RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
June 19 to June 25, 2022 Georgetown University's involvement in slavery was far more extensive than originally thought, making the elite Jesuit school a microcosm of the vexing issues likely to arise as society grapples with racial reconciliation, John Murawski reports in RealClearInvestigations: After it emerged in 2014 that Jesuit priests engineered the sale of 272 slaves in 1838 to stave off bankruptcy at the college, a contrite Georgetown renamed buildings; pledged funding for health clinics and schools and offered preferred admissions in perpetuity to the slaves’ descendants. But now that doesn’t look like enough: Historians and genealogists have since found as many as 1,650 slaves at the college and affiliated Jesuit plantations over more than a century and a half. These slaves and their progeny, in turn, begat an estimated 12,500 descendants believed to be alive today. As Murawski elaborates in a sidebar, Georgetown slavery did not actually end with the slave sale in 1838. It continued long afterward through leasing from other slave owners. Georgetown thus is facing mounting inquiries and claims from those just learning of their connection to the Jesuits. Universities like Georgetown are learning how challenging it is to be in the forefront of the movement to come clean on racial exploitation and exclusion. It is among nearly 100 institutions active in Universities Studying Slavery. Biden, Trump and the Beltway Plainclothes Surveillance Unit Among Jan. 6 Protesters Epoch Times
Dem Staffer Won't Be Arrested for Defacing Posters in Capitol Just the News
Trump Lawyers Knew 'Fake Elector' Move Baseless Washington Post
Serbian Royals Sought Hunter Biden's Help for Palaces New York Post
FBI Probes Woman's Sale of Ashley Biden Diary Daily Mail
White House Refuses to Divulge Election 'Reforms' Federalist
Ethics Complaint vs. White House Veteran Anita Dunn Fox News
Biden Racial Equity Rep: White Diplomats Like U.S. Too Much Free Beacon
Top FTC Staff Flee as Boss Is Called a Progressive Tyrant FTCWatch Other Noteworthy Articles and Series Last month RealClearInvestigations reporter James Varney noted many of the ways the Biden administration has made it easier for illegal immigrants to come to America. This article reports another one: The Biden Administration has been quietly packing the nation’s immigration courts, ousting Trump-appointed judges and installing people deemed to be more friendly to the illegal immigrants whose cases they hear, in what one Justice Department official called an “unprecedented” injection of politics into the courts. At least a half-dozen judges hired during the Trump years have been axed, including two this month in Arlington, Virginia. They are part of a massive upheaval in the Executive Office of Immigration Review, which has seen four of its top officials pushed out of their jobs, including the director, who for the first time in the agency’s history was removed involuntarily. In a separate article, the Federalist reports on the expansive “black market industry around illegal immigration that’s been created and sustained by U.S. border policy, which cartels and smugglers are using to enrich themselves at the expense of migrants and the American people alike.” Soon after President Biden took office, the Customs and Border Patrol stopped posting information on the apprehension of illegal immigrants who are on the terrorism watch list. In response to Republican pressure, the CPB is once again providing the numbers: Since the fiscal year began in October, 50 migrants who appeared in the federal Terrorist Screening Dataset have been intercepted while trying to cross into the US between official checkpoints at the southern border, according to Customs and Border Patrol statistics. That's up from just 15 for the 2021 fiscal year, three in 2020, none in 2019, six in 2018 and two in 2017 according to the enforcement statistics data released on Wednesday by CBP. In a separate article, the New York Post reports that 15 of those 50 migrants were nabbed in May alone. An unanswered question: If they caught that many people on the terror watch list, how many others slipped through? In a separate study, the Center for Immigration Studies agrees that such "got-aways" -- on the terror list or not -- are a big untold story with the Biden administration disclosing it has released more than 1 million illegal immigrants into the United States since it took over. Russian forces have pummeled Ukrainian cities and towns with a barrage of rockets and other munitions, most of which can be considered relatively crude relics of the Cold War, and many of which have been banned widely under international treaties, according to a New York Times analysis of more than 1,000 photographs taken on the ground by its own photojournalists and wire-service photographers. The attacks have made repeated and widespread use of weapons that kill, maim and destroy indiscriminately – a potential violation of international humanitarian law. These strikes have left civilians, including children, dead and injured, and they have left critical infrastructure, like schools and homes, a shambles. Of the weapons identified by The Times, more than 210 were types that have been widely banned under international treaties. All but a handful were cluster munitions, including their submunitions, which can pose a grave risk to civilians for decades after war has ended. More than 330 other weapons appeared to have been used on or near civilian structures. Because of the difficulties in getting comprehensive information in wartime, these tallies are undercounts. How rich is Vladimir Putin? While official Russian records say the country’s president owns “modest assets” including a small flat in St Petersburg, two Soviet-era cars from the 1950s, a trailer and a small garage, this article says he has much, much more. Emails reviewed by the Guardian suggest a far-flung collection of palaces, yachts, vineyards and other holdings worth an estimated $4.5 billion that appears to be owned by his friends and oligarchs connected to him can be traced to a single entity – LLCInvest.ru. – that may be controlled by Putin. A digital paper trail appears to suggest that an array of holiday homes and other assets reportedly used by the Russian president, which according to available records belong to or have been owned by separate individuals, companies and charities, are linked through a common email domain name, LLCInvest.ru. A snapshot of leaked email exchanges from last September further suggests directors and administrators associated with some of the separate entities that hold and manage these assets have discussed day-to-day business problems as if they were part of a single organisation. A Kremlin spokesperson said: “The president of the Russian Federation is in no way connected or affiliated with the objects and organisations you named.” Some Afghan refugees ushered to safety in the United States after the Taliban took over their country are complaining that they are not receiving all the benefits they were expecting. This article focuses on a mother (who is also “women’s rights advocate”) and her family of six. They say they are not living the promised American dream. “In the camp they say we are working so that when you resettle you have your own apartment, food stamps, Medicaid, Social Security and work permit, but that’s not the case,” she said. Every member of her family, she said, experienced delays in getting social services. Her son had an eye infection but was turned away from two clinics because he didn’t have Medicaid. A caseworker from the resettlement agency had to drive him to the emergency room for treatment. Her husband, who asked not to be named in this article, didn’t get a work permit until February, four months after he arrived in Texas, Mashal said. He had been a member of the professional class in Kabul. In May he started working at a minimum-wage job. The article reports that the woman, Roshan Mashal, is also frustrated because she had asked that she and her family be resettled in the Washington, D.C., area so she could continue her work on behalf of Afghan women but instead they have been settled in Dallas. A security guard was never trained to use the single button audio warning system designed to broadcast an alert into the bedrooms of every unit of the condo that collapsed in Florida last year, killing 98 people. “If I had known about it, I would have pressed it,” the security guard, Shamoka Furman, said in an interview. Furman dialed 911 seven minutes before the collapse. The performance of the building’s automated fire alarm system remains one of the many frustrating questions still unanswered 12 months after the collapse. With seven minutes elapsing between the time of the pool deck failure and the catastrophic fall, could some of the residents who slept through the initial boom have been able to make their way to safety? | 