In a letter sent to Biden, U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) is demanding answers on why the President, as media reports indicate, has delayed munition shipments to Israel.
According to ABC News and other media outlets, 3,500 bombs were ready to be shipped to the Israeli Defense Forces but that shipment was stopped over the IDF's plan to drop those munitions on Rafah, the southern city in Gaza.
After being pushed south by the IDF since mid-October, Hamas is occupying that city but so are millions of Palestinian refugees.
At a Senate hearing last week, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin publicly confirmed the delayed shipment of munitions, the ABC News story pointed out.
In his letter, Sen. Marshall had several questions for Biden.
- “What is your administration’s official justification for blocking shipments of U.S.-made ammunition to Israel during the week of April 25-May?”
- “Since Oct. 7, 2023, how many aid shipments have you blocked, delayed or rerouted from reaching Israel?”
- “Did your administration reroute this ammunition shipment from Israel to Ukraine?”
- “Does your administration have future intention of blocking critical aid to Israel?”
A bait-and-switch trick for GOP support
President Biden signed a $95 billion foreign aid package in late April that included $60 billion for Ukraine in its continuing war with Russia and $26 billion for Israel.
Marshall told the "Washington Watch" program Tuesday he was not among Republicans who voted for the aid package, citing U.S. southern border security concerns. Many of his colleagues, he said, voted for the funding bill because it supported Israel and the IDF.
“So Joe Biden does another bait-and-switch on us," Marshall told show host Tony Perkins. “He tricks people into voting for his Ukraine funding and most likely he’s diverting these weapons for Israel to Ukraine."
That military funding bill, the Senator pointed out, coincides with the IDF offensive on Rafah.
"That’s more than just a coincidence," Marshall argued.
Eyeing votes in must-win Michigan
It’s also unlikely that Biden’s latest attempt to flood the U.S. with non-citizens is coincidental to the fact that polling shows he trails Donald Trump in Michigan, a key swing state.
Michigan has a significant population of Middle East immigrants and those voters are taking notice, The New York Times reports.
“Joe Biden is losing in all the major swing states, including Michigan," Marshall said. "There is a large pro-Palestinian group up there that he’s trying to cater to, and there’s no doubt this is part of the equation."
So, with an election coming in November, Marshall concluded, the country is witnessing the Biden administration abandon Israel to "appease" the Arab voters in must-win Michigan.
Biden, who has not controlled the border and instead flown illegals into the U.S. and granted them parole, has now floated the idea of bringing Gaza refugees to the U.S.
New York Post columnist Todd Benson notes that “just about all of the Gaza Strip’s two million inhabitants have gone through decades of institutionalized cradle-to-grave indoctrination into the ruling Hamas’ upside-down 7th Century Islamist value system which features at its core an extremely violent religious ideology.”
Afghanistan-like problems resurface
Chad Wolf, an acting Secretary for Homeland Security under Trump, sees Biden’s Gaza plan as an extension of the disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
“It’s the same concern we had with the Afghans," Wolf told the "Washington Watch" program. "After the fall of Kabul, everyone was saying we need to help those who helped the United States, the interpreters and other folks. Instead, what we saw from the Biden administration was them paroling in 400,000 Afghans. Not all of them helped the U.S. military."
Wolf therefore predicts a similar problem with Palestinian refugees come to the U.S.
In refugee resettlement, the refugee’s government may play a key role in the vetting process for certain individuals. In the case of the Gaza refugees, that governing authority is Hamas.
The plan flies in the face of traditional efforts at refugee resettlement, Wolf said.
“They need to explain to the American people why they need to do this, this idea that we need to bring folks from Gaza all the way to the United States when the principle and the rule of thumb is you want to resettle refugees out of an area that perhaps is dangerous … you want to do that as close to home as possible,” Wolf said.
Closer resettlement allows refugees to more easily return home as circumstances allow. But countries closer to Gaza aren’t accepting the refugees.
“If countries like Jordan and Egypt are not taking these people, presumably for security concerns, what is the Biden administration doing that allays those security concerns, and why won’t EU countries and other countries in the region take them? The Biden administration’s got a lot of explaining to do if they actually go forward with this proposal,” Wolfe said.
Congress has little recourse for a President who fails to use approved funding for its designated purpose, Marshall said. He suggests an inspector general investigation that reaches the U.S. Supreme Court.
"Most importantly is we can bring it to the attention of the American people, that this White House has a total disregard for the law," Marshall said. "He’s proven over and over again that he does unconstitutional things, even after the Supreme Court says don’t do this forgiveness of student loans."
