Category: Washington Free Beacon

The Biden administration will waive sanctions against a company building the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, a move that will likely allow completion of a project that the Russian government is using to increase its influence in Europe.

Axios reported Tuesday that the administration is waiving sanctions against Nord Stream 2 AG and its CEO, Matthias Warnig. Nord Stream 2 is a German company controlled by Gazprom, the Russian state-controlled oil giant. Warnig is a former East German intelligence officer said to be close to Russian president Vladimir Putin.

In March, Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the pipeline “a Russian

YouTube is blaming the COVID pandemic and shoddy technology for its inconsistent censorship of a legal expert’s defense of Israeli airstrikes in Gaza.

The Washington Free Beacon reported Monday that YouTube twice removed a clip of George Mason University law professor Eugene Kontorovich discussing the legal status of Israeli strikes in Gaza. The second time, YouTube informed Kontorovich that his clip violated the platform’s “violent criminal organizations” policy, which YouTube typically invokes to take down terrorist hostage or recruitment videos.

But on Tuesday, YouTube told the Free Beacon that “automated systems” were to blame for how the video was handled.

Few Americans have heard of Chris Hayes, the former editor of the Nation who has hosted his own show on MSNBC since 2011.

According to a Morning Consult poll published Tuesday, 44 percent of respondents said they had never heard of Hayes, the second-highest percentage among the media personalities included in the survey. Only Hayes’s MSNBC colleague Lawrence O’Donnell scored higher (48 percent) in terms of national obscurity. Just 19 percent of Americans had a favorable opinion of Hayes, compared with 18 percent for O’Donnell.

CNN’s Anderson Cooper was the most recognizable primetime host—just 13 percent of poll respondents had

Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R., Ala.) introduced legislation to block billions in taxpayer funding from going to China.

The senator aims to prevent the federal Thrift Savings Plan (TSP), a retirement fund for federal workers and the military, from investing in companies connected to the Chinese military and other Chinese Communist Party operations. In 2019, TSP fund managers announced plans to invest $54 billion in an index fund with roughly 8 percent of its capital going toward Chinese companies. The TSP board put the plan on hold in May 2020, citing uncertainty in world markets caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Tuberville

President Joe Biden’s nominee for immigration enforcement chief took a paid trip in 2015 to China funded by an advocacy group for a visa program that allows wealthy foreigners to obtain U.S. visas in exchange for million-dollar investments in domestic projects, according to Texas state ethics records reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.

Ed Gonzalez, who has served as the sheriff of Harris County, Texas, since 2017, was nominated for director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement last month. But his financial ties to advocates for the EB-5 visa program are drawing concerns from critics who call it a magnet

Just three days after Congress’s top doctor said vaccinated members would no longer be required to wear masks in committee hearings, the doctor reversed his decision, sparking concerns that politics is being prioritized over science.

On Thursday, Dr. Brian P. Monahan, the attending physician for Congress, issued guidances relaxing indoor mask mandates for fully vaccinated lawmakers in accordance with CDC guidelines. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) said on Friday she would keep the mask mandate in place in the face of the guidance from Monahan and the CDC. In a letter issued late Monday, Monahan realigned the

Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) slammed the Associated Press on Monday for sharing office space with Hamas in a Gaza tower.

“Why is the Associated Press sharing a building with Hamas?” Cotton asked on the Senate floor. “Surely these intrepid reporters knew who their neighbors were.”

Israeli forces destroyed the tower in Gaza on Saturday with an airstrike after giving an hour warning to evacuate the building before the attack. The Israeli military said the building was a target because it contained several assets of Hamas intelligence agencies. In a statement, the Associated Press said it had “no indication” Hamas

An Israeli legal scholar’s argument about the legality of Israeli airstrikes was temporarily removed from YouTube on Monday for violating unspecified “content guidelines.”

Eugene Kontorovich, a professor at George Mason University, appeared on RT to explain why Israel’s counterstrikes in Gaza are protected by international law. YouTube removed a video of his appearance because it violated the company’s terms of service. It later reversed the decision and restored the video without an explanation for why the initial action was taken. Kontorovich believes the video was down for 24 hours.

The move continues a pattern of capricious moderation of content related