January 18th, 2024: Terrorist Designations, COVID Cover-ups, & the Truth in Texas
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01:03Welcome to the President's Daily Brief.I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage.Let's get briefed.First up, after months of attacks from Iranian-backed Houthi militants, President Biden has reinstated their designation as a terrorist organization, reversing an earlier decision made at the start of his presidency.I'll explain why they were taken off the list in the first place and then break down what this redesignation means for the group.Later on, we look at important developments emerging from China, starting with indicators that the nation's economy,is facing challenges on multiple fronts. We'll also uncover new findings about the period precedingthe COVID-19 outbreak and the Chinese government's efforts to control information that might have
01:52saved lives. Really? The Chinese government trying to control information, I didn't see that coming.Finally, in today's back of the brief, we discussed new developments in the dispute between the federalgovernment and Texas. Recent court documents suggest the White House may have beendisseminated incorrect information in order to smear Governor Greg Abbott and other state officials.But first up, the PDB spotlight. In a move that was largely expected, the Biden administrationhas relisted the Yemen-based Houthi group as a specially designated global terrorist entity,and that is a reversal of a 2021 Biden decision to remove the group from that list.Speaking to reporters about the move, a senior administration official said, quote,
02:42these attacks are a clear example of terrorism and violate international law.They pose a major threat to lives, global commerce, and critically undermine the delivery of humanitarian aid.Of course, this is a stark contrast to recent comments from President Biden, who just last weektold reporters that it was irrelevant, whether the Houthis were designated as terrorists ornot. Apparently, it was the president's statement that was irrelevant. So this all raises an obviousquestion. Why did the administration initially de-list the group from the global terrorist roster?In 2021, the White House defended doing that on the grounds that the label was intensifying Yemen'shumanitarian crisis, which has been fueled by the country's ongoing civil war.
03:32The State Department at the time said, quote,Our action is due entirely to the humanitarian consequences of this last-minute designationfrom the prior administration, which the United Nations and humanitarian organizationshave clarified would worsen the world's most severe humanitarian crisis.The department added,And we just like to do the opposite of whatever that guy Trump did.The complication arose from the fact that the terrorist designation made itillegal for U.S. citizens and entities to provide any resources or support to the Houthis.
04:08Now, given the Houthis control over significant parts of Yemen, including the capital, Sana'and the major port of Haudita, this posed a dilemma for aid organizations that were operatingin these regions. Banks and financial institutions also became wary of process transactionslinked to the Houthis, fearing legal consequences, and that hesitancy can freeze the flow of fundsfor humanitarian aid. It's worth noting that the humanitarian crisis in Yemen is still going on.The UN considers it the world's largest crisis, estimating that two-thirds of the population,about 21.6 million people, are still in need of humanitarian assistance.So, the Houthis are terrorists once again. What's old is now new again,
04:56but what are the practical implications of being a specially designated global terrorist?Well, first, it criminalizes knowingly providing material support to the group, and this encompassesall forms of aid, including funds, training, expertise, or personnel. The designation, as a SDGT, does notprohibit or impede humanitarian aid, an important distinction between this designation and being listedas a foreign terrorist organization, as they previously had been. Financial repercussions are alsosignificant. Any assets connected to the Houthis within U.S. jurisdiction will be seized.U.S. financial institutions are mandated to block transactions involving these assetsand are required to report them to the Treasury Department. Furthermore, this designation grants
05:48legal authority for U.S. armed forces and agencies to act against the group, potentiallylegitimizing military or other counterterrorism actions. Now, it's unlikely that this movewill stop the Houthis from attacking ships in the Red Sea.The only thing that would accomplish thatwould be if their overlords, the Iranian regime,instructed them to stop.And frankly, that doesn't appear to be in the cards.All right, coming up after the break,
06:18we've got two stories out of Chinastarting with new indications of trouble in the nation's economyand new evidence that China suppressed informationthat could have saved lives in the early days of the country.the COVID-19 outbreak. I'll be right back. Welcome back. I want to shift our focus to China,which continues to face economic headwinds at a time of falling population growth and recordlow birth rates. As we've previously discussed on the PDB, China is contending with a stubborneconomic slowdown, driven by low business confidence, rising unemployment, low consumer demand,
06:58high levels of local government debt and a faltering real estate market.Prices across the Chinese economy declined for the third straight month in December,while home prices and property sales also cratered.New home prices in December reached a nine-year low,and sales for the month declined by 23 percent,when compared with the same time last year, according to a report by Axios.The outlook for the property sector in China remains bleak,with property investment dropping by nearly 10% across 2023.
07:34Elsewhere, the economic signals are really no better.Youth unemployment remained stubbornly high,resting at roughly 15% for people ages 16 to 24.Factory activity dropped to its lowest level in six months in December,and manufacturing declined for the third straight month.In early December, credit rating agency Moody'srevised its view of China's government debt, shifting the outlook from stable to negative,suggesting that China could struggle to meet its debt obligations.
08:06One recent bright spot for China was GDP growth, which hit 5.2% last year.That growth, however, was largely the result of China lifting their zero COVID policy last year,which had previously driven growth down to 3% in 2022.A recent analysis by London-based capital economics said, quote,the recovery clearly remains shaky,although the government met its 2023 GDP growth target of around 5%,achieving the same pace of expansion in 2024 will prove a lot more challenging, end quote.All of this comes as China's population fell for a second consecutive year in 2023,
08:50driven by a wave of COVID-19 deaths that occurred after they lifted their zero COVID policy restrictions,along with a record low birth rate.Until 2022, when the population dropped by roughly 850,000 people,China hadn't seen a net population decline since the Great Famine of 1961.Last year's decline was significantly larger than 2022,resulting in a drop of more than 2 million people.Meanwhile, the birth rate, which has long been in decline due to the aftershock of China's decades-longone-child policy, hit a record low 6.39 births per 1,000 people in 2023. New births also saw
09:36nearly 6% decline, and all of this spells significant trouble for China's dominant positionatop the global economic ladder. All right, sticking with China, we are continuing to learn more abouthow CCP leaders hid the dangers posed by the COVID-19 virus from the rest of the world duringthe early days of the outbreak. A report by our friends at the Wall Street Journal on Wednesdayrevealed that Chinese researchers had isolated and mapped the new virus by late December of2019, but continued to lie to the world about the virus for weeks, calling the disease a viralpneumonia of unknown cause. Chinese specialists had met with the virus.representatives of the World Health Organization, the WHO, on January 3rd 2020, but did not disclose
10:26their knowledge that the new pathogen was a new coronavirus. The Chinese ultimately waited untilJanuary 11th, 2020 to share the virus's sequence with the WHO. This costs the international communityan extra two weeks that could have been used to gain a better understanding of the novel virusand determine how best to deploy resources in response.Instead, doctors and scientists the world overwere left scrambling to understand the mystery illnesswithout the critical insights neededto advise the public on how to protect themselves.
11:02The documents reviewed by the Wall Street Journalcame as the result of an inquiryby the House Energy and Commerce Committee,which has been probing the origins of COVID-19.The committee's chair, Representative Kathy McMorris-Rogers,said the findings show the U.S., quote, cannot trust any of the so-called facts or dataprovided by the CCP and calls it a serious question the legitimacy of any scientific theoriesbased on such information, end quote. No offense, but you don't need an investigation or a
11:35committee or inquiry to come up with that conclusion. A spokesman for the Chinese embassydefended their response saying it was science-based and would stand the text.of history. Yeah, just throw the word science in front of whatever, and there you go.If that wasn't disturbing enough, we're now learning that Chinese scientists are againexperimenting with deadly mutant COVID-19 strains, including one that is a 100% mortality ratein mice. Scientists at the Beijing University of Chemical Technology, that sounds like a respectablejoint recently published a study on the deadly virus dubbed GXP2V, which was first discovered in 2017.The virus reportedly killed 100% of humanized mice within just eight days of exposure.
12:27Scientists said, quote,Meh, eight days?We can do better than that.The rapid death rate reportedly surprised researchers, who warned that their findings,underscores a spillover risk of GXP2V into human beings.humans. Now the study, as you might imagine, prompted outrage from the international scientificcommunity. Well, that's nice. Francois Ballou, an epidemiologist at University College London'sGenetics Institute, called the research scientifically totally pointless. Well, I mean, unless you count
13:02getting grants from government institutions, which, of course, would be the point. Professor RichardEbright, a chemist at Rutgers University, agreed and noted.quoted that the study conspicuously lacked any mention of biosafety precautions used for the research.He warned, quote, the absence of this information raises the concerning possibilitythat part or all of this research, like the research in Wuhan in 2016-2019 that likelycaused the COVID-19 pandemic, recklessly was performed without the minimal biosafetycontainment and practices essential for research with the potential pandemic pathogens.quote. However, frankly, I'm sure that the scientists at the Beijing University of Chemical Technology
13:47were wearing masks, so that should do it. Coming up, the Biden administration has been using thetragic drowning deaths of three migrants to attack Texas officials who barred U.S. Border Patrolagents from accessing a small section of the border. However, new court filings show that thefederal government's initial recounting of the incident wasn't accurate.I'll have the details in today's back of the brief.Exema is unpredictable.But you can flare less with ebbglis.A once-monthly treatment for moderate to severe eczema.
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16:08Sign up for your $1.1 per month trial at Shopify.com slash special offer.In today's back of the brief, I wanted to follow up on that standoff between Texas authoritiesand the U.S. Department of Justice, specifically, the circumstances surrounding the tragicdeaths of three migrants who drowned in the Rio Grande River.To get you up to speed on this story, the Biden administration is blasting the state of Texas,after state authorities barred U.S. Border Patrol from accessing the Shelby Park area last week,and that's a two-and-half-mile stretch of the Rio Grande and Eagle Pass.
16:46The situation reached ahead on Friday evening after a woman and two childrentragically drowned in the Rio Grande River along that same stretch.Now, officials with the Department of Homeland Security claimed that border patrol agentswere prevented from accessing the area in order to save them.Texas officials immediately disputed the DHS narrative.Now, since that incident has happened,the Biden administration has used those drownings as a cudgel against the state of Texas,blaming officials there for the tragic deaths.
17:19In a statement over the weekend, the White House stated, quote,while we continue to gather facts about the circumstances of these tragic deaths,one thing is clear, Governor Abbott's political stunts are cruel, inhumane, and dangerous.The media has also politicized those deaths,and the Texas Democratic Party even called Abbott, quote, the Grim Reaper.Well, the Biden administration has now admitted that the initial narrative was wrong, and the three migrants who drowned died long before border patrol agents ever sought access to the Shelby Park area from Texas officials.According to official court filings, the DOJ said Mexican officials advised border patrol about the drownings at 9 p.m. local time, an hour after they occurred.Of course, this isn't the first time the Biden administration has misled the public in an effort to demonize efforts to secure the border.
18:15You may remember back in 2021, the White House blasted mounted CBP agents for allegedly using their reins to whip Haitian migrants in Del Rio, Texas.A CBP investigation ended up concluding that the whipping's never happened.And of course, no apology was given by the White House for their false statements.Likewise, with this latest example of the White House rushing to partisan judgment without any facts,you can make bank on the fact that they will not apologize.And that, my friends, is the President's Daily Brief for Thursday, 18 January.If you have any questions or comments, please reach out to me at PDB at thefirsttv.com.I'm Mike Baker, and I'll be back later today with the PDB afternoon bulletin.
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