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As Americans struggle to keep up with the rising tide of prices and feel the squeeze of high interest rates on housing, President Joe Biden continues to claim that the economy is good. “Bidenomics” is working, there’s no recession to see here, so shut up and enjoy the drag queen performances at the White House.
That narrative took a hit back in 2022, however, when America experienced two consecutive quarters of decline in gross domestic product—the traditional definition of a recession. In the first quarter of 2022, inflation-adjusted GDP declined in the U.S. by 1.6%, and it declined by an additional 0.6% in the second quarter of that year.
The Biden administration responded by simply redefining the word “recession.” The move made a bizarre kind of sense coming from a bureaucracy that has redefined what it means to be a woman.
The White House stated in July 2022 that “it is unlikely that the decline of the GDP in the first quarter of this year—even if followed by another GDP decline in the second quarter—indicates a recession.”
The Heritage Foundation, a stick-in-the-mud organization that doesn’t support willy-nilly redefining words to suit the woke movement, decided to get to the bottom of this whole redefining-a-recession nonsense. Heritage’s Oversight Project filed a Freedom of Information Act request in July 2023, asking the Treasury Department for internal communications regarding recessions. (Heritage created The Daily Signal in 2014.)
Treasury asked Heritage to narrow the parameters of the request. It did so. Treasury refused to hand over the documents by the time required by law. Heritage sued. Late last month, Treasury handed over some documents.
The catch? Most of the conversations in those documents have been redacted.
To be sure, we do get little gems like “I’d be glad to discuss tomorrow or Monday,” and “Thank you for forwarding.” These largely meaningless pleasantries are among the few words Treasury apparently deems nonthreatening enough to reveal to the public.
Many pages simply feature a large black box redacting the entire page.
One email shows Treasury staff discussing a quote from the International Monetary Fund stating that a “technical recession” consists of two quarters of economic decline.
“For the United States, some indicators, such as the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s GDPNow forecasting model, suggest that a technical recession (defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth) may already have started,” Gene Sperling, a senior adviser to Biden, quoted the IMF in an email on July 26, 2022.
Treasury redacted Sperling’s own words in his email, along with the substance of every email responding to him.
So, Heritage plans to sue again.
“The Oversight Project sued the Treasury Department to seek answers on why the Biden administration gaslit the American people into changing the definition of recession,” Kyle Brosnan, chief counsel at the Oversight Project, told The Daily Signal. “We have received multiple document productions from our lawsuit showing that there were a lot of communications about this change, but excessive redactions have hampered our ability to determine the truth. We intend to challenge these redactions as we progress in the case.”
The Biden administration’s apparent attempt, yet again, to hide the substance of internal discussions about the definition of a recession raises more questions than answers.
Did Treasury officials intentionally twist the definition in order to politically protect Biden in a midterm election year? Did they develop strategies for hiding negative economic news that might interfere with the 2024 election? If they weren’t trying to monkey with the definition of recession, why are they so insistent on hiding that fact?
Perhaps the Biden administration merely wishes to redefine “transparency,” as well.
The post WHAT ARE THEY HIDING? Biden Admin Redacts Its Justification for Altering the Definition of ‘Recession’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Wisconsin is one of the most fiercely contested battleground states in this election cycle, but it lacks federal transparency requirements for voter registration imposed on most states, according to a lawsuit by an election watchdog.
Minnesota, generally a solidly blue state although it saw a razor-thin margin in the results of the 2016 presidential race, also doesn’t make its voter rolls available to the public, the lawsuit contends.
Public Interest Legal Foundation, an election integrity advocacy organization, announced the litigation last week, alleging that the exemption of six states from a provision in the National Voter Registration Act violates the principle of equal state sovereignty.
“No state should be exempt from transparency,” J. Christian Adams, president of Public Interest Legal Foundation, said in a written statement. “All states should be treated equally under the law and no exemption should allow certain election officials to hide documents relating to voter list maintenance activities.”
In 1993, Congress passed the National Voter Registration Act, better known as the “Motor Voter Law,” which allows Americans to register to vote when they get a driver’s license.
The federal law also requires states to update voter registration lists to ensure that dead people or those who have left a jurisdiction no longer are listed.
For accountability, the law says that states must “make available for public inspection and, where available photocopying at a reasonable cost, all records concerning the implementation of programs and activities conducted for the purpose of ensuring the accuracy and currency of official lists of eligible voters.”
However, Congress carved out an exception to the transparency requirement for seven states: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Idaho, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Maine, and Wyoming.
The reason was that the seven states offered same-day voter registration or, in the case of North Dakota, didn’t require voter registration.
After briefly stopping same-day voter registration, Maine lost its exemption from the disclosure provision of the federal law.
The new complaints, filed in two federal courts, contend that the exemptions from U.S. law violate the principle of equal state sovereignty by treating the remaining states differently.
Public Interest Legal Foundation is suing Minnesota and Wisconsin first.
“This lawsuit is the first step to bringing the National Voter Registration Act’s transparency requirements to all 50 states,” Adams said.
The Wisconsin lawsuit names Wisconsin Election Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe as the defendant. The Minnesota litigation names Secretary of State Steve Simon as the defendant.
A Wisconsin Election Commission spokesperson declined comment for this report, but pointed to the applicable portion of state law, which says the commission and local governments can decide the cost of obtaining voter information.
“The commission shall establish by rule the fee for obtaining a copy of the official registration list, or a portion of the list. … The amount of the fee shall be set, after consultation with county and municipal election officials,” a portion of the law says.
The Minnesota Secretary of State’s Office didn’t respond to a request for comment from The Daily Signal.
The litigation cites the Supreme Court case of Shelby County v. Holder, in which the high court reaffirmed that all states enjoy equal sovereignty and determined that if Congress treats states differently, it must be “sufficiently related to the problem [the statute] targets” and must “make sense in light of current conditions.”
Public Interest Legal Foundation’s complaints argue that Minnesota and Wisconsin grant and remove voting rights through voter registration and maintenance of that voter list. So, they argue, Congress’ goal of making the process transparent should apply to both states.
Thirteen of the 20 states that offer same-day voter registration are still subject to the federal transparency requirements, the litigation notes.
The post These States Withhold Voter Registration From Public That Most States Are Federally Mandated to Disclose appeared first on The Daily Signal.
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