Politics
Video: How Kash Patel, Trump’s F.B.I. Pick, Plans to Reshape the Bureau
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How Kash Patel, Trump’s F.B.I. Pick, Plans to Reshape the Bureau
Donald Trump’s pick to lead the F.B.I. has called for firing the agency’s top officials, shutting down its Washington headquarters and has vowed to investigate the president-elect’s political adversaries.
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“I’d shut down the F.B.I. Hoover building on Day 1, and reopen it the next day as a museum of the deep state. And I’d take the 7,000 employees that work in that building and send them across America to chase down criminals. Go be cops. You’re cops, go be cops.” “A man who’s also been with me just about from the beginning. He’s tough, he’s smart. He loves our country and he is a warrior, Kash Patel.” “We are blessed by God to have Donald Trump be our juggernaut of justice, to be our leader, to be our continued warrior in the arena. I am going to go on a government gangsters manhunt in Washington, D.C., for our great president. Who’s coming with me? And we have to take out not just the government gangsters, but the mainstream media, the ones that perpetuated the fake news narratives. We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re going to come after you.”
Recent episodes in 2024 Elections
Politics
Iowa sues Biden administration to verify status of 2,000 registered voters who may be noncitizens
Iowa is suing the Biden administration over its alleged refusal to provide access to the citizenship status information of more than 2,000 registered voters whose status was questioned ahead of the 2024 election.
Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird and Secretary of State Paul Pate filed the lawsuit on Tuesday, which claims U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) “would not hand over” its “list of noncitizens illegally registered to vote in Iowa.”
Federal authorities’ “failure meant that the State had to rely on the best — imperfect — data it had available to ensure that no Iowan’s vote was canceled by an illegal, noncitizen vote,” Pate and Bird said in a joint statement.
Along with USCIS, the lawsuit names the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas as defendants.
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Fox News Digital reached out to DHS for comment but did not immediately hear back.
The complaint details how state election officials checked voter rolls against a list of people who identified themselves as noncitizens with the state’s Department of Transportation. The vast majority of the 2,176 names had subsequently registered to vote or voted, meaning that some of those people could have become naturalized citizens in the lapsed time.
Pate told county elections officials during the state’s early voting to challenge the ballots cast by any of the individuals named on the list and have them cast a provisional ballot instead.
Pro-voting groups sued Pate over the move, though days later a judge ruled against them and allowed those named on Pate’s list to cast provisional ballots.
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At least 500 of the identified individuals proved their citizenship status and had their votes counted, the Des Moines Register reported, citing preliminary information collected from 97 of the state’s 99 counties.
Another 74 ballots were rejected, according to the Register, mostly because those people did not return to prove their citizenship status.
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Most of the people on Pate’s list did not vote in the 2024 election, according to the Register’s data from county auditors.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Politics
California raw milk producer says RFK Jr. has encouraged him to apply for FDA position
Mark McAfee, the California raw milk producer who has been at the center of several bird flu-related product recalls, says a transition team for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has encouraged him to apply for a position at the Food and Drug Administration.
McAfee, CEO of Fresno-based Raw Farm, LLC, told The Times that he has complied with the request and applied for the position of “FDA advisor on raw milk policy and standards development.”
The recent raw milk recalls were the result of positive tests for H5N1 bird flu among McAfee’s cows. His farms have since been quarantined, and the state has suspended all sales of raw milk and cream. Raw Farm has voluntarily issued recalls for all remaining milk and cream products in stores.
McAfee’s farm is also involved in at least 11 lawsuits stemming from a salmonella outbreak that sickened 171 people in California, and which occurred between October of last year and May of this year, according to Bill Marler, a Seattle-area food safety lawyer.
When asked about McAfee potentially being tapped for a federal food advisory role, Marler wrote in an email: “Clown Car.”
Last month, President-elect Donald Trump announced that he had chosen Kennedy to lead the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, which oversees the FDA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and other agencies.
Kennedy has been a vocal advocate for raw milk, and has criticized FDA policy forbidding interstate sales of the product. According to McAfee, Kennedy is also a consumer and customer of Raw Farm milk.
McAfee said he has not officially been selected for the advisory role. Indeed, Kennedy’s own nomination as HHS director still requires confirmation by the U.S. Senate.
The Times has reached out to the Trump transition team and Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again teams for comment, but has not yet received a response.
McAfee is the largest producer of raw milk in the nation and maintains 1,800 dairy cows on two farms — one in Fresno, the other outside Hanford.
His raw milk products include whole milk, cream, kefir and cheese — all of which can be sold in stores in California, but not over state lines..
However, FDA regulations do not apply to his pet food product line, which can be sold outside California — albeit with warning labels noting that the products are not intended for human consumption.
McAfee is also president of the Raw Milk Institute, a raw milk educational and advocacy organization designed to aid dairy farmers interested in adopting standards and methods for raw milk production.
In an interview with The Times two weeks ago, McAfee said that as excited as he is for Kennedy to change the FDA’s policy on raw milk, such a move needs to be carried out with deliberate care.
“I’m dedicated to making sure that whatever happens, it is not chaotic, crazy, or just a free for all, but rather very constructive with farmer training and testing and high standards,” he said. “I’m very interested in committing myself to helping raw milk emerge as a constructive, high standards, healthy, wonderful, germinating, delicious food.”
He noted that in 2021, Montana lawmakers passed a “food freedom” law that legalized the unregulated sale of raw milk and raw milk products. Soon after, people started to get sick.
McAfee said he flew out to meet with raw milk dairy producers and helped them establish standards that incorporated training, testing and quality control.
For instance, he noted one dairy farmer was cleaning his milk buckets with chlorine, which McAfee said does not address fats and biofilms.
“It was filthy,” he said.
Instead, he showed the farmers how to clean their equipment with hot water and soap.
“You have to have standards,” he said.
McAfee’s milk is highly regulated by the state of California, which performs frequent testing for food-illness pests such as campylobacter, cryptosporidium, E. coli, listeria, brucella, and salmonella and other bacterial illnesses in his milk.
He said unlike conventional dairies where the milk is pasteurized after it’s been collected, he is required to test the cows for pathogens, and said he only milks disease-free cows.
He has an on-farm laboratory where he tests for listeria, campylobacter, E. coli 0157H7 and salmonella in his bulk tanks and cows.
He said his cows are meticulously cleaned before they are milked. And the milk is immediately shunted into a rapid chiller that drops the milk’s temperature from 100 degrees Fahrenheit to 35 degrees Fahrenheit in about two minutes, he said.
Then the milk stays at that temperature until delivered to stores.
Even so, experts say bacteria can still contaminate milk — even when procured from a sparkling-clean udder. The FDA, CDC and other health agencies say the public should drink only pasteurized milk.
Since 2006, Raw Farm — formerly known as Organic Pastures Dairy Company — has been involved in 13 recalls, including the three bird flu related ones from last month.
The other recalls were the result of bacterial contamination, including E. coli, listeria, campylobacteria and salmonella. In some cases, people became severely ill with hemolytic uremic syndrome — or kidney failure.
There was also a recent outbreak of salmonella poisoning from Raw Farm raw milk, which involved at least 171 people “the majority of which were children,” noted a report on the outbreak by the state’s Center for Infectious Diseases.
McAfee said if he were selected for an advisory role at the FDA, he’d consider creating a certification program, such as those in place for organic farming that involve farmer education and training, for raw milk production.
He also said he’d look into changing food liability laws, “where you can’t go get a million dollars for somebody that gets diarrhea for a week.”
McAfee said the government should consider raw milk and other whole food insurance programs, like the USDA’s crop insurance program which provides for farmers whose fields and crops have been impacted by drought, flooding or fire — or the more recent milk insurance program which provides money for dairy farmers whose herds have been infected with bird flu.
“I would recommend strongly that all whole foods — including maybe greens, eggs, carrots, by God, poor carrots — have food liability insurance… so people can get that food, because right now, insurance or companies saying, ‘Oh, you’re on the naughty list so no more insurance for you.’” he said. “And so you’re going to have stores with less and less of these whole foods that are critical to actually getting people healthy again.”
Politics
GOP rebels go to war over Biden’s mammoth $98B disaster aid request
FIRST ON FOX: The ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus is calling on Republican leaders to reject President Biden’s $98.4 billion disaster aid request.
In an official position staked out by the GOP group on Wednesday evening, lawmakers are demanding a slimmed-down package covering what is “absolutely necessary,” to be offset with spending cuts elsewhere.
“Congress should not pass a whopping $100 billion unpaid disaster supplemental funding bill — that Democrats will use to cement their own unrelated priorities — in the waning days of Democrat control in Washington right before Republicans take control of the White House and both Chambers,” the House Freedom Caucus statement read.
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“The House should consider only what is absolutely necessary right now to provide critical relief to hurricane victims and farmers, and pay for it with offsets from wasteful spending elsewhere in the government, then wait for President Trump to take office to better manage disaster relief.”
It comes as both House and Senate lawmakers negotiate over how large the disaster aid package should be, and whether it should be attached to an end-of-year federal funding bill that’s critical to avoiding a partial government shutdown during the holiday season.
More than 100 people were killed in North Carolina alone when Helene barreled into the Southeastern U.S. in late September.
Hurricane Milton, another deadly storm, hit Florida and Georgia roughly a week later.
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., told “Your World” host Neil Cavuto that a $100 billion disaster aid package may be necessary.
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“I believe that we need that disaster supplemental at about $100 billion. There’s nearly an estimate of $50 billion in North Carolina alone,” Tillis said. “It’s going to take years to recover and we shouldn’t be playing games with people’s lives.”
But some fiscal conservatives have balked at the prospect of granting the mammoth-sized federal request without cutting costs elsewhere.
They’ve argued that granting the Democratic administration’s request for such a hefty package would be a reckless move that would further balloon the national debt.
“I’m not going to vote for $100 billion unpaid for. Zero chance,” Freedom Caucus Policy Chair Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, told Fox News Digital last month.
Rep. Chuck Edwards, R-N.C., who is not a member of the Freedom Caucus and whose district was hit hard by Helene, told Fox News Digital that he was in touch with House leaders about a disaster aid bill but said details were still being crafted.
Meanwhile Congressional leaders are expected to negotiate on a continuing resolution (CR), a short-term extension of the current government funding levels, by the Dec. 20 partial shutdown deadline.
“We’re looking at a couple of different options,” Edwards said on Wednesday morning. “It may be attached to the CR, it may run parallel to the CR, but it’s very much being constructed right now.”
Asked about Biden’s requested total, he said, “It’s still being built. We’ve got pretty much the bones established, we’re just trying to determine proportionately, how much money we spend in each of the various areas.”
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who discussed disaster aid and government funding with the House Freedom Caucus on Tuesday evening, gave little insight into his plans during his weekly press conference.
“It’s serious, serious damage. But the initial request was $116.5 billion. And what we’re doing right now is the important, methodical job that the House has, to go through really line by line and assess those requests and make sure that they all are actually tied to disaster and not superfluous items and issues that are included,” Johnson said.
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