Media Mentions – Functional Government Initiative

WH Chief Of Staff’s Family Scored Huge Mining Deal Thanks To Biden Green Initiative

By Nick Pope (Daily Caller)

September 13, 2023

Companies linked to White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients’ family members scored a major African mining deal thanks to a Biden administration initiative aimed toward promoting “clean energy,” The Intercept reported Wednesday.

The Biden administration brokered a March 2023 deal between TechMet, a company that develops supply chains for green technologies, and Lifezone Metals to source nickel from Tanzania. Zients’ brother-in-law Brian Menell is the CEO of TechMet, and a trust fund for Zients’ adult children owned more than 400,000 shares of Lifezone before the company’s July public listing on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), according to The Intercept.

‘Obnoxious’ charity that occupied McCarthy’s office heavily bankrolled by taxpayers

By Gabe Kaminsky (Washington Examiner)

September 14, 2023

A left-wing nonprofit group whose activists were arrested for occupying House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) office to demand reauthorization of an HIV/AIDS program pockets millions of dollars each year in government grants, documents show.

Activists for the HIV/AIDS advocacy organizations Health GAP and Housing Works faced arrest Monday after storming McCarthy’s office on Capitol Hill and pressing Congress to carve out a five-year extension to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, a program that allocates federal funds for research, prevention, and treatment to fight the disease. Housing Works, a charity based in Brooklyn, New York, has received government cash for decades, including over $100 million in grants between fiscal 2011 and 2022, according to tax forms reviewed by the Washington Examiner.

Democrat Jacky Rosen sees Big Pharma investments soar while urging lower drug prices

By Gabe Kaminsky (Washington Examiner)

September 1, 2023

Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV), who faces a tough 2024 reelection bid in the swing state of Nevada, reaped a windfall in profits from her investments in companies that have jacked up drug prices — all while the Democrat has touted support for lowering them.

Rosen has described on social media how she hears from “constituents every week who are concerned about the rising cost of prescription drugs” and has vowed to “keep fighting to lower prescription drug costs for everyone.” The Nevada Democrat, whom Republicans have slammed over her campaign spending cash at luxury restaurants and hotels, disclosed in 2022 holding up to roughly $300,000 in shares of major pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.

‘Total lack of critical thinking’: Experts question COVID vax, mask mandates amid ‘surge’

Greg Piper (Just The News)

August 29, 2023

Governments and private entities are using a small rise in COVID-19 hospitalizations and new viral variants to juice interest in bivalent boosters that only 1 in 6 Americans have taken and to urge a return to routine masking, if not outright mandating new jabs and face coverings.

What they aren’t providing is robust evidence for the effectiveness of the interventions against infection by a virus that has already provided natural immunity to an estimated 19 in 20 Americans as of November 2022, according to Harvard research published in this month’s journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.

Docs Offer Glimpse Inside Censorship Industrial Complex

By Pete McGinnis (RealClearPolitics)

August 29, 2023

Welcome to the Censorship Industrial Complex. It’s rather like the old “military industrial complex,” which was shorthand for the military, private companies, and academia working together to achieve U.S. battlefield dominance, with the R&D funded by the government that buys the final product.

But the censorship industrial complex builds algorithms, not bombers. The players aren’t Raytheon and Boeing, but social media companies, tech startups, and universities and their institutes. The foes to be dominated are American citizens whose opinions diverge from government narratives on issues ranging from COVID-19 responses to electoral fraud to transgenderism.

House Democrats backing college loan forgiveness owe boatloads in student debt

By Gabe Kaminsky (Washington Examiner)

August 28, 2023

Congressional Democrats calling for widespread student loan forgiveness owe major sums in educational debt, according to a Washington Examiner analysis of newly released financial disclosures.

A total of 14 Democratic members of Congress, who are an average of 45 years old and include the likes of “Squad” Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), and Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), reported on 2022 filings holding up to $1.7 million combined in their own or a family member’s student debt. That these same politicians have also urged President Joe Biden to waive away college loans on the backs of taxpayers presents an apparent conflict of interest, ethics experts and a top Republican lawmaker say.

DHS agency used Slack channel, ‘personal’ cellphone for misinformation meetings: records

By Greg Piper (Just The News)

August 27, 2023

Government and private advisers to the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency communicated with each other through private channels, plausibly circumventing federal record-keeping rules if not the Freedom of Information Act, according to a transparency group.

The revelations about the inner workings of the since-disbanded Protecting Critical Infrastructure from Misinformation & Disinformation Subcommittee, part of CISA’s Cybersecurity Advisory Committee, emerged from the latest batch of documents obtained by the Functional Government Initiative through a state public records request.

Sen. Warnock’s Church Salary Raises Ethics Concerns

By Peter Malbin (Newsmax)

August 22, 2023

Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., allegedly used an accounting loophole to rake in more than four times the outside income limit for senators in 2022, the Washington Free Beacon reported.

Warnock earned $155,000 in 2022 while serving as a part-time pastor at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, according to his latest financial disclosure, the Free Beacon reported.

“That far exceeds the $30,000 outside income limit for lawmakers in the upper chamber, but the Democrat senator claimed $125,000 of his pastor pay for the year was actually ‘deferred compensation’ for services he rendered to the church before he was sworn into office on Jan. 20, 2021,” the Free Beacon wrote, saying the “deferred compensation” arrangement seems fabricated.

With Church Salary, Raphael Warnock Blew Past Senate’s Outside Income Limit In 2022

By Andrew Kerr (Washington Free Beacon)

August 22, 2023

Sen. Raphael Warnock (D., Ga.) used a sketchy accounting loophole to rake in more than four times the allowable outside income allowance for senators in 2022, a move experts say doesn’t pass legal muster.

Warnock made $155,000 in 2022 serving as a part-time pastor at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, according to his latest financial disclosure. That far exceeds the $30,000 outside income limit for lawmakers in the upper chamber, but the Democratic senator claimed $125,000 of his pastor pay for the year was actually “deferred compensation” for services he rendered to the church before he was sworn into office on Jan. 20, 2021.

Secret Letter to CDC: Top Epidemiologist Suggests Agency Misrepresented Scientific Data to Support Mask Narrative

By Megan Redshaw (The Epoch Times)

August 21, 2023

Documents recently obtained from the National Institutes of Health suggest public health officials used inaccurate information and misrepresented medical research to advance their policy objective that masks prevent severe COVID-19 and virus transmission—despite opposing scientific evidence received from experts.

In a recently obtained letter (pdf) sent in November 2021 to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), top epidemiologist Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, and seven colleagues informed the agency it was promoting flawed data and excluding data that did not reinforce their narrative.