Ukraine’s Trans Military Spokesperson Suspended After Threatening to Hunt Down ‘Russia’s War Criminal Propagandists’

Debra Heine reporting for American Greatness 

Ukraine’s trans military spokesperson Sarah Ashton-Cirillo has been suspended from his duties after saying in an outlandish online video that Ukraine would hunt down those considered to be Russian propagandists and “make them pay for their crimes.”

“Next week, the teeth of the Russian devils will gnash ever harder and their rabid mouths will foam in uncontrollable frenzy as the world will see a favorite Kremlin propagandist pay for their crimes,” Ashton-Cirillo, né Michael John Cirillo, said in the Sept. 13 video. “And this puppet of Putin is only the first,” he added. “Russia’s war criminal propagandists will all be hunted down and justice will be served.”

Ashton-Cirillo, a political operative and registered Democrat, was appointed in August to be a Ukraine Territorial Defense Forces (TDF) English-language spokesperson. The appointment came after he was allegedly wounded in action while serving in the 113th Kharkiv Defense Brigade.

Last year, after a stint as a “war correspondent” and while serving in the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) as a combat medic, Ashton-Cirillo was honored at Las Vegas city hall.  The Ukraine propagandist was given certificates of recognition by US Senator Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) and former Democrat Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak.

According to the Fox 5 report below, the Smithsonian Institute also requested one of Ashton-Cirillo’s military uniforms.

Ashton-Cirillo’s antics caught the attention of Senator JD Vance (R-Ohio), who fired off a letter to top Biden administration officials Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines asking if the self-described “progressive activist” has ties to American intelligence services. Vance also demanded to know if U.S. funds were subsidizing Ashton-Cirillo’s apparent role in Ukraine.

“If the Ukrainians want to hire weirdos to threaten Americans and others for speaking their mind, I guess that’s their right. They shouldn’t use our tax dollars to do it,” the Ohio senator told Breitbart News.

“I’d like like the Biden administration to explain who this crazy Ukrainian spokesperson is, and whether they stand by Ukraine’s clear attack on free speech,” Vance wrote on X.

Ashton-Cirillo responded on X, saying: “Since the staff of @JDVance1 is keeping a close eye on my Twitter, I’d ask that the Senator kindly back the delivery of ATACMS to Ukraine, so we can end this war of Russian aggression as quickly as possible and make sure the next lost life is the last lost life of this genocide.”

“Since I’ve got your attention, are you/Ukraine still planning to kill people who engage in speech you don’t like? And are there any American citizens on the kill list?,” Vance wrote back.

Ashton-Cirillo posted another video in which he thanked X “for carrying this exclusive message from Kiev.”

Exclusive 🚨🚨🚨

Special Ukraine in the Know: 

My response to Senator Vance’s letter to the US Secretaries of State and Defense and the Director of National Intelligence asking about my role in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/L6KuHgfyC5

— Sarah Ashton-Cirillo (Ukrainian TDF Media) (@SarahAshtonLV) September 18, 2023

“To everyone asking: Yes, this is real,” Vance wrote on Sept. 18. “This is the English language spokesman for the Ukrainian armed forces. This same person posted a video last week threatening violence against anyone who engaged in speech the Ukrainians deemed bad propaganda. Disgusting.”

Vance appeared on Fox News Tuesday evening to discuss the contretemps with host Jesse Watters.

“My first reaction when I saw this video was that SNL had somehow gotten funny again,” Lance told Watters. “I was sure that it was a big comedy sketch and I was not in on the joke.”

The senator said he was “shocked” to learn that Ashton-Cirillo does actually represent the Ukrainian military, which he noted “is almost entirely at this point funded by the American taxpayer.”

Vance pointed out that Ashton-Cirillo’s threat about hunting down “Russian propagandists” would apply to U.S. journalists who question the regime’s narrative on the war in Ukraine.

Once such journalist, American citizen Gonzalo Lira, is currently languishing in a Ukrainian prison on allegations of spreading Russian propaganda, Breitbart reported.

Lira, a dual citizen of the United States and Chile who was living in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv at the time of the Russian invasion, is reportedly facing between five to eight years in prison under Ukraine’s wartime propaganda laws.

“Are we really funding a military that is threatening the free speech rights of people who disagree with the Ukrainian war effort?” Vance asked.

After Vance raised awareness about the Ashton-Cirillo’s activities in Ukraine, the Command of the Territorial Defense Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on Wednesday put out the following statement:

The statements of JSgt Ashton-Cirillo in recent days were not approved by the command of the TDF or the command of the AFU. When conducting military operations against the aggressor, the defense forces of Ukraine strictly observe the norms of international humanitarian law.

The command of the TDF will conduct an official investigation into the circumstances of these statements. Appropriate decisions would be taken. Sergeant Sarah Ashton-Cirillo will be suspended immediately pending the investigation.

X22, And we Know, and more- Sept 22

 

Make a deal! Make a deal! Make a deal!

Our Self-Induced Catastrophe at the Border ~ VDH

The American people must override the corrupt entities who profit from the border's human misery and chaos

by Victor Davis Hanson for American Greatness

Since early 2021 we have witnessed somewhere between 7 and 8 million illegal entries across the now nonexistent U.S. southern border.

The more the border vanished, the more federal immigration law was rendered inert, and the more Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas spun fantasies that the “border is secure.” He is now written off as a veritable “Baghdad Bob” propagandist.

But how and why did the Biden administration destroy immigration law as we knew it?

The Trump administration’s initial efforts to close the border had been continually obstructed in the Congress, sabotaged by the administrative state, and stymied in the courts. Nonetheless, it had finally secured the border by early 2020.

Yet almost all its successful initiatives were immediately overturned in 2021.

The wall was abruptly stopped, its projected trajectory cancelled. The Obama-era disastrous “catch-and release” policy of immigration non-enforcement was resurrected.

Prior successful pressure on Mexico’s President Andrés Obrador to stop the deliberate export of his own citizens northward ceased.

Federal border patrol officers were forced to stand down.

New federal subsidies were granted to entice and then support illegal arrivals.

No one in the Democratic Party objected to the destruction of the border or the subversion of immigration law.

However, things changed somewhat once swamped southern border states began to bus or fly a few thousand of their illegal immigrants northward to sanctuary city jurisdictions—especially to New York, Chicago, and even Martha’s Vineyard.

The sanctuary-city “humanists” there who had greenlighted illegal immigration into the southern states suddenly shrieked. They were irate after experiencing the concrete consequences of their own prior abstract border agendas. After all, their nihilism was always supposed to fall upon distant and ridiculed others.

New York mayor Eric Adams went from celebrating a few dozen illegal immigrants bused into Manhattan, to blasting his own party by allowing tens of thousands to swamp his now bankrupt city.

But why did the Biden administration deliberately unleash the largest influx across the southern border in U.S. history?

The ethnic chauvinists and Democratic Party elites needed new constituents, given their increasingly unpopular agendas.

They feared that the more legal Latino immigrants assimilated and integrated into American society, the less happy they became with leftwing radical abortion, racial, transgender, crime, and green fixations.

Democratic grandees had always bragged that illegal immigration would create what they called “The New Democratic Majority” in “Demography is Destiny” fashion. Now they slander critics as “racists” who object to leftwing efforts to use illegal immigration to turn southwestern red states blue.

Mexico now cannot survive as a modern state without some $60 billion in annual remittances sent by its expatriates in America. But many illegal immigrants rely on American state and federal entitlements to free up cash to send home.

Mexico also encourages its own abject poor and often indigenous people from southern Mexico to head north as a safety-valve of sorts. The government sees these mass exoduses northward as preferable to the oppressed marching on Mexico City to address grievances of poverty and racism.

The criminal cartels now de facto run Mexico. An open border allows them to ship fentanyl northward, earn billions in profits—and kill nearly 100,000 Americans a year. Illegal immigrants pay cartels additional billions to facilitate their border crossings.

Do not forget American corporate employers. Record labor nonparticipation followed the Covid lockdown. In reaction to the dearth of American workers, the hospitality, meat packing, social service, health-care, and farming industries were desperate to hire new—and far cheaper—labor.

Human rights activists insist that the borders themselves are nineteenth-century relics. And the global poor and oppressed thus have a human right to enter the affluent West by any means necessary.

Many in the tony suburbs and in universities do not live anywhere near the border. So they pontificate on the assurance that thousands of unaudited illegal immigrants will never enter their own enclaves or campuses.

The result is elite bottled piety—but not firsthand experience with the natural consequences of millions chaotically fleeing one of the poorest countries in the world to pour into the wealthiest. Without background checks, vaccinations and health audits, legality, high-school diplomas, English-facility, skill sets, or capital, the result is an abject catastrophe.

Polls continue to show that the American people support measured, diverse, legal, and meritocratic immigration as much as they oppose mass illegal immigration into their country and the subsequent loss of American sovereignty on the border.

They understand what the Biden administration does not: no nation is history has survived once its borders were destroyed, once its citizenship was rendered no different from mere residence, and once its neighbors with impunity undermined its sovereignty.

Ending illegal immigration now depends solely on the American people overriding the corrupt special interests and leaders who profit from the current chaos and human misery.

White House Signals Intent to Veto Massive Pay Raise for Junior Enlisted

Matt Dempsey reporting for RedStateVIP 

The White House today has signaled to House Republicans that Biden intends to veto their military spending bill, which includes a roughly 30 percent pay raise for all junior enlisted member ranks from E-1 through E-6, citing opposition to language in the bill regarding social justice issues like abortion and transgender issues. 

Under the spending bill advanced by the House Appropriations Committee earlier this year and scheduled to be voted on by the full House later this week, no service member would make less than the equivalent of $15 per hour for a 40-hour workweek.

America's warfighters are the ones who are tasked with taking on the burden that the overwhelming majority of Americans do not want to do or are unable to do. They are the ones that carry the weight, walk and fight with it, and so much more. People, like myself, who served or are serving in combat arms military occupational specialties like infantry, artillery, tanks, and more, are America's warfighters. We are the ones that are "sent unto the breach," and we are the ones that spill the blood, including our own. We are the ones who carry the burden of combat with us for our entire lives. We are the ones who have to see and experience the hell that is war. And when we are not in or at war, we are training for the next one, and as I stated earlier, that is incredibly dangerous in and of itself. 

Historically, the United States has never paid its service members a considerably high wage, especially its junior enlisted members. For reference, an E-1 in 1947 made just $70 a month, with the main caveat being costs were nowhere near what they are today. Today, an E-1 with over four months of service makes $1,917.60 per month, and an E-6 with three years of service makes $3,424.80 per month. These are all pay scales and rates without being taxed. There are several different types of additional allowances for certain statuses, like being married with dependents, uniform allowances, and others, but the pay is not drastically changed. 

While serving in the Marine Corps, I was promoted to Corporal (E-4) in my 3rd year, about halfway through my first deployment to Iraq in 2003 and that made my pay go up to $1,726.80 a month from $1,528.80. The big differences in pay for me, came when I deployed to Iraq. There, I received combat pay, along with having no federal or state taxes withheld from my pay, because a combat zone or hostile duty zone was considered a tax-free assignment. Which made my pay, roughly double what it was in the States. I came back from my first tour in Iraq after 10 months in October of 2003, and I had almost $16,000 in my account and I thought I was richer than Bill Gates. 

While serving in the military, even at the lowest rank, one doesn't have to pay for housing, food, health, or dental insurance. It is all deducted from our pay before we even see it, in fact, it isn't even listed on our LES, or Leave and Earning Statement (military equivalent for a pay stub). The only things listed on our LESs were our take-home pay and all the taxes that were deducted.  The one thing that we as service members are required to pay for is our uniforms.  But you have a uniform allowance for that so you don't really pay right? Wrong. Our uniform allowance was only $1,213.35 annually. The Marine Corps required several uniforms to be maintained in our wall lockers (our clothes cabinet). I could explain in great detail what our uniform requirements are, but I will save you the misery. I will just say that our uniform allowance is paid monthly and is never enough to cover what we need. Boots alone were bought frequently due to needing different boots for different things and they cost well over $100 per pair. To "help us maintain our uniform requirements" our commanders advised us all to get STAR Cards, which basically is a military credit card. So we all got one and it had a $1,000 credit limit which we quickly ran all the way up and had to start paying that every month. 

The life of a junior enlisted, especially those from E-1 through E-4, is financially burdensome. We didn't make enough money to really do much outside of the base, so most of us ran up more credit card debt, and some of us went straight to the payday advance place and borrowed even more money. For those poor souls who wanted to buy a car and didn't know what to deal with, they got bent over backward by the dealerships. Guys were coming back with brand-new cars and trucks with 25 to 30 percent loans, they didn't know any better. Most, and I mean the overwhelming majority of junior enlisted has at one point lived paycheck to paycheck at best; I did for some time too. Then when it came time to do taxes, we didn't know, and or couldn't afford a private company to do our taxes, which really could have helped us out. Our only option was to go to the base IPAC (base admin offices and services) office and wait in line for another Marine to do our taxes for us. There were no write-offs, no deductions, nothing like that; it was hand over our W2 and get back a refund form that says we'll be getting back a refund of $300. 

That is the financial life of a junior enlisted service member. We really do not make much of anything, our raises are predominantly all COLA-related, nothing more. When politicians typically brag about that three or even 8 percent raise for the troops, it is almost always just a COLA/inflation pay adjustment to keep up with the rise in both. But that only happens every four or six years at best. We knew what we were worth, and for the most part, we didn't care. It really hurts to say it, but we really did think, and I guarantee that most (junior enlisted) still do, that America really didn't give a damn about us. But that didn't stop us from wanting to do our jobs. We signed up for this, we knew what we were walking into (mostly) and we carried on with a smile. 

But we knew then and they know now, that if you're a boot (new guy) Private or PFC, you are worth and make less than somebody that works in fast food. And if states like California get their way, fast food workers at major chains can get paid far more than them. In states like California, if the bill passes and is signed by Newsom, their pay will be $22 an hour, which makes an average monthly salary with a 40-hour work week, approximately $3,800. Someone like myself, serving in the Infantry military occupational field, as an E-1 Private makes half that. One flips burgers, and the other at a minimum is trained in rifle marksmanship, land navigation with a compass and a map, radio and hand signal communications, and able to carry a full combat load in excess of 65 pounds minimum at distances of up to and including 20 plus miles in any terrain and weather, is trained in hand to hand combat, can be able to call in medivac or artillery or mortar fire mission via radio, using proper procedure; I could go on and on. Yet that E-1 Private makes half of what that burger flipper makes, and the worst part is they know it. Yet for some insane reason, we love it. I loved it. 

The best way to support our troops financially, which wouldn't cost a penny to the taxpayer (which includes the military) is to make all military service a tax-free system.  With roughly 2.1 million servicemembers, including reserve and guard personnel, at their current salaries, does not make a significant contributor to the tax revenue scheme currently in use in America. Add that to the fact that a large percentage of these men and women are in jobs that are incredibly dangerous in peacetime, let alone active combat. By eliminating the tax burden on American military service members on Active Duty, you can enrich their lives without adding a penny to military spending. It is literally the most cost-effective way to put more money in their pockets. And tax revenue reduction impact on the states where service members are stationed would be minimal, as would the Federal impact. It is a burden that should be taken on as a thank you to service members, who absolutely deserve it  

Allowing all service members to take home their entire pay rate without any reduction due to taxes or other withholdings would be a game changer for everyone, but specifically, it would be a huge difference to the E-1 Private, Airman, Seaman, and more. Those servicemembers would be taking home all $1,917.60 every month. It may not seem like a lot to the majority of this country, but I can tell you from a personal standpoint, that anything and everything helps. Getting our pay to be tax-free, however, is a huge bump. A question I would ask any politician, especially President Biden "Aren't we worth it?" Time for the politicians of both parties to open their eyes and think big picture, in addition to thinking about other ways they can help put more money in the service member's wallet and bank account. And eliminating the tax burden from them is a huge step in the right direction. 

WATCH: Rand Paul Pulls No Punches on Ukraine and Zelensky

Bonchie reporting for RedState 

As I type this, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is on Capitol Hill again, this time to try to secure another $23 billion. That would be on top of the already $113 billion that has been appropriated over the last year and a half. 

Ukraine's war of self-defense against Russia has largely turned into a stalemate. The spring counter-offensive that Zelensky was hoping would turn the tide hasn't produced the desired results, and while Vladimir Putin is certainly not "winning" the war, he's been able to garner a position where he could conceivably drag it out for many more years. 

That has some Republicans saying enough is enough. Rand Paul is one of them, and he pulled no punches when asked about the situation on Fox News. 

BARTIROMO: There's also this incredible story about an American journalist, Gonzalo Lira. He's reportedly, right now, in prison in Ukraine on allegations of spreading Russian propaganda. I don't understand this, that Joe Biden could approve $113 billion of money to Ukraine, and yet he has not tried to get this American journalist out of prison there?

PAUL: It's even worse than that Maria. They've canceled the elections. What kind of democracy has no election? So next year, Zelensky said he's not going to have an election because it would be inconvenient during the war and it would be expensive. Well, the thing is, if you don't have elections, why in the world are we supporting a country that's not a democracy? 

They've banned the political parties, they've invaded churches, they've arrested priests. So no, it isn't a democracy, it's a corrupt regime. Are the Russians any better? No, the Russians are worse, but at the same time, we don't always have to pick some side to be on, but the ultimate reason I'm against this is we don't have the money and when we borrow more money it leads to more inflation, leads to more likelihood of recession in our country, and so we can't keep doing it.

Certainly, Paul's words are going to be controversial, but the primary question to ask is simple: Is he wrong?

I don't ask that to make an argument for Russia or against Ukraine's right to self-defense. Certainly, I've been clear that I think Ukraine has the right to defend itself and its territory as long as it sees fit. That's a moral statement, though, not a practical one. Whether Gonzalo Lira is a good person or not isn't really relevant. A nation that arrests people for "spreading propaganda" is not a free state. People can pretend otherwise because of the dichotomy presented, but that's just reality. 

The United States managed to have elections during its own Civil War, which had eaten up far more territory and taken far more lives. And sure, Zelensky and the Ukrainians have the ability to put in place whatever measures they see fit to win the war they are fighting. At the same time, Americans have the ability to look at those measures and say they are no longer going to blindly fund them. 

Past that, Paul is clearly right that we simply don't have the money to keep doing this. Americans are being crushed by higher prices, and continuing to add to the national debt only exacerbates the situation. As I've said before, if funding Ukraine is such an excellent, effective use of military resources compared to regular military spending (and there's an argument to make there), as many claim, then pay for it out of the regular defense budget. Continuing to have these massive separate appropriations is not sustainable. 

Lastly, the biggest issue for Zelensky and the Biden administration is a refusal to articulate any realistic end game. Is the United States really going to fund this war until Crimea is retaken, as Zelensky has stated? Because Ukraine can't even retake its eastern flank, which is far more geographically welcoming. It may never have the military ability necessary to retake Crimea, and what that means needs to be fleshed out. 

Paul is a hardliner on this, but even non-hardliners are growing skeptical. At this point, they are justified in their skepticism.

It’s No Accident The Southern Border Is Collapsing, It’s Intentional

The scenes out of Eagle Pass, Texas, leave no doubt the actual policy of the Biden administration is uncontrolled mass illegal immigration.

by John Daniel Davidson for The Federalist

A clip of comedian Louis C.K. on the Joe Rogan show has been circulating on X (formerly Twitter) this week in which he goes on and on about how opening up the southern border would be a good thing because Americans shouldn’t have such a high standard of living compared to the rest of the world, how poor people in other countries just want what Americans have, and how it’s not fair that we have so much. “It shouldn’t be so great here,” he says. So open the border and let them pour in.

It’s possible he’s joking, that it’s just a comedy bit he’s practicing. That’s what my friend Inez Stepman thinks. Get liberals to nod along in agreement and then expose the consequences of such an insane idea. You can judge for yourself:

I don’t think it comes off as a joke but as an almost perfect distillation of globalist liberalism. Louis C.K. cannot fathom why Americans should have a say about who comes into their country and who does not. He clearly has no real allegiance to his country or countrymen, and is actually embarrassed by their prosperity — and presumably his own as well.

There is nothing special about America, according to this view, and no reason the rest of the world should not enjoy her ill-gotten riches. Opening the border is the least we could do for the cause of justice.

Whether it’s a joke or not, the substance of what Louis C.K. articulates is the logical endpoint of leftist ideology. It’s what the mainstream left actually believes — and the Biden administration has been actively working to accomplish at the southern border. 

This week, the border began collapsing completely in south Texas. Over five days, about 45,000 people illegally crossed the Rio Grande near the small town of Eagle Pass, Texas, population 28,000. In one especially active 24-hour period, nearly 10,000 people forded the river.

Customs and Border Protection shut down two international bridges to deal with the crisis. The mayor of Eagle Pass, Rolando Salinas, declared an emergency on Wednesday, it seems with good reason. He told The New York Post that the surge of illegal immigrants, most of them single adult men from Venezuela, has swamped the city’s only migrant shelter. Many of them, says Salinas, “don’t want to listen to instructions.” He added, “Not all of them come in peace.” 

Bill Melugin of Fox News has been in Eagle Pass this week posting jaw-dropping videos and images of the influx, which sure enough consists of mostly single adult men. The lines stretch over the river and along both banks as far as the eye can see. Whatever you think of the border and U.S. immigration policy, this is shocking.

All of it recalls the mass encampment of some 15,000 Haitians under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas, two years ago. At the time, images of what looked like a refugee camp you might see in a war-torn country dominated several news cycles, goading the Biden administration to disband the encampment and deport a small number of Haitians as a warning to others. Most of them fled back across the Rio Grande rather than face being deported to Haiti, a country they had left years ago for better jobs in South America (which countries they in turn left for better jobs in the United States).

But notice how the illegal immigrants in Melugin’s footage are walking calmly, not running, not trying to evade Border Patrol. They show every indication they believe they will not be detained long.

And of course they’re right. It’s impossible for federal authorities to detain this many people arriving within such a short timeframe. There is simply nowhere to put them.

A soft-sided facility erected by Customs and Border Protection that could house about 2,000 quickly reached capacity early in the week, leaving federal officials little choice but to parole mass numbers of illegal immigrants and release them from custody on their own recognizance. They are now making their way to points all across the United States. The vast majority of them will stay for good.

This is not a mistake or a mishap, the unintended result of an ill-considered policy. This is intentional. Flooding the border with illegal immigrants is the actual policy.

When White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre repeats the talking point that President Biden has “done more than anyone else” to secure the border and deal with illegal immigration, as she did again last week, what she really means is that under Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, uncontrolled illegal immigration is not something federal officials are trying to stop, it’s something they’re trying to facilitate and manage.

The numbers tell the tale. Nearly six million people have been arrested crossing into the United States illegally since Biden took office. Millions more have gotten in without being caught. About 200,000 are arrested every month. They are coming in such great numbers because they know that if they can get across the river they’ll be allowed to stay. Under Biden, there is almost no chance of being deported. It’s not more complicated than that.

That brings us back to Louis C.K.’s comments and the ideology from which they spring. Deterring illegal immigration is a policy you pursue only if you believe foreign nationals do not automatically have a right to enter the United States simply because they want a better life. Borders are something you enforce only if you believe you have a duty to your fellow citizens and the nation at large to protect the country and safeguard its way of life.

Biden and Mayorkas and the ruling elite in this country do not believe these things. They believe a borderless world is better, that the United States does not belong to the American people, to whom they feel no particular allegiance.

To quote Louis C.K., they believe it shouldn’t be so great here. And they’re determined to make it so.

Tucker Carlson Interviews Texas AG Ken Paxton

This is really a good interview.  Texas AG Ken Paxton shares the details of how the fraudulent impeachment process was created out of thin air and then launched against him by Democrats and Karl Rove/Bush Republicans in Texas.  The process explanation is blood boiling, and yet Paxton was gagged from speaking about it throughout the impeachment effort.

Tucker Carlson spends a lot of time asking questions about the origination of the impeachment effort, and during the interview Paxton outlines the legal challenges he was bringing against specific interests, Big Pharma, Google and Joe Biden, that led to the merge of Democrats and Texas Republicans trying to take him out.  It’s a remarkable and eye-opening interview.  WATCH:

Biden’s New Office of Gun Violence Prevention Will Do Nothing to Save Lives

posted by Jeff Charles at RedStateVIP 

President Joe Biden is forming an Office of Gun Violence Prevention, ostensibly to curb gun-related violence and mass shootings across the country. The move comes as his administration has been unable to get Congress to pass his radical anti-gun agenda. Advocates might argue that this step will help to save lives, but in reality, it is far more likely that it will be a “feel-good” measure that doesn’t actually address the problem.

The announcement comes amid heightened crime rates in major cities, and a sharp increase in gun sales as a result.

It follows an extreme action taken by New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who issued a ban on the carrying of firearms in Albuquerque. The White House’s move suggests that the president is seeking every avenue through which he could curtail gun ownership without legislation.

President Biden on Friday will announce the creation of a new office for gun violence prevention, an escalation of the administration’s efforts to tackle the issue amid stalled progress in Congress, according to four people briefed on the action who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss plans that were not yet public.

Biden and Vice President Harris are scheduled to announce the new office at an event in the White House Rose Garden on Friday afternoon, the people said.

Greg Jackson, a gun violence survivor who is the executive director of the Community Justice Action Fund, and Rob Wilcox, the senior director for federal government affairs at Everytown for Gun Safety, are expected to have key roles in the office, the people said.

This initiative comes in response to several anti-gunner activist groups who have been pressuring the White House to take on a more intrusive role in preventing gun violence. However, the reality is that crime falls mostly under the purview of state and local governments, meaning that this new agency will add another bureaucratic layer that would only further expand the size and scope of the federal government without offering any real solutions.

The formation of this office is part of other steps the Biden administration has taken to limit gun ownership in the absence of sweeping gun control laws enacted by Congress. The makeup of the legislature has made it quite difficult for Biden to impose his anti-gun agenda. However, it did manage to pass a gun control law in 2022 in the wake of several mass shootings. Still, the bipartisan group’s legislation did not come close to what Democrats wanted.

Under the Biden administration, the Bureau for Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (AFT) has taken several actions to impede gun ownership. The agency implemented a rule requiring owners of AR-15-style pistols to register their firearms.

The new regulations require owners to pay a $200 tax and submit fingerprints. In an attempt to encourage registration, the ATF temporarily waived the tax until May 31. However, the majority of owners have chosen to take their chances, hoping that the courts will overturn the ATF and Biden’s decision, just as they did with the ban on “bump stocks” during the Trump era.

Under the Biden administration, the ATF has also stripped the licenses of hundreds of licensed firearm dealers over small clerical errors.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) has revoked the licenses of 122 gun dealers in the current fiscal year. In the previous fiscal year, the figure was 90, and in 2021 it was only 27.

Moreover, since records of revocations began in 2013, the ATF never revoked more than 81 dealers' licenses, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. Prior to Gun-Grabbin' Joe riding into town, the ATF mainly issued warnings to firearms dealers for legal violations, in part because "they are a valuable source of tips on suspicious gun buyers."

The reality is that this new office will be about as effective at curbing gun violence as fighting a grizzly bear with a toothpick. Gun-related violence is typically not the result of a lack of laws; it is a symptom of deeper societal problems like poverty, lack of education, mental health struggles, and more. The notion that curtailing gun ownership instead of addressing these underlying issue will somehow save lives is ludicrous.

Of course, the real reason why Biden is creating an Office of Gun Violence Prevention is because he wants to appease his critics. The White House has failed to get legislation limiting gun ownership, and it has done little to address violence. Forming this agency is just a way for Biden to say “See? I’m doing something.”

Unfortunately, this office will likely become more adept at violating our rights than actually solving a problem.