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The Trump administration is reportedly planning a “baby bonus.” This would be a $5,000 bonus to mothers in a bid to increase birth rates. The plan comes amid dwindling birth rates in most developed countries, which is considered a long-term threat to the future of the United States. We’ll discuss this topic and others, in this episode of “Crossroads.” Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. 🔵 Watch the full episode HERE 👇   https://ept.ms/3YeLoRu Stay Informed. Stay Free. https://www.joshphilipp.com/

On a previous episode, we discussed how the Supreme Court ruled in Trump’s favor in an immigration case—a case involving the deportation of illegal immigrants present here in the United States. However, that earlier case was won by Trump on a technicality: the lawyers for the illegal immigrant decided to file their case in Washington (rather than in Texas, where the man was being held) and, therefore, the case was dismissed due to being brought forth in the wrong venue. But, very notably, the underlying legal issues weren’t actually examined. The question of whether the Alien Enemies Act could really be used against illegal immigrants such as alleged Venezuelan gang members wasn’t ruled on. Therefore, more lawsuits were filed. And one of those new lawsuits bore fruit, as the U.S. Supreme Court decided to stop the Trump administration from being able to deport “putative class of detainees.” Meaning, this group of illegal immigrants cannot be deported until the court determines if they share the same legal claims. In other words, there is concern that these people are not given due process to contest the allegations of being associated with the Tren de Aragua gang. Let’s go through the details together. Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. 🇺🇸 Epoch Times $1 Full Access Special Offer: https://ept.ms/RomanSale

The Department of Defense has been authorized by the Trump administration to take nearly 110,000 acres of land along the southern border from the Department of the Interior. This not only allows the United States broader control over border security, but could also result in additional criminal charges against illegal immigrants. We’ll discuss this topic and others, in this episode of Crossroads. Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. 🔵 Watch the full episode HERE 👇   https://ept.ms/3ECgEmD Stay Informed. Stay Free. https://www.joshphilipp.com/

The attorney general of the United States has just issued a new Justice Department rule, rescinding the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ (ATF) authority to restore gun rights to those who’ve had them taken away. This action opens the door for potentially millions of people to get their Second Amendment rights restored. Let’s go through it together. Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. 🇺🇸 Epoch Times $1 Full Access Special Offer: https://ept.ms/RomanSale

Harvard University could lose about $2.2 billion in grants and tens of millions of dollars in contracts. The federal government is now freezing the university’s funds, after its heads refused to follow policies that would get rid of diversity programs and put some restrictions on student protests regarded as anti-Semitic. Harvard argues that this is about protecting constitutional rights, while the Trump administration says it’s about upholding civil rights laws. We’ll discuss this topic and others, in this episode of “Crossroads.” Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. 🔵 Watch the full episode HERE 👇   https://ept.ms/42sebVe Stay Informed. Stay Free. https://www.joshphilipp.com/

As the U.S.-China trade war continues to escalate, I’m sitting down with China analyst Gordon Chang. “Jamie Dimon said this: ‘Why don’t you just pick up the phone?’ Well, the reason is we’ve had that attitude for five decades … and look where it’s gotten us. So, if the Chinese want to do something about our tariffs, it’s up to them to pick up the phone,” says Chang. What is the current state of play when it comes to Trump’s tariff strategy? Is it working in America’s favor? “The only way China wins this trade war is if it gets Trump to preemptively surrender,” says Chang. “This is an existential struggle. It’s more than just a trade war. It’s more than just a tariff war. And we better win it.” And how is Xi Jinping’s leadership being challenged inside China? Watch the video: “General He, I think, was sacked not by Xi Jinping, but by the adversaries of Xi Jinping in the Chinese military ... we have seen all these unexplained and unusual disappearances of military officers, especially since the middle of 2023,” says Chang. “I think this is the most dangerous moment in history.” Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

After Beijing retaliated to U.S. tariffs, President Donald Trump has now announced a tariff hike to 125 percent on Chinese products—and a 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs on other countries. To understand what’s really going on, we’re speaking with one of the world’s leading experts on the Chinese economy. Christopher Balding was a professor at Peking University’s HSBC School of Business until 2018 when he was fired for pushing back against censorship. Now, he is a senior fellow at the Society and the founder of New Kite Data Labs. Watch the video: “I think President Trump wants to push a very deep, ongoing decoupling from China, and I think he wants to promote that decoupling, not just with China, but [by] drawing at least a secondary moat around near allies like Mexico, Canada, parts of Europe, Japan, and South Korea,” Balding says. Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

From cutting programs under the U.S. Agency for International Development to putting Voice of America employees on paid administrative leave, the Trump administration and its Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have been aggressively seeking to reduce government spending on international initiatives. But some such spending may be worth keeping. Watch the video: Cleo Paskal, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, breaks down how certain U.S. measures in the Pacific are vital to deter increasing Chinese encroachment in the region, but they may not be well-understood. Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. RUSH TRANSCRIPT Jan Jekielek: Cleo Paskal, such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders. Cleo Paskal: Always great to be here. Thank you for having me. Mr. Jekielek: A lot of unusual things have been happening with respect to different tools of U.S. foreign policy. USAID is being cut down dramatically. Most recently, Voice of America and Radio Free Asia are being reduced down to their statutory spending requirements. I see a lot of narrative out there that basically the axe is being taken to U.S. foreign policy initiatives. What’s your take? Ms. Paskal: It’s a complicated and evolving picture. There are a few, so I’m looking mostly at the Pacific region. But just to say that there are entire countries like India that are very happy to see USAID go, because they think that some of that activity was targeted at their leadership. So the sense that all countries are angry and heartbroken about it is not accurate, but there are some where this is going to hurt. And so this kind of hammer vs. scalpel is going to be very important. Figuring out what works and what doesn’t is going to be very important. And I’m hoping that what we are in is a transition phase where there is this pause or whatever it is, and then there’s going to be a readjustment that’s more in line with the sort of things that are good for U.S. power. But just for an example, because you talked about the media stuff, there’s been some excellent reporting in the Pacific coming out of VOA. There have also been some very peculiar pieces coming out of Radio Free Asia around, for example, Palau. We’re using specific examples to get an idea of what it means. Palau has a huge number of challenges that it is countering. The president of Palau gave the national security coordinator the right to go after people who are overstaying their visa, misusing their visas, in some cases almost literally breaking down doors, rolling up Chinese illegal gambling organizations, getting all sorts of very dubious people out of the country. But Radio Free Asia chose to write during that same period about unexploded World War II bombs being a huge problem and not cover that. Now, there are some unexploded World War II bombs, but in terms of what’s important as a story coming out of Palau is not accurately being reflected. There are other stories about, you know, teenagers in Palau, anti-US militarization, but there aren’t stories about how, at the inauguration of the president of Palau, the foreign minister of Japan sat next to the foreign minister of Taiwan in a show of solidarity, which is huge geopolitical signaling. So the coverage has been unusual in certain locations, and I’m not saying this about those particular stories, but as you know, there have been a lot of concerns about penetration, targeted penetration into those reporting agencies by people who have interests that are not aligned with U.S. interests. So a reassessment is not a bad thing. We'll see what happens during the rebuilding phase. Mr. Jekielek: To your point, one thing that someone alerted me to was that Voice of America has never actually covered this forced organ harvesting issue that the Chinese regime has been involved in for decades, like not even one time. I guess the idea is, I mean, I’m thinking about Ted Lipien’s work. You know, he’s been arguing that there needs to be reform in these agencies for a very long time. But now he’s also saying, you know, he thinks what’s happened is going too far. Ms. Paskal: Yes, and we'll see what happens next. Kari Lake initially talked about setting up a dedicated unit within VOA to investigate Chinese illegal, coercive, aggressive, and deceptive activity throughout the region. VOA is very well placed to connect the dots. It’s hard for, you know better than anybody, when you cover the CCP, your advertising can get cut, you know, you’re marginalized, you’re discredited. So imagine if you’re a little newspaper in Solomon Islands and you want to cover what China is doing in your country. It’s nearly impossible. And I’m using that as a specific case because there is a very good news organization in the Solomon Islands, called In-depth Solomons. They’re having a hard time now. They can’t do that type of coverage. They’re not going to be able to get local advertising to support themselves. So they were doing what basically VOA should have been doing anyway, but they were doing it on the ground in their own voice and with incredible courage. And some of those journalists have now been laid off. And what typically happens in those situations is the pro-PRC government offers them a job within the government. Come and do marketing for us or come and do PR for us. And you’ve got a journalist who has a family, their parents might need medical care, their kids need school fees, and the source of funding has been cut off. They need to survive. So they get diverted into the system. They know that it doesn’t make them feel good, but they need to be a good parent, they need to be a good child, and this is their only option for doing it. So that’s an example of where the cuts are directly hurting Chinese coverage. For example, they broke a story about how the minister of police in Solomons had a bank account with a Chinese national and the son of the former prime minister of Solomons, which is the one that switched the country from Taiwan to China, in Singapore. That is an incredibly important piece of information that changes the way you look at policing, for example, in Solomon Islands. It wouldn’t have happened if they wouldn’t have been getting funding from the U.S. Now, there have been different sorts of funding to achieve very specific political goals, and that’s the problem. It sort of all became kind of enmeshed. And hopefully this is a process of disaggregating and figuring out what is supporting freedom around the world, both with USAID and with VOA, and creating structures that are going to reinforce that going forward. Mr. Jekielek: One of the things that was brought to my attention by Michael Pack, who had run USAGM for a bit under Trump 45, was just a lot of really bizarre anti-American content, which makes no sense, obviously, in such media. Ms. Paskal: Yes, and what happened to him is that he was kept out of office. He was appointed and he was kept out of office for years, right? They wouldn’t approve him, they wouldn’t put him in. And so I think that part of this is a reaction to that perceived overreach on the other side. You know, the American people voted for change and you’re not going to let us do it. So we’re going to get rid of the organizations that are blocking that. If you’re going to continue to maintain control over them and not reflect the will of the voter, this is sort of the Trump administration line, then why should we continue to support you? You’re not doing what the voters voted for. It’s described sometimes as the deconstruction of the administrative state, but the question is, you know, is there also sort of a reappropriation of the mechanisms of state that they think are under this, under the executive, as opposed to this unelected bureaucracy. That’s the whole language around it, right? This is really a fight about what government is and who controls government and the role of the voter vs. the role of the bureaucracy. And it’s spinning out into all areas, including obviously this. Mr. Jekielek: I remember President Trump, you alluded to this earlier, right? It was a scalpel, not hatchet, if I believe is the term. So that’s kind of what you’re hoping for here, I guess. Ms. Paskal: Well, yeah. And then after the scalpel, you do some suturing, you get some antibiotics, and then you get up and running, right? So we’re in this cutting phase, but the question is, okay, then what? If you’ve excised what you consider to be the cancer, right, are you then going to put it, put the body politic in a position to be able to get up and running again? Or are you going to let it bleed out? Mr. Jekielek: I mean, to use the sort of, well, I mean, there’s arguments about this, right? Is there a place for U.S. media? Is there value to those U.S. media? And, you know, which is, you know, some people would just say this. That’s just U.S. propaganda. Why should we have that? Ms. Paskal: So I think that what they’re terming as propaganda, if it’s done right, if you’re just telling the American story truthfully, then that is incredibly powerful and gives hope to a lot of people. So it’s not about that. And this is and this is actually a lot of what it was originally was what was founded during the Cold War, was to get out the American story. Or it’s not. You know, it’s not, you know, the U.S. is perfect. And in fact, when talking about how to work towards a more perfect union, the imperfections involved in that are also part of the inspiring truth. Even the U.S. isn’t perfect, but it has these structures in place that the founders put in, these checks and balances. And so maybe why doesn’t our country have that? You know, how can we work through some of our problems? But second of all, it cuts through a lot of the propaganda that you’re getting, the anti-American propaganda that you’re getting from the United Front organizations, for example, or things like that. We, I’m talking about sort of the free world, Canada is free, has something that the CCP doesn’t, which is we have truth on our side. So the more that you talk about how things really are, the better. And it gives hope to honest people in other places that there is another model than this just continuous degradation of the institutions trending towards a CCP-ification, where you can’t trust your judiciary, you can’t trust your police, you can’t trust, you know, the U.S. is going through some internal issues like that now, but the fact that it’s all out in the open gives you hope. Mr. Jekielek: Yes, I actually talked about this precise principle in a recent interview where I was in the hot seat because there’s a lot of reasons to be unhappy for, you know, I think this is kind of probably one of the most bipartisan, there’s a lot of people that are unhappy about what’s going on in the u.s perhaps for different reasons right and a lot of those people I’ve noticed in some cases have very dark thoughts about it like actually America is the problem in the world and if anything you know the the current reality is sort of a testament to the fact that things change mechanisms of change exist and it’s a not not a one-way ticket if, it’s a validation of the fact that there’s something special here. Ms. Paskal: Sometimes it’s helpful to hear what other people think about the U.S., right? I’m a Canadian, and I’ve learned an enormous amount about how the U.S. operates over the last 10 years, just by how this has been all fought out in public. And it’s been painful. You know, people have ended up in jail, you know, censored. It’s been, it has been a very painful process. But you see change. You see that the system can adapt and change. And who knows where it’s heading, but it’s kind of inspiring. In my country, there are some very serious issues that don’t get debated like this at all. And the media environment is much more closed. It can be very difficult to bring up topics that are sensitive. I’m from Quebec. With Quebec separation, you just can’t talk about how there is no logic to it. Just by me saying that out loud would make it difficult for me to operate in Quebec. Somebody will now clip it and bring it back home and I’m going to have to deal with that for the next 20 or 30 years. I was involved in some of the consultations around Scottish independence. And they looked at things like, OK, how are we going to do a foreign policy? How are we going to do currency? What are we going to do about our border? Quebec has never done any of that. So it’s just emotive control of the population. The reason that I’m going into the bizarreness of Quebec separation as a policy is because it’s an indication of how crazy but mature U.S. debate is. We could talk about any of the sorts of similarly sensitive issues, even a close neighbor, is difficult for an American to, I think, comprehend. So, yes, America is chaotic and hopefully self-adjusting and moving towards that more perfect union and something that is a system that I learn from every day and respect and admire. And I think that there are a lot of people around the world who feel the same way. And yes, there’s a lot of negativity domestically. And I think that there are a lot of foreign elements that push that narrative, especially through social media, for their own ends. Mr. Jekielek: Right. I want to talk about Canada. Of course, viewers know I’m also Canadian. This is a great opportunity for us to discuss Canada becoming the 51st state. The reason I mention this is because, well, we’ve been talking a lot about 80-20 issues in U.S. domestic policy, for example, men and women’s sports. That’s an 80-20 issue with 80% of Americans not into seeing that happen. So an 80-20 issue for Canada is Canada not being the 51st state and Canada maintains sovereignty. And President Trump’s repeated assertions that Canada could or should become a 51st state has become a massive issue in Canada. It’s a big talking point. Everyone’s buzzing about it. And it’s completely changed the political ecosystem, frankly. Ms. Paskal: Yes, and this is one of the reasons why I brought up the Quebec thing. In the same way that Quebec isn’t going to go independent, Canada is not going to become the 51st state just for sheer structural reasons. And I don’t think it would be good for the U.S. from a Trump administration perspective because we‘d be the biggest state, we’d have more representatives in Congress than California would, and they wouldn’t be MAGA voters, it would completely destabilize the U.S. political system from the inside. The Republican Party doesn’t want D.C. to become a state because it would put in a couple of more Democrats into the House. Imagine 30 or with those six million French Quebecers, about half of whom would then want to separate from the U.S. It’s a poison pill politically to bring it. So it’s structurally a non-starter, what would be involved in terms of the referenda and passing through parliament and all that sort of stuff. So it’s like Quebec separation. It becomes this storm, this strawman dang in the system, right, that obscures what’s really going on. And I think what’s really going on is the U.S. is saying, your border is insecure, you are a security threat in a whole bunch of different ways, and we’re protecting you and have been for a long time and we want this sorted out. But what do you think? Mr. Jekielek: I think that’s a big part of it actually. The Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that America is in the process of resetting its trade relationships and of course trade and security are closely tied in every scenario. And America obviously has these odd trade relationships where it would, in one direction, practice essentially free trade, and in the other direction would get very protectionist policies. Canada is probably much less of a practitioner of this asymmetry than other states. I mean, Communist China is an example. I think Japan kind of started it back in the day. But nonetheless, that exists. So there is even that dimension. Trump talks about reciprocal tariffs, right? This idea is, why does it make sense for you to have these uber-protectionist policies in one direction and not in the other, right? Again, even though the scale, I think, in Canada is less than probably most other countries. Ms. Paskal: So just to jump in on that, a big part of that is the, at least in one sector, Quebec dairy farmers. Mr. Jekielek: Dairy is one of these highly protected, exactly. Ms. Paskal: Yes, and they’re protected for domestic political reasons over the Quebec independence stuff, right? So Ottawa doesn’t want to annoy Quebec because Quebec will throw a tantrum, potentially politically. And so we have a parliament. Quebec elects people into the federal parliament, into the national parliament, whose pretty much only platform is Quebec separation. Right. The Bloc Québécois platform is that we don’t want to be part of Canada. So they’re taking up these seats in parliament, but they’re functionally not part of the national discussion. They’re just about if you don’t give us what we want, we’re going to stir up this. It’s like taking parliament hostage on certain topics. And one of them is these dairy farmers. We could get into the maple syrup mafia as well. The point is that we do this, and the U.S. trade negotiators know it. We pretend that the U.S. is being irrational when we’re doing it for the same narrow, venal, domestic, political reasons that the U.S. would do something around some specific local market issue around soybeans or something else. Mr. Jekielek: It’s fascinating to me because there’s these security issues where President Trump seems to be using tariffs as this tool and rhetoric as a tool to try to correct some actually pretty significant security problems that he views, and possibly also these tariff asymmetries, these protectionist asymmetries. But using this rhetoric of the 51st state. Former Prime Minister now, Justin Trudeau, talked about how Canada is this post-national, I think that was a term used, a post-national state. So he was proud of the idea that there isn’t a strong national identity, kind of an odd thing. But there is a kind of national identity. And I think it’s very interesting to me that President Trump in the U.S., by using this rhetoric of the 51st state, catalyzed the one thing that’s possibly the most powerful in the Canadian identity, which is we’re not American, and don’t even suggest that. Ms. Paskal: Part of that comes from fighting against manifest destiny for a huge chunk of time. You know, there were very serious periods, like the War of 1812 is obviously one of them, where the relationship between what is now Canada, I mean, Canada didn’t exist during the War of 1812, and the U.S. didn’t exist the way it does now, but the idea of the border being potentially changeable as the U.S. was moving west and expanding and changing its border is something that has been part of Canadian concern for a very long time. And part of the reason for the Alaska Purchase in 1867, which is the same year Canada confederated, was because Seward’s idea was if you have California and you have Alaska, you can move on the British colony that is in between and grab the whole West Coast. And to compete against that, what’s now British Columbia said, OK, we'll join the rest of Canada if you build a railway so you can get troops out here to defend us against this American pincher move from the North and the South. So it’s been a part of U.S.-Canada relations for a long time. But what’s happened is Canada got very comfortable with the U.S. not being an aggressor, but with being a protector. Now, we’re going back to older discussions from the U.S. side saying, why are we protecting you? And if we are going to be protecting you, and functionally, the U.S. military in the Arctic, in the Pacific, is doing the heavy lifting for Canada. At the same time, and I don’t want this piece to be missed, because it was one of the first things that President Trump brought up, Canada is allowing criminal activity in Canada that spills over into the U.S., including around fentanyl. Calvin Chrustie testified at the Cullen Commission three years ago, that as a retired RCMP over a decade ago, they were seeing the Sinaloa cartel, the Chinese triads, and the Iranians working out of the port of Vancouver, and that Vancouver was an area for crypto money laundering. I mean, they knew there were these problems. Sam Cooper writes about this very well. We have been and are and continue to be a security risk to the U.S. We are a net security detractor, not a provider. So I think that when you combine both those external threats, but also the internal threat that the U.S. is posing to the U.S. I’m in some ways grateful that the Trump administration brought this up in the hope that Canada will start to get its act together for the sake of Canadians. Mr. Jekielek: So talking about the Pacific and DOGE cuts as well, I can’t help thinking back a little while when it was almost the case that the COFA countries, the three compact countries in the Pacific, I’m going to get you to tell me all about them, that play an incredibly important part of the U.S. security posture in the Pacific, almost were defunded. And so I was thinking about DOGE and how, you know, it’s already been said that there’s been certain things that have been cut that shouldn’t have had some things have been brought back, right? So maybe let’s talk about, you know, that whole realm, like, because this is something we wouldn’t want to see that same scenario happen again, probably. Ms. Paskal: Right. So just very briefly, the compact countries are Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia, and Marshall Islands. And the compact refers to a very unique agreement made between each of those countries and the United States at the end of the Cold War. This zone goes across the center of the Pacific. In the 20s and 30s, so the U.S. had Guam and the Philippines along the coast, but Japan controlled the center of the Pacific. These countries that are now Palau, Federated States of America, Indonesia, Marshall Islands, and the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana, so Saipan, Tinian, that whole zone was controlled by the Japanese. The U.S. strategic thought was, okay, we’ve got Philippines and Guam, so we can keep off the coast. We can keep any problem off the coast of Asia and we have Hawaii as a fallback position, so we’re good. But the U.S. didn’t have the middle. And Japan did, you know, civil-military fusion in the middle. And when it hit Pearl Harbor, it very quickly took the Philippines and Guam, and it cut the U.S. off at Hawaii. After 100,000 Americans died, liberating those islands, so these are, so Palau is the Battle of Peleliu, Federated States of Micronesia is Truk Lagoon, Marshall Islands is Kwajalein. After the U.S. fought and died across that whole area after the end of World War II, they said, we’re not going to do this again. And a lot of the people who went to Congress had fought in that war. And so the question was, and this is a perennial question for the U.S., because the U.S. is actually not a comfortable colonial power. There’s elements in Congress who consider not only isolationists, definitely not comfortable with colonialism. How do you make sure that the center of the Pacific isn’t a threat to you while not being a colonial power? And the way that they threaded that needle was they set up the Congress of Micronesia, where representatives came from all across that region. And the end result was that what’s now the Commonwealth of Northern Marianas, which is Saipan and Tinian and some other islands, voted to join the United States. and they became part of the United States. And the other three countries voted to go independent. But they signed this compact with the U.S. The compact ties the countries together. So people in those countries, they’re independent. They have their own citizenship. They have their own passport. But they can live and work in the U.S. They have the U.S. Postal Service as domestic mail. They have the support of the FAA. They have all sorts of federal government services that are normally only seen in the U.S. just for these three countries. So that’s how the needle was threaded, because along with that came U.S. strategic denial. So it’s a very unique, elegant solution that was born out of blood and suffering of those Pacific Islanders and of the men, almost all men, who went into Congress to create this deal. The issue with DOGE is there’s very little awareness of this. And we saw that, as you said, parts of it needed to be renewed recently. And it took a lot of education in Congress, including through work that you did and also many others, for members of Congress to understand how unique this relationship was. Now, once they understood, that was the only thing that got funded during that period. Ukraine, Taiwan, Israel, all of that got stalled, but the compacts got funded because there was huge bipartisan support for continuing this relationship. Now, where you’re getting these machete cuts across the systems, it’s not clear if they know how this is going to affect those relationships. So for example, the post office. The discussion is about cuts to the post office. The post office hates having to service the compact states because they lose money, right? They’ve been funded by Congress to do it. But if there isn’t awareness of this relationship, then it might look like something that’s easy to cut. Mr. Jekielek: Right. Because there’s this awareness of this broader deal, right? That the U.S. gets this massive security perimeter and it’s in response to paying for this stuff. Ms. Paskal: Yes. And you don’t want to end up like we did in the late 30s, where you’ve got these Americans or American territory sitting out on the edge of Asia—Guam and the Commonwealth and Northern Marianas and nothing in the middle. Toshi Yoshihara did a very good study on this. He studied the Pacific War very carefully . When it goes into a place like Solomon Islands, you see it targets the same locations where there were bases or where there were runways. In the Solomon Islands, the Chinese are now rebuilding Henderson Airfield, which so many Marines died to protect. They’re putting in ports. They’re putting in Huawei towers. You know, they’re getting through political warfare and placement that has the potential to be switched very quickly from commodity to strategic asset. And they’re trying to do that in these three countries. Two of them recognize Taiwan, so they have an added layer of defense. But they’re still trying to do things like push in Chinese tourists. They did this in Palau. Build up the economy, pull the tourists, and say, if you don’t de-recognize Taiwan, then we’re going to continue with this crashing of your economy. That’s also why, for example, they’re very happy to let Chinese organized crime operate in these locations because it weakens governance, it increases corruption, and it makes it easier for the Chinese to exert political leverage. Mr. Jekielek: And so very briefly, a strategic denial. Can you define that for me? Ms. Paskal: Sure. So that means that the U.S. can block the militaries of other countries from operating in that region. So that whole center zone with Palau, Marshall Islands, Federal States of Micronesia, the U.S. can say, we don’t want Chinese warships pulling into port, for example. So that’s actually the more important element, the strategic denial element, then the sort of emplacement element, keeping the area clean of aggressive foreign militaries and allowing that ability to freely move back and forth across the region. The problem with that in a Chinese context is they use non-military ships in a military capacity. So their fishing fleet can actually be just as destructive for the security of a country as one of their warships. I would argue for the expansion of the definition of defense and security of the Compacts of Free Association well beyond kinetic warfare. So that includes these unrestricted warfare elements that we’re seeing the Chinese employ in the area. So I would say bribery, going after corruption, getting rid of those Chinese organized crime gangs that do the sort of foot soldier work of some of the CCP infiltration activities, that should all be considered going after or be the responsibility the U.S. has to secure the defense and security of the compact states. Mr. Jekielek: I can’t help but remember my interview with President Panuelo, former president of Federated States of Micronesia, talking about how when he would go to these international conferences, the Chinese ambassador would be walking with him and telling him what he has to do. He had that kind of brazenness. Of course, he didn’t respond to that. And this is in a country which has this deep tie to the U.S. I think it kind of illustrates the brazenness, but second of all, the deep interest in the CCP and building control in these places. Ms. Paskal: Yes. And on the funding part, I mean,this is something that Grant Newsham has said also, you know, that it might cost you whatever it is, a hundred million now, but it’s going to cost you a hundred billion and who knows how many lives later on if you let these relationships fall apart. From a strategic aspect, they’re people there that have trusted their lives to the U.S. and they serve in the U.S. military at very high rates. They contribute to the defense of their nations and to the defense of the mainland. And it’s a relationship unlike any other. There’s a bizarre aspect to this, which is that these three countries plus the U.S., like Guam and Commonwealth of Northern Marianas, are actually under the Department of Interior. The Secretary for Interior, Secretary Burgum, is sitting on the National Security Council because of the National Energy Security, National Energy Emergency that was declared. So he’s sitting on the NSC. And one thing that might be very helpful is to expand his role, since his department is also responsible for this area, to also make sure that they can coordinate across the interagency to make sure that the cuts aren’t affecting the relationship with these compact states and with the territories, and at the same time, aggressively go after the strategic corruption that China is forcing into these countries to destabilize them. Mr. Jekielek: This is what I was going to say. The unspoken thing here is that there’s this giant blank check waiting on the desk of every politician in these three countries, right? They’re just waiting for that moment when the U.S. withdraws to take advantage. Ms. Paskal: Yes, because they know their geography. They know how vulnerable the U.S. is if it doesn’t have strategic denial in the Central Pacific. They saw how the U.S. was concerned by the Spanish and the British and the French and the Japanese. And there was that kind of famous exchange between the then commander of U.S. Pacific Command, Admiral Keating, an unnamed Chinese official who said, well, we'll take Hawaii West and you take Hawaii East. And it’s not going to stop at Hawaii, right? But that messaging around Hawaii tells you that they’re thinking along these terms. And what happens to those Americans sitting out in Guam? That’s west of Hawaii. So part of the problem is the mental map that the U.S. has of what the U.S. is. Mr. Jekielek: Because if I may, just because of, I mean, partially just because of the maps that we’re used to looking at from the time we’re children, right? Ms. Paskal: Yes. What are they centered on? That the National Geographic map, not the Royal Geographical Society, but the National Geographic map, what’s in the center? Mr. Jekielek: Yes, Europe, obviously, that’s what we grew up with, right? Yeah. But I think you’re about to tell me that the Pacific is really where the center is, right? Ms. Paskal: If you’re drawing a map of the United States, it goes from the East Coast or Puerto Rico to Guam and the Commonwealth and Northern Mariana Islands. Those are the boundaries of the United States. That should be in the center of your map. And then you can see how important that whole center of the Pacific is. We talk a lot about the first island chain and the second island chain, as if it’s Star Trek and you can magically teleport to the chain, right? You need to get through the center of the Pacific. And again, that’s why those visionary diplomats from both the region and the US in the 70s and 80s put together the compacts so that you can get across the middle and the middle can be safe. It’s not just about what the U.S. needs. Those three countries, the elders of those countries who signed those agreements and the voters of those countries, the compacts were agreed by plebiscite by the population, had lived through horrific war. They didn’t want to do it again. They know how important their geography is. And they thought their best bet was to be part of what I think is actually the original conceptualization of a free and open Indo-Pacific, which allows what the U.S. always wanted from the Pacific, going right back to the beginning, trade. It wants to be able to freely trade in the Pacific. And for that, security and trade is closely tied. There needs to be security, but it’s not an exclusive security, which is the Chinese conceptualization. It’s one in which everybody can benefit and prosper and there can be growth and you don’t have to worry about whether that Chinese port is bringing in drugs to destroy your society so that they can have more leverage over your politicians so that they can then turn that port into a military base. That’s the circle or the cycle that some of these countries are currently going through. I mean, reductionist, obviously, but that’s the use of unrestricted warfare and entropic warfare, or I think the Chinese call it disintegration warfare, in order to achieve those results. And that is very actively happening now in those across the Pacific and especially in those U.S.-aligned states. Mr. Jekielek: So for the benefit of our audience and myself, if you could, you know, just in practical terms, what do all these different pieces of the puzzle look like in terms of this encroachment, in terms of this influence, in terms of this military-civil fusion that you mentioned? Ms. Paskal: One of the interesting things about looking at the Pacific Islands is because they’re so small, the layers of bureaucracy are so small, you can see how the Chinese operate. You can see what their toolkit is, what mechanisms of state they target, and towards what end. And I would argue that in a case like Solomon Islands, for example, which some say, oh, you know, the Chinese have taken it, so there’s nothing you can do. There are so many good, honest people there. That is a betrayal of everything that this country stands for and turns it into a toolkit for how you liberate a country from Chinese influence. Okay, so you know this is the site of Guadalcanal. Over you know 82, 83 years ago it needed to be liberated from kinetic warfare. Now it needs to be liberated from unrestricted warfare. What does it look like? It’s a very good case study because in 2019 it switched recognition from Taiwan to China. So you have sort of a starting point, and you can see what they went after. They went after policing. They started affecting the judiciary. They started trying to get involved in independent elections and politics. So the case study of it is somebody who you spoke to, Daniel Suidani, who was the premier of Malaita province. And he encapsulates what the Chinese will do to somebody who tries to stand up to them using their proxies. His province, when the switch happened to China, said, we don’t want any CCP-linked businesses. We want a moratorium on CCP-linked businesses operating in our province because we have concerns over it turning into a police state. We have concerns over freedom of religion. We have concerns over the environmental effects. And that was all based on what he had seen around him. And they put out this Auki communique, which is, if anybody wants to understand the Chinese, don’t go to a think tank in D.C. Go take a look at the Auki communique. He just kind of lays out the problems. It’s quite a document. What did you find that stood out for you? Mr. Jekielek: For me, it’s the many different points of attack working in conjunction to completely subvert a society, if that makes sense. Ms. Paskal: Yes, and they knew it and they were standing in the way. So what happened? He needed health care. The federal government and the federal government was very, very pro-PRC, declined to pay for his health care unless he let in the Chinese companies. He said no. And for anybody who ever says, you know, that, oh, they’re all corrupt anyway, you’ve spoken to some of the great leaders, President Panuelo, and obviously, Daniel Suidani. These are people who are willing to put their life on the line for freedom and for their people. He ended up getting health care in Taiwan, so that one didn’t work. Then they paid off through proxies enough of his parliament to get him out as premier. Then the national government took away his elected seat, saying he didn’t recognize the one China policy, so therefore he was an agent of Taiwan. That court case, he went to court and that has now been declared illegal. But he was taken out of his domestic parliament while that happened, and all sorts of policies could go through because they put in people who were pro-China. So he won on principle, but on the ground, things started to change. He held the line about the Huawei towers going into his province. As soon as he was taken out, the Huawei surveyors started going in. Recently, he was arrested on very dubious charges. And it shows that, first of all, very few people are standing up for him from outside the country. The lawfare is wearing them down, bankrupting them. If they weren’t people of incredible internal strength, they would have buckled a long time ago. And at the same time, they’re dealing with issues like the locals don’t have the medicine to survive an operation. So the allies like Australia, they’re coming in with over $100 million for policing efforts to support the same police that are arresting Suidani, but they’re not coming in with the money for the hospital. I like the Filipino term, ICAD, the illegal, coercive, aggressive, and deceptive Chinese activity, the same time as building up things like the health system, these very, very good people have nowhere to turn. And the country just starts to disintegrate from the inside. The Chinese can point to Suidani and ask, do you really want to be like this guy? He can’t get health care for his family. He’s constantly getting arrested or going to court. He’s not going to be premier of his province. Or do you want to take a bit of Chinese money and go take your sick wife to Australia for health care? Mr. Jekielek: It strikes me as odd at first glance that Australia kind of isn’t pulling its weight here? Is that how you view it? Ms. Paskal: Australia is part of the problem. It’s more than that, because they claim a privileged position as interlocutor between the U.S. and the Pacific. And we saw this with, there was a hot mic episode with Dr. Kurt Campbell and Prime Minister Albanese, where the Australians are pushing this Pacific Policing Initiative. And Dr. Campbell said, oh, we were going to do that, but Kevin asked us not to, meaning Kevin Rudd, the Australian ambassador to the U.S. So we’re going to give it to you. With wanting to be the interlocutor, the Australians think that it makes them look more important in DC, and so it gives it more weight. But they can’t deliver. I’m going to give you two macro-level strategic examples of this. Australia signed deals with Nauru and Tuvalu, where they were called compact-light deals, where Australia took very high levels of, they call it mutual consent for things like foreign affairs or strategic denial, things like that. So in theory, in these cases, the U.S. would have to ask Australia if it wanted to do military exercises with Tuvalu or Nauru. So it took those rights. And in exchange, it implied it would take some responsibility for defense. Australia couldn’t even shadow those Chinese ships had sped up, the Australian ships didn’t have the fuel capacity and the refueling capacity to be able to shadow them properly. So they can’t protect seemingly their own continent, but they’re telling the U.S., don’t worry, we’ve got Nauru and Tuvalu covered. And by saying that, it means bureaucrats here can go, okay, we don’t have to do it. So it leaves them effectively open. Mr. Jekielek: From the perspective of the CCP, if I’m hearing this right, they basically have a lot of opportunity in these areas. Ms. Paskal: Yes. But part of the problem is by Australia filling that space, that it can’t, it’s taking rights without the responsibilities. And also on the Nauru and Tuvalu deal, the other thing that is very problematic is those are country-to-country deals. The real compacts were done by plebiscite, by referendum. The people were involved. These are just, we signed a deal with these governments, and so that’s it, which again creates a precedent for the CCP. So when the CCP signs a deal, government-to-government deal, with another country, they can say, look, Australia did it. You know, what’s wrong with our deal? And we’re going to offer Nauru or Tuvalu just slightly more, and we'll do a better job of protecting you or delivering if there’s a typhoon or this or that. So part of this is Australia is wanting to look important to DC. Part of it is Australian arrogance. Part of it is an attitude in Australia that is condescending at best towards Pacific Islanders. Part of it, I think, is their intelligence community prefers to deal with corrupt people because they think it gives them leverage. My argument for that is if they’re corrupt, the Chinese are going to be able to corrupt them more. So all you’re actually doing is protecting Chinese assets. And we’ve seen that, I think, in play in places like the Solomon Islands, where there are people who, leaders, who are taking Chinese money and very likely laundering it through Australian bank accounts and real estate, which means that if the Australian government wanted to, it could help liberate Guadalcanal from this Chinese activity just by doing what it’s supposed to do, which is clean up its own banking system and make sure that corruption isn’t permitted within Australia and yank the visas. If you take the Chinese money and you sell out your country and your people, you can’t visit Australia. Forget your kids going to university in Australia. We’re going to seize your beach house. We’re not going to allow your blood money to be part of the U.S. system, the Australian system. The U.S. can do it too in other locations. For example, what’s coming into the Commonwealth under the Marianas in Guam. Australia talks a lot about whether we’re going to buy a submarine or the whole AUKUS thing. If they really wanted to protect their regional security, they'd go after Chinese strategic corruption and the people who are taking it and give room for honest people like Daniel Suidani to be in a position to build up his country in a way that is conducive to freedom and prosperity over the long term. Mr. Jekielek: Cleo, this has been another fascinating discussion. Any final thoughts as we finish up? Ms. Paskal: I think that a good chunk of what we’re talking about now may be out of date in three months. Things are moving so quickly. And I’m hoping that discussions like these that can inform the debate, which you do so well, make sure that when the scalpel is applied, it doesn’t nick an artery. Mr. Jekielek: Cleo Pascal, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show. Ms. Paskal: Thank you. Always great to see you.

Harvard University could lose about $2.2 billion in grants and tens of millions of dollars in contracts. The federal government is now freezing the university’s funds, after its heads refused to follow policies that would get rid of diversity programs and put some restrictions on student protests regarded as anti-Semitic. Harvard argues that this is about protecting constitutional rights, while the Trump administration says it’s about upholding civil rights laws. We’ll discuss this topic and others, in this episode of “Crossroads.” Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. 🔵 Watch the full episode HERE 👇   https://ept.ms/42O5Qep Stay Informed. Stay Free. https://www.joshphilipp.com/

In North Carolina, the state Supreme Court has just issued a ruling forcing the state to count tens of thousands of votes that are missing crucial details, such as having no driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number on file. This decision is especially crucial given the fact that the election in question is currently split by only about 700 votes—meaning this one decision can actually change the outcome of the race. Let’s go through the details together. Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. 🇺🇸 Epoch Times $1 Full Access Special Offer: https://ept.ms/RomanSale

Emma Reilly worked as a human rights lawyer at the United Nations. She discovered that for years, the Human Rights Council had been handing over the names of Chinese dissidents slated to attend the U.N. to the Chinese regime. Included were the names of U.S., Canadian, and European citizens. “The CCP demands get listened to because the U.N. takes them seriously, whereas they believe that the money from the U.S. will always flow, no matter what the law says in Congress, and that’s a problem,” Reilly says. “You see the way that individuals who are willing to prioritize China’s influence and China’s comfort over their own mandate managed to rise and rise in the U.N., whereas people that object get fired.” After speaking out and informing the United States of what she says was a “criminal” practice at the U.N., she lost her whistleblower protection status and was fired. Watch the video: “I was one of the 2 percent of people that are recognized as a legitimate whistleblower that found a dangerous policy and reported it. So, I should have been protected, but the U.N. decided to ignore its own rules. It was very blatant,” Reilly says. “You see just the sheer number of sex abuse scandals within the U.N., even by their own reckoning. There are—and this is literally according to their own figures—there are 800 cases of sexual harassment or abuse. No NGO could sustain that.” Views expressed in this video are those of the host and the guest and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. RUSH TRANSCRIPT Jan Jekielek: Emma Reilly, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. Emma Reilly: Thank you for having me. Mr. Jekielek: Emma, you were fired from the UN for objecting to a secret policy of giving out the names of US and Canadian citizens, I mean dissidents who are working with the UN. How is this possible? Tell me about how this happened. Ms. Reilly: It shouldn’t be possible. It’s very definitely against the rules. But basically, the Chinese delegation in Geneva would just write to the UN bureaucrats and say, and say, Hey, can you tell us if these dissidents are coming or not? All of the UN human rights mechanisms are based in Geneva and China didn’t want to have its human rights record criticized. So they thought they would ask their friends at the UN for a favor. Instead of saying no, like the UN did for every other country that asked, they simply handed over names. And we’re talking, as you said, about US citizens, Canadian citizens, UK, Germany. And the UN didn’t inform any of those countries that this was happening. And in fact, when they challenged them about it, they simply lied. They claimed it never happened. Mr. Jekielek: The US was at this time and still remains the largest funder of the UN. How does this work? Ms. Reilly: The way it works essentially is that China’s number two. When the US, Canada and other democracies give money to the UN, they usually do it in what’s called on-the-air marked funds. So they essentially say, here’s a blank check, spend this as you see fit. And the UN really encourages this, obviously, because they want to be able to use the money however they want to use it. Whereas when countries like China or Iran give money to the UN, it’s very tightly stated in those agreements how exactly that’s going to be spent. So even to things like when China gives money, it specifies every time that it cannot be spent in any country that has diplomatic relationships with Taiwan. What that means is that in addition to all of the Chinese money depending on having diplomatic relations with China, you also have the UN development funds that are secretly dependent on that, even though it’s not actually stated anywhere publicly. So all that the democracies see is that the money for small island developing states is fully funded this year by China. And what they don’t see is that that means that any small island developing state that still has diplomatic relations with Taiwan will be under enormous pressure to switch allegiance. Mr. Jekielek: Many absolutely astonishing things you’re telling me here. This is official policy, yet it’s secret. How do we know about it? Ms. Reilly: Because I told people. In 2012, I thought I'd got my dream job working at the UN. I was working with NGOs that were at the Human Rights Council and I was their liaison in the Human Rights Council. I received one of these emails that was forwarded to me by my predecessor, essentially implying that I should hand over names. And I told her that that would not be happening. Essentially, a fiction was put on for me. This had actually been happening since 2006. It was 2013 when I first found out about it and it was astonishing. My direct boss, a man called Eric Tistounet, put it in writing that it might exacerbate Chinese mistrust if we didn’t give them the names. Mr. Jekielek: Let me reiterate this. These are people who are, you know, dissidents to communist China. In many cases, they’ve settled in the US and Canada and other states. These are people that the Chinese Communist Party is looking to, at the very minimum, silence, if not, you know, worse. And the concern in writing was that it might make the Chinese feel bad? Ms. Reilly: Yes, essentially, we might have to have an awkward meeting at which we said, this is against the rules, you can’t have the names. Now, I was absolutely willing to have that awkward meeting. When you look at the sort of the emails that are exchanged back and forth, it’s a bureaucratic decision. But it’s not bureaucratic for the people’s families who are still in China. Those people are arrested, they’re pressured by the authorities. There have been cases of them being tortured. They’ve been imprisoned in concentration camps. Some of them have died in concentration camps. This is not some kind of anodyne action. And this is information being given to China exactly when it feels it needs it, weeks in advance of these people ever actually showing up in Geneva to speak. So they have weeks to intimidate their family members still in China. And as I said, some of these people are US citizens, others have permanent residency in the US because of their status as dissidents. And the UN is deliberately endangering US citizens. So of course, I reported that to the US. And what happened next, essentially, was the US delegation in Geneva went to see the very man who was handing over names and asked him, are you doing this? Now, very obviously, he has an interest in lying at that moment. And that’s exactly what he did. And in sworn testimony, he admits that he lied to the US government about this policy. In all of their court filings, the UN admits this is an ongoing policy. I wasn’t fired for lying. I was fired for objecting to a policy of the Secretary General. And specifically listed in there was the fact that I had told the US delegation and Congress about it. So the UN essentially says that they have a right to lie to the US government, their largest donor, about handing over names of US citizens to the Chinese Communist Party, but that I had to be fired because I told them the truth. Mr. Jekielek: Emma, just to kind of unpack this further, we’re talking about the UN Human Rights Council, whose purpose is to safeguard human rights. It’s specifically to protect people in exactly these sorts of situations where they’re from a regime that is known to do the most extreme of human rights violations. By giving those names out, those people’s family members, if they’re in China or friends or something, can be intimidated or harmed or whatnot to basically prevent those people from doing the work they were going to be doing with the U.S. Human Rights Council in the first place. So again, explain to me how this is possible. Ms. Reilly: I think it’s possible because you have a lot of people in the UN who have a very comfortable life and who prioritize their personal comfort over other people’s human rights. The UN works based on something called the Noblemaire Principle, which says that the UN must always be the most attractive place to work. So we’re paid better than the US equivalent. We’ve got better benefits than the Swedish. The UN will cover private education up to the age of 25 for your kids anywhere on earth. You can go see any doctor anywhere on earth, anytime. It’s all covered. It’s a very comfortable life. And I think that a lot of people, unfortunately, will prioritise that. As I said in those emails, people will be tortured and killed as a result of this if you do this. And the response was we might have to have an awkward conversation with the Chinese ambassador. Even when I met directly at one point with António Guterres, the Secretary General, to discuss this issue, to try to get him to act. And he told me it would be difficult because it’s China. And for context, some of the money that China gives to the UN goes directly to his office, $20 million a year. $10 million of that is to promote the Belt and Road Initiative. So it’s official UN policy that that must be promoted at all times, no matter how much of a debt trap it turns out to be. And another 10 million to whatever the Secretary General feels like spending that money on. And based on my conversation with him, where he didn’t seem to care about the individuals whose names were being handed over, I would say China’s getting its money’s worth. Mr. Jekielek: Emma, what is the Belt and Road Initiative, for our audience? Ms. Reilly: It’s China’s version of development cooperation, which is a lot more favourable to China.So it’s widely viewed as a debt trap, essentially paying for large infrastructure projects in the developing world and charging such large amounts of interest on the repayments for that, that a lot of the structures end up back in the hands of China. An example is Entebbe Airport in Uganda. Mr. Jekielek: So the type of financial relationship that you’re describing that exists here often actually exists sort of off the books. But again, you’re describing something that’s official policy, that’s transparent, that it might make some people kind of incredulous to believe that the UN has official policy to promote the Belt and Road Initiative of the Chinese Communist Party. Ms. Reilly: You can go and look it up for yourself. It’s called the Peace and Development Trust Fund, the ultimate sort of Orwellian doublespeak that you get at the UN, but it’s right there. When the US is giving money to the UN, they look at what the UN is planning to do this year, and what they would like to fund. China doesn’t do that. China doesn’t let the UN decide what it’s going to have as its priorities. China imposes those priorities. It has this separate governing board for this money that doesn’t report back to the General Assembly, and doesn’t report back to the general UN coffers. So it’s very much a separate $20 million a year directly to the Secretary General. Now, there should at least be a debate in the UN as to whether that’s a funding mechanism that the UN should be encouraging. Mr. Jekielek: The US under the Trump administration now has withdrawn from the WHO, and there are rumblings of frankly even withdrawing from the UN entirely. Given the type of things you’re telling me, how do you view that? Ms. Reilly: I think it would be a huge mistake. I mean, China’s already taking over the UN while the US is in there. I would say instead of disengaging altogether, it would be time to go in and clean up. The US has done that in the past. And those worked for a couple of years. And then essentially, as everyone was looking the other way, the UN gutted them from any sort of possibility of working. But I think it’s really important that the US maintains its position because if it doesn’t, it’s essentially ceding territory. It’s ceding the ground to China. China’s already trying to push the UN to fit the Xi Jinping thought. It was extraordinary, even when I was working there, sometimes I would get documents that I was writing, official UN documents would come back from the Secretary General’s office with things like win-win cooperation suddenly inserted in them, you know, things that are directly taken quotes from Xi Jinping thought. And also one thing to think to remember is how this is all viewed from within the UN. Within the UN, the way they see it is essentially the US won’t pay its dues for a few years, then power will change hands in the US again, and we‘ll get the back payment, because that’s what’s happened in the past. So they aren’t that threatened by disengagement in the sense that the way they see it is they’ll disengage for a few years, they‘ll rejoin, and we’ll get the back payments. One thing I do think, though, that would be really useful is the US used to have a law on the books, and it was actually introduced under the Obama administration, that said that if the UN retaliates against whistleblowers, they don’t get 10% of the money, and they have to improve whistleblower protection in order to get that back. Now, I was fired explicitly for telling Congress the truth. Congress needs to insist that that is no longer illegal within the UN, and that they can get true information about what’s happening. And when there are dangers to their own citizens, UN staffers that are brave enough can come forward. Mr. Jekielek: The bottom line is you’re saying you think the best thing for the US to do would be to stay engaged, but demand all sorts of accountability, like having very significant, serious strings attached. Tell me about your story. Dig into it a little bit more. So you were fired. What happened next? Ms. Reilly: Technically, I shouldn’t have been able to be fired because within the UN, one of the reforms that the US insisted on in the past was that the UN introduced whistleblower protection. This was after the oil for food scandal in Iraq. And the UN has always claimed to have this. Nobody actually gets whistleblower protection in the UN, but I did. I was one of the 2% of people that are recognized as a legitimate whistleblower that found a dangerous policy and reported it. So I should have been protected, but the UN decided to ignore its own rules. It was very blatant. So within the UN system, I had named a woman called Catherine Pollard, who’s the head of management, as the person who was leading retaliation against me. So Catherine Pollard told everyone not to investigate the retaliation against me, placed me under investigation for having told the truth, so the act of whistleblowing essentially, and then fired me for it. So I was simultaneously recognised as having told the truth to the US and that that should be protected whistleblowing and fired for whistleblowing. It really is Orwellian when you get into the kind of the ways the UN structures work. It’s that kind of absolute power on the part of the managers. That’s part of the problem because everyone who works with the UN has diplomatic immunity, so they can’t be held responsible in court. This policy is complicity with human rights violations. If you give China a name of somebody and they go to that person’s family and torture somebody, you’re criminally complicit in that act. But even though it’s an international crime, nobody at the UN can be held responsible. So you have this extreme level power differential, where you’ve got dissidents who cannot speak out in China, who’ve managed to leave the country in a lot of cases, or who are sort of descendants of migrants, who are in a position where they should be able to speak out, who are going to the one room on earth where you’ve got Chinese diplomats who are required to sit there and listen to dissidents talking about what’s really happening. And then you’ve got these sort of very powerful bureaucrats that can essentially just ignore all of their rights because it’s more convenient, because they don’t feel like having an awkward conversation with an ambassador. And even though all of the rules say that technically the whistleblower should be protected, they can just ignore those too, because nobody’s holding them to account. There needs to be accountability for the people who are committing the crimes. Mr. Jekielek: The US is undergoing a process right now of some kind of increasing transparency and accountability and cost cutting within the US government itself. Are you suggesting that the US should apply something like this to the UN? Ms. Reilly: The US can’t act alone when it comes to the UN. But I think that there’s enough member states, the democracies essentially, that recognize that there are problems. I mean, you see just the sheer number of sex abuse scandals within the UN. Even by their own reckoning, there are, and this is literally according to their own figures, there are 800 cases of sexual harassment or abuse. No NGO could sustain that. So I think there’s a recognition that there needs to be independent systems. And it’s actually very easy to do that. There’s already been the votes in the General Assembly to have an independent ethics office, to have an independent investigation service. So you just need to separate it off from the secretariat, have it report to the General Assembly. There’s nothing here that’s terribly difficult. So yes, as the largest donor, it’s the US taxpayer money that is wasted on all of these ineffective oversight systems that don’t work. So instead of having those, let’s spend that money on systems that do work and that do root out the corruption. Mr. Jekielek: You’re basically suggesting that with the next payment handed over to the UN on the US side, there should be some very specific rules with clear oversight ability to assess whether the requirements have been met, much the way in this case, I think that the way that the CCP makes demands of the UN. Ms. Reilly: Yes, but the CCP demands get listened to because the UN takes them seriously, whereas they believe that the money from the US will always flow, no matter what the law says in Congress. And that’s a problem because at the moment, the corruption is very hidden. As you said, some of it is hiding in plain sight. Mr. Jekielek: Why is China giving 20 million a year as a slush fund for the Secretary General. Recently, there were 40 Uyghurs who were deported from Thailand back to communist China. There was a lot of criticism of Thailand for doing that in the first place. I’m kind of familiar to some extent with the realities there. About 20 years ago, I worked on specifically working to prevent these sorts of repatriations from happening because the Chinese regime was always pressuring the Thais to send back even people who were protected by the UN High Commission for Refugees. What happened here? Ms. Reilly: My knowledge of this is largely from reporting, but the New Humanitarian news agency had a really interesting scoop a few months ago where they released some internal communications in UNHCR [The UN Refugee Agency] in Thailand. And essentially, the Thai government had asked the UN for their assistance. And, you know, one of the points of the UN is that it’s supposed to be above the kind of political pressures that can be brought to bear on states, you know, the UN Human Rights Office is meant to prioritize human rights, the UN Office for refugees is supposed to prioritize the rights of refugees. But instead of doing that, and arranging for repatriation of these people based on their protected status, the UN in its internal communications was saying, this could adversely affect China’s funding, so let’s not do anything. So essentially, they’re making this calculation, you know, how much is a human life worth? And what’s really shocking is that at the time that those emails were sent, Volker Turk, who’s now the High Commissioner for Human Rights, was high up in the Office for Refugees, and he was one of the people taking these decisions. So you see the kind of way that individuals who are willing to prioritize China’s influence and China’s comfort over their own mandate manage to rise and rise in the UN, whereas people that object get fired. Mr. Jekielek: Basically, you’re telling me that the UN could have made accommodations, but basically chose not to based on the reporting. Ms. Reilly: Yes. And they specifically raised in those emails, China’s funding, that essentially, they didn’t want to be unpopular with China. Now, again, that’s the point of having the UN is to have a body that has a specific mandate. And it’s meant to apply that mandate fairly throughout the world. And again and again, you see exceptions for China. Mr. Jekielek: I’ve also been hearing about Taiwanese, including journalists, being banned from UN buildings. Have you been following this? Ms. Reilly: Yes. This essentially is, again, the UN bureaucrats, without even consulting member states, taking decisions based on what China is asking for. So it used to be the rule that you could get into the UN building with a photo ID. And that’s really important because stateless people, for example, will not have a passport. And what the UN has done is that they have secretly changed that rule that it is now government issued ID from a UN member state. So nobody with a Taiwanese passport can enter the UN premises. Now, it used to be that they were able to do that. And this was a decision taken in both New York and Geneva by unelected bureaucrats without telling other member states that this was happening. In Geneva, they went one step further. And this was very specifically to prevent a US resident who is on China’s list from entering the building. So he’s already gone on record about this. Yang Jianli was coming to the UN in Geneva to give a speech, And China was informed in advance that he would be coming. So they changed the rule again. They said it can now only be a passport issued by a member state because he has a travel document issued by the US, but it’s not a passport because he isn’t a US citizen yet. So they actually changed the rules specifically based on the policy that I reported, where China had advanced information that he was coming. He had previously entered with no problem with that document. And in order to stop him even being able to get into the building to speak at the council, they changed the rules of entry for the entire building. And again, this is unelected bureaucrats behind closed doors without consulting a single member’s debt, simply based on a request for a favour from China. Mr. Jekielek: Absolutely astonishing. You have actually said that every UN agency bends to China’s will. What other examples do you have? Ms. Reilly: We all saw with the limitations China was putting on what the WHO was allowed to look at and not look at when they were looking for the origins of Covid. I was contacted by someone who was working on a report for the UN Environment Program, again, around the origins of Covid. And he was being pressured to include edits from China, essentially, about what he wanted to say in his report. You just see it again and again. Mr. Jekielek: As we keep talking, I feel you’re making the case for the US not to be so engaged in all of this activity because basically, the US puts in the lion’s share of the money, but the activity seems to be all for the benefit of the Chinese Communist Party, or at least in the first place, which is explicitly anti-US. Ms. Reilly: The way the UN is funded can essentially be broken down into two parts. There’s what’s called the regular budget, and then there’s voluntary contributions. And the regular budget goes a lot to the sort of political talking shops. So the General Assembly, the Security Council, made all of that stuff function. And then you’ve got the voluntary contributions where the US gives huge amounts of money. Now, in order for the US to maintain its voting rights and things, there’s very little you can do about the regular budget, but you can do stuff about the voluntary contributions. The US, essentially, when I was reporting it to US diplomats, there was very much a sense that they didn’t want to be spending political capital on this, that they had other priorities. Well, if the new administration doesn’t have a particular priority within the UN, then make cleaning it up the priority. Give it a year, see if it works. In a sense, it’s the don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. It’s completely corrupt. I’ve seen that, I think, more than most. But I don’t think it’s beyond saving. And I think it is important that countries cooperate, particularly in the face of a threat like the Chinese Communist Party. I think that multilateral cooperation has proven quite effective in the past. I think it can be again. I just think that this sort of bloated monster that the UN has become is a problem. Because remember, the UN is supposed to be the civil service. It’s not supposed to be acting like a separate member state. The Human Rights Council had a rule. It very clearly said you do not get to be told in advance who is coming. That’s what member states decided. And this is the equivalent of some official in the State Department deciding to do the exact opposite of what Marco Rubio tells them. So if the UN goes back to being a civil service that is doing the will of the member states and not acting against the will of the member states to do favors for other ones, then I think it can be useful again. Mr. Jekielek: I remember 20 years ago, there were several what were called special mechanisms in the UN Human Rights Commission. One of them, the special rapporteur on torture, a man named Manfred Nowak, I remember because he was just this amazing Austrian human rights lawyer to whom we would submit credible reports of torture in this case for this special mechanism. And in some cases, a life could be saved using that mechanism. So that’s an example. Are those mechanisms still around? What’s the status of that? Ms. Reilly: And some of them are amazing. I love that you’re mentioning Manfred Nowak. He actually supervised my master’s thesis. I am a big fan of Manfred’s. He was an amazing special rapporteur. Those are independent mechanisms. So they’re not even paid a salary. They literally do their work for free. They’re appointed by the Human Rights Council. And some of them are absolutely amazing. A lot of it depends on who’s holding the post at the time. But the special rapporteur on torture, the working group in arbitrary detention, the working group in enforced disappearances, all of these mechanisms have been incredibly effective sometimes about actually having an impact in China. And whenever you see something, I’m often told, but you know, they always say things about China. And if you actually look, it’s not the UN, sort of the paid staff that are doing it, it’s not the High Commissioner for Human Rights. It’s those special mechanisms that are saying there’s a weaker genocide, something needs to be done, that actions need to be taken to prevent torture, that Thai nationals shouldn’t be sent back. And those mechanisms can be incredibly effective. They’re very underused. But that’s the kind of part of the UN that we should be saving. One of the things that you see actually now with a lot of those mechanisms is that because they’re so effective, and because China sees them as such a threat, what they’ve started to do is sort of create their own essentially counter mechanisms to take up all the talking time. So they have a mechanism and sort of, you know, international solidarity or unilateral coercive measures, i.e. sanctions. So, you know, if the US introduces sanctions against Russia, those are discussed as being some kind of human rights abuse. So it’s that kind of thing where you do enter again into the kind of Orwellian doublespeak where you have some mechanisms that very clearly aren’t really human rights mechanisms but are designed essentially as a counterbalance. But those mechanisms are still there. And I would appeal to those as the reason why the US should stay engaged to ensure that those parts that do function continue to function. But when it comes to the actual secretariat and what is supposed to be the civil service, there, I think root and branch reform is what is required. And also, I mean, it can be done a lot cheaper. It often is done a lot cheaper and a lot better by NGOs. I would actually quite strongly advocate, and did even when I worked for the UN, for dividing the salaries in the UN by two. There is no reason for someone who is supposedly committed to human rights to be earning quite so much. There is no reason for the head of investigations in the UN, a relatively small secretariat, to be paid more than the head of the FBI. It has become very bloated. Most of that money is going into salaries and benefits that are sort of out of, have lost any link with reality at this point. And I think that, yeah, a lot of savings could be made if there was sufficient will, but that’s going to take essentially US leadership to reform the UN. Mr. Jekielek: There’s this distinction between what I would describe as individual rights, which is what the UN Human Rights Council is supposed to be safeguarding, right? The individual rights that are outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights versus this idea of collective rights, which I see increasingly being promoted, for example, by the Chinese Communist Party at the UN. Have you followed this at all? Do you have any thoughts on that? Ms. Reilly: Oh, yes, I have many thoughts on this. It is telling that if you actually look at the public statements of the last two high commissioners, Michelle Bachelet and Volker Turk, they talk about climate change. They'll talk about environmental degradation. They will almost never mention freedom of expression. They will never mention those individual rights. A lot of China’s work is being done for it by the people who are placed in these positions. Instead of standing up and saying that it is wrong to be torturing people and these people need to be released. The High Commissioner for Human Rights will leave that entirely to the special mechanisms that you mentioned. So the special rapporteurs are the ones who are publicly talking about that. But the public statements by UN officials when it comes to human rights are almost entirely devoid of substance. They will very, very rarely make a vague statement about a non-powerful country that might have repressed some protesters, but they will not come out and make statements about, for example, what is happening in Xinjiang. The UN has an office on allegedly on genocide prevention, they have never once uttered the word Uyghur. So a lot of that collective rights discourse is now used essentially to kill the discourse on individual rights. And collective rights do exist. I’m not saying that they aren’t there. But by phrasing everything as collective rights, what you tend to end up with is a situation where nobody’s ever responsible. Because, you know, who are you going to hold responsible in a court for climate change if you see it as a human rights violation? Whereas, for torture, you can usually point to the person who did it. And there’s this idea of sort of accountability and that rights are really meaningful for that individual, because if you violate that right, you can be held accountable. And you know, there are all of these other UN agencies that are dealing with climate change. But if you listen to what Volker Turk kind of says publicly, it’s his main issue. Whereas he works very hard to never ever mention China. Every four years, each country in the UN, its human rights record is examined. And so all of the NGOs and civil society working in China and working in violations of individual rights were coming to Geneva for this meeting. And Volker Turk found some urgent human rights work to undertake next door in Liechtenstein. So you’ve got a quarter of humanity on one side and a microstate on the other. And he decided that that was the exact day that he needed to go to Liechtenstein. So yes, I think that a lot of the discourse around collective rights is a way for the UN to essentially neuter the Human Rights Office, make sure you put people in that post that don’t care very much about human rights, and that will only speak about the human rights that China is okay with them mentioning. So, you know, economic and social and cultural rights and the right to a clean environment and that kind of thing, but never torture, never anything else. Mr. Jekielek: One exception to what you’re talking about actually is Israel, the only country that has a permanent agenda item at the Human Rights Council. Quick thought on that? Ms. Reilly: The UN has a huge problem of anti-Semitism, even within my own case. I don’t actually have any Jewish heritage, but another whistleblower within the UN did, a woman called Miranda Brown. She reported child sex abuse in the Central African Republic where peacekeepers had been raping children as young as eight years old. It was truly horrific. And she reported both those actions and the failures of the UN to respond. It was extraordinary because I was watching this spokesperson of the High Commissioner for Human Rights being asked about my case. And he suddenly went into an anti-Semitic rant about her, completely unrelated to the case. I made a report about this, of anti-Semitism to the High Commissioner for Human Rights. I made that report in 2021 and I’ve yet to get a response. It’s literally on video. It couldn’t be clearer. But yeah, I think that there is an almost reflexive anti-Semitism among some people in the Human Rights Office. I don’t think any country should be immune from criticism, but I do think that that criticism should be based on law and not essentially prohibited discrimination. To give one example, the same man who put in place the policy of handing names to China, Eric Tistounet, had an absolute vendetta against an organisation called UN Watch and made some incredibly anti-Semitic comments to me about them, but also sent emails to his staff, encouraging them to go to internet cafes to put comments on UN Watch’s statements, essentially to try to shut them down and to insult UN Watch. Hillel Neuer, the executive director of UN Watch, got a copy of these emails and made a complaint to the UN. NGOs have the right to make a complaint, but they have no form in which to follow up if that complaint gets ignored. So the secretary general just ignored his complaint. I made a complaint about the anti-Semitism and I have yet to hear back from the high commissioner, Volker Turk, who makes public statements about how much he deplores anti-Semitism, but has not acted on a complaint about it in his own office. And it’s been three years now since I made that complaint. So where exactly is the action? Where is the action on UN Watch’s complaint? It is not okay to have the person that’s running the UN Secretariat and the Human Rights Council discriminating against an NGO on the basis that that NGO is represented by someone of Jewish heritage. That’s not acceptable. Mr. Jekielek: In terms of member country lawmakers, of course, most importantly in the US, but also in Canada and other states, what would be your wish list? Ms. Reilly: Can I get very technical here? I want to see the law back in place on the US books that says that if the UN isn’t living up to its stated values of transparency, accountability and whistleblower protection, that the US will withhold funds. It’s vitally important that it was back into the Consolidated Appropriations Act. I’m not sure how it was taken out. It had bipartisan support, and it needs to be applied. There needs to be accountability. One thing I would really appeal to, especially I think for the incoming US ambassadors to the UN, is to not be so credulous when UN officials tell you something. Because in my case, I literally have UN officials on the record under oath admitting to lying to US diplomats. And they weren’t concerned about admitting that under oath. They weren’t going to face any consequences. Lying to US diplomats was part of their job. And me telling them the truth for them was the problem. So they need to essentially ask the question and verify the information that you get back.So for example, when it comes to the policy I reported, the UN says in court that that policy continues. And the last act before he retired of the man who put that policy in place was to hire someone as secretary of the Human Rights Council whose CV had been sent to him by the Chinese Communist Party. Now if you go and ask her the question, I am sure that she will say she does not hand over names. Mr. Jekielek: You’ve laid out some extremely disturbing realities during our talk here. Any final thoughts as we finish up? Ms. Reilly: I think there’s a tendency, I think especially when you get this deep into the worst of the UN, there’s a tendency to think it’s all there is. But as you said, there are still people out there like Manfred Novak who do care, who do the good work. If the UN can re-find its purpose, it can be a force for good in the world. The only way that that has a chance of happening is if the US government gets involved and really looks at transparency, accountability, and value for money. That would be a worthwhile endeavor. Mr. Jekielek: Emma Reilly, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show. Ms. Reilly: Thank you so much for having me. Mr. Jekielek: We reached out to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, as well as current and former UN officials Antonio Guterres, Volker Turk, Catherine Pollard, and Eric Tistounet. The UN Office rejected Emma Reilley’s contentions and said that there have been independent reviews of her complaints. They did not deny that dissident names were provided to the Chinese regime. They contend that the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has the same standards for China as it does for all countries, and that they’ve spoken out regularly about both China’s human rights abuses and about anti-Semitism.

In an unsigned opinion, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration—on technical grounds—in a case involving Venezuelan nationals facing deportation. Let’s go through the details together. Join host Roman Balmakov on this episode of “Facts Matter.” Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. 🇺🇸 Epoch Times $1 Full Access Special Offer: https://ept.ms/RomanSale