Tag: Joe Biden

Trump pardons diesel mechanics for Clean Air Act violations at Alaska rally

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Mechanic repairing a white Ford truck with its hood open

President Donald Trump issued pardons at a campaign rally in Alaska on Tuesday for two diesel mechanics who were previously charged with and pleaded guilty to violating the Clean Air Act.  The president signed the pardons for Zachary Czubak and Patrick Fleming on stage at the campaign event in Wasilla after he invited them up on stage. “They wanted to put them in jail for 10 years because they fixed an engine, how sick,” Trump said.  “The concept is that if you allow people to fix the engines, they’re going to take all of the environmental crap that makes it bad, makes it expensive, that they’re going to do undo that.

And when you undo that, you therefore send fumes into the air, so we’re going to put them in jail for ten years,” he continued.  Czubak and Fleming each pleaded guilty in 2022 to federal charges that they violated the Clean Air Act by illegally tampering with equipment and removing equipment meant to control air pollution. According to the Anchorage Daily News, federal prosecutors said the two men, along with Michael Wayne Hanzuk, tampered with and removed emission controls from at least 37 vehicles between July 2019 and September 2020. “This means the world to me,” Fleming said on stage. “We’re not criminals. We’re not trying to hurt anybody. We want to help Alaskans.

We want to help people with diesel trucks, with vehicles across the world.”  Trump previously pardoned nine convicted of similar Clean Air Act violations in July for what a White House official described as overzealous enforcement by previous administrations.

Source: Trump pardons diesel mechanics for Clean Air Act violations at Alaska rally

By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised.
Hebrews 11:11

Hunted for Following Jesus

In some communities, Muslims who leave Islam to follow Christ face rejection, threats, violence, and even death because of their faith. For Muslim-background believers, choosing to follow Jesus…

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25 years after Sept. 11 attacks, Taliban rules Afghanistan again, but now with $7 billion in U.S. firepower

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As Americans reflect this week on the 25 years that have passed since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, CBS News has returned to Afghanistan, where the war those attacks triggered ended five years ago with the Taliban’s stunning return to power.  When the last U.S. and allied soldiers left after a brutal two-decade war, the Taliban’s fighters seized billions of dollars worth of American-purchased military hardware.

President Trump, whose first administration negotiated the deal to end the war with the Taliban, has accused the Biden administration of “totally botching” the withdrawal. Five years later, the hardware of America’s longest-ever war is still easy to spot on the streets of Kabul. Taliban fighters patrol in armored vehicles once supplied to Afghan forces, wearing American tactical gear and carrying American weapons.

CBS News saw one Humvee in the Afghan capital still adorned with a faded Green Bay Packers decal — a remnant from its past operators.  President Trump has been fiercely critical of the former Biden administration, accusing his predecessor of allowing the U.S. military to abandon billions of dollars in military hardware. Mr. Trump has demanded that the Taliban hand it back. But the Taliban has proudly shown off its American-funded arsenal, even staging military parades through Kabul’s streets.

Pentagon figures released last year show some $7 billion in hardware and weaponry fell into the group’s hands when the Afghan National Army collapsed. Shortly after the 2021 withdrawal, CBS News filmed as “Badri 313,” an elite Taliban special forces battalion, patrolled in their American vehicles, American commando gear and with their American weapons. Asked about President Trump’s determination to reclaim the equipment, Taliban Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Abdul Qahar Balkhi told CBS News the hardware now belongs to “the state of Afghanistan, and we are not in the business of doing transactions and deals on the assets of the state of Afghanistan.”

When it was pointed out that American taxpayers purchased the equipment, Balkhi said: “The Americans did a lot of things. Americans killed a lot of people, destroyed the majority of the country. Should they not be paying for that first?” The Taliban waged a vicious insurgency during a war that killed more than 2,400 U.S. service members and tens of thousands of innocent Afghans.  But critics of the Biden administration’s handling of the U.S. withdrawal say it’s allowed the Taliban to transform from insurgents into a state military force armed with billions of dollars in American-funded firepower. 

They have used those weapons to impose a draconian interpretation of Islamic rule on Afghanistan’s people, almost completely depriving women and girls of the right to work and study, and restricting life for everyone in the country in ways that some analysts say are even harsher than during the group’s previous reign.  Biden has offered little public commentary on the Afghanistan withdrawal, but he said in September 2021, a month after the Taliban took back control, that he “was not going to extend this ‘forever war,’ and I was not extending a ‘forever exit.'”

“If anything, the developments of the past week reinforce that ending U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan now was the right decision,” said the then-president in August 2021, as the Taliban reasserted their rule 20 years after being ousted by the U.S.-led military campaign. “American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves.” In 2023, the Biden White House released a 12-page summary of a classified review of the Afghanistan exit that largely blamed the Trump administration for the deal it struck with the Taliban to withdraw U.S. forces from the country by May 2021. 

The so-called Doha Agreement brokered by the first Trump administration laid out a series of conditions for the Taliban to fulfill in order for U.S. forces to leave. Another report partially declassified and released by the State Department in 2023 faulted both the Trump and Biden administrations for “insufficient” planning surrounding the withdrawal.

Source: 25 years after Sept. 11 attacks, Taliban rules Afghanistan again, but now with $7 billion in U.S. firepower – CBS News

For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.
1 Timothy 2:5

Powerful earthquake shakes Panama

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Plague in Russia?

Russian authorities have sought to allay global worries over the death of a young woman who worked at a Siberian anti-plague laboratory. But moves to isolate her contacts and…

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Because They Are Above us All: Jill Biden on Hunter pardon: “We just could not let our son go to jail” under Trump’s DOJ

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Middle-aged man in a blue blazer and light gray shirt standing outside with autumn trees in the background

Jill Biden said she supported Joe Biden’s decision to pardon their son, Hunter, because they couldn’t let him go to jail under President Trump.  Joe Biden had repeatedly pledged not to pardon his son, but reversed course at the end of his presidency.  “And then the Justice Department changed. And I think that the process was not fair to Hunter,” Jill Biden told CBS News Sunday Morning’s Rita Braver in an interview airing Sunday on CBS. “When Trump was elected, things changed, and we knew that he would target Hunter. And we just could not let our son go to jail on a charge that no one would go, I mean, no one has ever gone to jail for.” Joe Biden repeatedly said he wouldn’t pardon his son, who was convicted in June 2024 of three separate felony charges related to his purchase of a revolver in 2018 when he was battling a drug addiction, which he lied about on paperwork to obtain the gun.

Hunter Biden also pleaded guilty to nine tax evasion charges in a separate case in September 2024. The elder Biden’s decision to pardon his son drew bipartisan criticism. When asked by Braver if she urged her husband to pardon Hunter Biden, Jill Biden said: “I truly supported it. I wanted him to pardon Hunter at that point, and I agreed with Joe.” Asked why Biden also preemptively pardoned several other family members before he left office, Jill Biden said: “I suppose for the same reason that he felt that they would be targeted.”  Jill Biden talked to Braver about the election, her husband’s 2024 debate performance, and her new book, “View from the East Wing: A Memoir.” 

Source: Jill Biden on Hunter pardon: “We just could not let our son go to jail” under Trump’s DOJ – CBS Atlanta

Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Romans 15:13

Israel marks three years since October 7 attack with memorials and protests

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