President Biden’s top spokesperson refused to comment Monday on why two Russian billionaires associated with first son Hunter Biden have escaped US sanctions over the year-old war in Ukraine.

The Post asked press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre for an explanation after reporting fresh details last week on the association between the Biden family and oligarchs Vladimir Yevtushenkov and Yelena Baturina.

“Could [you] share the reason why President Biden hasn’t sanctioned the Russian billionaires Vladimir Yevtushenkov and Yelena Baturina?” The Post asked Jean-Pierre at her regular briefing.

“How is he handling the conflict of interest there given his son was a business associate of these two people? And can you confirm that, as sitting vice president, he dined with Baturina in Georgetown?”

Two Russian billionaires who have managed to dodge US sanctions over Moscow’s year-old invasion of Ukraine went property shopping with Hunter Biden, dined with then-Vice President Joe Biden, and discussed “favors” they might swap, sources tell The Post.

New details of Joe and Hunter Biden’s association with Yelena Baturina and Vladimir Yevtushenkov flesh out tantalizing clues from the first son’s abandoned laptop. The sources spoke with The Post this week after the duo was yet again spared in a fresh batch of sanctions announced by the Treasury Department Friday.

“I think it’s very fishy,” said one source who had firsthand knowledge of the business relationship between Hunter Biden and Yevtushenkov — who is sanctioned by the UK and Australia but not by the US.

House Republicans rallied to the defense of former President Donald Trump before his possible indictment, demanding that the Manhattan district attorney who is investigating him turn over documents and come for an interview.

The Republican chairmen of three House committees sent a letter Monday to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, seeking information about his actions in the Trump case, which they characterized as an “unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority.” They requested testimony as well as documents and copies of any communications with the Justice Department.

No authorities wanted to take the case but then “what changed? President Trump announces he’s running for president and shazam,” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said shortly after sending the letter.

The letter to Bragg — effectively demanding transparency in the middle of a criminal investigation — suggested that Republicans intend to use their House majority to defend Trump as he mounts a second run for president.

The last gas-powered muscle car from Dodge isn’t leaving the road without some squeals, thunder and crazy-fast speed.

The 2023 Challenger SRT Demon 170 will deliver 1,025 horsepower from its 6.2-liter supercharged V-8, and the automaker says it will be the quickest production car made.

Stellantis, formed in 2021 by combining Fiat Chrysler and France’s PSA Peugeot, says it can go from zero to 60 miles per hour (97 kilometers per hour) in a scary 1.66 seconds, making it faster than even electric supercars from Tesla and Lucid.

It’s what the performance brand from Stellantis is calling the last of the rumbling cars that for decades were a fixture of American culture on Saturday night cruises all over the country.

Stellantis will stop making gas versions of the Dodge Challenger and Charger and the Chrylser 300 big sedan by the end of this year, squeezed out by stricter government fuel-economy regulations and an accelerating shift to electric vehicles to fight climate change.

On Tuesday, March 26, 2012, I was invited by Ron Paul and his staff to assist a meeting of the Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology Subcommittee of the House Committee on Financial Services. The title of the hearing was "Federal Reserve Aid to the Eurozone: Its Impact on the U.S. and the Dollar."

Unfortunately, Ben Bernanke had not come to the hearing, being busy with propaganda lectures in favor of the Fed. Instead, two of his colleagues, Mr. William C. Dudley (president and chief executive officer, Federal Reserve Bank of New York) and Dr. Steven B. Kamin (director, Division of International Finance, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System), showed up to answer the committee's questions on currency swaps with other central banks.

The hearing dealt mainly with the Fed's currency swap with the ECB, which amounts to a covert bailout of European banks.

But why did European banks need help from the Fed in the first place? European banks had borrowed dollars short term in international wholesale markets and lent these dollars for the long term to US companies or households. The maturity mismatch is highly risky, because once a bank cannot renew its short-term debts it becomes illiquid.

As part of the red carpet rollout for illegal immigrants the Biden administration is dedicating tens of millions of dollars to provide migrant youths with a multitude of services once they are released from government shelters. This includes medical, educational, legal and an array of other services. American taxpayers will also fund detailed home studies by deploying case managers to conduct intensive in-home engagements and virtual check-ins to ensure the safety and continued support for the young migrants and the families they have been released to. On its face the program for migrant youth—officially labeled Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) by the government—appears to be superior to the system that manages hundreds of thousands of U.S. children in similar situations, such as foster care.

Private and public educational institutions, small businesses, city and county governments, tribal organizations as well as nonprofits will receive government funding to assure UAC are well taken care off. The money will flow through the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which is charged with caring for illegal aliens under the age of 18. In a recent grant announcement the agency’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) reveals that it will allocate $50 million—and possibly up to $300 million—for the Home Study (HS) and Post-Release Services (PRS) for unaccompanied children. “PRS providers will be charged with a scope of services that includes three levels – virtual check-ins, case management services, and intensive in-home engagements,” the grant document states. “ORR provides Home Studies and PRS nationwide and needs HS/PRS providers to serve both high-need and remote locations where sponsors of unaccompanied children reside.” The agency encourages providers located in or near geographic areas where UAC are commonly unified with sponsors to apply.

The Federal Reserve was reportedly aware of Silicon Valley Bank’s risky practices more than a year before the California-based financial institution collapsed.

The Fed issued six citations after finding serious weaknesses in the bank's handling of risks during a 2021 review, The New York Times reported Sunday.

The bank did not fix its issues and by July 2022, it underwent a full supervisory review and was rated as having deficient governance and controls. Regulators restricted the bank to prevent it from using acquisitions to grow.

The San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank met last fall with senior leaders at Silicon Valley Bank to discuss the institution's ability to access cash in a crisis and how to weather rising interest rates.

Additional problems at the bank were discovered in early 2023 when it underwent what the Fed calls a "horizontal review," which assesses the risk management strength.

The Palestinian Authority, Egypt and Jordan have condemned as “racist” a firebrand Israeli minister’s remarks denying the existence of the Palestinian people, with Amman summoning Israel’s ambassador for a rebuke.

Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich is part of veteran leader Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-right government that took office in December.

Jamie Dimon is the Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the U.S., which is also ranked the riskiest global bank by its regulators. But instead of getting his own house in order in the midst of a banking crisis, Dimon has been peculiarly focused elsewhere.

Over the past five days, Jamie Dimon’s legions of publicists have been burning up the phone lines with reporters, pushing the narrative that Jamie Dimon is some kind of financial wizard who needs to have a seat at the table to save the regional bank, First Republic Bank. (Scroll down here to see the exhaustive public relations effort that has gone into this narrative.)

Last Thursday, news hit the wire services that Dimon had lined up 11 banks willing to place $30 billion in uninsured deposits into First Republic Bank. JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo each ponied up $5 billion – or two-thirds of the $30 billion. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) caps federal deposit insurance at $250,000 per depositor, per bank.

North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper states that he will NOT veto a bill sent to his desk that will increase punishments for rioters in the state.

Fox News reports that the GOP-led legislature sent a bill to the desk of the Governor that would increase penalties on rioters. The bill passed through the bipartisan legislature, and the governor had until Monday to veto it. However, he has stated that he will not do so. The Associated Press reports that the governor let the bill become law without his signature. This is a move that the Governor can make, given the laws in the state. It allows him to allow the bill to become the law of the land without his express approval.

The decision to allow the law to go into effect may help prevent what could have been an override by the heavily GOP legislature in North Carolina. Therefore, Governor Cooper might simply be making sure that he is getting out of the way of a potentially embarrassing situation where he could have an override.

Louisiana Republican lawmakers gained a significant upper hand after a longtime Democrat switched parties.

State Rep. Francis Thompson, who has served as a Democrat from northeast Louisiana for decades, changed his party registration on Friday, according to CBS affiliate WAFB.

With this party swap, Republicans now have the numbers in both chambers of the state legislature to muster a two-thirds supermajority to override vetoes by Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards.

This is the first time Republican lawmakers in the state have had such an advantage in Louisiana’s roughly 210-year history, per Newsweek.

On October 13, 2022, the FBI testified that they were using geo-tracking data to identify Trump supporters who had gathered near the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

A bombshell report by the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) revealed the “vast, secretive” partnership between private companies and the federal government to surveil and track the movements of millions of Americans.

According to the EFF, the intel alphabet agencies, including ICE, the FBI, US Secret Service, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the Department of Defense (DoD), as well as state and local law enforcement, are being funneled hordes of private cell phone location data by private brokers who harvest the information.

This is the same tactic that Gregg Phillips, Catherine Engelbrecht, and True The Vote used for their investigation into the mail-in ballot dropbox fraud during the 2020 election. The cell phone location data collected by this group was used to identify the network of Democrat operatives who committed mass election fraud, as seen in the recently-released documentary “2000 Mules.”

The FBI was alleged to have used this data to identify patriotic protesters who traveled to Washington DC on January 6, 2021, to support President Trump and the US Constitution.

For her efforts to report injuries to the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) and to educate others in her hospital system on doing the same, Physician Assistant Deborah Conrad said she was labeled an anti-vaxxer and fired from her job.

Today, the New York-based Conrad tells her story at medical freedom conferences throughout the country, the most recent being one in Mississippi where physicians, scientists, and the vaccine injured warned state lawmakers to pull the COVID-19 vaccines from the market.

Conrad told The Epoch Times she began to see early danger signals in 2021 upon the vaccine rollout, and with that, resistance among her colleagues to report on them.

“After the vaccines came out, there was this uptick in unusual symptoms, some of which I had never seen in my 20-year career,” Conrad said. “In every case, it was in somebody who had received the COVID-19 vaccine.”

Conrad said she had never admitted an adult patient with RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) until the COVID-19 vaccines.

“And every patient who came in with RSV was vaccinated for COVID,” Conrad said. “It wasn’t normal.”

Kari Lake joined Bannon’s War Room this morning to announce a prayer rally on Tuesday during the Arizona Supreme Court’s deliberations on whether or not to consider Lake’s election lawsuit. 

The Gateway Pundit has reported extensively on Kari Lake’s lawsuit, which has moved to the Arizona Supreme Court and will be considered in a conference tomorrow, March 21. “At the conference, the Court will decide whether to accept review and schedule an oral argument,” states a recent Order from the Supreme Court.

Rogan O’Handley, aka DC Drano, tweeted recently that he is “in shock” that Arizona Courts don’t see an issue with Maricopa County intentionally causing over 59% of machines to malfunction and fail Republican Election Day voters. The election should be thrown out on this issue alone.

Catholic Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò warned at a pro-Russian meeting that Democratic Megadonors George Soros, World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab and Microsoft founder Bill Gates have “perpetrated a real world coup d’etat” for their actions during the COVID-19 pandemic followed by the war in Ukraine.

Speaking at the Founding Congress of the International Movement of Russophiles last week in Moscow, Viganò said, as translated: “We cannot be surprised that, after de-Christianizing the Western world, this elite considers Russia an enemy to be overthrown. The Russian Federation undeniably stands as the last bastion of civilization against barbarism.” 

He also said the elites use global organizations such as NATO, the United Nations and similar groups for the “indoctrination of the masses.” 

News is breaking that Donald Trump will turn himself in to New York authorities Tuesday, where he expects to be arrested. Huh? Where did this come from? Arrested for what exactly? Why now? And why in New York? What is the proudest and least humble man in America 2.0 doing humbling himself like this?

Several questions arise here. Why is Trump traveling from Florida to New York, for the purpose of being arrested? In these cases, usually witnesses are extradited to other states. And governors can always refuse to extradite, as happened consistently during Jim Garrison’s investigation. So wouldn’t Ron DeSantis, as a loyal Republican, deny any laughable extradition order for Trump? Or would DeSantis be happy to get rid of his obnoxious rival for the presidential nomination, especially given Trump’s curious attacks on his character? So many potential plot twists.

As Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping met in Moscow today, Putin accused the West of attempting to curb Russia and China's progress.

In an article published by the People's Daily newspaper, he asserted that the Western world is trying to divide the Eurasian space into military blocs to contain the two countries' development. Putin went on to say that the crisis in Ukraine, which he believes is being fueled by the West, is a "manifestation of its desire to retain its international dominance and preserve the unipolar world order."

In response, Xi, in an article published in the Kremlin's Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper, asserted that his visit to Moscow is a "journey of friendship, cooperation, and peace." He also noted that the relationship between Russia and China is based on principles of "nonalignment, nonconfrontation and nontargeting of third parties."

Webmaster addition: Gosh DARN that human-caused global warming!

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has slammed District Attorney Alvin Bragg as a “Soros-funded prosecutor.” This was in reference to Democratic campaign backer George Soros.

The governor of Florida is anticipated to run against Trump for the Republican nominee.

On Monday, DeSantis (R-Fla.) claimed that Bragg was “pursuing a political agenda and weaponizing the office” as he reportedly considered indicting former President Donald Trump on charges related to alleged hush-money payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels in 2016.

“I’ve seen rumors swirl, I have not seen any facts yet, and so I don’t know what’s going to happen. But I do know this,” DeSantis said. “The Manhattan district attorney is a Soros-funded prosecutor, and so he, like other Soros-funded prosecutors, they weaponize their office to impose a political agenda on society at the expense of the rule of law and public safety.”

“Soros-funded prosecutors,” according to DeSantis, “may conduct a high-profile politicized case, and that’s awful.”

Jen “Circle Back” Psaki was lit up online for her inaugural MSNBC show on Sunday after ironically slamming a conservative author for not offering a clear and concise answer for what “woke” means during a recent interview.

Psaki, of all people, should know that some issues are complex. When someone is in the position of communicating a message and has a human moment, the result can be less than ideal.

President Joe Biden’s first press secretary got countless passes for being awful at her job and failing to provide coherent answers to reporters' questions.

Two bills under consideration in Texas propose restoring sound money and enforcing the US Constitution’s monetary provisions that could weaken the grip by the Federal Reserve. If enacted, SB 1558 would officially recognize gold and silver coins as legal tender and eliminate capital-gains taxes on gold and silver — thus bringing Texas closer to constitutional compliance and treating gold and silver as money. HB 4305 would require the Texas comptroller to establish gold and silver reserves, thus reducing its dependence on the federal government.

These bills are important steps toward nullifying the unconstitutional Federal Reserve, which has a monopoly on money, and will help Texas avoid the federal government’s plans to impose Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC).

Chris Rock warned American lawmakers on Sunday, cautioning that arresting former President Trump would only make him more popular.

The comedian made this comment while attending an event in Washington D.C. honoring Adam Sandler, where the room was filled with prominent political figures, including former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and representatives from President Biden's administration. Rock asked, "Are you guys really going to arrest Trump? Do you know this is only going to make him more popular? It's like arresting Tupac. He's just gonna sell more records. Are you stupid?" He then moved on to Trump's relationship with adult film star Stormy Daniels, quipping that "f---ing a porn star and paying someone off so his wife wouldn't find out - that's romantic."

Shares of Credit Suisse plunged 63% in early trading Monday after the announcement that banking giant UBS would buy its troubled rival for almost $3.25 billion in a deal orchestrated by regulators to stave off further market-shaking turmoil in the global banking system.

UBS shares were down 14% in early trading on the Swiss stock exchange.

Swiss authorities urged UBS to take over its smaller rival after a plan for Credit Suisse to borrow up to 50 billion francs ($54 billion) failed to reassure investors and the bank's customers. Shares of Credit Suisse and other banks plunged after the failure of two banks in the U.S. raised questions about other potentially shaky global financial institutions.

Credit Suisse is among 30 financial institutions known as globally systemically important banks, and authorities worried about the fallout if it were to fail.

Former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy says the idea that officers will handcuff former President Trump and arrest him after an indictment "couldn't happen," and that it will instead be up to the U.S. Secret Service and the New York Police Department to arrange a location for him to surrender.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is weighing possible charges against Trump and could bring an indictment. Those charges stem from the $130,000 hush-money payment that then-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen made to Stormy Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, in the weeks leading up to the 2016 presidential election in exchange for her silence about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump in 2006.

As automated technology has evolved and become more capable, it has revolutionised the way we live, interact with each other, and even vote, affecting society from the heights of government through to everyday behaviours. Better understanding the scope of AI’s capability is key to developing and, crucially, managing the technology in the future. In recent years, academic research has played a fundamental role in supporting this knowledge base and, as the first dedicated academic facility to study the impact that technology is having on politics, the Centre for Technology and Global Affairs at Oxford University is a leading-edge example of this knowledge exchange in action.

Abhishek Dasgupta, Research Fellow in Artificial Intelligence at the Centre for Technology and Global Affairs (the Centre), discusses how this pioneering interdisciplinary research facility is driving our understanding of AI’s societal impact, how technology is influencing political governance today, and how these changes are shaping our lives – for better or worse.

French mathematician and Fields Medal recipient Cédric Villani has devoted some of his formidable natural intelligence to the subject of artificial intelligence (AI), helping write a report that was submitted to the French government in March. He also knows a thing or two about politics having been elected as a national deputy last year. It is his belief, as surprising as it may sound, that AI and politics could very well have a future together.

"Even though not everything is clear yet, AI could become very useful in terms of politics, especially regarding the link between citizen and government," Villani states in the latest edition of Charles magazine.

"No one is supposed to be unaware of the law. But the law is a set of incomprehensible texts," he adds. That's where AI could come in. The mathematician turned lawmaker imagines a chatbot, for example, that could review all the articles in our dense legal codes in order to extract a substantial response to any particular legal question.

Webmaster addition:

California can’t ban residents from buying modern handguns.

That’s the ruling handed down by Federal District Judge Cormac J. Carney, a George W. Bush appointee, on Monday. He found California’s requirement that all new pistols sold in the state include a series of uncommon or even theoretical safety devices is unconstitutional. He ruled the regulation, which has resulted in no new handgun models being sold to civilians in nearly a decade, violates the Second Amendment.

“Californians have the constitutional right to acquire and use state-of-the-art handguns to protect themselves,” Judge Carney wrote in his preliminary injunction for Boland v. Bonta. “They should not be forced to settle for decade-old models of handguns to ensure that they remain safe inside or outside the home.”

The decision is the latest blow to California’s strict gun-control laws in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2022 opinion in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, which set a new standard for reviewing gun laws. Late last year, a federal judge also blocked the state’s attempt to discourage legal challenges to its restrictions. Many of the state’s other high-profile gun restrictions are similarly embroiled in ongoing litigation, and Monday’s ruling may signal they may face a tough climb to clear the bar set by the Supreme Court.

The also ruling paves the way for law-abiding Californians to access new pistol models for the first time in a long time.

The European Union has agreed on the ammunition plan for Ukraine worth two billion euros ($2.1 billion), media reported on Monday, citing diplomats.

Brussels hosts a meeting of the EU Council of Foreign Ministers is taking place in Brussels on Monday.

Russia launched its special military operation in Ukraine in February 2022, after the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics appealed for help in defending themselves against Ukrainian provocations.