"A strange trend is sweeping across China. Outside Chengdu, an urban park next to a golf course and luxury villa now sports a sign 'Return to Agricultural Use. In the southeastern province of Fujian, a farmer described having his daffodil fields bulldozed. Reportedly, it's all part of a new directive from the Chinese Communist Party to reclaim arable land, roll back reforestation initiatives, and rapidly increase grain production to achieve 'food security.'

"But as China clears vast tracts of land in service of what some have called a 'New Great Leap Forward,' what may be going into the ground is stolen American technology. Not fiberoptic cable and semiconductors, but something just as important: high-tech seeds.

"Back in 2011, a field manager at a farm in Iowa spotted an unfamiliar man digging in one of his fields. When he confronted the stranger, the man claimed to be from a university and hurriedly excused himself. The field happened to be planted with special seeds from DuPont Pioneer, and the manager passed along the unnerving incident to the company which informed the FBI. The investigation uncovered a Chinese seed smuggling ring and the man digging in the field, Mo Hailong, was charged by the Department of Justice and sentenced in federal court for conspiracy to steal trade secrets.

"But that was just the beginning. Since then, the FBI has investigated many such cases, and the DOJ has secured additional convictions, including one just last year when Xiang Haitao, a PRC national, pled guilty to conspiracy to commit economic espionage and was sentenced to more than two years in prison."

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"The FBI is not the revered institution it once was, but it can be again.

"I was an FBI special agent for more than 12 years and considered it a calling until I walked away at the end of last year. Unfortunately, the FBI changed significantly as it became politically and socially weaponized. I joined the FBI to fight crime but over time found myself being bombarded with partisan politics and social movements swirling around me which I wanted no part of.

"At the same time, Americans lost trust in this important institution and morale plummeted. It pained me that I was no longer proud to say I was an FBI special agent. I realized under the current leadership that no one was going to stop the FBI from continuing on this trajectory, and I lacked faith things would improve."

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"President Joe Biden is frustrated. Unemployment has fallen to a healthy 3.6%, the economy is growing at a decent 2.4% rate, and inflation has fallen to 3%. And yet despite all this good economic news, the vast majority of voters rate the economy as poor and blame Biden for its sorry state.

"What gives?

"One hint can be found in the most recent CBS News poll, which found that 65% of adults would rate the economy as 'bad' and just 13% said that they were getting better financially. Most adults, 52%, said they were just staying in place, while 35% said they were falling behind.

"Among those that rated the economy as bad, 88% blamed 'inflation and the rising costs of goods and services.' Indeed among all respondents, even those who rated the economy as good, 70% of adults said that their personal income was not keeping up with inflation.

"And this perception is reflected in economic numbers. Despite falling inflation, prices are still rising. And overall, real wages are still down 5% since Biden took office. In other words, most voters are functionally making less money today than when Biden took office. No wonder most people think the economy is still bad!"

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"Half of Americans in a poll released Thursday said the U.S. economy is continuing to get worse, despite recent positive indicators.

"The CNN poll found that 51 percent of Americans said the economy is still in a downturn and conditions are continuing to worsen, while another 28 percent said an economic recovery has yet to start, but conditions are no longer getting worse.

"Just 1 in 5 Americans said the U.S. economy is beginning to recover from its recent problems, according to the poll."

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"D.C.'s slowest month is going to be one of the busiest for the nation's labor cops.

"President Joe Biden's appointees are poised to dramatically reshape the work lives of tens of millions of workers and the businesses that employ them. The Department of Labor, National Labor Relations Board and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission -- each operating on a separate track -- are readying to push out new regulations and rules on everything from overtime pay to who counts as an employee.

"The packed agenda will allow Biden to champion his pro-worker agenda as his re-election campaign heats up and the president works to tamp down grumbling from some segments of organized labor, most notably the United Auto Workers.

"Employers are bracing for the deluge, as August shapes up to be the start of a critical stretch for the federal government's top workplace enforcers."

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"President Joe Biden is facing increasing opposition for his ongoing crusade against popular household items. As of August 1, traditional incandescent light bulbs became the newest on the regulatory chopping block, effectively outlawing them nationwide.

"Under new Energy Department efficiency standards, bulbs manufactured and sold now must meet the 'minimum energy-efficiency standard' of 45 lumens per watt, giving rise to LED bulbs that some researchers have suggested can cause health complications.

"Biden's light bulb ban joins the list of growing home items the President has fixated on. Perhaps most notably, gas stoves have been a target of his administration for several months."

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"New polling provided exclusively to The Federalist shows a vast majority of U.S. voters support election integrity initiatives such as voter ID requirements and limitations on the use of mail-in voting.

"Conducted by the Honest Elections Project (HEP) from July 13-16, the survey reveals widespread support among the American electorate for common-sense election integrity policies. According to the poll, 88 percent of Americans support laws mandating voters show a form of ID in order to cast their ballot, including the vast majority of black (82 percent) and Hispanic voters (83 percent). Only 9 percent of those polled opposed ID requirements.

"The survey's findings paint a vastly different picture than the one crafted by legacy media and Democrat politicians, who for years have maliciously smeared voter ID laws as Republican-sponsored tools designed to 'suppress' the votes of racial minorities."

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"On the same day Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra was grilled by Congress for failing to vet immigrant family sponsors, the Department of Labor announced a 44% increase in the number of children it found working illegally this year.

Both of these issues stem from the same problem, a problem not created by either HHS or the Department of Labor. Child labor, and deaths from child labor, are surging in this country as a direct result of the catch-and-release policies implemented by President Joe Biden at the southern border. These problems will only get worse until all child immigrants are treated equally when encountered by Border Patrol.

The trafficking of immigrant children across the southern border was almost nonexistent until 2008, when President George W. Bush signed the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act. Before 2008, immigrant children were treated equally when apprehended at the border, no matter what country they came from. Nearly all were returned to their country of origin.

After the Wilberforce bill, children from countries other than Mexico and Canada were guaranteed not only a hearing from an immigration judge but also an automatic transfer from Border Patrol custody to HHS's Office of Refugee Resettlement, which would then release them to a sponsor in the United States, usually a family member."

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"With the collapse of his plea bargain, Hunter Biden is facing something that he has been able to evade for five years: a real prosecution. The plea bargain itself was widely panned as a sweetheart deal that offered Biden a chance to close out the investigation with no jail time and two minor misdemeanors. However, it is hard for a plea bargain to actually write 'a wink and a nod' as a part of the formal factual description. The judge made a simple threshold inquiry on its meaning, and it immediately collapsed as the prosecutors and defense counsel struggled to explain.

"If the Justice Department followed its past practice, a withdrawal of this kind would ordinarily result in the prosecutors pursuing every possible criminal count -- and serious jail time. However, Hunter's sudden exposure to equal justice could prove equally costly for the person who was not to be mentioned in the case: President Joe Biden."

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"A recent video on Twitter showed a supermarket employee tussling with a shoplifter who had filled her bag with items. As the employee pulled the bag from her hand, she cried, 'I have to feed my family!' That's a common refrain from shoplifters these days, echoed in media headlines proclaiming that people have turned to stealing to put food on the table -- despite a U.S. social safety net that includes $185 billion in spending on food stamps and other nutrition-assistance programs. In truth, America's exploding shoplifting problem predates our current economic difficulties. Much of the stealing, store owners and security experts say, has less to do with putting food on the table than with a rise in organized theft, and it's having a particularly adverse effect in cities where criminal-justice reforms have made it easy to get away with.

"Retail theft in America has grown to a $94 billion epidemic, according to the National Retail Federation -- a staggering 90 percent increase since 2018. Retailers say that the problem gained momentum about a decade ago, when states began decriminalizing low-level shoplifting, raising the value of goods that a person must steal to enable prosecutors to bring felony charges. More than two-thirds of states now treat shoplifting as a misdemeanor if someone boosts less than $1,000 in goods, and 15 states have raised their limit to $1,500 or more. More than 70 percent of surveyed retailers reported that shoplifting spiked in their stores after these changes. Bail reforms that free without bond those arrested for shoplifting have also contributed to the problem. An official of the Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists says that retail theft is now 'a low-risk and high-reward line of business.'"

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