Bill de Blasio has run into a serious roadblock.

"Bragg modeled his memo on similar policy missives from Los Angeles's George Gascon, Philadelphia's Larry Krasner, and San Francisco's Chesa Boudin -- leading figures in the 'progressive prosecutor' movement. The only real difference is that Bragg's memo is encoded for New York's penal laws, so it takes some translation to regular language.

"Bragg's directives will drive ordinary citizens and the NYPD crazy. He will not charge defendants for resisting arrest. The NYPD now can expect every arrest to be a brawl, in which the only person likely to be charged with a crime is a police officer. ...

"Bragg's policies for major crimes will have even more serious consequences."

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