Austin Independent School District course says gender is ‘innermost concept of self as male, female, neither or both’

Instead of ruining life for everyone, just send these kids to a special needs facility. We do this for rowdy kids and ones with handicaps like autism. Enough of the attack on children and parents by Marxist enemies of the state (AKA Teachers’ Unions, teachers). They are guilty of child abuse and treason. [US Patriot]

A Texas school district encouraged K-12 teachers to take paid time off, at taxpayer expense, to take a course on “how to create supportive learning environments for LGBTQIA+” students as young as five years old.

The Austin Independent School District’s course material, obtained through a public information request, defined gender identity as the “innermost concept of self as male, female, neither or both,” calling it “one’s authentic identity.” The course also provided an example of a girl who questions her gender identity and asked how teachers should properly respond.

“A 14-year-old youth, who recently asked to be called Ronnie not Veronica, discloses to you a desire to go by ‘they’ pronouns,” one PowerPoint slide read. “Ronnie wants to cut their hair short but isn’t sure how their parents will react, making them feel anxious. Ronnie is also stressed because while they have been dating Julie and ‘came out as a lesbian’ in 7th grade, they have started to have feelings for Ted, who identifies as male, and this is confusing for them.”

The Austin public school district did not respond to a request for comment on the substance of the training course.

The district pushed the teacher training amid a series of fights nationwide over whether students should be taught about gender identity and transgenderism. The Free Beacon reported last year that these debates over sex education at the local level are fueled by liberal advocacy groups that push public schools to promote gender ideology to elementary students. One district spiked a sex education plan in Nebraska after parents discovered it was secretly advised by a Planned Parenthood activist, the Free Beacon reported.

The Austin public school district sparked controversy in June when it defied orders from Texas attorney general Ken Paxton (R.), who labeled its pride parade as “human sexuality instruction,” which requires parents to approve their children’s participation. The district rejected Paxton’s claim and followed through with the parade without parental approval.

The “Be a Beacon” gender course is run by Out Youth, which in a February Facebook post claimed that so-called gender-affirming care for transgender children “saves lives.” The training course cited resources from two prominent LGBT groups that also support children receiving puberty blockers and hormone treatment. The presentation cited a book titled, The Transgender Child: A Handbook for Families and Professionals.

“Are you, or parts of you, both? How do you know?” the course asked teachers. “If your anatomy changed overnight to the opposite sex, would it change who you feel yourself to be?”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Sean Casten holds up to $500,000 in company that is expected to benefit from Democrats’ so-called Inflation Reduction Act

Illinois Democrat Sean Casten is very happy with his party’s “historic” green energy spending. His latest financial disclosure may show why: The congressman holds up to $500,000 in a green energy company that will likely benefit from the spending.

Casten has spent much of the last week touting Democrats’ so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which is not expected to have “any measurable impact on inflation” but does funnel nearly $400 billion toward green energy initiatives. Casten in a statement last week called that spending “a historic win for American families and for the future of our planet.” It could also be a historic win for Casten’s investment portfolio.

That’s because Casten, according to a financial disclosure he filed last week, holds between $250,000 and $500,000 in Greenleaf Power, a Sacramento-based green energy company that sells “carbon-neutral electricity” to utility companies. The Casten-backed green energy bill contains specific provisions that are likely to benefit Greenleaf. The legislation, for example, allocates roughly $30 billion toward “grant and loan programs for states and electric utilities” that obtain “clean electricity” like that offered by Greenleaf. The bill also provides generous tax credits to property owners who install equipment to harness alternative energy sources such as biomass, in which Greenleaf specializes.

Still, none of Casten’s many statements touting the Inflation Reduction Act’s green energy spending disclose the Democrat’s six-figure stake in Greenleaf, which brought Casten up to $50,000 in “partnership income” in 2021 alone. Casten’s decision to fixate on Democrats’ work to “fight climate change,” meanwhile, may prove to be shortsighted as the congressman faces a competitive reelection campaign against Republican Keith Pekau. Only 35 percent of U.S. adults are “extremely or very concerned” about the effects of climate change, down from 44 percent just three years ago, according to an Associated Press poll.

Power the Future founder and executive director Daniel Turner called it a “shame that the American people are going to be on the hook” for “provisions that enrich this member of Congress.” He also argued that the “green energy” Greenleaf produces from biomass is not truly “green”—the company generates electricity by burning wood, a far cry from the wind and solar energy Casten has touted in the past.

“It just shows you the political motives behind this piece of legislation,” Turner told the Washington Free Beacon. “The fact that we consider biomass clean is really laughable, because biomass is really just burning trees. So why are we proud of that?”

Casten did not return a request for comment. The Democrat’s latest financial disclosure provides some clarity on his Greenleaf holding, as the congressman’s prior disclosure listed Greenleaf but claimed the asset had no value. Casten filed that 2020 disclosure as he urged Congress to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on “tax credits for clean energy.” In one case, Casten went as far as to attack fellow congressional Democrat Joe Manchin after the West Virginia senator expressed opposition toward the spending.

“We’re trying to drive a car into the future,” Casten said during an September 2021 MSNBC interview. “With all due respect to Mr. Manchin, until we’re lining up to take off the emergency brake this car ain’t driving very fast. It’s certainly not driving as fast as it needs to, and that’s the pressure we as Democrats have to keep focused on.” Casten’s past clean energy spending advocacy also excluded any mention of his Greenleaf investment.

Beyond the American public’s waning concern about climate change, it’s unclear if the Inflation Reduction Act, which Joe Biden signed into law on Tuesday, will have a sizable impact on climate change. A climate scientist who led an independent analysis of the package told the Associated Press the legislation will reduce global warming “not a lot.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Data suggests ‘economic weakness will intensify and spread more broadly’

America’s recessionary drumbeat just got louder as a key economic gauge from the Conference Board dropped for the fifth month in a row, weighed down by a slowing job market, weak manufacturing new orders, and deep consumer pessimism.

The Leading Economic Index (LEI) for the United States, which is a forward-looking gauge designed to predict business cycle shifts including recessions, fell by 0.4 percent in July, following a 0.7 percent drop in June, the Conference Board said on Aug. 18.

“The U.S. LEI declined for the fifth consecutive month in July, suggesting recession risks are rising in the near term,” Ataman Ozyildirim, senior director for economics at the Conference Board, said in a statement.

While the U.S. economy met the common rule-of-thumb definition for a recession when gross domestic product (GDP) printed negative for two quarters in a row earlier this year, recessions are formally called by a panel of economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). They use a broader definition than the two-quarter rule, relying on a wide range of indicators, including the labor market, which has remained on a relatively solid footing.

The Biden administration has seized on the NBER’s criteria for declaring a downturn, insisting that the economy isn’t in a recession, with White House officials often citing labor market strength—though there are signs that it’s cooling.

Even though unemployment is at 3.5 percent and the latest non-farm payrolls report showed U.S. employers adding a forecast-beating 528,000 in July, a growing number of U.S. corporations have announced hiring freezes or layoffs, while the number of Americans filing for unemployment insurance has been slowly trending up.

Mild or Severe Recession?

The slowing labor market was one of the factors singled out by Ozyildirim in his comments on the LEI’s fifth consecutive monthly slump.

“Consumer pessimism and equity market volatility as well as slowing labor markets, housing construction, and manufacturing new orders suggest that economic weakness will intensify and spread more broadly throughout the US economy,” he said, adding that the Conference Board projects that the U.S. economy won’t grow in the third quarter and “could tip into a short but mild recession by the end of the year or early 2023.”

While the view that America’s recession will be short and mild has its advocates, economist Nouriel Roubini, who got the nickname “Dr. Doom” after correctly predicting the 2007–08 financial crisis, calls that view “delusional.”

Roubini said in a recent interview on Bloomberg TV that he believes persistently high inflation will force the Fed to keep monetary settings tight, which will tip the U.S. economy into a “severe recession and a severe debt and financial crisis” that will be long-lasting.

Similarly, former President Donald Trump recently warned that, unless the country changes course in key areas—including energy policy—he believes something worse than a recession is on the horizon.

“Not recession. Recession’s a nice word. We’re going to have a much bigger problem than recession,” Trump said at a rally in Arizona at the end of July. “We’ll have a depression.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Since receiving Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, Bonnie Eisenberg experienced relapse of her breast cancer 8 years after being in remission.

The 73-year-old was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer in 2012. After successful treatment, she had been in remission since 2014.

Ever since then, her doctor has measured tumor marker levels in her body to monitor for relapse.

Tumor markers are usually proteins that indicate possible tumor or cancer growth. High levels of tumor markers may indicate cancer but it is not definitive.

There are many markers that can be tested, but the one that her doctor particularly focused on was the carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), a tumor marker common to cancers of the breast, colon and rectum, prostate, ovary, lung, thyroid, and liver.

Since 2014, Eisenberg dutifully took monthly CEA tests along with others. The tests continuously returned with numbers in the normal range, which her doctor said was from 0 to 4.0 ng/mL.

Eisenberg’s average CEA results had been at 0.4 ng/mL, indicating her cancer was under control.

“Everything’s been going fine,” Eisenberg told The Epoch Times, “I was one of his best patients. He never worried about me.”

However, that changed after she got vaccinated. She received her first Moderna shot in January 2021 and experienced various common adverse effects including fever, shakes, “you name it, I had it,” she said.

That month, her CEA test rose to 3.7 ng/mL.

However, since it was still within the normal range, both Eisenberg and her doctor were not concerned.

After all, tumor cells are not limited to cancer patients. It is a known fact that everyone can have cancerous cells; what matters is whether the immune system can keep the cancer in check.

Eisenberg took her second shot in February 2021 and again suffered the same adverse effects.

Her CEA numbers jumped to 5.2 ng/mL that month.

This took her out of the normal range. Yet because Eisenberg has been such a stable patient, and because her result was so close to the normal range, both she and her doctor dismissed the results.

“Maybe I should have been a little more on the doctor. Since I was so good. We weren’t really that concerned about it.”

Boosters became available in October 2021. Eisenberg was not happy to take it given her previous adverse reactions, but she and her husband took it anyway. She experienced the same terrible adverse reactions.

In October 2021 and December 2021, she had CEA tests taken.

On Dec. 13, 2021 at 8 o’clock in morning, she received a call from her doctor. He was very concerned.

“When you’re getting a phone call that early in the morning, something’s wrong. He says to me: ‘Bonnie, we have to scan you.’ What’s the matter? [I asked]. My mark was up to 17.6 [ng/mL]—I was in trouble.”

Eisenberg was immediately sent for a CAT scan, as well as MRI and PET scans.

On the PET scans, it showed that her previously dormant breast cancer has “metastasized,” meaning that it has spread to locations outside the breast.

“When he hit me with this, even now … it’s just a very hard thing to accept. It’s just something that should have never taken place.”

“[The cancer] went to all my bones … it didn’t go to any of my body organs, but it was over every bone you could think of. On the PET scan I lit up like a Christmas tree.”

A metastasizing breast cancer would automatically put her in stage 4, the worst stage for cancers.

Eisenberg is convinced that the vaccine is responsible for her cancer recurrence. The increase in CEA levels correlated well with her vaccine timeline, and she is adamant that she will not get any more vaccinations, fearing that she will really die from it.

In the same month (December 2021), Eisenberg started targeted therapy. The main medication she takes for her cancer costs about $14,000 a month “but I just have a little copayment coverage for it.”

She also has a hormone blocker as well as a monthly injection of denosumab ($3,000 each) to prevent bone fractures. Luckily, her insurance covers the cost of denosumab.

Eisenberg has responded very well to her drugs, and her cancer is back in remission now.

Since she started treatment again, her CEA numbers dropped from 4.7 in January 2022 to below 1 ng/mL in June 2022. Her numbers are just like how she was before vaccination.

The bright spots representing cancer cells are also gone on her new PET scans.

Nonetheless, things have not returned to normal; the drug side effects Eisenberg complains of are likely to accompany her for the rest of her life.

“I have to be on [medication] for the rest of my life. I can’t stop it … he [the doctor] can lower the milligrams and stuff like that … but you always have to be watched. What I have is not going away.”

Her breast cancer medication reduces white blood cell counts, significantly weakening her immune system and puts her at risk of infections. This new worry hangs on Eisenberg’s mind, and in crowded places, she feels compelled to put on a face mask.

The drug also causes her hair to thin, and as a “hair girl,” Eisenberg is bothered by the reality that she can no longer straighten her hair.

The denosumab injections can also cause loss of bone mass leading to eventual breakdown. Eisenberg is glad to have greater intervals introduced between each injection and possible reduced dosages for her medications.

Given her stage 4 relapse, Eisenberg is considered fortunate to be back in remission.

Eisenberg shared her experience with other women also in remission who have not been recommended to do monthly tests, or women who responded very poorly to potent breast cancer treatments.

She hopes that her story will be able to help others so that the same does not happen to them.

“Whatever erupted inside me from the shot, something happened because they don’t even know what it does to the immune system … [the doctors, people at Moderna] don’t even know; there’s no answers. Nobody has any answers. I don’t care who you talk to. You’re not gonna get an answer. They don’t know.”

“There’s possibly other girls like me now. They don’t even know what’s happening inside them because if they’re not tested properly, they’re not going to know.”

In the history of the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a total of 93 breast cancer cases have been reported as an adverse effect of a vaccine, of which 77 of the cases are reported after COVID-19 vaccines.

What Current Research Shows Us

The current research suggests the COVID shots altered the innate immune system, which is likely to alter the adaptive immune system.

Within the body, we have the innate immune cells that are quick-acting, inflammatory, and target all foreign molecules the same way.

Some of these innate immune cells will eventually activate adaptive immune cells, called the T and B cells. These cells begin to work a few days after infection and require activation from innate immune cells to function properly. These T and B cells target infections and cancers through specific and varied pathways. They create an immune memory afterwards so that the immune system will be able to act faster the next time.

Innate Immune System Alterations: Interferons

Interferons (IFN) are antiviral proteins.  There are three major types: type I, II, and III, categorized based on the receptors each IFN binds to.

One of the most important IFN is type 1 IFN; it acts globally, targeting many tissues and organs to protect from infections, autoimmune diseases, as well as cancers.

Studies show that they are particularly important in the early response to infection and cancer.

“Impaired type I IFN signaling is linked to many disease risks, most notably cancer, as type 1 IFN signaling suppresses proliferation of both viruses and cancer cells by arresting the cell cycle,” the authors, led by Dr. Stephanie Seneff from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology wrote.

IFN-alpha and IFN-beta are type 1 IFNs; these molecules alert other cells of a virus or cancer, and also stop infected and cancerous cells from proliferating, causing diseased cells to die.

However, research on spike protein and mRNA vaccines suggests that IFN-alpha action may be impaired when exposed to spike protein.

A study that exposed human cells to spike protein DNA to induce the cell to produce spike protein found that the cell shipped out the spike protein with two forms of microRNAs (miRNAs) that inhibited molecules that activated IFN-alpha/beta.

miRNA are short strands of RNA molecules that bind to the DNA in cells and can therefore regulate cell activity. These two miRNA inhibited an essential protein that activates the IFN-alpha/beta pathway. This implies that vaccinated individuals will have a reduced IFN-alpha/beta response and poorer immune clearance.

Seneff said that the reduced symptoms in the vaccinated are likely because of this reduced pathway, since the initial symptoms of COVID-19 are caused by actions of the interferon action. This is why many vaccinated individuals are getting infected with rebound symptoms.

“[The vaccinated] don’t get the symptoms … don’t feel as sick, but actually, you’re spreading the disease like crazy because you’re not fighting it off.”

This also means that the virus will stick around in vaccinated individuals for longer, and if the disease is not cleared after a long period of time, it can cause severe disease down the line.

This hypothesis also concordant with hospitalization and mortality rates in New South Wales, an Australian state where over 95 percent of the population has been fully vaccinated, with many people receiving one or two boosters.

Hospitalitization rates and mortality rates are significantly higher in the boosted and fully vaccinated cohort, with lower rates in the unvaccinated and patients that have only received one dose.

Reduced T-Cell Response

T-cells and B-cells are adaptive immune cells, meaning that they engage in specific and targeted attacks rather than attacking all foreign invaders the same way, which is what innate immune cells do.

Both cell types are very powerful, but both need to be activated first through innate immune system pathways to develop strong, specified attacks.

Killer T-cells engage in close combat with diseased and cancerous cells by punching holes into them whereas B plasma cells work long-range, releasing antibodies into fluids in the body to surround and neutralize toxins, bacteria, and viruses. B-cells also play a role in cancer, though their function and importance are not well understood.

T-cells have been extensively studied for the important role they play in cancer by killing cancer cells directly. The activity of T-cells have often been used to predict disease outcomes in cancer patients.

However, recent studies have shown that innate immune function has been altered in those injected with the COVID shots. A preprint study found receptors that activate T-cell action, including TLR7/8 (toll like receptors 7 and 8), are reduced in vaccinated individuals.

Further, a Chinese study of people who have been vaccinated with the spike protein-inducing COVID-19 shots found that gene activity for what proteins and pathways are turned on and off have changed across most immune cells.

This raises questions about our traditional understanding of the innate immune cell to T-cell activation pathway and whether vaccinated individuals will have an immune system that responds similarly to how it was before vaccination.

The study found T-cell activity was reduced as well as an increased inflammatory response in the immediate weeks following vaccination, which, in the long-term, puts people at risk for cancer.

“These data suggested that after vaccination, at least by day 28, other than generation of neutralizing antibodies, people’s immune systems, including those of lymphocytes (T-cells, B-cells, natural killer cells) and monocytes (innate immune cells), were perhaps in a more vulnerable state,” the authors wrote.

These findings overlap with pathologist Dr. Ryan Cole’s observations at his medical laboratory, Cole Diagnostics.

Related Coverage

Dr. Ryan Cole: Alarming Cancer Trend Suggests COVID-19 Vaccines Alter Natural Immune Response

Cole told Jan Jekielek on American Thought Leaders that after vaccinations started rolling out in the older population, he noticed the reappearance of Molluscum contagiosum, a parapoxvirus that most people get in childhood and is kept in check by the immune system from the teenage years onward.

Though the uptick is unusual, as Cole saw more cases he grew concerned that the vaccines may be driving a form of “immune dysregulation,” meaning a possible breakdown to established immune controls. Since these viruses are normally kept in check by T-cells, which also keep cancers in check, a loss of immune memory against viruses could be a sign of loss of control in cancers.

“About a month or two later, all of a sudden there are certain types of cancers that I commonly see in the laboratory, after 500,000 patients … I started seeing endometrial cancers go up and there’s certain type … Melanomas, I started seeing thicker and earlier as well.”

Since then he has shared his findings in other lectures and found that other doctors and nurses around the world have made similar observations of increased rates of cancer cases.

An analysis by The Expose on VAERS data also indicated an uptick of cancer after COVID-19 vaccines by 143,233 percent.

Developing Cancer After Vaccination

In addition to cancers relapsing, there are also cases of sudden cancer development in previously cancer-free people after vaccination.

Cheryl Rolf shared her late husband John Rolf’s experience with a sudden onset of esophageal cancer within a month or two after vaccination.

“He was vaccinated with the first vaccine March 1st of 2021, and then the second vaccine on March 29th,” Cheryl Rolf, his wife told The Epoch Times during a phone call.

A few days after his second vaccination, John, who had always been healthy, started to cough, and soon he would sporadically choke on his food, and “that gradually increased in frequency over time.”

In August, John’s doctor sent him for a scan, showing suspicious growth at the base of the esophagus, and by late August, John was diagnosed with stage 3 esophageal cancer.

“The oncologist said he marked [John] curative,” Rolf said. “He planned for him [John] to fully recover from this.”

Esophageal cancer is a rarer form of cancer that predominantly affects men aged 45 to 70. Smoking, long-term heavy consumption of alcohol, bile reflux, nerve problems in the esophagus, and obesity are all risks of esophageal cancer.

Considering John’s age of 68 years at the time, he was at risk. However, he had no medical or family history of cancer. He also did not have stomach reflux, nor did he smoke, and only drank alcohol occasionally. He was not obese.

In early September, John started his chemo and radiotherapy and it was a particularly tortuous experience for him.

John’s trouble with swallowing soon worsened, coupled with nausea and an altered sense of taste from chemo, he soon “seemed to have given up trying to eat or drink.”

“[John] was supposed to be taking more food and fluids in—he was getting some in—but he was also spitting up an awful lot of yellow phlegm … he couldn’t just drink things like you and I do. He gets to take a sip and try to get it down.”

Dehydration and weight loss meant that he also needed hydration once every three days.

John finished his treatment regimen in mid-October 2021 and doctors planned for him to make a physical recovery from the therapy, gain his strength back, and then remove his tumor through surgery.

However, on Oct. 25, three days after he received his last hydrofusion, John passed away in his sleep.

“I got up and he said ‘I want to sleep some more’ and he didn’t get up. I went and looked [later] and he had passed away.”

Rolf called 911 and moved John onto his back and gave compressions until the paramedics came, but John was gone.

“It was a horrific experience.”

Fourteen cases of esophageal cancers have been reported to VAERS in total for all vaccines, of which one included metastatic cancer (stage 4). Eleven esophageal cancer cases were reported as an adverse event of COVID-19 vaccine, including the single stage 4 cancer case.

Multiple Myeloma After mRNA Vaccination

Stanley Pruszynski also shared his wife’s sudden development of multiple myeloma after two doses of the COVID-19 Moderna vaccine.

Multiple myeloma is a “cancer in the blood … there’s no cure for it because you can’t cure blood cancer,” Pruszynski said.

It affects immune cells, making patients particularly at risk of dying from infections.

The majority of multiple myeloma patients in remission relapses in a few years, and most will later succumb to complications of the disease, particularly infections.

Pruszynski’s wife, Bonnie, then 69 years old, has been very healthy throughout her life. She was adopted into her family, therefore it is unknown if her family has a medical history of cancers, but she had no medical history of previous cancers.

Pruszynski said that Bonnie was very fit. The two would go on walks of five miles a day, and usually it would be him who would want to take a break.

However, two weeks after her second Moderna dose in February, Bonnie developed flu symptoms with constant coughing and night sweats and would get little sleep.

These symptoms persisted and medication did little to improve her condition. She began to feel weak and would ask for breaks on walks before Pruszynski did. She was often scared, she would fall and need to hold onto the walls when navigating their apartment.

In April, Bonnie fell and was taken to the emergency room.

On admission, her hemoglobin level was so low that she was given a blood transfusion.

“They [doctors] tried running some blood tests; the blood wasn’t separating properly to do the testing … well, it turns out that it was because of her hemoglobin levels,” Pruszynski said.

In June, Bonnie was diagnosed with multiple myeloma and started chemotherapy. She started stem cell therapy in December 2021 and spent Christmas in the hospital.

Stem cell therapy is a dangerous yet ambitious therapy to reset the immune system.

First, stem cells will be harvested from the body and stored. The other white blood cells in the body will then be wiped out, often using chemo and radiotherapy. Once the immune system is obliterated, the stem cells will be transferred back into the body to restart the immune system anew.

Bonnie’s fatigue improved and her cancer went into remission, but she still feels weak. The two now walk a quarter of a mile a day, compared to the five miles they used to.

Bonnie now works remotely with reduced hours. Pruszynski estimates that her salary is likely halved.

Pruszynski said that Bonnie has had high blood protein levels for many years. This condition can be a precursor to diseases and often comes with symptoms, though Bonnie was not affected.

Pruszynski therefore suspects that the vaccine, particularly the spike protein it generates, which is known to be toxic, may have triggered something in Bonnie’s immune system leading to blood cancer.

“They give her an estimate of maybe five to 10 years, maybe less. They don’t really know. They don’t have a clue but eventually it will kill her.”

There are a total of 89 multiple myeloma cases reported to VAERS, including plasma multiple myeloma, recurrent myeloma, and recurrent plasma multiple myeloma for all vaccines, and 65 of the cases were reported for COVID-19 vaccines.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Cases of the polio virus are re-emerging across the world, including in the U.S., and appear to be attributed to strains of the virus resulting from vaccination.

In July, A 20-year-old man residing in New York was diagnosed with polio, resulting in paralysis in his legs. While mainstream media outlets covered the story, journalists and commentators exploited the incident, blaming it on an individual’s decision to not receive a polio vaccine.

As Dr. Leana Wen, a notorious advocate for face masks and placing restrictions on people who opted out of receiving a COVID-19 jab, wrote in The Washington Post:

“Because of low vaccination rates, polio is back and appears to be spreading in at least one part of the country. Other vaccine-preventable diseases will also reemerge unless we take urgent steps to reverse this tragic trend. In July, an unvaccinated 20-year-old man residing in Rockland County, N.Y., was diagnosed with polio, which resulted in paralysis in his legs.”

Similarly, NBC News ran a story alleging the case was directly linked to low vaccination rates titled: “Polio Vaccination Rate For 2-year-olds is as Low as 37% in Parts of N.Y. County Where Paralysis Case Was Found.”

“Polio has been circulating for months in New York City area and poses an ongoing risk to the unvaccinated, CDC says,” reads the headline of another CNBC story.

The New York man, however, was actually infected with a type 2 vaccine-derived poliovirus, a result of an oral polio vaccine, according to the New York State Department of Health.

The vaccine responsible for crippling the individual is what’s known as a “live-attenuated vaccine,” which in contrast to inactivated vaccines, retains the ability to become more deadly and infectious if mutates while replicating. The virus can then be shed into the environment, enabling it to infect vulnerable individuals.

Despite the re-emergence of polio being triggered by a vaccine, health officials and mainstream media outlets have continued to push vaccination as the solution to a potential outbreak.

“‘Silent’ spread of polio in New York drives CDC to consider additional vaccinations for some people,” claimed CNN.

In other words, the re-emergent case of polio being used by journalists and public health agencies to push vaccination is actually a direct result of an individual receiving a polio vaccine.

Dr. Robert Malone on Aug. 19 sued the Washington Post, alleging statements in an article about him were defamatory.

The Jan. 24 article says Malone offered “misinformation” when he said during a speech that the COVID-19 vaccines “are not working” against the Omicron virus variant.

As proof, the paper linked to studies by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from January that found a booster shot on top of a primary series was protecting well against severe disease. The studies were published in the agency’s quasi-journal, which has a stated goal of being aligned with the agency’s messaging. The centers have repeatedly promoted COVID-19 vaccination during the pandemic.

Later in the speech, Malone said that the vaccines “do not prevent Omicron infection, viral replication, or spread to others.” That quote was not included in the Post’s article.

“I said nothing about disease and death at that point in time,” Malone told The Epoch Times, accusing the Post of taking a “selective misquote” and using the CDC study to contest an assertion he never made.

The Post did not respond to a request for comment while an automatic message from the article’s author, Timothy Bella, said he’s on parental leave until December. Bella provided no evidence in the article that the vaccines were protecting against Omicron infection.

An interview request from Bella to Malone before the article was written, reviewed by The Epoch Times, shows Bella telling Malone that “I have respect for you and your body of work” and that he hoped to “shadow you” during Malone’s time in Washington, where the doctor delivered the speech at a protest against COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

Ten Statements

Ten of the statements in the article were defamatory, including the statement that Malone’s claims have been “discredited;” that Malone during the speech “repeated the falsehoods that have garnered him legions of followers;” and that Malone’s claims are “not only wrong, but also dangerous,” according to the 19-page suit, filed in federal court in Charlottesville, Virginia.

“The qualities WaPo disparaged—Dr. Malone’s honesty, veracity, integrity, competence, judgment, morals and ethics as a licensed medical doctor and scientist—are peculiarly valuable to Dr. Malone and are absolutely necessary in the practice and profession of any medical doctor and scientist. WaPo ascribes to Dr. Malone conduct, characteristics and conditions, including fraud, disinformation, misinformation, deception and dishonesty, that would adversely affect his fitness to be a medical professional and to conduct the business of a medical doctor,” the suit states.

“Dr. Malone’s statements concerning COVID-19 and the purported ‘vaccines’ were 100% factually accurate. He has never committed fraud on [sic] engaged in any medical disinformation or misinformation. Further, the so-called ‘vaccines’ do not work, as is abundantly clear from both the scientific and anecdotal evidence to date,” it also says.

Malone previously served the Post with a written notice threatening legal action if it did not retract and/or correct the allegedly defamatory statements, but it refused to make any retractions or corrections, according to the filing.

Malone has also threatened to sue other media outlets, including the New York Times, but decided to start with the Post because the case “is really straightforward,” he said.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The legislation would allow states and districts to use unspent funds from the American Rescue Plan to issue scholarships directly to parents

VIDEO: Fox News

EXCLUSIVE: Rep. Burgess Owens and Sen. Tim Scott introduced legislation in the U.S. House and Senate this week to combat learning loss incurred during COVID.

Owens, R-Utah, introduced the Raising Expectations with Child Opportunity Vouchers for Educational Recovery (RECOVER) Act in the House on Friday, which would allow unspent funds from the American Rescue Plan to be used to issue child opportunity scholarships directly to parents. 

Owens told Fox News Digital there is a “group who has been really negatively impacted by the last two years, and those are the low-income and minority students.” 

“It allows parents to take scholarship funds… and use it, so their kids can catch up,” he said. “Whether it be tutoring, whether it be books — whatever it takes to make sure their kids are able to catch up is what this is being used toward.”

$15M IN AMERICAN RESCUE PLAN FUNDS WENT TO ‘ANTI-RACISM,’ ‘SOCIAL ACTIVISM’ PROGRAMS FOR KIDS

Elementary students wearing masks in the classroom (iStock)

These scholarships can be used by low-income families for qualifying educational opportunities, including tutoring services, private school tuition, testing fees, educational therapies for children with disabilities and books or other curriculum materials.

Districts have yet to spend 93% of the $122 billion allocated for K-12 education in the American Rescue Plan, according to data from the U.S. Department of Education.

Owens predicted the legislation will encounter opposition from the unions, but said parents have become more involved in their kids’ education in the past two years, and begun pushing back on unions. 

“The key point is this, we have an educational system that is not trying to rescue our kids, is not trying to educate our kids,” Owens said.

Rep. Burgess Owens. Photographer: Dylan Hollingsworth/Bloomberg via Getty Images (Photographer: Dylan Hollingsworth/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

FLORIDA REP. BYRON DONALDS DISCUSSES SCHOOL CHOICE: ‘GET BACK TO FOCUSING ON CHILDREN’

The federal funds have already been allocated, meaning the legislation includes no new spending, and gives school districts and families flexibility in how the funds are spent, Owens noted.

“The key point is, this is a bipartisan conversation,” he added. “All of us want to make sure our kids are taken care of, and educated, and competitive. We need to have educational freedom, and we’re now seeing the places that lack it most are those who are at risk most.”

Scott, R-S.C., who introduced companion legislation in the Senate on Thursday, told Fox News Digital “while kids struggle to recover from months of learning loss, school districts continue to sit on billions of dollars in federal funding.” 

NORTH KOREAN DEFECTOR: I AM TERRIFIED OF THE ‘MASSIVE INDOCTRINATION COMING FROM THE LEFT’ IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

The legislation, Scott added, gives the unused funds to parents “who won’t let a penny go to waste.” 

“They’ll use every resource to ensure their kids live up to their God-given potential — just like my mom did for me,” he said.

(Tim Scott, REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/Pool)

Students performed lower in the 2021–2022 school year when compared to the 2020–2021 school year, according to a report from education software company Renaissance. 

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For students in first grade or below, reading results were “concerning,” according to Renaissance, which noted that school closures might have disrupted foundational reading skills for students around the ages of 5 and 6. Early literacy scores for pre-readers at this grade level were 19 points lower on average during fall 2021 and 17 points lower over the winter, the study showed. 

SOURCE: Fox News

Mike Franken also took money from disgraced former senator Al Franken

Iowa Democratic Senate candidate Mike Franken pledged to run for office “without taking one dime of corporate PAC money.” That promise didn’t preclude him from taking thousands from corporate-funded groups.

“I don’t take any corporate PAC money,” Franken said in June. “Not a penny.” But that same month, the Iowa Democrat received $5,000 from Sen. Tim Kaine’s (D., Va.) Common Ground PAC, which accepted donations from Pfizer, Capital One, and Amazon. Franken took $2,500 from Sen. Mark Kelly’s (D., Ariz.) Liftoff PAC, which is funded by the National Association of Realtors, and another $2,500 from Sen. Tina Smith’s (D., Minn.) Velvet Hammer PAC, which boasts contributions from Wells Fargo, Delta Air Lines, and Goldman Sachs.

The donations could spell trouble for the Senate candidate, who has decried “corporate greed” and accused incumbent Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) of being beholden to “corporate donors.”

The Senate candidate also took $2,500 from disgraced former Democratic senator Al Franken’s Midwest Values PAC. The ex-comedian resigned in 2018 following accusations of sexual harassment, but said last year he is open to running again for office. His PAC raised hundreds of thousands of dollars even after his departure.

A Franken campaign spokesman said the candidate “has never taken a dime from corporate PACs.” He did not comment on any other corporate donations.

Franken, a retired Navy vice admiral, came under fire in July when he said he “did not serve” to defend the rights of people who criticize Joe Biden. He is the third Iowa Democrat to skirt a self-imposed corporate PAC donation ban after Rep. Cindy Axne and Abby Finkenauer, whom Franken bested during the Senate primary.

Finkenauer lost by 15 points in June during the Democratic primary to Franken, who was defeated in 2020 by failed Democratic Senate candidate Theresa Greenfield. Sen. Joni Ernst (R., Iowa) beat Greenfield in the general election by 6 points, though the Democrat raised twice as much money for her campaign.

Franken raked in $1.7 million during the last fundraising period, outraising Grassley by more than two to one. The Republican still holds more cash in hand, and won his last election by a nearly 25-point margin.

Grassley campaign manager Matt Dailer told the Washington Free Beacon that Franken should either return the donations or “admit his pledge was nothing more than a hollow stunt.”

“Mike Franken hasn’t even been elected to office and he’s already breaking his word to Iowans,” Dailer said. “He can make up any excuse he wants, but Iowans see through his dishonest word games.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stealthily edited a webpage it maintains that lists details about messenger RNA (mRNA) COVID-19 vaccines.

The page, titled “Understanding mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines,” says it was last updated on July 15. But archived versions of the page show that key portions were removed on July 22 or July 23.

The version captured on July 22 includes the claim, “The mRNA and the spike protein do not last long in the body.”

“Our cells break down mRNA from these vaccines and get rid of it within a few days after vaccination,” it says. “Scientists estimate that the spike protein, like other proteins our bodies create, may stay in the body up to a few weeks.”

The following day, the claims were gone.

A CDC spokesperson acknowledged to The Epoch Times that the removal happened, despite the page still saying it has not been updated since July 15.

“CDC routinely reviews our webpage information to ensure we have consistent and up-to-date recommendations. In an effort to make all COVID-19 vaccine webpages consistent, information on the Understanding mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines webpage was adjusted and a portion was removed,” the spokesperson said in an email.

The removal drew criticism from some, including scientist Ray Armat, who first noticed the stealth edit.

In a social media post, he described the alteration as done “in a tacit/underhanded way.”

“The CDC is quietly deleting misleading information from their website,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) added.

The Claims

Messenger RNA is the technology utilized by both the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, the most administered vaccines in the United States and a number of other countries.

The vaccines deliver the mRNA into muscle cells, where the mRNA triggers the production of the spike protein. The spike protein is a component of the virus that causes COVID-19. The spike protein remains on the cell’s surface, which trains the immune system to produce antibodies against the virus.

After that process is finished, the cells break down the mRNA and it leaves the body as waste, according to the CDC.

The agency makes several challenged claims about mRNA vaccines, including alleging the mRNA does not affect or interact with a person’s DNA.

For one, the CDC could not provide any documents supporting that claim, nor several related claims. And some studies have indicated that the mRNA does interact with DNA, including one from Swedish researchers, while others have found the mRNA lingers for weeks after vaccination.

Pfizer has maintained that its vaccine “does not alter the DNA sequence of a human cell” and the CDC spokesperson said the alteration to the webpage “was not a change to the science of how the mRNA vaccines work.”

“The mRNA from these vaccines are broken down by the cells that interpret this coding, and the process takes a few days after vaccination,” the spokesperson said.

Meiling Lee contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Emails reveal how Hunter got Obama to officially recognize partnership

The Biden administration last month warned of a Chinese Communist Party front group that seeks to “co-opt” state leaders as part of Beijing’s sprawling foreign influence operation. Emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop show the first son and his business partners helped the organization gain a foothold in the United States while his father was vice president.

In 2015, Biden’s partners lobbied the State Department to publicly approve a partnership between the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries and State Legislative Leaders Foundation, a nonprofit group that hosts forums for state legislators and corporate leaders. Hunter’s team portrayed the initiative as a boon for U.S.-Chinese relations.

But emails show they hoped the U.S. government’s recognition of the partnership would help the foundation establish an office in Beijing. It is not clear why the partnership—or the Obama administration’s blessing of it—would have helped Hunter Biden’s business prospects. What is clear is that he and his colleagues believed it would: Biden associate James Bulger wrote in a July 17, 2015, email that the Beijing office would be “a great business driver” for a joint venture they sought with Harvest Fund Management, a Chinese investment firm led by Henry Zhao, a businessman and reported member of the Chinese Communist Party.

The lobbying campaign proved wildly successful on all fronts. After a September 2015 meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping, President Barack Obama endorsed the partnership between State Legislative Leaders Foundation and the Chinese group. Months later, Hunter Biden’s company finalized its multimillion-dollar deal with Harvest Management.

Biden’s emails, which have not been previously reported, show how the younger Biden helped a Chinese Communist Party influence outfit that his father’s administration now views as a national security threat. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence said last month that the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries seeks “to directly and malignly influence state and local leaders to promote the PRC’s global agenda.”

On April 28, 2015, Bulger told Hunter Biden that State Legislative Leaders Foundation president Stephen Lakis wanted to meet to discuss a path forward to setting up a SLLF office in China and creating a partnership between his organization and the Chinese organization.

“Whatever you need on this just let me know and I’ll make it work,” Biden replied.

Between April and July 2015, Biden’s longtime friend and business partner Eric Schwerin arranged meetings between the State Legislative Leaders Foundation and State Department officials to help advance the partnership with the Chinese group. Schwerin, who had dozens of White House meetings with members of then-vice president Joe Biden’s office, was “instrumental” in arranging the State Department sessions, according to an email from Bulger.

The Biden group’s primary goal was to have Obama reference the collaboration between the State Legislative Leaders Foundation and the Chinese group in his upcoming meeting with Xi Jinping. On May 11, 2015, a foundation adviser wrote Evan Ryan, who then served as assistant secretary of state for educational and cultural affairs, that a reference by Obama would help them gain “top level approval” from Chinese officials to set up a foundation office in Beijing.

Ryan, who now serves as White House cabinet secretary and is married to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, appears to have played a major role in midwifing the partnership. Schwerin noted in an email to Biden that Ryan had “helped with” the effort to officially acknowledge the foundation’s work with the Chinese group. Other emails show Biden and Schwerin in frequent correspondence with Ryan on other matters.

The U.S. intelligence community has increasingly warned that Beijing uses American businessmen and nonprofit groups—often through “deceptive and coercive” means—to promote China’s political agenda in the West. Republicans have said Hunter Biden would have been a prime target for such an influence operation, given his extensive dealings in China and his access to policymakers in Washington. Biden, who is under federal investigation over his taxes and foreign business dealings, earned millions of dollars from a deal with CEFC China Energy, whose chairman was suspected of having ties to Chinese military intelligence. Biden also provided legal services to a CEFC executive whom he referred to as “the fucking spy chief of China” and who was convicted for trying to bribe African officials for oil rights.

The Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries and State Legislative Leaders Foundation have hosted five “Cooperation Forums” in Honolulu, Las Vegas, Wuhan, and Shijiazhuang since 2015, providing the Chinese influence group access to dozens of state legislative leaders and American business executives. While the U.S. government has not publicly scrutinized the forums, the State Department in 2020 pulled out of a forum between the Chinese group and the National Governors Association due to the former’s efforts to “spread Beijing’s malign influence in the United States.”

Biden’s associates began lobbying the U.S. government as a ploy to land a lucrative investment from Harvest Fund Management, one of China’s largest asset managers. Biden allegedly touted his family’s political connections in seeking a $5 million investment from Harvest founder Henry Zhao, the Washington Free Beacon reported. Zhao is believed to be a Chinese Communist Party official, according to the New York Post.

The Biden team had worked with the State Legislative Leaders Foundation before. The foundation helped Biden and his associates at the private equity firm BHR Partners in 2015, when Hunter’s team helped the Aviation Industry Corporation of China purchase Michigan auto parts maker Henniges Automotive, the Free Beacon reported earlier this year.

The Biden emails provide a detailed roadmap of how the State Legislative Leaders Foundation, the Biden team, and Zhao sought to use an official blessing from the U.S. government to advance their business interests. In a September 2014 email, Lakis, the foundation president, told Zhao he was a “shareholder” in Bulger’s company. He urged Zhao to consider an investment in the Biden joint venture, saying he had “every confidence that such a partnership will be beneficial to all parties.”

Back in China, Zhao was “working with the Chinese Governments [sic] counterparts in Beijing” to have the foundation’s efforts mentioned during the Obama-Xi summit in September 2015, Bulger told Biden in a July 17, 2015, email. Having the initiative mentioned in an official document for the summit “would be a huge boost to [Zhao’s] effort in China.” That in turn “would be a great business driver for Burnham/Harvest,” referring to their joint venture, said Bulger. Bulger, a relative of mobster Whitey Bulger, also wrote that Zhao wanted Biden’s “help with this matter.”

The emails do not detail what steps Biden took to help the initiative, but he cheered the partnership between the foundation and the Chinese group in a November 2015 email to Zhao. Biden wrote he was “very happy to hear that the State Legislative Leaders Foundation matter was worked out and was highlighted during President Xi’s State Visit in September.”

Burnham and Harvest finalized the joint venture in March 2016, according to emails Biden sent to Zhao.

“This is an exciting milestone and I look forward to helping building [sic] a cross border institution that helps investors in our respective countries across the globe,” Biden wrote Zhao on March 18, 2016.

While Biden had high hopes for the partnership with Zhao—he said his company had “no greater partner” than the Chinese businessman—the joint venture went south in May 2016 after another Biden partner, Devon Archer, was indicted on fraud charges.

It is unclear whether Biden was aware of his son’s activities, though Hunter has kept his father in the loop on several of his other business ventures. Joe Biden met in 2017 with Michael Lin, a longtime Hunter business partner who advised the State Legislative Leaders Foundation on its first foray into China, the Free Beacon reported in May 2021.

None of Biden’s associates—Schwerin, Lakis, or Bulger—have registered with Congress as lobbyists, despite their outreach to the State Department. None returned requests for comment. Biden’s attorney and the White House also did not respond to requests for comment.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

So drag queens are OK but when you refuse a vaccine that does not work you get cut. [US Patriot]

Lance Corporal Catherine Arnett is on the brink of court martial for decisions made in opposition to what she considers an “unlawful order” to take a COVID-19 vaccination shot.

Immediately following the secretary of defense’s order to vaccinate against COVID-19 on Aug. 24, 2021, Arnett sought religious exemption—which was denied the following month. Having submitted her appeal against the decision in November, it was denied in January 2022. This began an administrative separation process from the Marine Corps, prompting Arnett to declare she “cannot consent to it.”

The 24-year-old Lance Corporal held firm in her beliefs, telling The Epoch Times that “if your mandate is illegal, then your separation orders are illegal.” In April 2022, Arnett received a letter from her command, giving her 30 days to leave Japan and report to California’s Camp Pendleton to be processed for separation. The Marine Corps does not separate individuals from duty stations overseas or outside the continental United States.

Thus, Arnett continues to refuse to board a plane, explaining that “[the order] to get on the plane [is] inextricably linked to the vaccine mandate.” If the “unlawful order” of the vaccine mandate were not in place, she would have chosen to serve longer, aspiring to become a drill instructor. Instead, her decision to seek religious accommodation and subsequent refusal to leave Japan for separation from the Marine Corps has had consequences that may lead to a court martial.

Arnett was charged under Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice for disobeying a direct order. She was also charged under Article 87 for deliberately failing to board an aircraft to the United States.

Because Arnett has less than six years of service, under military regulations, the Marine Corps does not have to give her an administrative separation board to decide whether to retain or separate her from service. After her religious accommodation appeal was denied, she was accused of misconduct and commission of a serious offense for not getting the COVID-19 vaccination shot, Arnett said. She was told that she would be administratively separated within 30 days.

Arnett’s court martial trial is set to begin on Aug. 23, only one month shy of the expiration of her current enlistment and her ability to leave the Marine Corps under normal terms. It is her intention to remain in Japan until Sept. 18, which would fulfill the four-year contract she made with the Marine Corps.

Arnett is hopeful the vaccine mandates will be defeated in the courts sooner than later, saying, “God willing, I would like to remain in the Marine Corps.” She recognizes that she has chosen a difficult path, admitting that her decisions have left her feeling alienated. “I’ve basically been exiled from my squadron,” she said, adding that there seems to be an “unspoken rule” that she does not interact with other service members. She described the experience as “very isolating.”

Leadership Lacking

The Epoch Times also spoke to Lt. Col. Madison Whitaker (a pseudonym) who has served nearly 18 years in the Marine Corps. Whitaker spoke to The Epoch Times on the condition of anonymity, fearing reprisals. His orders to battalion command were recently canceled for refusing to get the jab. With equal disappointment, he is aggrieved by the lack of approval for religious accommodation as well as the military’s refusal to recognize service members’ natural immunity to the coronavirus.

“What’s missing from the entire equation,” Whitaker said, “is that leadership is not willing to sit down and have a kneecap-to-kneecap adult conversation with the Marines in their units.” Before “sidelining” nearly all exemption requests for religious accommodation or otherwise. He believes Marine Corps leadership should be meeting with those under their command.

He explained that no one in his chain of command sat him down to hear his side of the story. “There has never been an effort to do anything like that,” he said.

Whitaker said that there are no Food and Drug Administration-approved (FDA) vaccines available to service members, so he doesn’t understand the rush to force vaccinations on personnel.

The marine, along with a group of service members, argues that the Pentagon’s vaccine mandate cannot compel service members to receive vaccines issued under Emergency Use Authorized (EUA), but only vaccines that have full FDA approval and are labeled as such. Currently, only EUA vaccines are available for service members to take, according to a whistleblower report sent to Congressmembers on Aug. 15.

The Pentagon, however, has issued a policy (pdf) saying the FDA-approved Comirnaty and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines are interchangeable, citing FDA guidance. The legality of this policy is contested by service members resisting the vaccine mandate.

Many of the officers tasked with enforcing the vaccine mandate “don’t want to be seen as bucking the system,” Whitaker said. “They don’t want to risk their reputation, their retirement, or the things that they have worked toward over the course of their careers.” What’s more, he is convinced that “the highest levels of the DoD” have been instructed to not give any religious waivers except to service members who were already exiting the service.

As of Aug. 3, the Marine Corps has approved (pdf) 11 religious exemptions, 545 administrative or medical exemptions, and has separated 3,299 people.

Punishing Marines for their decision to object to the vaccine for religious reasons, or because there are only EUA drugs available, is “contrary to how we’re brought up as Marines and what is expected of us whenever we get an order that is suspect.” Thousands contend that forcing service members to take an experimental vaccine is unlawful, Whitaker noted.

“In the case of Lance Corporal Arnett, this is her first tour and she’s being sidelined,” Whitaker pointed out. “For those like Arnett who have probably wanted to join for a long time,” he said, “this has just completely diminished the trust between the leadership and those that are going through this or would have to go through this.”

Defending Their Rights

Regardless of the outcome, Arnett hopes her experience “empowers other service members to challenge unlawful orders.” Every citizen, in general, she said “should have the gall to challenge unlawful orders.”

Whitaker agreed, stating, “There’s this misconception out there that whenever you join the military, you take an oath that relinquishes your rights.” But this is not true. “We don’t lose any of the rights espoused in the Bill of Rights or anywhere in the Constitution,” he explained.

“While it may sound idealistic, I’m fighting for my First Amendment rights, and my free exercise of religion,” Whitaker said, “it’s really that simple.” According to the Marine Corps officer, “service members are not wards of the state just because they raise their right hand. They still retain their rights.”

Whitaker finds it “even more egregious” that what he has sworn to do for the country—”support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic—is the very thing thousands are being punished for.”

Truth be told, he said, “we have significant religious persecution of service members going on within the DoD for a pharmaceutical product that no one needs, many of these service members don’t want, and that is not safe, nor is it effective.”

“If we don’t defend our First Amendment rights, then we won’t have any rights in this country,” Whitaker said.

Both Arnett and Whitaker emphasized that their views do not reflect those of the Department of Defense (DoD), the Department of the Navy, or the U.S. Marine Corps.

Neither the DoD nor the Marine Corps replied to a request for comment from The Epoch Times.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Can you believe the FCC and the wireless industry trade association when they claim there’s no risk with 5G wireless, especially since they haven’t funded any safety studies? Why Brussels and Belgium halted their testing and Switzerland is delaying its 5G rollout amid 2,000 studies showing harm.

Exposure to electromagnetic field (EMF) and radiofrequency (RF) radiation is an ever-growing health risk in the modern world. The Cellular Phone Task Force website¹ has a long list of governments and organizations that have issued warnings or banned wireless technologies of various kinds and under various circumstances, starting in 1993.

Another long list of organizations representing doctors and scientists are also among them, including an appeal for protection from nonionizing EMF exposure by more than 230 international EMF scientists to the United Nations in 2015, which notes that:²

“Numerous recent scientific publications have shown that EMF affects living organisms at levels well below most international and national guidelines.

Effects include increased cancer risk, cellular stress, increase in harmful free radicals, genetic damages, structural and functional changes of the reproductive system,^3,4,5 learning and memory deficits, neurological disorders, and negative impacts on general well-being in humans. Damage goes well beyond the human race, as there is growing evidence of harmful effects to both plant and animal life.”

A call for a moratorium on 5G specifically was issued in September 2017 by more than 180 scientists and doctors from 35 countries,^6,7 “until potential hazards for human health and the environment have been fully investigated by scientists independent from industry,” noting that “RF-EMF has been proven to be harmful for humans and the environment,” and that “5G will substantially increase exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMF) on top of the 2G, 3G, 4G, Wi-Fi, etc. for telecommunications already in place.”

In an article⁸ on the Environmental Health Trust’s website, Ronald Powell, Ph.D., a retired Harvard scientist of applied physics, notes “there is NO SAFE WAY to implement 5G in our communities; rather there are only ‘bad ways’ and ‘worse ways,’” and rather than argue about who should have control over its deployment, we should focus on preventing its employment altogether.

Health Concerns Over 5G Abound

Wall Street analyst Sunil Rajgopal also warned that mounting health concerns may delay the implementation of 5G.⁹ Some countries have already taken steps to slow 5G deployment due to health risks, Rajgopal notes. The question is, can it be stopped?

5G testing was halted in Brussels, Belgium,¹⁰ and Switzerland is delaying its 5G rollout in order to create a system to monitor radiation.¹¹ Syracuse, New York, is also attempting to set up some safeguards and has “negotiated the right to conduct on-demand safety inspections of 5G antennas,” to allay public concerns.¹² According to Forbes:¹³

“In New Hampshire, lawmakers are considering establishing a commission to study the health impacts of 5G networks. And Mill Valley, Calif., near San Francisco, last year banned new 5G wireless cells.”

Many other areas, however, have chosen to trust the Federal Communications Commission and the wireless industry trade association, CTIA, which has created a “Cellphone Health Facts” website citing research showing no risk. However, if you believe the FCC is assessing health risks, you’d be wrong.

At a Senate commerce hearing (above), the FCC admitted that no 5G safety studies have been conducted or funded by the agency or the telecom industry, and that none are planned.^14,15 In a speech given at the National Press Club in June 2016, Tom Wheeler, former FCC chairman and prior head of the wireless industry lobbying group, made the agency’s stance clear when he said:¹⁶

“Stay out of the way of technological development. Unlike some countries, we do not believe we should spend the next couple of years studying … Turning innovators loose is far preferable to letting committees and regulators define the future. We won’t wait for the standards …”

In light of the more than 2,000 studies showing a wide range of biological harm from EMFs, assurances from the FCC and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that wireless radiation exposures, including 5G, is safe, seem disingenuous at best. As noted in a Counterpunch article:¹⁷

“Telecom lobbyists assure us that guidelines already in place are adequate to protect the public. Those safety guidelines, however, are based on a 1996 study of how much a cell phone heated the head of an adult-sized plastic mannequin. This is problematic, for at least three reasons:

• living organisms consist of highly complex and interdependent cells and tissue, not plastic.
• those being exposed to radiofrequency radiation include fetuses, children, plants, and wildlife – not just adult male humans.
• the frequencies used in the mannequin study were far lower than the exposures associated with 5G.”

Even so, in 2022, substantial research on EMF safety has yet to be done. In fact, as of August 1, 2022, of more than 35,000 articles on EMFs, only seven have been medical or biological studies.¹⁸ However, “none of these studies modulated or pulsed the signal as required by 5G or used other features of 5G technology,” according to Joel M. Moskowitz, Ph.D., director for the Center of Family and Community Health School of Public Health at UC Berkeley.¹⁹

What Level of EMF Can Humans Withstand?

EMF exposure at many biological impacting frequencies, such as those that run cellphones and Wi-Fi, has increased about 1 quintillion times over the past 100 years.^20,21 Unfortunately, EMF exposure is so widespread these days, it’s virtually impossible to conduct controlled population studies anymore, as no population is truly unexposed or unaffected. This lack of a control group makes it very difficult to determine what the real-world effects are.

That said, one controlled exposure study has been done, revealing it’s nowhere near as harmless as people think. At the beginning of the 20th century, there were two populations in the United States — rural and urban. Urban areas were by and large electrified, while rural areas were not electrified until around 1950.

Dr. Sam Milham, an epidemiologist, painstakingly analyzed mortality statistics between these two populations over time, clearly showing there was a wide difference in mortality from heart disease, cancer and diabetes between these two groups. Then, as rural areas became electrified, the two curves merged.

Today, we not only live and work in electrified surroundings, we’re also surrounded by microwaves from wireless technologies. Soon, 5G may be added to the mix, making exposures all the more complex and potentially harmful. As noted by Counterpunch:²²

“5G radiofrequency (RF) radiation uses a ‘cocktail’ of three types of radiation, ranging from relatively low-energy radio waves, microwave radiation with far more energy, and millimeter waves with vastly more energy …

The extremely high frequencies in 5G are where the biggest danger lies. While 4G frequencies go as high as 6 GHz, 5G exposes biological life to pulsed signals in the 30 GHz to 100 GHz range. The general public has never before been exposed to such high frequencies for long periods of time.”

Health Concerns Linked to 5G Exposure

The added concern 5G brings is the addition of the millimeter wave (MMW). This bandwidth, which runs from 30 gigahertz (GHz) to 300GHz,²³ is known to penetrate up to 2 millimeters into human skin tissue,^24,25 causing a burning sensation.

This is precisely why MMW was chosen for use in crowd control weapons (Active Denial Systems) by the U.S. Department of Defense.²⁶ MMW is also used in so-called “naked body scanners” at airports.²⁷

Research has shown sweat ducts in human skin act as receptors or antennae for 5G radiation, drawing the radiation into the body,^{28,29,30,31,32} thereby causing a rise in temperature. This in part helps explain the painful effect. As noted by Dr. Yael Stein — who has studied 5G MMW technology and its interaction with the human body — in a 2016 letter to the Federal Communications Commission:³³

“Computer simulations have demonstrated that sweat glands concentrate sub-terahertz waves in human skin. Humans could sense these waves as heat. The use of sub-terahertz (millimeter wave) communications technology (cellphones, Wi-Fi, antennas) could cause humans to percept physical pain via nociceptors.

Potentially, if 5G Wi-Fi is spread in the public domain we may expect more of the health effects currently seen with RF/ microwave frequencies including many more cases of hypersensitivity (EHS), as well as many new complaints of physical pain and a yet unknown variety of neurologic disturbances.

It will be possible to show a causal relationship between G5 technology and these specific health effects. The affected individuals may be eligible for compensation.”

MMW has also been linked to:^{34,35,36,37,38}

• Eye problems such as lens opacity in rats, which is linked to the production of cataracts,³⁹ and eye damage in rabbits^40,41
• Impacted heart rate variability, an indicator of stress, in rats^42,43,44 and heart rate changes (arrhythmias) in frogs^45,46
• Pain⁴⁷
• Suppressed immune function⁴⁸
• Depressed growth and increased antibiotic resistance in bacteria⁴⁹

As noted in a Gaia.com article:⁵⁰

“Many scientists understand that the electromagnetic radiation leaking through the doors of our microwave ovens are carcinogenic, and therefore, can cause cancer. Most of these scientists also believe that these waves are mutagenic, meaning they change the DNA structure of living beings.⁵¹

The launch of 5G will be similar to turning on your microwave, opening its door, and leaving it on for the rest of your life. There’s good reason why hundreds of scientists are taking action against the wireless industry.”

Understanding EMFs’ Mechanisms of Harm

As explained in by Martin Pall, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of biochemistry and basic medical sciences at Washington State University, the primary danger of EMFs in general is that it causes excess oxidative stress that results in mitochondrial dysfunction.

According to Pall’s research,^52,53,54,55 radiofrequency microwave radiation such as that from your cellphone and wireless router activates the voltage-gated calcium channels (VGCCs) located in the outer membrane of your cells.

According to Pall, VGCCs are 7.2 million times more sensitive to microwave radiation than the charged particles inside and outside our cells, which means the safety standards for this exposure are off by a factor of 7.2 million.

Low-frequency microwave radiation opens your VGCCs, thereby allowing an abnormal influx of calcium ions into the cell, which in turn activates nitric oxide (NO) and superoxide which react nearly instantaneously to form peroxynitrite⁵⁶ that then causes carbonate free radicals, which are one of the most damaging reactive nitrogen species known and thought to be a root cause for many of today’s chronic diseases.

For an in-depth understanding of peroxynitrites and the harm they inflict, see “Nitric Oxide and Peroxynitrite in Health and Disease”⁵⁷ — a 140-page free access paper with 1,500 references written by Dr. Pal Pacher, Joseph Beckman and Dr. Lucas Liaudet.

One of its most significant hazards of peroxynitrite is that it damages DNA. The European REFLEX study published in 2004 revealed the nonthermal effects of 2G and 3G radiation are actually very similar to the effects of X-rays in terms of the genetic damage they cause.⁵⁸

Your body has the capacity to repair that damage through a family of 17 different enzymes collectively called poly ADP ribose polymerases (PARP). However, while PARP work well, they require NAD+ for fuel and when they run out of NAD+ they stop repairing your DNA.

This in turn can lead to premature cell death, since 100 to 150 NAD+ molecules are needed to repair a single DNA strand break. NAD+ is central to maintaining cellular and mitochondrial health, so the fact that PARP consumes NAD+ to counteract EMF damage is an important concern.

Cancer Is Not the Primary Health Risk of EMF

The voltage in your body appears to play a significant role in health and disease. Your body’s production of electricity allows your cells to communicate and perform basic biological functions necessary for your survival. However, your body is designed to operate at very specific levels and frequencies.

It seems logical that being surrounded by man-made EMFs that are 1 quintillion times higher than the natural EMF environment of the Earth may interfere with your DNA’s ability to receive and transmit biological signals.

While the controversy over EMF damage has centered around whether or not it can cause cancer, especially brain tumors, this actually isn’t your greatest concern. Since the damage is strongly linked to activation of your VGCCs, it stands to reason that areas where VGCCs are the densest would be most vulnerable to damage.

As it happens, the highest density of VGCCs are found in your nervous system, your brain, the pacemaker in your heart and in male testes. As a result, EMFs are likely to contribute to neurological and neuropsychiatric⁵⁹ problems, heart and reproductive problems.

This includes but is not limited to cardiac arrhythmias, anxiety, depression, autism, Alzheimer’s and infertility. Indeed, this is what researchers keep finding, and all of these health problems are far more prevalent and kill more people than brain cancer.

What’s more, seeing how many are already struggling with electromagnetic hypersensitivity, saturating cities and suburban areas with MMW radiation will undoubtedly make the problem more widespread, and make life unbearable for those already feeling the effects of wireless radiation.

Media Ploy to Detract From 5G Concerns: Blame the Russians

In a Medium article,⁶⁰ Devra Davis, Ph.D. — a well-respected and credentialed researcher on the dangers of cellphone radiation — highlights a media trend of writing off scientists who warn about 5G dangers by labeling them “untethered alarmists … linked to Russian propaganda.”

“Could it be a coincidence that following on the heels of the NY Times story, the Wall Street Journal and the UK Telegraph have echoed the same smear of guilt by association,” she writes,⁶¹ adding:

“These otherwise credible media sources ignore the substantial body of science pinpointing hazards of wireless radiation and 5G detailed in independent journalistic investigations that have appeared extensively in media throughout Europe and been covered by major networks …

Could the failure to report these critical 5G issues and correct misleading information regarding health effects of wireless and 5G in the New York Times have anything to do with the their new joint venture with Verizon in 5G journalism, or the fact that the Times board of directors includes officials from Facebook, Verizon, Media Lab, and other stalwarts of the telecom industry, while Carlos Slim, head of some of the largest telecom firms in the world, has downsized and now owns just 15 percent of its stock?”

Davis also points out a clear difference between American and Russian scientific expertise with regard to EMF:

“The history of research on the environmental and public health impacts of radio frequency microwave radiation (‘wireless radiation’) reveals some uneasy parallels with that of tobacco.

In the 1950s and 1960s, scientists who showed the harmful impacts of tobacco found themselves struggling for serious attention and financial support. The validity of their views was only accepted after the toll of sickness and death had become undeniable.

For health impacts from wireless radiation, a similar pattern is emerging. Each time a U.S. government agency produced positive findings, research on health impacts was defunded.

The Office of Naval Research, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and the Environmental Protection Agency all once had vibrant research programs documenting dangers of wireless radiation. All found their programs scrapped, reflecting pressure from those who sought to suppress this work.

Russian’s 50 years of research on electromagnetic radiation since the Cold War has led to their clear understanding that this exposure does have biological effects. The Russian National Committee on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection issued a 2011 Resolution⁶² recommending persons under 18 not use a cell phone.”

Brain Cancer Risk Is Likely Real

While heart disease, dementia and infertility overshadow the risk of brain cancer, the possibility of cancer still remains, and may be a far more significant concern for young children who are growing up surrounded by wireless technologies than we realize.

The fact is, we won’t know for sure whether in utero and early cellphone use will increase brain cancer rates until a decade or two from now when today’s youths have grown up. Mounting research suggests cellphone radiation certainly influences your risk, and there are a number of compelling anecdotal reports that are hard to ignore.

In her article,⁶³ Davis mentions Robert C. Kane, a senior telecom engineer “had willingly served as a guinea pig for Motorola and other companies developing new wireless technologies in the 1980s.”

He developed a type of malignant brain cancer the National Toxicology Program later confirmed was a side effect of cellphone radiation exposure (see video above). The NTPs results were published in 2018. Before his death in 2002, Kane published the book, “Cellphone Radiation — Russian Roulette,”⁶⁴ in which he stated that:⁶⁵

“Never in human history has there been such a practice as we now encounter with the marketing and distributing of products hostile to the human biological system by an industry with foreknowledge of those effects.”

FCC Is a Captured Agency That Cannot Be Trusted

Davis also highlights another crucial problem, namely the fact that the FCC has been captured by the telecom industry, which in turn has perfected the disinformation strategies employed by the tobacco industry before it. She writes:⁶⁶

“… [I]n 2015 a Harvard expose tracked the revolving door between the FCC and the telecom industry and concluded that the FCC is a captured agency and that ‘Consumer safety, health, and privacy, along with consumer wallets, have all been overlooked, sacrificed, or raided due to unchecked industry influence.’”

The book in question is “Captured Agency: How the Federal Communications Commission Is Dominated by the Industries It Presumably Regulates,” written by investigative journalist Norm Alster.⁶⁷

As just one example, before his role as FCC chairman, Wheeler headed up the CTIA, which is the lobbying group for the wireless industry, which explains his commentary on 5G and why the FCC doesn’t believe in studying its health risks and “won’t wait for the standards.”

The book also shows how the telecom industry is manipulating public opinion by undermining the credibility of scientists that speak of dangers, cutting funds for research, publishing manipulated studies showing no harm and claiming “scientific consensus” of no harm when no such consensus actually exists. Naturally, the telecom industry also spends millions of dollars lobbying the FCC on issues that might impact its bottom line.⁶⁸

5G Threatens Weather Prediction

Interestingly, aside from potential health ramifications, a global 5G network will also threaten our ability to predict weather which, in addition to putting civilians at risk will also jeopardize the Navy.⁶⁹ According to a paper⁷⁰ in the journal Nature, widespread 5G coverage will prevent satellites from detecting changes in water vapor, which is how meteorologists predict weather changes and storms.

Davis quotes⁷¹ Stephen English, meteorologist at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts: “This is the first time we’ve seen a threat to what I’d call the crown jewels of our frequencies — the ones that we absolutely must defend come what may.”

Alas, the FCC ignores such concerns and, according to Davis, “weather experts within the U.S. government are being muzzled.” In a letter to the FCC, Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., urge the agency to rein in the expansion of wireless communications in the 24 GHz band for this reason.⁷²

Educate Yourself About the Health Risks of 5G

My book, “EMF*D: 5G, Wi-Fi & Cell Phones: Hidden Harms and How to Protect Yourself,” talks about EMF dangers, with a comprehensive resource on current technologies such as:

• What EMFs (electromagnetic fields) actually are, where you find them in your daily life, and how they affect you
• The toll that EMFs have been proven to take in conditions such as cancer, heart disease, and neuropsychiatric illnesses
• Why you’ve been largely kept in the dark about this threat to your health
• How you can actually repair the damage done by EMFs at a cellular level
• Practical strategies to protect yourself and your loved ones from EMFs at home, at work, and out in the world

You can also download a two-page 5G fact sheet⁷³ from the Environmental Health Trust. On their website, you can also access a long list of published scientific studies showing cause for concern.⁷⁴

To reduce your EMF exposure, read through the suggestions below and implement as many of them as possible. Additional guidance and solutions for mitigating electric and magnetic fields can also be found at the end of “Healthy Wiring Practices,”⁷⁵ a document created by building biologist Oram Miller, whom I’ve interviewed on this topic.

Nighttime remediation

• Use Stetzer or Greenwave filters to remove voltage transients from your electricity and use meters to confirm that they are in a safe range.
• Use a battery-powered alarm clock, ideally one without any light. I use a talking clock for the visually impaired.
• Consider moving your baby’s bed into your room instead of using a wireless baby monitor. Alternatively, use a hard-wired monitor.
• If you must use Wi-Fi, shut it off when not in use, especially at night when you are sleeping. Ideally, work toward hardwiring your house so you can eliminate Wi-Fi altogether. It’s important to realize that if you have a Wi-Fi router, you have a cellphone tower inside your home. Ideally, you’d eliminate your Wi-Fi and simply use a wired Ethernet connection.

If you absolutely must have a router, you can place it inside a shielded bag when not in use. You can find shielded items online, or make your own using Swiss Shield fabric. If you have a notebook without any Ethernet ports, a USB Ethernet adapter will allow you to connect to the internet with a wired connection.

• For more extensive shielding, you can consider painting your bedroom walls and ceiling with special shielding paint, which will block RF from outside sources, such as cell towers, smart meters and radio/TV towers. Windows can be covered with metal window screen or film. For your bed, consider a shielding bed canopy.

Daytime strategies to reduce unnecessary EMF exposure

• To reduce EMF exposure during the daytime, consider using Stetzer filters to decrease the level of dirty electricity or electromagnetic interference being generated. You can also take these with you to work or when you travel. This may be the single best strategy to reduce the damage from EMF exposure since it appears that most of it is generated by the frequencies that the filters remove.
• Connect your desktop computer to the internet via a wired Ethernet connection and be sure to put your desktop in airplane mode. Also avoid wireless keyboards, trackballs, mice, game systems, printers and portable house phones. Opt for the wired versions.
• Avoid carrying your cellphone on your body unless in airplane mode and never sleep with it in your bedroom unless it is in airplane mode. Even in airplane mode it can emit signals, which is why I put my phone in a Faraday bag.⁷⁷ They are really inexpensive and only $10 for two of them. I tested them and they are highly effective at blocking radiation.
• When using your cellphone, use the speaker phone and hold the phone at least 3 feet away from you. Seek to radically decrease your time on the cellphone. I typically use my cellphone less than 30 minutes a month, and mostly when traveling. Instead, use VoIP software phones that you can use while connected to the internet via a wired connection, or better yet, use a landline telephone.

General household remediation

• If you still use a microwave oven, consider replacing it with a steam convection oven, which will heat your food as quickly and far more safely.
• Avoid using “smart” appliances and thermostats that depend on wireless signaling. This would include all new “smart” TVs. They are called smart because they emit a Wi-Fi signal and, unlike your computer, you cannot shut the Wi-Fi signal off. Consider using a large computer monitor as your TV instead, as they don’t emit Wi-Fi.
• Replace CFL bulbs with incandescent bulbs. Ideally remove all fluorescent lights from your house. Not only do they emit unhealthy light, but more importantly, they will actually transfer current to your body just being close to the bulbs.
• Dimmer switches are another source of dirty electricity, so consider installing regular on/off switches rather than dimmer switches.
• Refuse smart meters as long as you can, or add a shield to an existing smart meter, some of which have been shown to reduce radiation by 98% to 99%.⁷⁸

Originally published on August 11, 2022 on Mercola.com

Sources and References

• ¹ The Cellular Phone Task Force, Governments and Organizations that Ban or Warn Against Wireless Technology
• ² EMFScientist.org International Appeal to the UN May 11, 2015, updated January 1, 2019
• ³ Environ Int. 2014 Sep; 70C:106-112
• ⁴ Central European Journal of Urology 2014; 67(1): 65–71
• ⁵ Fertility and Sterility January 2012; 97(1): 39-45.e2
• ⁶ Scientists Warn of Potential Serious Health Effects of 5G, September 13, 2017 (PDF)
• ^7, 31, 50 Gaia.com May 14, 2019
• ⁸ EHtrust.org, 5G and Its Small Cell Towers Threaten Public Health
• ^9, 13 Fortune May 22, 2019
• ¹⁰ The Brussels Times. Radiation Concerns Halt Brussels 5G Development. March 31, 2019
• ¹¹ Reuters April 17, 2019
• ¹² Government Technology May 10, 2019
• ¹⁴ US Senate, Richard Blumenthal February 7, 2019
• ^15, 17, 22 Counterpunch May 3, 2019
• ¹⁶ Prepared Remarks of FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler June 20, 2016 (PDF)
• ¹⁸ EMF Portal August 1, 2022
• ¹⁹ Electromagnetic Radiation Safety. August 3, 2022
• ²⁰ Electromagnetic Health January 11, 2014
• ²¹ Nourish Balance Thrive July 29, 2018
• ^23, 34 Electric Sense May 12, 2017
• ^{24, 29, 33, 47} Environmental Health Trust, Letter to the FCC From Dr. Yael Stein MD in Opposition to 5G Spectrum Frontiers
• ²⁵ Telecom Power Grab, 5G Fact Sheet
• ²⁶ Environmental Health Trust 20 Facts About 5G Wireless
• ²⁷ Science.howstuffworks.com, Difference Between Backscatter Machines and MMW Scanners
• ²⁸ Phys Med Biol. 2011 Mar 7;56(5):1329-39
• ³⁰ Principia-scientific.org April 2, 2019
• ³² Endoftheamericandream.com May 19, 2019
• ³⁵ Eluxemagazine, Frightening Frequencies
• ³⁶ ElectricSense, The Dangers of 5G, May 30, 2018 (PDF)
• ^37, 43, 45 A 5G Wireless Future by Dr. Cindy Russell (PDF)
• ^38, 44, 46 References List to A 5G Wireless Future by Dr. Cindy Russell (PDF)
• ³⁹ Klin Oczna. 1994 Aug-Sep;96(8-9):257-9
• ⁴⁰ Health Phys. 2009 Sep;97(3):212-8
• ⁴¹ Zhonghua Lao Dong Wei Sheng Zhi Ye Bing Za Zhi. 2003 Oct;21(5):346-9
• ⁴² Fiziol Zh SSSR Im I M Sechenova. 1992 Jan;78(1):35-41
• ⁴⁸ Biofizika. 2002 Jan-Feb;47(1):71-7
• ⁴⁹ Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology June 2016; 100(11): 4761-4771
• ⁵¹ Gaia.com December 3, 2018
• ⁵² Rev Environ Health. 2015;30(2):99-116
• ⁵³ International Journal of Innovative Research in Engineering and Management, September 2015; 2(5)
• ⁵⁴ J Cell Mol Med. 2013 Aug;17(8):958-65
• ⁵⁵ Current Chemical Biology 2016; 10(1): 74-82
• ⁵⁶ American Journal of Physiology 1996 Nov;271(5 Pt 1):C1424-37
• ⁵⁷ Physiol Rev. 2007 Jan; 87(1): 315–424
• ⁵⁸ JRS.BV EU Reflex Study Shows DNA Damage
• ⁵⁹ Journal of Chemical Neuroanatomy September 2016; 75 Part B: 43-51
• ^{60, 61, 63, 65, 66, 71} Medium May 18, 2019
• ⁶² Resolution of Russian National Committee on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (PDF)
• ⁶⁴ Cell Phone Radiation — Russian Roulette (PDF)
• ⁶⁷ Ehtrust.org, Harvard Press Book on Telecom Industry Influence to the US FCC — Captured Agency by Norm Alster
• ⁶⁸ Opensecrets.org January 23, 2018
• ^69, 72 ZDnet.com May 14, 2019
• ⁷⁰ Nature April 26, 2019
• ⁷³ Environmental Health Trust, 5G Fact Sheet (PDF)
• ⁷⁴ Environmental Health Trust, Published Scientific Research on 5G, Small Cells and Health
• ⁷⁵ Createhealthyhomes.com, Healthy Wiring Practices (PDF)
• ⁷⁶ Amazon.com Talking Clock
• ⁷⁷ Amazon.com Signal Blocking Bag
• ⁷⁸ The Global Healing Center November 13, 2014

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

White House COVID-19 czar Ashish Jha on Tuesday admitted that the six-foot social distancing rule that was implemented in early 2020 isn’t actually effective.

Over the past several years, “a lot of time” was spent “talking about six feet of distance, 15 minutes of being together. We realize that’s actually not the right way to think about this,” he said during a White House briefing on COVID-19.

“That’s not the most accurate way to think about this,” Jha said, adding that it is about “the quality of air you’re breathing around you.”

In a crowded indoor area with poor ventilation, people can “get infected” with COVID-19 “in minutes,” Jha said, adding that being outdoors you can be “outside for long periods of time” and not get infected.

Jha made those comments in regards to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) having relaxed guidelines around COVID-19. That included dropping the six-foot social distancing rule.

The agency last week rescinded a number of rules and made key updates to its recommendations, now stating that unvaccinated and vaccinated individuals should essentially be treated the same, while explicitly saying that those with a prior infection have protection against severe illness.

Starting in early 2020, federal health agencies issued a recommendation that people keep at least six feet of distance away from one another. Health departments, businesses, corporations, and schools across the United States then adopted the rule, leading to restrictions such as capacity limits and lockdowns.

‘Nobody Knows’

A former administration for the Food and Drug Administration, Scott Gottlieb, revealed in late 2021 that the six-foot rule was made up.

“Nobody knows where it came from,” Gottlieb, a Pfizer board member, told CBS News. “Most people assume that the six feet of distance, the recommendation for keeping six feet apart, comes out of some old studies related to flu, where droplets don’t travel more than six feet.”

The CDC, he said, initially recommended a 10-foot rule, and the six-foot rule was a compromise between the federal health agency and Trump administration officials.

“So the compromise was around six feet. Now imagine if that detail had leaked out. Everyone would have said, ‘This is the White House politically interfering with the CDC’s judgment.’ The CDC said 10 feet, it should be 10 feet, but 10 feet was no more right than six feet and ultimately became three feet,” Gottlieb remarked.

The CDC also said in its update that it’s no longer recommending unvaccinated people to quarantine after exposure. Unvaccinated people who have been in close contact with an infected person aren’t advised to go through a five-day quarantine period if they haven’t tested positive or shown symptoms, according to the revised guidelines.

Regardless of vaccination status, according to the CDC, “you should isolate from others when you have COVID-19” or are “sick and suspect that you have COVID-19 but do not yet have test results.” Previously, the CDC said fully vaccinated people who were exposed could skip the quarantine period.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Elon Musk has eked out a legal victory in his battle with Twitter, as a judge has ordered information about fake accounts to be handed over to Musk.

Delaware Chancery Court Judge Kathaleen McCormick handed Musk a defeat as well in ruling that 21 other people from whom Musk wanted data do not have to provide him with information, according to TechSpot.

Information from Twitter’s former head of consumer product, Kayvon Beykpour, must be released.

According to Reuters, Musk’s team of lawyers had identified Beykpour as “a key figure in calculating the amount of fake accounts on the platform.”

Beykpour was fired by current Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal in May.

“We look forward to reviewing Beykpour’s communications and will continue to seek information and witnesses until the full truth comes out,” said Alex Spiro, a lawyer for Musk, according to Bloomberg.

The issue of fake accounts emerged as a major bone of contention in Musk’s proposed purchase of the social media platform. Twitter estimates that about 5 percent of its accounts are bots. Musk has said the figure is closer to 20 percent.

Musk said he decided not to go through with the $44 billion deal because he could not verify the number of fake accounts. Twitter then took Musk to court to force him to buy the company.

 Dan Brahmy, CEO of the Israeli tech company Cyabra, agrees that Twitter has lowballed its number of fake accounts, according to Reuters.

“They have underestimated that number,” he said, putting the share of fake accounts at 13.7 percent.

In a countersuit filed against Twitter, Musk argued that “misrepresentations or omissions” by the company have inflated Twitter’s actual value, The Washington Post reported.

The countersuit said Twitter has 65 million fewer monetizable daily active users — people who can be seeing ads — than the 238 million that Twitter says it has.

Twitter undercounted bots as part of a “scheme to mislead investors about the company’s prospects,” Musk’s countersuit alleged, according to The Guardian.

Lawyers for Musk and Twitter will meet in court in October to debate whether the deal must be completed, the Washington Examiner reported.

Joe Biden is set to cancel $3.9 billion in student loans, announcing that the federal government will discharge all remaining federal student loans for students who attended the ITT Technical Institute.

The student loan borrowers who attended the now-defunct institute will receive a discharge through “borrower defense to repayment” according to Forbes and do not need to apply to have their loans canceled.

“It is time for student borrowers to stop shouldering the burden from ITT’s years of lies and false promises. The evidence shows that for years, ITT’s leaders intentionally misled students about the quality of their programs in order to profit off federal student loan programs, with no regard for the hardship this would cause,” Secretary of Education Dr. Miguel Cardona said.

“The Biden-Harris Administration will continue to stand up for borrowers who’ve been cheated by their colleges while working to strengthen oversight and enforcement to protect today’s students from similar deception and abuse.”

The ITT Technical Institute was a well-known private technical institute based in Indiana with approximately 140 satellite campuses all over the United States. The institute operated until announcing on Sept. 6, 2016, that it would “discontinue academic operations at all of its ITT Technical Institutes permanently”.

Since taking the White House in 2021 Biden has canceled almost $32 billion in student loans, essentially subsidizing the educational expenses of a combined 1.8 million borrowers spread across “borrower defense to student loan repayment and school closures,” “public service loan forgiveness” and “total or permanent disability”.

Democrats continue to call for Biden to “#CancelStudentDebt“, a move that conservatives believe would obfuscate the transfer of debt from the individual borrowers to the American taxpayer.

Democratic Rep. Pramila Jaypal of Washington urged Biden to cancel all student debt.

Student loan payments are set to resume in 16 days. With the stroke of a pen, @POTUS can bring relief to millions of people across the country. Let’s get it done.

— Rep. Pramila Jayapal (@RepJayapal) August 15, 2022

Representative Cori Bush of Missouri also joined the refrain.

Right now, millions of people are living in limbo, unsure if student loan payments will resume in 16 days. Canceling student debt would provide immense relief to numerous borrowers.@POTUS, now is the time. #CancelStudentDebt

— Congresswoman Cori Bush (@RepCori) August 15, 2022

Conversely, Republicans have heavily criticized student loan forgiveness.

“Expansive student loan forgiveness does nothing to solve the problems in higher education and exacerbates the economic disaster fueled by the President’s lack of fiscal responsibility,” Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina said according to Forbes.

Revolving Door: Biden Adviser Forced to Divest Stock Portfolio, Recuse Herself from Decisions Involving Corporate Clients

“Time and again, Biden operates as if he can issue any decree he wants on student loan forgiveness, even if it means exercising authority that he does not have.”

In an Op-Ed for Fox News, Foxx and Sen. Richard Burr, also of North Carolina, wrote, “By caving to progressives, Biden is breaking his promise to over 100 million taxpayers without student debt who are subsidizing this boondoggle.”

They pointed the finger squarely at their Democrat colleagues in Congress, “Yet, when in the position to actually legislate, House and Senate Democrats are (un)surprisingly quiet on student loan debt. Rather than do their jobs, top Democrats are asking the president to do their dirty work for them, calling for an additional extension through the end of the year and debt forgiveness by executive fiat.”

The GOP legislators also voiced concerns that the proposed student loan cancelation would “easily push inflation above 9 percent” back in April when the piece was written.

Inflation hit 9.1 percent in June before pulling back slightly to 8.5 percent in July, according to Trading Economics.

central pillar of the just-passed Inflation Reduction Act is $80 billion going to the IRS to hire some 87,000 new agents, doubling the current force, to chase down U.S. taxpayers who allegedly are not meeting their tax obligations.

The rationale is we have a large national budget deficit — that is, government is bringing in less money than it spends — so a larger army of IRS agents chasing down tax deadbeats will help solve our nation’s fiscal problems.

But part of this same new law in which U.S. taxpayers are asked to spend $80 billion to hire more IRS agents to shake down their neighbors who are supposedly not paying their fair share, there is $430 billion in new government spending, a large portion of which is earmarked for green energy projects of various shapes and forms.

At the same time that we’re expanding our army of tax collectors, we continue to expand government and spending at an even faster pace.

The Congressional Budget Office has just released its latest Long-Term Budget Outlook, and here we get a broader picture of the problem.

According to the report, “From 1972 to 2021, total federal outlays averaged 21% of GDP; over 2022-2052 period, such outlays are projected to average 26% of GDP.”

The Congressional Budget Office projects that government will take on average 5% more from our national economy in the next 30 years than it did on average over the last 50 years.

Looking at our GDP in 2022, roughly $25 trillion, at 26% of GDP, government spending will be over a trillion dollars more than it would have been at 21%.

A trillion dollars more in spending on average per year, with another 87,000 IRS agents running after taxpayers to make sure they pay up.

So, the bigger army of tax collectors is about helping raise money to finance ongoing expansion of government and increasing control of government over the lives of private Americans.

Why, as someone whose business is trying to improve the lives of low-income Americans, do I care about this?

Turning pages forward in the CBO report, we get to the really shocking information.

From 1992 to 2021, per CBO, the average growth of the U.S. economy was 2.4% per year. CBO projects that from 2022 to 2052 the average growth of the U.S. economy will be 1.7% per year.

This should shock every American, and it’s getting hardly any attention.

The more our national economy is controlled by government and politicians, the more sluggish will be growth of our economy.

It stands to reason. Growth comes from entrepreneurs, work, creativity. More government means less of all these things and slower growth.

Slower growth means lower income and less opportunity.

Anyone who cares about helping those who want to get ahead in America should be cheering for faster growth and less government rather than more government and slower growth.

Hoover Institution economist John Cochrane has pointed out that from 1950 to 2000, the U.S. economy grew at 3.5% per year. Real income per person went from $16,000 in 1950 to $50,000 in 2000. If the economy grew from 1950 to 2000 at 2% instead of 3.5%, notes Cochrane, income in 2000 would have risen to just $23,000 rather than $50,000.

It’s why, as someone who cares about helping low-income Americans get ahead and improve their lot, I care about a growing dynamic economy, not a bloated, sclerotic economy controlled by politicians and Washington special interests.

The so-called Inflation Reduction Act takes matters in the exact opposite direction in which we should be going. Pretending to care about the nation’s fiscal imbalances while adding $430 billion in new spending, all of it driven and defined by Washington special interests, is the problem, not the solution.

SOURCE: Right and Free

The Oregon Democrat warned that wealthy business owners could abuse the loan program. Financial disclosures suggest his wife did just that.

Oregon Democratic senator Ron Wyden warned early in the pandemic that wealthy business owners could abuse the Paycheck Protection Program. Financial disclosures suggest his wife did just that.

Nancy Bass Wyden, the multimillionaire owner of New York’s Strand bookstore, received $2.7 million in Paycheck Protection Program loans between 2020 and 2021 and nonetheless went on to lay off 180 employees. Small businesses were eligible for the federally forgiven loans on the condition that they used a majority of the funds to keep employees on the payroll. In October 2020, Bass Wyden told CBS News that the Strand would not rehire many of those employees and that the store would “have to give back part of the loan due to the forgiveness rules.”

But as of September of last year, the federal government had forgiven both loans, ProPublica reported. The Small Business Administration declined to comment and the Strand did not respond to the Washington Free Beacon’s requests for comments on the loans.

The Paycheck Protection Program came under fire in 2020 for shelling out millions to billionaire real estate investors. Other family members of Democrats also got in line for handouts, including the multimillionaire father of then-Senate candidate Jon Ossoff (D.) who scored as much as $1 million from the program. Businesses like the Strand were able to line their pockets and lay off dozens of workers without rehiring them as long as 60 percent of the money went to payroll expenses.

Wyden and a group of senators pushed then-Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Small Business Administrator Jovita Carranza in April 2020 “to develop strong supervisory mechanisms to identify instances of unjust enrichment” for the program.

“Every loan that provides a windfall for an applicant who does not truly need it results in one fewer loan made to a struggling small business owner whose employees could be truly helped by this funding,” the senators wrote in a letter.

Wyden’s wife refused to rehire many of the employees she fired even after the Strand received its PPP loans, leaving the bookstore “woefully understaffed,” according to the union that represents the workers. She pleaded with the public to purchase more books in late 2020, saying the store’s revenue had plummeted 70 percent and that loans and cash reserves were “depleted.” The Strand said it was “impossible” to rehire all staff even with the paycheck loan boost.

“The limited sales we make now plus the PPP loan are the only things keeping our staff paid,” a Strand spokesman told Vulture in March 2021. “So until in-store sales bounce back, this is the best we can do.”

Bass Wyden earned as much as $3 million in book sales during the layoffs, according to her husband’s annual financial disclosures. The Oregonian reported in 2011 the couple’s net worth is between $12 million and $56 million.

The couple purchased millions of dollars’ worth of stock in 2020 that appreciated substantially following lockdowns, including as much as $600,000 in shares of Amazon, a prime competitor with independent bookstores.

An inspector general’s report in May found many Americans took advantage of the PPP loans as the Small Business Administration had no plan to counter fraud. One former U.S. attorney dubbed the program “the biggest fraud in a generation.”

Bass Wyden inherited the Strand from her father Ben Bass. Her children are next in line to take control of the 90-year-old bookstore next, according to the Strand’s website.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

A former Internal Revenue Service (IRS) whistleblower has said that the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) will see the government target middle-income Americans with increased scrutiny and audits.

William Henck previously worked as a lawyer for the IRS for 20 years until 2017, when he was terminated for allegedly revealing sensitive information to the media about how the IRS had reportedly failed to identify a multi-billion-dollar corporate tax credit scheme involving a source of energy known as burning pulp byproducts, or black liquor.

Speaking to Fox Business, Henck disputed claims by the IRS and other officials who have said that increased funding for the agency under the IRA, which is set to be signed into law by Joe Biden this week, would only lead to more audits for wealthy millionaires and billionaires and large corporations.

“The idea that they’re going to open things up and go after these big billionaires and large corporations is quite frankly [expletive],” Henck said in the interview on Aug. 15. “It’s not going to happen. They’re going to give themselves bonuses and promotions and really nice conferences.”

“The big corporations and the billionaires are probably sitting back laughing right now,” he said, adding that it was “insane” to double the IRS budget.

Henck also said he believes that the agency will go after businesses that don’t have enough money to hire Washington lobbyists.

‘Absolutely Not’ Being Used to Target Middle-Income Americans

The Democrat-controlled House passed the IRA in a strictly party-line vote on Aug. 12. It includes nearly $80 billion in IRS funding, including $45.6 billion for “enforcement.”

A Treasury Department report from May 2021 (pdf) estimated that such an investment would enable the agency to hire roughly 87,000 employees by 2031.

Amid mounting fears, the IRS has said it will “absolutely not” be using the extra money to increase audit scrutiny on small businesses or middle-income Americans.

IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig stated in a letter to members of the Senate on Aug. 4 that the extra resources will instead serve to help the agency in “challenging” areas such as audits of large corporate and global high-net-worth taxpayers.

“These resources are absolutely not about increasing audit scrutiny on small businesses or middle-income Americans,” Rettig wrote in the letter. “As we’ve been planning, our investment of these enforcement resources is designed around the Department of the Treasury’s directive that audit rates will not rise relative to recent years for households making under $400,000.”

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre have also doubled down on their rhetoric regarding reports about the extra funding being utilized to target middle-income Americans, stating that there would be no new audits for individuals earning less than $400,000 per year.

Henck disagrees.

‘Unlimited Resources And No Accountability’

“There will be considerable incentive to basically to shake down taxpayers, and the advantage the IRS has is they have basically unlimited resources and no accountability, whereas a taxpayer has to weigh the cost of accountants, tax lawyers—fighting something in tax court,” he told Fox Business.

“If you own a roofing company, you better count on getting audited because that’s what they’re going to be doing,” he continued. “They’re going to be going after your car dealerships, roofing companies.”

Henck’s comments come after the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that working-class Americans will end up paying billions of dollars in new taxes thanks to the IRA.

Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee said on Aug. 12 that they had received the information from the CBO confirming that under the new legislation, lower- and middle-income Americans will pay an estimated $20 billion more in taxes over the next decade.

This confirms that “at least $20 billion of the $124 billion in new revenue expected by a supercharged IRS will be coming from higher audits on low- and middle-income Americans” and that this would be “in addition to existing audits on these income levels,” GOP lawmakers said in a statement.

The Epoch Times has not received a response for comment from the CBO.

Source: The Epoch Times

Moderna documents regarding their COVID vaccine trial on animals, obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request by Judicial Watch, showed that some of the offspring of rats that were injected with Moderna’s mRNA shot developed rib malformations.

The 700 pages contain a portion of the formal Biologics Licensing Application (BLA) package that a manufacturer is required to submit to the FDA for approval.

The documents have not yet been made public, but were analyzed by former pharma executive Alexandra Latypova and reviewed by The Epoch Times.

Included in the documents are test results that show that Moderna mRNA shots caused statistically significant skeletal malformations in the offspring of the rats that took the mRNA-1273 (Spikevax mRNA) doses.

“mRNA-1273-related variations in skeletal examination included statistically significant increases in the number of F1 rats with 1 or more wavy ribs and 1 or more rib nodules. Wavy ribs appeared in 6 fetuses and 4 litters with a fetal prevalence of 4.03% and a litter prevalence of 18.2%. Rib nodules appeared in 5 of those 6 fetuses,” according to Moderna’s internal documents.

F1 refers to the rat offspring and litter indicates a group-birth of rats.

“Maternal toxicity in the form of clinical observations was observed for 5 days following the last dose (Gestation Day 13), correlating with the most sensitive period for rib development in rats (Gestation Days 14 to 17)” the documents state.

“Wavy ribs” refers to ribs not properly shaped.

In other words, 6 out of about 149 baby rats had wavy ribs and 5 of those also had rib nodules.

According to Latypova’s analysis, only female rats were studied (male rats were not treated with the Moderna vaccine).

The females got a human dose of 100mcg Spikevax mRNA, 28 and 14 days prior to mating and gestation days 1 and 13.

“1/2 rats euthanized before delivery to examine fetuses, the rest followed to 21 days after delivery,” Latypova stated, “No numbers are provided for the study size.”

In addition, there is no study report, but only Moderna’s own interpretation of the outcomes.

The results were part of reproductive toxicology tests done by Moderna, which is the only reproductive toxicology test for the product, according to Latypova.

It is not known how the dose translates from humans to rats.

“Neither Moderna nor Pfizer provided any dose calculations or justification information for dose selection in animal studies,” Latypova told The Epoch Times.

“Doses of drugs, or especially biologics do not necessarily have linear relationships with toxicity or efficacy. It is likely a much more complex relationship and unfortunately not known at all.”

“Reproductive toxicology is the study of adverse effects of medicinal products on reproduction. The FDA requires reproductive toxicity testing for any NME to be used in women of childbearing potential,” added Latypova, who has worked in more than 60 pharmaceutical companies, mainly focusing on creating and reviewing clinical trials, many of which were submitted to the FDA.

Despite the abovementioned lab results, the FDA issued a statement on Jan. 30 saying that there were no adverse effects on postnatal developments.

“No vaccine-related fetal malformations or variations and no adverse effect on postnatal development were observed in the study,” the FDA stated on the label for Moderna’s Spikevax vaccine.

“In a developmental toxicity study, 0.2 mL of a vaccine formulation containing nucleoside-modified mRNA (100 mcg) and other ingredients that are included in a 0.5-mL single human dose of SPIKEVAX was administered IM to female rats on four occasions: 28 and 14 days prior to mating, and on gestation days 1 and 13,” reads the FDA publication.

Pfizer Vaccine Also Caused Abnormal Ribs in Rats

In August of 2021, Elsevier published a peer-reviewed study (pdf) titled “Lack of effects on female fertility and prenatal and postnatal offspring development in rats with BNT162b2, a mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine.”

BNT162b2 is the Pfizer jab.

All the authors of the publication were employed by Pfizer, BioNTech, or Charles River, a Pfizer contractor.

This publication suggests that there was a “lack of effects” in postnatal offspring development, but the study shows that there was a 295 percent increase (8.3 percent compared to 2.1 percent in the control group) in abnormal ribs in vaccinated rat offspring. A huge increase in what is described as the “supernumerary lumbar.”

‘This Was an Extremely Dangerous Warning’

“Skeletal abnormalities in the bony rib cages are absolutely important and were statistically increased in the rat offspring of the experimental group compared with the placebo group,” James Thorp, an MD board-certified in obstetrics and gynecology, as well as maternal-fetal medicine, told The Epoch Times after reviewing Latypova’s analysis of Moderna’s BLA package.

“In clinical obstetrics and maternal-fetal medicine we see similar findings in skeletal abnormalities prior to birth that are extremely serious and often lethal. This was an extremely dangerous warning signal in reproductive toxicology studies and was never brought to the light of day to protect our global citizens. The CDC, Pfizer, Moderna, and the flagship medical journals of the medical industrial complex lied to the American public and should be held accountable,” Thorp said.

Thorp recently analyzed and verified the most recent Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) data related to COVID-19 vaccines and compared them to the influenza vaccines, finding numerous abnormalities.

The CDC website recommends the COVID vaccines during pregnancy in order to “prevent severe illness and death in pregnant women.”

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists also “strongly recommends that pregnant individuals be vaccinated against COVID-19,” adding that pregnant women’s complete vaccination should be a “priority.”

Moderna and the FDA did not respond to a request for comment.

The Epoch Times reached out to Pfizer and CDC for comment.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

A NEW STUDY REVEALS JUST HOW DAMAGING THE POLICY WAS.

COVID-19 lockdowns could be responsible for claiming 20 times more lives than they were advertised to save, according to a new analysis published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

The paper, which bases its conclusions on a comprehensive review of other relevant, lockdown-focused literature, was authored by researchers at the Jerusalem College of Technology.

“In this work, we performed a narrative review of the works studying the above effectiveness, as well as the historic experience of previous pandemics and risk-benefit analysis based on the connection of health and wealth,” summarized the article, titled “Are Lockdowns Effective in Managing Pandemics?”

“The comparative analysis of different countries showed that the assumption of lockdowns’ effectiveness cannot be supported by evidence—neither regarding the present COVID-19 pandemic, nor regarding the 1918–1920 Spanish Flu and other less-severe pandemics in the past,” argue the researchers.

The team proceeds to quantify the estimated number of lives lost due to the COVID-19 mitigation measure, which drew strong support from Democrats and public health officials including Anthony Fauci, Deborah Birx, and Mike Pence:

The price tag of lockdowns in terms of public health is high: by using the known connection between health and wealth, we estimate that lockdowns may claim 20 times more life years than they save.

The paper also exposes how governments and international health organizations’ embrace of lockdowns was at odds with their stance on the public health policy prior to COVID-19.

“It should be mentioned that the same conclusions—no clear benefit of lockdowns in case of pandemic—were made by national and international bodies before COVID-19 emerged. Namely, several governments prepared detailed plans of response to influenza- like pandemics years ago—see the programs of the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (2007) and the Israeli Ministry of Health (2007),”

MUST READ: STUDY: Closing Bars, Restaurants Did NOT Suppress COVID-19.

Researchers singled out the World Health Organization (WHO), which published a comprehensive 91-page preparedness plan in October of 2019 that explicitly mentioned that:

• social distancing measures “can be highly disruptive” and should be carefully weighted;
• travel-related measures are “unlikely to be successful”; “border closures may be
considered only by small island nations in severe pandemics”;
• and contact tracing and quarantine of exposed individuals are not recommended in any
circumstances.

The paper doesn’t argue that lockdowns were merely ineffective; however, adding that they actually claimed the lives of the people public health officials claimed to be protecting.

“The lockdown policies had a direct side effect of increasing mortality. Hospitals in Europe and USA were prepared to manage pretty small groups of highly contagious patients, while unprepared for a much more probable challenge—large-scale contagion. As a result, public health care facilities and nursing homes often became vehicles of contamination themselves—to a large extent because of the lockdown-based emergency policy implementation,” explained the paper, citing New York as an example.

“While our understanding of viral transmission mechanisms leads to the assumption that lockdowns may be an effective pandemic management tool, this assumption cannot be supported by the evidence-based analysis of the present COVID-19 pandemic, as well as of the 1918–1920 H1N1 influenza type-A pandemic (the Spanish Flu) and numerous less-severe pandemics in the past,” concludes the paper.

The findings follow the publication of other studies finding sizable drawbacks to lockdowns and other popular COVID-19 mitigation measures such as mask mandates.

Elite Afghan forces bring U.S. training to Tehran, according to whistleblower interviews

Elite Afghan soldiers trained by the United States fled to Iran with weapons and specialized combat training following the Biden administration’s bungled withdrawal from the country that let the Taliban regain power, according to a report by Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee based on interviews with whistleblowers and internal State Department documents.

“A ‘significant’ number of Afghan special forces and about 3,000 Afghan security forces, including high ranking officers, crossed the border into Iran,” according to the report, which was released on Monday to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the deadly U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan. “Some brought military equipment and vehicles with them. We believe this happened because they were not evacuated by the U.S. or our allies, and therefore had no other option.”

These forces were trained in combat by U.S. special operators, in some cases within the United States, and “could be a serious national security threat to the United States if they are captured or turn,” according to the report. They “know not only our tactics but who these elite [U.S.] military officials are.”

The findings detail months of chaos following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and indicate that the tumult in the country has provided an opportunity for regional enemies like Iran to regain a foothold in the war-torn country. Details of Iran’s ties to these U.S. trained fighters comes as new threats from Iran are making headlines across America, with the arrest of an Iranian national who’d put a bounty on former White House national security adviser John Bolton’s head, as well as the attempted murder last week of the novelist Salman Rushdie, who has long faced threats from Iran’s clerical regime.

“The recruitment of former Afghan military and intelligence personnel poses a major national security risk due to the fact these Afghan personnel know the U.S. military and intelligence community’s tactics, techniques, and procedures,” the report concludes.

In addition to the weapons and military equipment these special forces brought with them to Iran, they have an intimate knowledge of the U.S. military and its tactics in the region, know-how that is highly sought after by Iran’s terrorist proxy groups and other jihadi militants.

“These commandos are trained, highly trained, on how we do signals intelligence, how we do human intelligence, how we operate,” Rep. Michael Waltz (R., Fla.), a combat veteran, said in the report. “We know that the Taliban are hunting them down. They are seeking to force them through coercion to hand over that information so that they can use it and they can understand how we operate.”

Beyond Iran, Russia and China are also looking to recruit these forces for their inside knowledge about American military tactics.

“It is possible these former Afghan military and other intelligence personnel could be recruited or coerced into working for one of America’s adversaries that maintains a presence in Afghanistan, including Russia, [and] China,” in addition to Iran, according to the report.

The State Department said in October 2021 that it is aware of the threat posed by Afghan soldiers trained by the United States, though it has done little since then to find them and get them to safety.

“Afghans who possess the knowledge specific to security operations, intelligence collection, other aspects of security and defense forces that if it were to fall into terrorists’ hands would pose a national security risk to the United States, those people will have a special category, I think there is just no way around it,” a senior State Department official quoted in the report told Congress.

The Pentagon was to create a list detailing “critical Afghan personnel that would warrant prioritization in being evacuated.” But, as of February 2022, “the Pentagon list had still not been shared with the State Department Task Force, meaning several months of inactivity with regards to evacuation,” the report disclosed.

Afghan military personnel also do not qualify for the U.S. Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program that has brought in scores of vulnerable Afghans, the report says. The administration is still only evacuating remaining Americans, green card holders, and pre-approved SIV applicants.

It also has not been made clear if Afghan military members would qualify for refugee status, and, if they did, they would be responsible for getting themselves out of the country without American assistance, according to the report.

The number of Americans stranded in Afghanistan after the evacuation also is far higher than the Biden administration admits. While U.S. officials repeatedly said “about 100” Americans were left in the country after the military left, the State Department is known to have evacuated more than 800 American citizens since Aug. 31, 2021—a number that does not include the scores of Americans evacuated by outside groups.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

As Democrats take a victory lap after passing a bill that spends nearly $400 billion on green energy initiatives, Americans say they are less concerned about climate change than they were three years ago.

Only 35 percent of adults are “extremely or very concerned” about the effects of climate change on them personally, according to a poll from the Associated Press. In 2019, 44 percent of respondents said the same.

Fewer than half of respondents, 45 percent, said individual people have a large responsibility to fight climate change. Thirty-two percent of respondents said they were not concerned about the impact of climate change, and 33 percent said they were only “moderately concerned.”

The results come as Democrats celebrate Joe Biden’s upcoming signing of the Inflation Reduction Act. Although several studies show the bill will do nothing to lower inflation, which is at a 40-year high, the bill does provide the largest ever single investment in green energy and climate change mitigation. Because reports show the bill will do little to curb inflation, media outlets have begun referring to the Inflation Reduction Act as a climate and health bill. Yet that framing may not help Democrats sell its provisions to voters. Fewer Americans believe they have a direct impact on climate change than three years ago, the AP poll found. Roughly half said their actions have an effect on climate change, compared with the two-thirds who said the same in 2019.

The Inflation Reduction Act earlier this month passed both chambers of Congress, with every Democrat voting in favor. Biden is expected to sign the bill on Tuesday.

Many Democrats running in competitive races this November touted the bill’s provisions as evidence that the party is addressing voters’ concerns. But the AP poll found that Americans are far more concerned about rising consumer costs and economic issues than the environment. Fewer Americans cite the environment as a pressing issue than they did three years ago, the AP found.

In total, the Inflation Reduction Act earmarks $386 billion for green energy and climate change-related initiatives. One-hundred-sixty-one billion dollars of that money goes to clean electricity tax credits, while $36 billion goes to tax credits for electric cars.

Just 10 percent of respondents said they live in a household with solar panels or drive an electric car. Although nearly 75 percent of respondents said they are using energy-efficient appliances or reducing driving and air-conditioning use, the main reason was saving money rather than stopping climate change.

“I ran for president promising to make government work for working families again, and that is what this bill does—period,” Biden said this month.

Other than climate-change-related spending, the Inflation Reduction Act allocates $80 billion to double the size of the IRS’s workforce. Should the IRS find enough staffers to join the agency, it will employ more bureaucrats than the Pentagon, the State Department, the FBI, and the Border Patrol combined.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

In a recent interview with The Epoch Times, Mark Sherwood, a naturopathic doctor and former 2022 candidate for governor of Oklahoma, said Americans need to focus more on the self-sovereignty of their health and free themselves from the corporate, government-influenced health sector.

“Sovereignty is the ability to self-govern,” said Sherwood, founder of the Functional Medical Institute in Oklahoma.

When people are self-governing, they don’t depend on the government, the pharmaceutical industry, or powerful churches to guide their lives, Sherwood said. They make their own money, take care of their own health and wellness, and care for their families.

“I want to see people begin to own that once again, because I think it’s probably the epitome of the American dream, but I also think it’s the epitome of humanity,” he said. “If we lose the ability to take care of ourselves … we’ve lost the ability to even self-govern, and therefore, we become governed and we lose our rights, and rights become privileges.”

Doctors in the mainstream medical system are trained to do the “bidding” of corporations to supply patients with drugs, Sherwood said, and when the U.S. government got involved and promoted the idea of a food pyramid, Sherwood said things became even worse.

“So Big Food, Big Pharma, and Big Medicine got together,” he said. “I call it a marriage made in hell. ‘Food and Drug Administration.’ It doesn’t work.”

Rates of disease keep rising, and every year, 600,000 people die of heart disease and another 600,000 die from cancer, Sherwood said. Obesity has become the fastest-growing noncommunicable disease in history.

As of March 2020, 41.9 percent of American adults over the age of 20 were considered obese, according to the most recently available data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

These problems stem from a Western lifestyle based on Western medicine, which pushes the idea that if you get sick, a pill is the solution, Sherwood said.

“That’s not the way the body works,” he said.

Today, there are people who have no trust in the health care system anymore. Some people are scared to go to a hospital because of the distrust they have about doctors and hospitals, Sherwood said. This is due to the fact that the health system is “no longer about people.” Instead, it is all about profits, and a for-profit system is designed to do whatever it needs to make money, Sherwood said.

The media does not talk about diet, exercise, stress management, sleep, or other factors important to health. Instead of avoidance or reversal of disease processes, the media mostly talks about management of disease processes, Sherwood explained.

Correcting the Problem

To alter people’s reliance on the current health care system and improve their self-governance and health, Sherwood wants them to first understand that human beings “are not born with medication deficiencies.” People should not be dependent on medication to be their primary solution for health care.

Instead, people must realize how the body operates. Getting essential nutrients like minerals, vitamins, fatty acids, and amino acids from their diets and adding physical activity to their lives is crucial to maintaining their bodies, he explained.

Going to the doctor when someone gets sick should be a last resort, not the first resort, he said.

“When people understand that everything in earth, here, is for us to not only exist but to thrive—not survive, but to thrive—it’s here, right here,” he said. “If we can shift our thinking into that way, that’s the initial part of it.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Pfizer’s CEO has tested positive for COVID-19, he announced on Aug. 15.

“I would like to let you know that I have tested positive for #COVID19,” CEO Albert Bourla wrote on Twitter.

Bourla 60, says he has received four doses of his company’s COVID-19 vaccine, which has proven increasingly ineffective against infection from the virus that causes COVID-19 and severe illness once a person contracts the virus.

Bourla reported experiencing mild symptoms. He did not identify any of the symptoms. He said he’s “feeling well.”

“We have come so far in our efforts to battle this disease that I am confident I will have a speedy recovery. I am incredibly grateful for the tireless efforts of my Pfizer colleagues who worked to make vaccines and treatments available for me and people around the world,” Bourla said.

The CEO is isolating and has begun taking a course of Paxlovid, Pfizer’s COVID-19 pill.

U.S. drug regulators granted emergency authorization for Paxlovid in December 2021 for people aged 12 and older who test positive for COVID-19 and are deemed high-risk for progression to a severe case.

Regulators have since curbed or revoked similar clearances for many other drugs, such as Regeneron’s monoclonal antibodies, citing data that indicate the treatments aren’t as effective, or aren’t effective at all, against newer virus variants.

Paxlovid has become the most-distributed COVID-19 treatment in the nation, and was administered to President Joe Biden after the president recently tested positive for COVID-19.

Biden, who has also received four doses of Pfizer’s shot, experienced a rebound of symptoms after testing negative, which is common for Paxlovid recipients.

Previously Promoted 100 Percent Efficacy

Bourla is among the officials who have previously promoted the COVID-19 vaccines as being 100 percent effective against infection.

In April 2021, for instance, he shared the results from a study that was said to show Pfizer’s vaccine was 100 percent effective in preventing COVID-19 cases in South Africa.

All COVID-19 vaccines, though, have been shown to be less effective against both infection and severe illness as newer virus variants have emerged.

Against Omicron, which became dominant in the United States and many other countries in late 2021, the vaccines provide little shielding against infection, and decreased protection against severe cases.

Emerging data indicate that Omicron subvariants are even better at evading vaccine-based protection.

Pfizer and Moderna are among the companies working on Omicron-specific booster shots. Those could be rolled out in the United States as soon as September.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

NO ONE IN THE BIG PHARMA-SPONSORED MEDIA SEEMS TO HAVE PICKED UP ON THIS. STRANGE, HUH?

Former White House coronavirus task force spokesman Ambassador Deborah Birx has effectively laid blame for thousands of deaths at the door of big pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Moderna, claiming their refusal to pursue a “compassionate use authorization” for the COVID-19 vaccines led to a delay which directly impacted nursing home residents, The National Pulse can reveal.

The details come in the final parts of Birx’s little read book – Silent Invasion – wherein she details how she used “subterfuge” to get around the will of the Trump administration, as well as naming Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner and Vice President Mike Pence as her “go to” people in the government.

In Chapter 19, entitled “Winter Is Here,” Birx turns her guns on the same pharmaceutical companies she and her colleague Anthony Fauci promoted and protected during the COVID-19 outbreak. Specifically, she points out the corporates who were shielded by government from liability failed to get vital doses of their vaccines into the arms of those who needed it earliest: the elderly:

“Getting as many people inoculated as quickly and equitably as possible remained one of my priorities. In addition to “emergency use authorization,” or EUA, the FDA also has the authority to allow the use of therapeutics and vaccines (and the use of experimental drugs to people outside clinical trials) under what’s called “compassionate use authorization,” or CUA. Lacking the holy grail of emergency use authorization (which was pending), I continued to try to find a way to get the highest-risk group immunized as quickly as possible. In early November, I asked Tony and Steve to approach Moderna and Pfizer and urge them to apply for CUA while their vaccines’ efficacy was still being determined but safety was fairly clear. With a CUA in hand, we could inoculate any nursing home residents who wished to be. Whether they volunteered for the jabs or not, at least they’d have the option.”

MUST READ: Dr. Birx – Who Admitted COVID ‘Subterfuge’ In Trump’s White House – Says Her ‘Go To’ People Were Jared Kushner and Mike Pence.

But as many continued to die, her wishes were not carried through, she explains:

“We had a narrow window, and it was closing. Fifteen hundred nursing home residents died in the first week of October. The vaccine manufacturers, I learned, had already stockpiled three million doses. If we could draw from that supply through CUA, thousands of lives could be saved.

“This didn’t happen. Pfizer and Moderna declined to pursue compassionate use authorization. They believed the process would be a distraction. Their eyes were fixed on the EUA, another complicated process; taking on both simply wasn’t possible.

“I believed it was—it just wasn’t part of the plan these manufacturers had envisioned.”

Birx then goes on to detail the number of people that were affected by the major corporations’ refusal to pursue a faster route to market. At the time, many suspected they were refusing to do so because such speed would give President Trump an ostensible boost right before the U.S. presidential election.

“Take a moment to imagine that they did apply for compassionate use. And imagine that 1.5 million of the 3 million stockpiled doses went to nursing homes in November, and another 1.5 million at the end of November, for a second dose. If this had happened, the nursing home residents would have been fully protected in December, at the start of the surge, and not, as it turned out, as late as February, after the surge. An additional six-thousand-plus nursing home residents died in mid-December. They all could have been fully immunized and protected before this happened and we could have saved thousands of lives. If this had been done, literally thousands of lives could have been saved. Great good could have been done, and at low risk to these vulnerable people. In a pandemic, you need to innovate on the fly in response to the reality of the moment and not be locked into a rigid plan.”

MUST READ: STUDY: Closing Bars, Restaurants Did NOT Suppress COVID-19.

Birx’s theory rests on the efficacy of the vaccines, however. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines were altered this past week to remove the distinctions between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. Regardless of the “science” today, the United States continues to restrict foreign travelers into the country who are not vaccinated, unless they come in illegally through America’s porous southern border.

Not one major corporate news outlet has covered this story, while most take significant advertising money from big pharmaceutical companies. The chairman and chief executive officer of the Thomson Reuters Foundation is also a top investor and board member for Pfizer, as revealed by The National Pulse in December 2021. Support our investigative work here.

The protocols require ‘mind-blowing cognitive dissonance’

Nurses who witnessed “brutal” hospital COVID-19 treatment protocols kill patients paint a bleak picture of what is taking place in state and federally funded health care systems.

“They’re horrific, and they’re all in lockstep,” Staci Kay, a nurse practitioner with the North Carolina Physicians for Freedom who left the hospital system to start her own early treatment private practice, told The Epoch Times. “They will not consider protocols outside of what’s given to them by the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and the NIH (National Institute of Health). And nobody is asking why.”

Fueled by cognitive dissonance amid an array of red flags, Kay said hospital staff is ignoring blatantly problematic treatments that performed poorly in clinical trials, such as remdesivir, and protocols such as keeping the patient isolated, just to adhere to the federal canon.

“I’ve seen people die with their family watching via iPad on Facetime,” Kay said. “It was brutal.”

As a former nurse in intensive care, Kay said she had seen her share of tragedy, but how she saw COVID patients being treated “had me waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat with chest pains.”

“I hated my job,” Kay said. “I hated going to work. I was stressed in a way I’ve never been before in my entire life.”

Keeping families isolated was especially difficult, she said, because people couldn’t come to say goodbye to their loved ones.

‘We Can Do Better’

Kay was looking for other options when she found an inpatient protocol designed Dr. Paul Marik, founding member of Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, which purported to have a 94 percent success rate.

However, after Kay pitched it to the head of the pulmonary critical care department, she was dismissed, and the physician boasted that the hospital had a 66 percent survival rate at the time.

“I told him, ‘I feel like we can do better,’ but I was very quickly shut down,” Kay said. “I became very angry because I’m watching people die and I knew we could have been doing better.”

It was as if formerly smart people had become brainwashed, “and then just dumb,” Kay said, lacking the mental wherewithal to discern true from false.

This led Kay to begin treating patients in the outpatient setting to prevent their admission into the hospital system, which is now her full-time job after being fired for not submitting to what she described as illogical testing requirements for those who weren’t vaccinated.

At her telemedicine business, Kay said she’s seeing multiple cases of people suffering from COVID-19 vaccine injuries.

“I saw things on the inpatient side, too, that I suspected were vaccine injuries that went unacknowledged by our physicians,” Kay said. “I saw brain bleeds, seizures out of nowhere, cancer that just spread like wildfire, ischemic strokes, and I saw one person die horrifically from myocarditis.”

On the outpatient side, she said she’s seen conditions resulting from the COVID-19 vaccine such as brain fog, cognitive decline, joint pain, gastrointestinal dysfunctions, and neuropathy, which is numbness and tingling in hands, feet, and extremities.

‘The Old School Becomes The New School’

Kay’s business, Sophelina Counseling, provides telemedicine, mobile urgent care, and mobile IV therapies. It’s independent of corporate, federal, and state control, which she said is a solution to a health care system paralyzed with oppressive requirements.

“As long as there’s corporate control over medicine, whether it’s Medicare or private insurance companies, you’re always going to have providers who are forced, pressured, and coerced to do things that they wouldn’t normally do,” she said. “Physicians don’t have the treatment they used to have.”

Because of this corporate control, Kay said the list of boxes they must check takes time away from the actual patient.

“Getting away from this corporate structure is going to be a game changer,” she said.

Kay advocated for returning to the “old school” way, which is the direct, primary care model, in which the patient pays a monthly or annual fee to have access to the provider without the interference of a traditional insurance company that requires “too many hoops to jump through, headaches, and checkboxes.”

Kay points to a health care model called GoldCare, designed by Dr. Simone Gold, founder of America’s Frontline Doctors.

Gold, who was sentenced to two months in prison for her alleged involvement in the Jan. 6 breach of the Capitol, created GoldCare as a private membership association (PMA).

Because much of what insurance companies do revolves around potential lawsuits, to be a member of the PMA, one must sign a clause, agreeing that they won’t sue.

“What that does for us is we don’t have to order unnecessary testing or consults just to cover our back end because that’s most of what corporate medicine does,” she said.

As a result, Kay said, both the patient and the physician are happier because the treatment process hasn’t been weighted down with bloated insurance requirements.

For Kay, this model—an evocation of a simpler time in medical care when doctors were more connected with their patients—is key.

“The old school is going to have to become the new school,” Kay said.

NIH and the CDC did not respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment on COVID-19 treatment protocols.

Boycotting the System

Having taken salmon, eggs, and honey for payment, a nurse in Washington state who wished to remain anonymous shares Kay’s more traditional vision for the future of health care.

She told The Epoch Times that people “need to boycott their health insurance.”

“I think people who don’t need surgery to save their life should not go to the hospital,” the nurse said. “I think people need to find doctors who are private pay and pay for only what they need to be done.”

The federal government must be removed from the health care equation, she added.

“I especially don’t think any children should be going to these practitioners who are accepting state funding or Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements,” the nurse said

The nurse requested anonymity because—in addition to being unvaccinated—in Washington and Oregon state, she said the government has made it possible for the public to submit anonymous complaints, “devoid of evidence,” against health care workers who promote treatments that deviate from the official protocols.

After the nurse was fired for not complying with the vaccine mandate, she started her own private care business that offers monoclonal antibodies, L-lysine and vitamin C infusions, infrared red light therapy, and nebulizer machines as treatments as needed and when indicated.

‘Widespread Data Suppression’

With her newly launched business, she performed the early interventions that she said hospitals should be doing, “but refuse to do because they say there’s no evidence for it.”

The nurse works with a growing network of physicians and providers that function as a “total parallel society” existing in the shadows beside the “crooked” health care system, she said.

In the aftermath of the public vaccine campaign in her community, the nurse said she saw an increase in strokes and embolization procedures as doctors engaged in “widespread data suppression,” such as not reporting to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System what she saw as vaccine injuries and deaths and recording non-COVID deaths to be caused by COVID.

Even before the CDC had modified its definition of the unvaccinated, the hospital system was reclassifying patients who had only received one vaccine as unvaccinated, she said.

“The worst part of it was when the pulmonologists decided that unvaccinated patients would get seven days on the ventilator, then they would tell the families that nothing more could be done,” she said. “They would then terminally extubate these patients even when more could have been done.”

The nurse personally witnessed this, she said, with a 33-year-old mother of two children.

“She had been on ivermectin at home and was viewed as an anti-vax conspiracy theorist,” the nurse said.

Before the mother was terminally extubated and her status changed to “comfort care,” the nurse said she argued with hospital administrators for 12 hours.

She had asked the pulmonologist to consider running more tests, she said.

“It had been over a week since the last D-dimer, and this would have indicated whether fibrin in the bloodstream was increasing or decreasing,” the nurse explained. “The usual process with a known pulmonary embolism was to check every three days. There were more anticoagulant drugs and routes of administration that could have been utilized. Intravenous heparin is reversible. If they were willing to withdraw life support, why were they not willing to try something that could clear a circulatory impairment?”

In the end, the hospital won, she said.

“The mother died gasping for air while my hand was on her back,” she said. “I couldn’t believe it. I went to my manager and asked for an audit to be done on our coagulation times and pulmonary embolism treatment protocols. That got me booted from the ICU until I was fired.”

The nurse said she observed administrators repeatedly promoting the safety of the vaccine, though these claims weren’t reflecting what they were seeing with the growing cases of vaccine injuries.

Though there was some staff who saw the truth but ignored it to keep their jobs, there were many whom she observed—just as Kay reported—who exhibited “mind-blowing cognitive dissonance.”

“They received the vaccines themselves, and if they were to ever confront the possibility that they willingly became the hands of a truly evil agenda, I don’t think they could live with themselves,” the nurse said. “I used to consider my co-workers as people with whom I’d trust my life, but after they got that second dose of the vaccine, it was like they had a hive mind bent on hatred. It’s very eerie to say that out loud.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee say they have received information from the non-partisan scorekeeper at the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) challenging the Biden administration’s narrative that Americans making less than $400,000 a year won’t see higher IRS audit rates.

The remarks came in an Aug. 12 statement that was published as the Democrat-controlled House passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes nearly $46 billion in additional funding for IRS enforcement of the $80 billion or so total funding boost to the tax agency.

Committee Republicans said that the CBO statement they were provided with confirms that, under the new legislation, lower and middle-income Americans will be squeezed harder by the tax man to the tune of at least $20 billion.

‘Supercharged IRS’ Coming For Middle-Income Americans

This figure was arrived at by calculating how much less tax revenue would flow into government coffers if legislators had accepted amendment 5404 (pdf) proposed by Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) that explicitly called for none of the funds appropriated under the Inflation Reduction Act to be used to audit taxpayers making less than $400,000 a year.

“The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) confirms that had this amendment passed and lower- and middle-income taxpayers been protected, revenue in Democrats’ bill would have been reduced by at least $20 billion,” Committee Republicans said.

This confirms that “at least $20 billion of the $124 billion in new revenue expected by a supercharged IRS will be coming from higher audits on low- and middle-income Americans” and that this would be “in addition to existing audits on these income levels.”

The Epoch Times has reached out to the CBO with a request for confirmation of the scorekeeper’s assessment and comment, with no response received by publication.

‘Absolutely Not’ Increasing Audit Scrutiny?

Republicans said the CBO statement proves that members of the Biden administration are misleading the public by claiming that lower and middle-income Americans won’t face additional tax audits.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has insisted Republican claims that tax auditors will target lower and middle-income Americans at higher rates are false and politically motivated.

“I direct that any additional resources—including any new personnel or auditors that are hired—shall not be used to increase the share of small business or households below the $400,000 threshold that are audited relative to historical levels,” Yellen said in an Aug. 10 letter to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig.

“This means that, contrary to the misinformation from opponents of this legislation, small business or households earning $400,000 per year or less will not see an increase in the chances that they are audited,” she added.

The IRS chief, too, has insisted that the tax agency would “absolutely not” be increasing audit scrutiny on small businesses or middle-income Americans relative to “recent years,” according to a letter to members of the Senate on Aug. 4 (pdf).

More Audits ‘Almost Certain’

A previous CBO analysis indicated that, under basically the same funding plan as is featured in the Inflation Reduction Act, audit rates would be restored to levels around 10 years ago and that audit rates would rise “for all taxpayers,” though ones with higher incomes would face the biggest increase.

IRS audit rates have fallen sharply over the past decade, with the Government Accountability Office (GAO) saying in a report that rates in 2019 were about one third of those in 2010 for all income groups, dropping from 0.9 percent down to 0.25 percent.

A CBO estimate (pdf) shows that that the additional $80 billion in funding will bring in around $204 billion in new revenues, including from enforcement.

Despite Yellen’s and Rettig’s insistence that audit rates wouldn’t jump for those making under $400,000, Rachel Greszler, senior research fellow at the Grover M. Hermann Center, wrote in an op-ed for the Heritage Foundation that this is likely not the case.

“Despite the Biden administration’s claims, it’s almost certain that households making less than $400,000 a year would face increased audits under Democrats’ bill,” Greszler wrote.

“And despite estimates from official congressional scorekeepers that the Schumer-Manchin-Biden tax increase indeed would raise taxes on those Americans, the administration has doubled down on the claim,” she added.

Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) said on the House floor that the way Democrats can manage to raise $200 billion in new tax revenues is “with thousands of new agents targeting what I would call Walmart shoppers.”

“They’re real hard working American families. They are my constituents, they are my neighbors in my district. They’re living paycheck to paycheck, struggling with inflation and high gas prices,” Brady said.

“They will be hit with over 700,000 new audits thanks to a skyrocketing surge in IRS agents,” he added.

“Higher taxes, harassing IRS audits on our Walmart shoppers, no relief from inflation—all as America battles a recession,” Brady said.

The Inflation Reduction Act passed in a strictly party-line vote on Aug. 12, with the bill next heading to Joe Biden’s desk for final approval.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) COVID-19 guidance is the agency acknowledging it was wrong in the past to downplay natural immunity and promote unprecedented policies like asymptomatic testing, a California epidemiologist says.

The new guidance, released on Aug. 11, rescinds and alters a number of key recommendations, including treating unvaccinated and vaccinated people differently for many purposes, explicitly stating that people with previous infection have protection against severe illness, and removing six-foot social distancing advice.

“The CDC is admitting it was wrong here, although they won’t put it in those words,” Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor of medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine, told The Epoch Times.

“What they’ll say is that, well, ‘the population is more immunized now, has more natural immunity now, and now is the time—the science has changed.’”

But a large percentage of the U.S. population has had natural immunity, or protection from prior infection, Bhattacharya noted, while over 80 percent of the elderly population had protection from severe disease from COVID-19 vaccines, previous infection, or both, since 2021.

“This is two years too late, but it’s a good step,” Bhattacharya added.

CDC Statement

The CDC, which did not respond to a request for comment, portrayed the change as streamlining previous guidance, with the adjustments stemming from more people being vaccinated and more COVID-19 treatments available.

“We’re in a stronger place today as a nation, with more tools—like vaccination, boosters, and treatments—to protect ourselves, and our communities, from severe illness from COVID-19,” Greta Massetti, the CDC author of the new guidance, said in a statement. “We also have a better understanding of how to protect people from being exposed to the virus, like wearing high-quality masks, testing, and improved ventilation. This guidance acknowledges that the pandemic is not over, but also helps us move to a point where COVID-19 no longer severely disrupts our daily lives.”

Dr. Jerome Adams, the surgeon general during the Trump administration, echoed the line of thinking.

“The fact that @CDCgov is changing guidance shouldn’t be taken as proof that they were necessarily ‘wrong,’ on a particular issue. The virus has changed, our tools and immunity have changed, and our knowledge has changed. So too must our guidance. That’s how science works,” Adams wrote on Twitter.

Vaccination numbers have fallen off in recent months, with little change among adults and little update among children, even after the vaccines were authorized and recommended for kids as young as 6 months old.

No new treatments have been authorized since December 2021, and a number of the treatments have been shown as less effective against newer strains of the virus that causes COVID-19, as have the vaccines and, in some cases, natural immunity.

Nearly half of the 20 papers and briefs cited by the CDC in support of the adjusted guidance were published in 2020 or 2021, while a number of others were released in early 2022.

No Mandates Rescinded Yet

Among the most significant changes in the guidance: a rollback of recommendations for asymptomatic testing for individuals exposed to COVID-19, loosening guidance related to tracing contacts of COVID-19 cases, and ending quarantine recommendations for people exposed to a positive case.

Some rules are stricter for high-risk settings such as nursing homes.

Masking is also recommended for 10 days for people who were exposed to COVID-19, including when a person is at home around others.

Bhattacharya, who co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration in 2020, a document that called for focused protection on the elderly and fewer restrictions on others, said that the guidance is closely aligned with the principles outlined in the declaration.

Based on the new guidance, the CDC should immediately rescind the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for foreign travelers entering The United States, a policy imposed in November 2021, the professor added.

The CDC’s webpage describing the mandate says that the agency “is reviewing this page to align with updated guidance.” The U.S. government has not adjusted or rescinded any of its vaccine mandates since the guidance was changed.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

A federal court has reimposed an Obama-era freeze on coal leasing from federal lands that former President Donald Trump axed in a bid to unlock domestic energy production, though the judge left the door open to resuming the coal leases if a more extensive environmental review is done.

In a ruling on Aug. 12 (pdf), U.S. District Judge Brian Morris faulted the Trump-era review of the coal leasing program for limiting the environmental impact review to “just” three issues: greenhouse gas emissions, socioeconomic impacts, and water quality.

“The Court determines that such a limited analysis fails to consider ‘all direct, indirect, and cumulative impacts’ of re-starting the federal coal-leasing program,” Morris wrote in the ruling.

The judge said the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) tried to curtail the potential environmental impacts of coal leases in its National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review, calling the bureau’s decision “arbitrary and capricious.”

Morris also objected to BLM evaluating only four approved leases under the program, calling it “insufficient.”

In the ruling, the judge said that the coal leasing program would be put on hold “until the completion of sufficient NEPA review analyzing revocation of the moratorium.”

The Epoch Times has reached out to BLM for comment, with no response received by publication.

Interior Department spokesperson Melissa Schwartz told The Associated Press that officials are reviewing the ruling.

‘End to the War on Coal’

In January 2016, in a decision known as the Jewell Order, the Department of the Interior put a temporary freeze on leasing federal land for the purpose of mining coal, in part over concerns about climate change.

“Given serious concerns raised about the federal coal program, we’re taking the prudent step to hit pause on approving significant new leases so that decisions about those leases can benefit from the recommendations that come out of the review,” said then-Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell, an appointee of former President Barack Obama.

Trump, who championed domestic fossil fuel production as a bulwark against energy dependency on foreign countries, reversed the freeze in a sweeping executive order in March 2017 that also undid other Obama-era climate policies.

Announcing that “my administration is putting an end to the war on coal,” Trump said at the time that, “with today’s executive action, I am taking historic steps to lift the restrictions on American energy, to reverse government intrusion, and to cancel job-killing regulations.”

Under Joe Biden, a review of coal leasing impacts on climate change and taxpayers was launched in April 2021, but the Trump-era decision to pull the plug on the Jewell Order was not reversed—until now.

‘Significant Victory’ Versus ‘Deeply Troubling’

National Mining Association President Rich Nolan said in a statement that the industry group would appeal the ruling, citing the imperative of energy supplies that are cheap and secure.

“This is a deeply disappointing decision with energy-driven inflation, energy affordability, and energy security top concerns for Americans,” Nolan said.

“Denying access to affordable, secure energy during an energy affordability crisis is deeply troubling,” he continued, adding that “Americans need the energy affordability and energy security buttressed by coal production on federal lands.”

In 2017 and 2018, the most recent years of available data, the U.S. government sold leases for 134 million tons of coal on public land in six states, according to Interior Department figures.

Environmental groups hailed the court’s decision and called on the Biden administration to go further and terminate existing coal leases.

“This is a significant victory for our climate and the communities across the country who are impacted by our continued reliance on this dirty and dangerous fuel, but we cannot stop here,” Jenny Harbine, managing attorney for Earthjustice’s Northern Rockies office, said in a statement.

“While this ruling reinstates the moratorium on new coal leasing on public lands, the Biden administration must go further by urgently phasing out the existing coal leases that are destroying our planet,” she added.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The School District of Philadelphia is requiring all students and staff to wear masks for the first 10 days of the upcoming school year, officials announced on Friday.

After that, everyone is allowed to go mask-optional, regardless of COVID-19 vaccination status, unless the community transmission level is high.

“For the first 10 days of the new school year—from Aug. 29 through Sept. 9—all students and staff will be required to wear masks while in school, regardless of the COVID-19 Community Level,” according to an announcement on the district’s website.

“This is an extra precaution for everyone’s health and well-being since increased end-of-summer social gatherings may heighten the risk of exposure to COVID-19,” the post states.

The district will follow guidelines set by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to determine whether masking will be mandatory on campus and on buses.

If the CDC finds the COVID-19 community transmission level is “high” in Philadelphia, masks will become mandatory again. When the level is “medium,” the health agency “strongly recommends” masking.

There will also be periods the district will re-implement mask requirements following extended breaks in the school year and holidays when “increased social gatherings may heighten the risk of exposure to COVID-19,” or in the event of a “classroom” or “school-wide outbreak.”

If a student, or staff member, is exposed to COVID-19 but doesn’t show any symptoms, they will be allowed to remain at school, but are required to wear a mask for 10 days.

If a student tests positive for COVID-19, they will need to isolate at home for at least five days. If symptom-free after five days, they can return to school but are required to “wear a high-quality (N95 or KN95) mask for an additional 5 days and must eat in a designated area,” the district’s announcement reads.

Students and staff attending the district’s “Pre-K Head Start” program are required to wear a mask regardless of transmission levels for the entire 2022–2023 school year, according to updated pandemic protocols (pdf) presented by Dr. Kendra McDowell, the district’s chief medical officer.

For those unable to wear a mask due to a disability, the school should be informed to assist the student with “accommodations around mitigation efforts,” which include rapid antigen testing every 48 hours for 10 days. If testing isn’t available, or possible, the student will be required to quarantine at home for 10 days.

McDowell and Tony Watlington Sr., the district’s superintendent, said at a news conference they’re “determined to keep students in school for in-person learning” following significant disruptions over the past three school years.

Dr. Marc Siegel, a professor of medicine at New York University Langone Medical Center, told Fox News that requiring masks for the first 10 days of the school year is “a sign of hypocrisy,” noting that the mandate offers “no public health value.”

“The whole thing is, mandates aren’t working at all,” Siegel declared. “So, you know, they just obscure the question about whether there’s any public health value in actually doing any of this. I mean, I think if you’re at high risk, there is. So if I was in an area with a lot of spread, and I was at high risk, I might choose to wear a mask indoors. But there’s no evidence that these mandates doing anything.”

From NTD News

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Disgraced CNN journalist throws in the towel after 20 years

Jeffrey Toobin, the disgraced legal analyst who lost his job at the New Yorker (but kept his post at CNN) for masturbating in front of colleagues during a Zoom call, is leaving the network after 20 years. Toobin announced his departure on Twitter, noting that he would not return to CNN following his “vacation” and implying the decision was his alone.

“Was great to spend my last day on air with pals Wolf [Blitzer], Anderson [Cooper] and Don [Lemon],” Toobin wrote. “Love all my former colleagues. Watch for my next book, about the Oklahoma City bombing, coming in 2023 from @simonandschuster.”

The New Yorker gave Toobin the pink slip in November 2020 following the masturbation incident. The publication said its decision was based on a desire to foster “an environment where everyone feels respected and upholds our standards of conduct.” CNN felt otherwise, allowing the legal analyst to take “time off while he deals with a personal issue.” The network welcomed him back on the air in June 2021. “I didn’t think other people could see [the masturbating],” he explained.

Apart from the outrageous episode of indecent exposure, Toobin is best known for attempting to bribe his much younger mistress — who was also his co-worker’s daughter — to get an abortion in 2008. The journalist reportedly told the woman, Casey Greenfield, that he was “going leave his wife for her.” Upon learning she was pregnant, however, Toobin “questioned the paternity, balked at submitting to a test, and vowed to take no responsibility for a baby he wasn’t sure was his.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

A Congressional Budget Office report found that the Internal Revenue Service will collect billions of dollars from auditing low- and middle-income Americans under the White House-backed “Inflation Reduction Act,” contradicting Biden administration claims, according to Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee.

Fox News confirmed the report, finding the CBO informed congressional Republicans that, under the act, audits of taxpayers making under $400,000 will account for about $20 billion in additional revenue.

The news comes after high-ranking Biden administration officials, including Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, assured Americans that the IRS would not increase audits of people earning under $400,000. The Inflation Reduction Act, which on Sunday passed the Senate, allows the IRS to hire up to 87,000 new agents, making it larger than the Pentagon, the State Department, the FBI, and the Border Control combined. Democrats shut down an amendment that would have prevented agents from increasing audits on middle- and low-income Americans.

The bill is expected to pass the House on Friday.

News of the CBO report also comes as the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business found the bill will have an “impact on inflation [that] is statistically indistinguishable from zero” even as it raises taxes on Americans and decreases GDP for the next decade.

Republican lawmakers have pushed back against the bill, with Sen. Tom Cotton (Ark.) saying that “only the Democrats would call a bill that doubles the size of the IRS, raises taxes, and spends billions on a green energy slush fund the ‘Inflation Reduction Act.'”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

WARNING: Disturbing content. Viewer discretion is advised.

The Oxford English dictionary defines meme as “a humorous image, video, piece of text, etc., that is copied (often with slight variations) and spread rapidly by internet users.” Depending on how rotten your brain is from prolonged exposure to social media, you may or may not be aware that we are in the midst of a “meme war” that will ultimately determine the fate of American democracy.

One of the most significant new developments in this raging conflict is the emergence of the “Dark Brandon” meme, which portrays Joe Biden as a laser-eyed Machiavellian overlord skilled in the art of four-dimensional political chess. It also seeks to expropriate the “Brandon” moniker from Biden’s critics, who embraced the phrase “Let’s Go, Brandon!” in 2021 after a filthy NASCAR journalist falsely claimed that fans at Talladega were chanting in support of winning driver Brandon Brown. (Fact Check: They were chanting, “F— Joe Biden!”)

In any event, the Washington Free Beacon has exclusively obtained a number of avant-garde “Dark Brandon” memes created with the help of cutting edge artificial intelligence technology. Bear in mind: The mainstream media does not want you, the American people, to see these humorous images. Enjoy!

Source: The Washington Free Beacon

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revised its COVID-19 guidance on Aug. 11, stating that the United States should move away from quarantines and social distancing and focus on treating severe disease caused by the virus.

New guidelines from the federal agency no longer recommend staying at least six feet away from other people to reduce exposure. The six-foot social distancing recommendation had been intact since early 2020, although some public health officials have raised questions about whether the measure is actually effective.

In another major change, the agency stated that it’s no longer recommending unvaccinated people to quarantine after exposure. Unvaccinated people who have been in close contact with an infected person aren’t advised to go through a five-day quarantine period if they haven’t tested positive or shown symptoms, according to the revised guidelines.

“CDC’s COVID-19 prevention recommendations no longer differentiate based on a person’s vaccination status because breakthrough infections occur, though they are generally mild, and persons who have had COVID-19 but are not vaccinated have some degree of protection against severe illness from their previous infection,” the CDC stated.

Regardless of vaccination status, according to the CDC, “you should isolate from others when you have COVID-19” or are “sick and suspect that you have COVID-19 but do not yet have test results.” Previously, the CDC said fully vaccinated people who were exposed could skip the quarantine period.

“The current conditions of this pandemic are very different from those of the last two years,” Greta Massetti, a senior epidemiologist with the CDC, told media outlets on on Aug. 11. “High levels of population immunity due to vaccination and previous infection and the many available tools to protect the general population and protect people at higher risk allow us to focus on protecting people from serious illness from COVID.”

Testing to screen for COVID-19 won’t be recommended by the CDC in most places for individuals who don’t have COVID-19 symptoms, according to the new guidelines. Contact tracing should be relegated to hospitals and high-risk situations, such as nursing homes, the agency stated, while it placed less emphasis on screening for COVID-19 other than places such as prisons and nursing homes.

The CDC is now recommending that people “wear a high-quality mask for 10 days and get tested on day five” after exposure to the virus regardless of vaccination or prior infection. If one is sick, they should stay away from individuals such as elderly people or those who are also likely to develop severe symptoms from the virus

“When considering whether and where to implement screening testing of asymptomatic people with no known exposure, public health officials might consider prioritizing high-risk congregate settings, such as long-term care facilities, homeless shelters, and correctional facilities, and workplace settings that include congregate housing with limited access to medical care,” the CDC wrote in its report explaining the changes.

Reuters contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Banks, federal agencies, and ESG investors handicap the expansion of America’s energy supply

The oil and gas industry is looking to the future with caution, and plans for expanding production of fossil fuels appear to be limited. 

At the Enercom Energy Investment conference in Denver this week, the oft-repeated mantra among CEOs was that they will use the bulk of their profits to pay down debt and return money to investors through stock buybacks and dividend payments, with significantly less emphasis on major new capital investments. In addition, executives highlighted their commitment to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles for producing cleaner energy and addressing social justice issues. 

As Democrats in Congress prepare to allocate $369 billion via the Inflation Reduction Act to subsidize electric cars and wind and solar energy, America’s oil and gas producers face an uphill battle. A shrinking supply of capital, a hostile regulatory environment, and shortages of materials and labor are creating significant hurdles against new drilling. 

“I don’t want subsidies for our industry; we don’t need subsidies in our industry,” Chris Wright, CEO of Liberty Energy, told The Epoch Times. “We just don’t want barriers standing in the way of us providing the energy that people in the world want and need.”

Wall Street Steps Back from Fossil Fuel Financing

Among those barriers are banks and investors cutting back financing for new fossil fuel projects, due to both economic and political factors. In line with the ESG movement, 114 banks, collectively representing 38 percent of global banking assets, signed the Commitment Statement of the UN Net-Zero Banking Alliance, in which they pledged to “transition” their lending portfolios to reduce greenhouse-gas (GNG) emissions and reach net-zero GNG emissions by 2050 or sooner. American banks that signed this pledge include JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley.

Another global money club, Climate Action 100+, is “an investor-led initiative to ensure the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters take necessary action on climate change.” It has 700 investment companies as members, representing $68 trillion in assets, and includes asset managers such as BlackRock, State Street, Fidelity, Invesco, Fisher, and PIMCO; insurers such as Aegon, Allianz, and AXA; state pension funds like CalPERS, CalSTRS, New York State Common Retirement Fund, New York City Pension Funds, and Maryland State Retirement and Pension System; and university endowment funds from Harvard, MIT, and University of Rochester, among others.

In response, West Virginia and Texas recently barred banks that discriminate against fossil fuel companies from getting municipal banking contracts in their respective states. On July 28, for example, West Virginia State Treasurer Riley Moore announced that JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo would be placed on a Restricted Financial Institution List because they “are engaged in boycotts of fossil fuel companies, according to new state law, and are no longer eligible to enter into state banking contracts.”

“Each financial institution placed on the Restricted Financial Institution List today has published written environmental or social policies categorically limiting commercial relations with energy companies engaged in certain coal mining, extraction or utilization activities, rather than considering the financial or risk profile for each company,” Moore said in an official statement. “While the ‘Environmental, Social and Governance’ or ‘ESG’ movement might be politically popular in California or New York, financial institutions need to understand their practices are hurting people across West Virginia.”

Last week, 19 state attorneys general sent letters to BlackRock CEO Larry Fink declaring that his efforts to impose the ESG agenda on companies whose shares it owns run counter to its fiduciary obligations to pensioners, intentionally harm America’s energy companies, and, to the extent that financial companies collude in this effort, raise anti-trust concerns. BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager, with approximately $10 trillion in assets under management. 

In a letter to Fink, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich wrote, “BlackRock appears to use the hard-earned money of our states’ citizens to circumvent the best possible return on investment, as well as their vote. BlackRock’s past public commitments indicate that it has used citizens’ assets to pressure companies to comply with international agreements such as the Paris Agreement that force the phase-out of fossil fuels, increase energy prices, drive inflation, and weaken the national security of the United States.”

Global ESG Clubs Leave Oil and Gas Industry ‘Starved for Capital’

Oil and gas executives say the push to divest from fossil fuels by global organizations like Climate Action 100+, the UN Net-Zero Banking Alliance, and the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero is having its intended effect.  

“Our industry is being starved for capital,” Anthony Gallegos, CEO of Independence Contract Drilling, told The Epoch Times, noting that banks are increasingly unwilling to provide revolving lines of credit or asset-based lending facilities [ABLFs] to the oil and gas industry. “There’s probably a third as many banks today that are willing to provide revolvers and ABLFs to [oil and gas] service companies compared to what there would have been six years ago,” he said. “There are investors, there are endowments, there are limited partnerships, some of which have historically invested in energy, that today have a mandate that they cannot make investments in fossil fuel industries.”

“The concern that the State of West Virginia, the State of Texas, and other states have had about financial institutions trying to dissuade investment I think is very real,” Wright said. “What that impacts most is the smaller or rising players that count on bank debt financing and reserve-based lending [RBL]. There is massively less RBL capital today than a few years ago; there’s a number of big European banks that were players in this space that have pulled out; there are American banks that want to show a decline in the percent of their portfolio that’s in oil and gas; there is less private equity capital because university endowments and CalPERS, CalSTRS, and other state pension funds, are divesting from oil and gas.”

Curtailing credit to smaller, private oil and gas companies is particularly harmful, Wright said, because they are currently the most active in developing new production. By contrast to the larger, public oil and gas companies, which are cautiously investing in new growth, “The private companies are investing relatively aggressively. Sixty percent of the drilling and fracking activity right now in the United States is private oil and gas companies,” Wright said. 

In response to state actions, several U.S. banks recently denied they are doing anything to reduce financing for fossil fuels. Goldman Sachs stated in a July letter to West Virginia’s treasurer that it provided more than $118 billion in financing to fossil fuel companies. JPMorgan wrote that it had more than $42 billion in credit exposure to oil and gas companies. 

In an apparent reversal of BlackRock’s position in 2020 that “we will be increasingly disposed to vote against management and board directors when companies are not making sufficient progress on sustainability-related disclosures and the business practices and plans underlying them,” BlackRock announced in May that it will likely support fewer climate-related corporate votes in 2022 than it did in 2021.

Investors Are Risk-Averse After Oil Price Volatility, Bankruptcies

In addition to the ESG movement, the oil and gas industry is also emerging from a period of over-investment in new fracking projects a decade ago, which together with increased output in the Middle East caused oil and gas prices to fall sharply in 2016 and then collapse in 2020 during pandemic lockdowns, forcing many oil and gas companies into bankruptcy. This has caused many investors to take a more cautious approach, particularly now that the economy is slowing and oil and gas prices have fallen from their peaks in the spring. 

“I don’t think you’re ever going to see capital flow into this industry the way it did in 2012 through 2014,” Gallegos said. “Investors have made it clear: ‘We’re not here to fund your growth just for growth’s sake; if we’re going to give you money, you’re going to have to demonstrate a pathway toward generating returns where we’re seeing something back as investors.’”

Accordingly, CEOs are now more focused on returning cash to their equity and debt investors. 

Fitch Ratings Director Neil Stirrat said that oil and gas companies were “exercising capital discipline” and using profits to repay debt and repurchase equity, with only a “marginal” increase in capital expenditures. This increase, about 15 percent on average across the industry, was approximately equal to the increase in companies’ costs due to inflation. 

Fitch noted that industry credit ratings were generally going in a positive direction, as oil and gas companies reduced leverage, extended loan maturities, and improved their financial health. Whereas in 2020, Fitch downgraded the debt of 20 oil and gas companies, while upgrading four; in 2021, 13 companies were upgraded and only two downgraded. Year to date in 2022, Fitch upgraded the debt ratings of 10 oil and gas companies, with no downgrades. The average debt ratio for North American oil and gas companies, calculated as debt to earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA), came down from 4-to-1 in 2016 to 1-to-1 today.

A Hostile Regulatory Environment for Fossil Fuels

In addition to less generous investors, America’s fossil fuel companies faced a hostile regulatory environment. A June 28 report from the Heritage Foundation, for example, noted a rush by oil and gas companies in the final months of 2020 to secure drilling permits before the Biden administration took control. 

“To date, Biden is the only president in modern history not to have held a single oil and gas lease sale on federal lands despite clear direction from Congress to do so quarterly,” the report stated. “While the Department of Interior is being forced by court order to hold a lease sale this quarter, it increased fees by 50 percent and decreased the amount of available acreage for drilling by 80 percent—even as it cut fees and red tape for renewable ‘green’ energy production.”

In addition, Biden has not completed any offshore lease sales. By contrast, the Trump administration sold eight offshore leases, and the Obama administration sold 29. However, in 2021, the Biden administration issued more permits to drill on federal lands than the Trump administration did in its first year in office, though issuance of drilling permits has declined sharply in 2022.

Biden has also used other agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), to discourage investment in new oil and gas projects. The SEC issued a mandate in March that all listed companies must produce audited reports detailing their fossil fuel emissions, as well as those of suppliers and customers, together with their plans to reduce them. The SEC claimed that it was compelled to issue this mandate because “investors representing literally tens of trillions of dollars support climate-related disclosures.”

Government Spends Hundreds of Billions to Support Wind and Solar

Besides government policies and global money-club boycotts, the hundreds of billions in subsidies for renewable energy further undermine oil, gas, and coal companies’ ability to compete. This includes the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the invocation by Biden of the Defense Production Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act, currently being debated in the House of Representatives after being passed by the Senate.

In return for voting for green subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) reportedly negotiated a “side deal” that Congress would later approve a lessening of the regulatory burden for fossil fuels, including more congressional action to attempt to force the Biden administration to sell more oil and gas leases and issue new drilling permits. However, many doubt that Manchin will ever receive his part of the bargain, given that Democrats were virtually unanimous in rejecting a GOP-backed bill to streamline permit approvals last week.  

The version of the Inflation Reduction Act that Manchin approved even granted the EPA the right to regulate carbon emissions. This was a critical issue because the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in West Virginia v. EPA stated that the EPA’s decree that electric utilities must transition to renewable energy and away from coal and other fossil fuels was not legal because Congress never gave the EPA the authority to regulate carbon emissions. The Inflation Reduction Act would have given the EPA this authority, invalidating the Supreme Court’s decision, which had ruled in favor of Manchin’s home state. 

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W. Va.) offered an amendment, which all Democrats, including Manchin, voted against, to remove from the bill the provision that granted sweeping new powers to the EPA. When that effort failed, Capito then challenged the provision’s compliance with budget reconciliation rules, which allow the Senate to bypass the filibuster. The Senate parliamentarian agreed with Capito, and the language granting the EPA new authority was removed from the bill. 

“You could make the argument, and I’m sure Manchin would make it, that we’re getting some of those barriers out of the way for hydrocarbon development, and that would on the margin be positive,” Wright said. “But I balance that with the certainty that we’re going to spend $300 billion subsidizing unreliable, more expensive, grid-destabilizing energy, and if you subsidize it heavily enough, you’re going to get it no matter how destructive it is to our grid. No matter how negative it is, the subsidies are big enough that it is in the economic interests of those parties to build it, and we’re going to pay the price.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Dr. Anthony Fauci this week urged people to vote out members of Congress who are spreading “total lies” about COVID-19, but made a false claim himself about COVID-19 vaccines.

Fauci, speaking at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle on Aug. 9, was asked how the scientific community can deal with congressional leaders “who promulgate unscientific ideas yet control funding for public institutions.”

“Vote,” Fauci responded, drawing applause from the room.

In commencement speeches he’s given this year, Fauci urged graduates, “Don’t accept the normalization of untruths.”

“Because there’s so much preposterous lying that goes on, and including, unfortunately it’s true … that members in our own Congress, in our own Senate, who just get up and say things that are total lies,” added Fauci, the longtime head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). “‘Vaccines kill people, that kind of thing.’ It’s so much untruths that people who have a lot of other things in their lives that they have to worry about, they kind of start accepting it and all of a sudden, lying becomes normal.”

Vaccines do kill people, according to U.S. health authorities.

Nine deaths from a combination of blood clotting and low blood platelet levels, for instance, have been determined to be “causally associated” with Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Causally associated means the vaccine caused or was related to the deaths.

Severe allergic reactions are also triggered on occasion by the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, as are cases of heart inflammation. People who have experienced the conditions have died.

NIAID didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Dr. Larry Corey, a Fred Hutch employee who asked Fauci the question, identified Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) by name but didn’t offer any evidence for Paul promulgating unscientific ideas.

Paul and Fauci have clashed during Senate hearings over Fauci’s agency funding the Wuhan, China, laboratory located near where COVID-19 cases were first detected, and Republicans have vowed to investigate Fauci if they gain control of Congress in the upcoming midterm elections. Paul’s office didn’t respond to an inquiry.

Fauci wasn’t questioned on his own prior statements, including his admission that he misled the U.S. public on the effectiveness of masks in order to prevent a shortage of masks for health care workers.

The cancer center awarded Fauci with the 2022 honorary Hutch Award, which he received during a baseball game at T-Mobile Park. The discussion took place hours before the game.

Gain of Function

At one point during the discussion, Corey started talking about how an early strain of the virus that causes COVID-19 was detected in Washington state, and Fauci joked, “I developed the ancestral modern strain.”

“I created it. I was in my kitchen,” Fauci said, drawing laughter.

“Gain of function, here we come,” Corey said, before moving on to another subject.

Gain of function is a term that describes research to make pathogens more transmissible or pathogenic.

Fauci has insisted that U.S.-funded research in China was not gain of function, but outside experts have said the research clearly met the definition of the term.

“Families of the more than 1 million Americans who have perished from COVID-19 aren’t laughing,” Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), one of Fauci’s fiercest critics in Congress, wrote on Twitter in response to a clip of the new exchange.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Dozens of cases of Langya virus have been reported in China, according to new research from scientists who were previously linked to controversial bat coronavirus studies at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The Langya henipavirus — referred to as LayV — belongs to a family of viruses that are “known to infect humans and cause fatal disease,” revealed a group of Chinese-led scientists in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Of the 35 confirmed LayV cases found in China’s Shandong and Henan provinces, however, none have proven deadly. Symptoms include fever, fatigue, cough, loss of appetite, and muscle aches.

The majority of the scientists behind the paper identifying the virus are affiliated with Chinese Communist Party-run scientific institutions, which are notorious for their ties to the regime’s military efforts and biological warfare programs. Researchers from labs including the Beijing Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology and State Key Laboratory of Pathogens and Biosecurity are among the paper’s authors.

Lin-Fa Wang, a researcher at the Duke–National University of Singapore Medical School, is also an author of the peer-reviewed New England Journal of Medicine piece, whose work on the LayV virus follows his involvement with bat coronavirus research conducted by the Wuhan Institute of Virology using funds from Anthony Fauci’s National Institutes of Health (NIH) agency.

Led by EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak and the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s “Bat Woman” Shi Zhengli, researchers used the samples to conduct risky “gain-of-function” research, as now-deleted webpages reveal the lab manipulating bat coronaviruses to “replicate efficiently in primary human airway cells and achieve in vitro titers equivalent to epidemic strains of SARS-CoV.”

MUST READ: STUDY: Closing Bars, Restaurants Did NOT Suppress COVID-19.

Wang, who is an Honorary Professor at the lab, appears as a co-author on many of these now highly controversial studies including “Isolation and characterization of a bat SARS-like coronavirus that uses the ACE2 receptor” in 2013 and “Discovery of a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses provides new insights into the origin of SARS coronavirus” in 2017.”

Though Wang told the Chinese Communist Party-run Global Times that the reported LayV cases had “not been fatal or very serious” so far and that there was “no need for panic,” officials from Taiwan’s health authority are currently monitoring the virus’ spread.

In the paper, scientists sequenced the LayV virus genome and alleged that “the shrew may be a natural reservoir of LayV.”

In the early days of COVID-19, Chinese Communist Party scientists and their American counterparts pushed a similar narrative.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is admitting it gave false information about COVID-19 vaccine surveillance, including inaccurately saying it conducted a certain type of analysis over one year before it actually did.

The false information was conveyed in responses to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for the results of surveillance, and after the CDC claimed COVID-19 vaccines are being monitored “by the most intense safety monitoring efforts in U.S. history.”

“CDC has revisited several FOIA requests and as a result of its review CDC is issuing corrections for the following information,” a CDC spokeswoman told The Epoch Times in an email.

No CDC employees intentionally provided false information and none of the false responses were given to avoid FOIA reporting requirements, the spokeswoman said.

Heart Inflammation

The Epoch Times in July submitted a FOIA, or a request for non-public information, to the CDC for all reports from a team that was formed to study post-vaccination heart inflammation by analyzing reports submitted to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a system run by the CDC and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The CDC not only said that the team did not conduct any abstractions or reports through October 2021, but that “an association between myocarditis and mRNA COVID-19 vaccination was not known at that time.”

That statement was false.

Clinical trials of the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines detected neither myocarditis nor pericarditis, two types of heart inflammation. But by April 2021, the U.S. military was raising the alarm about post-vaccination heart inflammation, and by June 2021, the CDC was publicly acknowledging a link.

The CDC previously corrected the false statement but did not say whether its teams had ever analyzed VAERS reports.

“In reference to myocarditis abstraction from VAERS reports—this process began in May 2021 and continues to this date,” the CDC spokeswoman said in an email.

The CDC has still not released the results of analyses.

Data Mining

The CDC promised in January 2021 that it would perform a specific type of data mining analysis on VAERS reports called Proportional Reporting Ratio (PRR). But when Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit, asked for the results, the CDC said that “no PRRs were conducted by the CDC” and that data mining “is outside of th[e] agency’s purview.”

Asked for clarification, Dr. John Su, who heads the CDC’s VAERS team, told The Epoch Times in an email that the CDC started performing PRRs in February 2021, “and continues to do so to date.”

The CDC is now saying that both the original response and Su’s statement were false.

The agency didn’t start performing PRRs until March 25, 2022, the CDC spokeswoman said. The agency stopped performing them on July 31, 2022.

The spokeswoman said it “misinterpreted” both Children’s Health Defense and The Epoch Times.

Children’s Health Defense had asked for the PRRs the CDC had performed from Feb. 1, 2021, through Sept. 30, 2021. The Epoch Times asked if the response to the request was correct.

The spokeswoman said the CDC thought “data mining” referred only to Empirical Bayesian (EB) data mining, a different type of analysis that the Food and Drug Administration has promised to perform on VAERS data.

“The notion that the CDC did not realize we were asking about PRRs but only data mining in general is simply not credible, since our FOIA request specifically mentioned PRRs and their response also mentioned that they did not do PRRs. They did not say ‘data mining in general,’” Josh Guetzkow, a senior lecturer at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem who has been working with Children’s Health Defense, told The Epoch Times via email.

“There is also no credible reason why they waited until March 31, 2022, to calculate PRRs, unless it was in response to our initial FOIA filed in December 2021, which was rejected on March 31, 2022—the same day they say they began their calculations. It means the CDC was not analyzing VAERS for early warning safety signals for well over a year after the vaccination campaign began—which still counts as a significant failure,” he added.

The CDC has also not released the results of the PRRs. “PRR results were generally consistent with EB data mining, revealing no additional unexpected safety signals. Given it is a more robust data mining technique, CDC will continue relying upon EB data mining at this time,” the agency spokeswoman said.

The FDA has told The Epoch Times it conducted EB data mining but the agency has declined to share the results.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley was appointed by former President Donald Trump in 2019 and remains in office under Joe Biden.

In a recently published excerpt from her forthcoming book, “The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021,” New Yorker writer Susan Glasser recounts Milley’s service during the Trump administration.

Glasser portrays Milley as a dedicated military officer with a strong set of values who loathed his unstable and temperamental boss. But despite his commander in chief’s “fits of rage, late-night Twitter storms” and “abrupt dismissals,” Milley was determined not to resign for the good of his country. So altruistic.

There was that one time, however, when Milley was so utterly humiliated by Trump that he spent days in his Pentagon office, writing and rewriting a letter of resignation.

The occasion came during the June 2020 George Floyd riots. Members of Black Lives Matter had tried, but fortunately failed, to burn down St. John’s Church in Washington, D.C.’s Lafayette Square. Trump, accompanied by several advisers and Cabinet members, famously walked to the church and was photographed as he held up a Bible. Milley was among that group.

The legacy media claimed that a crowd of BLM protesters had been “violently” cleared from Lafayette Square by the U.S. Park Police for the sole purpose of this photo-op. One year later, the inspector general of the Interior Department released a report stating that the USPP had cleared the park to allow fencing to be installed “in response to destruction of property and injury to officers.”

In her new book, of course, Glasser tells readers, “Most of the demonstrations had been peaceful, but there were also eruptions of looting, street violence, and arson, including a small fire in St. John’s Church, across from the White House.”

Anyway, because members of the military are expected to remain apolitical and he had participated in a “political event,” Milley was filled with remorse.

During a pre-recorded commencement address to the graduating class of the National Defense University, Milley apologized. He said, “I should never have been there.”

“As senior leaders, everything you do will be closely watched, and I am not immune, as many of you saw the result of that photograph of me at Lafayette Square last week,” he told the graduates.

“I should not have been there. My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics. As a commissioned, uniformed officer, it was a mistake that I have learned from and I sincerely hope we all can learn from it.”

Upon additional reflection, Milley penned his letter of resignation, which is included in Glasser’s excerpt.

It is a boastful, four-paragraph letter written by a disgruntled subordinate with little sense of self-awareness. He tells the president he’s done some “deep soul-searching” and “can no longer faithfully support and execute your orders.”

Woke Gen. Milley Quietly Revises Wildly Incorrect Prediction He Gave Congress in February

“It is my belief that you were doing great and irreparable harm to my country,” he begins. “I believe that you have made a concerted effort over time to politicize the United States military. I thought that I could change that. I’ve come to the realization that I cannot, and I need to step aside and let someone else try to do that.”

Milley continues, “You are using the military to create fear in the minds of the people — and we are trying to protect the American people. I cannot stand idly by and participate in that attack, verbally or otherwise, on the American people.

“The American people trust their military and they trust us to protect them against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and our military will do just that. We will not turn our back on the American people.”

“I swore an oath to the Constitution of the United States and embodied within that Constitution is the idea that says that all men and women are created equal,” Milley writes. He expands upon his own acceptance of all people no matter their race, religion or sexual orientation, then moves on to his patriotism. The implication is, of course, that Trump is racist, bigoted and doesn’t love America.

“Lastly it is my deeply held belief that you’re ruining the international order, and causing significant damage to our country overseas, that was fought for so hard by the Greatest Generation that they instituted in 1945. Between 1914 and 1945, 150 million people were slaughtered in the conduct of war. They were slaughtered because of tyrannies and dictatorships.

“That generation, like every generation, has fought against that, has fought against fascism, has fought against Nazism, has fought against extremism. It’s now obvious to me that you don’t understand that world order.

“You don’t understand what the war was all about. In fact, you subscribe to many of the principles that we fought against. And I cannot be a party to that. It is with deep regret that I hereby submit my letter of resignation.”

Is he calling Trump a fascist? A Nazi? Sounds like it. If Milley thinks Trump damaged America’s reputation, we have to wonder how he feels about Biden’s blunders.

Unfortunately, he never submitted the letter to Trump.

Glasser writes, “Milley had finally come to a decision. He would not quit. ‘F*** that s***,’ he told his staff. ‘I’ll just fight him.’ The challenge, as he saw it, was to stop Trump from doing any more damage.”

Trump would have been better off if this coward had resigned. Among other allegations, Milley reportedly told his Chinese counterpart he would alert him if Trump were to plan any surprise attacks.

“Gen. Milley needs to be called in TODAY and asked under polygraph what he said to China.”

Sen. @RandPaul tells me why he believes Milley’s alleged actions could have “caused an accidental war.” pic.twitter.com/81YadLJbbv

— Glenn Beck (@glennbeck) September 15, 2021

I would remind Milley of a certain oath he took a long time ago. He solemnly swore to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to bear true faith and allegiance to the same.

The BLM riots in the summer of 2020 were not peaceful. They were responsible for over $1 billion in property damage. They caused injury and even deaths. It’s one thing to oppose racism and quite another to excuse crime in our cities.

Either you’re for the rule of law and against terrorism, or you’re not.

Standing up for the rule of law and against terrorism isn’t politics, Gen. Milley. It’s your job.

A coalition of 19 Republican attorneys general says BlackRock CEO Larry Fink prioritizes left-wing political initiatives over shareholder returns and is jeopardizing the retirement of middle class workers with pensions.

Fink’s embrace of environmental, social, and governance investment policies, known as ESG, potentially runs afoul of several laws, the AGs charge in a letter sent to Fink. Instead of managing state pension funds and finding the best returns on investment, the AGs write, BlackRock uses “citizens’ assets to pressure companies to comply with international agreements” such as various climate initiatives.

Republicans are increasingly targeting asset managers such as BlackRock over their pro-ESG policies. They allege that these asset managers are transforming into backdoor channels for liberals to implement policies outside of the legislative process and leaving aside their principle, legal duty: maximizing returns for shareholders.

Critics of ESG say the policies are often arbitrary and can hurt a company’s bottom line. Moreover, ESG metrics can be gamed. Many companies, such as Tesla, receive a high ESG score under one metric while they rank poorly on another.

“Rather than being a spectator betting on the game, BlackRock appears to have put on a quarterback jersey and actively taken the field,” the AGs write. “As a firm, Blackrock has committed to implementing an ESG engagement and voting strategy across all assets under management.”

BlackRock manages an estimated $10 trillion in assets, a number larger than many first-world economies. Billions of those dollars come from U.S. pension funds. That extraordinary amount of money also gives billionaire Fink, a large donor to Democratic Party candidates and causes, tremendous influence over companies BlackRock invests in. Should Blackrock pull investments from a company over its climate or racial policies, two categories often included in ESG metrics, the company’s stock price would plummet.

The AGs assert that when BlackRock engages with companies over climate practices, it violates the states’ law about maximizing financial returns. For example, if BlackRock representatives pressure a company CEO to adopt a more expensive way to source energy in order to meet climate goals, that company may post lower profits. That drop in profits may translate to a lower stock price and harm pension funds invested in that company.

BlackRock has emerged as an explicit leader in the push “to retire fossil fuels,” the AGs allege. Part of that may be purely ideological or because of a desire to “attract investment from European or left-wing pension funds,” the AGs add. Regardless of motivation, BlackRock is obligated per law to only seek the best financial return on their investments.

Pressure from asset managers such as BlackRock appears effective. Sixty percent of respondents to a Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas survey last year said “investor pressure” was the number one reason that oil companies such as Exxon are not expanding operations.

The Biden administration recently picked BlackRock Investment Institute chairman Thomas Donilon to co-chair the Foreign Affairs Policy Board. During his time at the BlackRock Investment Institute, Donilon called on Americans to triple their investments in China, the world’s largest polluter.

West Virginia announced last month that it would no longer do business with Wall Street firms that boycott the fossil fuel industry. One of those firms included BlackRock. The ban will cost the firms $18 billion a year, according to the state’s treasury office.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Matt Cartwright, who has a history of tax delinquency, endorses bill that more than doubles agency’s size

Congressman Matt Cartwright has a history of tax delinquency. That isn’t stopping the Pennsylvania Democrat from backing a plan that would sic an army of nearly 90,000 new IRS agents on the American people.

Cartwright last year owed $436.63 in penalties and interest that stemmed from late property tax payments on his Washington, D.C., condo, the Washington Free Beacon reported last week. The incident was not his first tax-related mishap—from 2013 to 2018, the Democrat racked up thousands of dollars in penalties and interest related to his tax delinquencies. Still, Cartwright on Monday announced his support for the Inflation Reduction Act, Democrats’ $430 billion spending bill that does little to fight inflation and gives the IRS $80 billion to hire up to 87,000 additional employees.

Cartwright’s history of tax delinquency and subsequent support for the bill could haunt the congressman as he faces a difficult reelection bid against GOP challenger Jim Bognet. Cartwright trails the Republican by 1 point with 9 percent of voters undecided, internal polling obtained by the Free Beacon shows. 

Cartwright will also have to overcome Joe Biden’s historic unpopularity, which has even extended to the president’s hometown of Scranton. In Cartwright’s eighth district, which includes Scranton, just 38 percent of voters approve of Biden, compared with 60 percent who disapprove, the Free Beacon revealed Wednesday. Despite Biden’s hometown woes, Cartwright is standing by the president—unlike some of his House Democratic colleagues, the congressman has publicly backed Biden to run for reelection in 2024. Cartwright was also a staunch Biden supporter during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, having said in 2019 that he was “honored” to endorse his “friend, northeastern PA hometown boy, Joe Biden for president.”

Cartwright did not return a request for comment. His Monday statement voicing support for Democrats’ latest spending bill did not include a comment on its IRS-related provisions. Should that bill pass the House, the IRS will receive $80 billion to hire as many as 87,000 additional employees. The hiring spree would more than double the size of the agency’s workforce, making the IRS larger than the Pentagon, State Department, FBI, and Border Patrol combined, the Free Beacon reported. Bognet has railed against the proposal, arguing that the Inflation Reduction Act should instead be called the “Audit America Act.”

“With that many new IRS agents, every small business can expect to be audited,” Bognet said Monday. “We must stop this spending spree, and we must stop this auditing spree.”

Beyond the Cartwright-backed bill’s proposed IRS expansion, even liberal economists don’t believe the $430 billion Inflation Reduction Act will reduce inflation. Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi, whom Biden himself routinely cites, said in a new report that the legislation will cause no change in inflation until the third quarter of 2023, when Americans can expect to enjoy a .01 percent decrease.

Cartwright is nevertheless touting the bill as a win for Democrats. In his Monday statement, he called the bill “landmark legislation” that “the American people have been waiting for.”

Cartwright’s race against Bognet is not his first. The Democrat narrowly defeated Bognet by roughly 3 points in 2020, a result that marked the tightest reelection bid of his career. Bognet has thus far raised $1.2 million to Cartwright’s $3.5 million.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

The Chinese regime commits and enables trafficking in persons, primarily by subjecting religious and ethnic minorities to forced labor, according to the U.S. Department of State’s latest Trafficking in Persons Report.

Forced labor in China is so prevalent—that it amounts to a “government policy or pattern”—conducted by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials at all levels, the report stated.

Chinese citizens have further reportedly suffered forced labor at Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, also known as “One Belt, One Road”) projects abroad due to the regime’s neglect to supervise recruitment and labor conditions, the report added.

During the reported period—from April 2021 to March 2022—China showed indicators of state-sanctioned forced labor, did not meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking in persons, and did not make serious efforts to fight it, causing the country to rank among the lowest tier of nations, the State Department said in the report. 

Forced Labor in Detention Centers

State-sponsored forced labor occurs mainly under the CCP’s “mass detention and political indoctrination” campaign targeted against Uyghurs and other Muslim or Turkic minorities in China’s Xinjiang region, according to the State Department.

Victims include Tibetans, Christians, and members of other suppressed ethnic and religious minorities, such as Falun Gong adherents.

The CCP “subjugate[s] and exploit[s] minority populations in forced labor in internment camps under the pretext of combating violent extremism and other social ills,” the report stated. 

“Authorities continued to amplify the magnitude of trafficking crimes in the country and abroad, including by perpetrating genocide,” it added. 

An independent people’s tribunal, known as the Uyghur Tribunal, ruled in December 2021 that the Chinese regime had committed genocide against ethnic Muslims in Xinjiang—through an array of repressive acts that included mass internment, family separation, sterilizations, and forced labor.

The United Nations estimates that more than 1 million Uyghurs have been detained in internment camps in Xinjiang. 

Such internment camps are “designed to erase ethnic and religious identities under the pretext of ‘deradicalization,’” according to the State Department.

Detainees may be subject to forced labor within internment camps or at near or external factories. The goods produced range from garments to consumer electronics, face masks, automotive components, and holiday decorations, among many others.

Domestic companies are incentivized to open factories near internment camps through tax cuts and subsidies, as well as to take in transferred detainees from other provinces, as stated in the report.

Local authorities are also incentivized to conduct forced labor, as they are awarded funds “for each inmate forced to work in these sites at a fraction of minimum wage or without any compensation,” the report read. 

Local officials are also encouraged to meet detention quotas to keep the system functioning. They achieve this by issuing arbitrary arrests and accusing individuals of false criminal offenses or administrative violations—such as violating birth regulations. This data was extracted from the regime’s official documents, according to the State Department.

Non-interned Forced Labor

Besides being subject to forced labor under detention, victims are coerced into forced labor through threats of interment. They are also transferred to manufacturing sites in other provinces under “poverty alleviation” programs.

China “has reportedly placed 2.6 million members of minority communities in agricultural and manufacturing jobs within Xinjiang and across the country through state-sponsored ‘surplus labor’ and ‘labor transfer’ initiatives featuring overt forced labor indicators,” the report stated. 

“The government has transported at least 80,000 of these individuals to other provinces for forced labor under the guise of poverty alleviation and industrial aid programs,” it added. 

Trafficking in Persons Linked to China’s BRI

The Chinese regime has reportedly omitted to oversee BRI projects’ recruitment channels, labor conditions, and contracts, which resulted in Chinese citizens being deceived into moving abroad, where they were subjected to forced labor and other abuses, according to the report.

The BRI—a tool for the CCP’s global expansion—finances enormous loans to developing nations for building infrastructure. Chinese state-owned banks provide the countries with loans that experts say open the nations to the risk of being saddled with unsustainable debt levels. 

The loans are then used to pay Chinese companies to build infrastructure, including the development of roads, ports, power plants, mines, telecommunications, or banking institutions. The ostentatious projects have been described as part of so-called debt-trap diplomacy since the often-unpayable loans will force the nations to repay China with goods or land.

Chinese citizens employed in BRI projects abroad have suffered forced labor at worksites funded totally or partially by Beijing, Chinese companies, or Chinese nationals, said the State Department.

Chinese and “host country nationals employed in some BRI construction projects, mining operations, and factories in African, European, Middle Eastern, Asian, Pacific, Latin American, and Caribbean countries experience deceptive recruitment into debt bondage, arbitrary wage garnishing or withholding, contract irregularities, confiscation of travel and identity documentation, forced overtime, and resignation penalties,” the report read.

Such was the case of Li Wei and Mao Chen, two Chinese citizens recruited for a rural BRI project in Indonesia, which included flights, housing, food, and wages. However, once at the smelting plant, their passports were seized, and they were subject to forced labor, working 16 hours a day without a salary, according to the report. They were accommodated in small quarters, surveilled by armed guards.

A subcontractor later took over their contracts, but their labor conditions did not change. While Li escaped the facility, Mao was still subjected to forced labor. 

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

China and Russia are the clear winners of the the carbon-reducing provisions in the Democrats’ latest spending bill that aim to cut fossil fuel emissions by 40 percent by 2030, according to former President Donald Trump’s erstwhile economic adviser.

Stephen Moore, a Trump-era adviser and senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told NTD in a recent interview that the climate-related provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act—now en route to final House approval—would hamstring American energy production and benefit adversaries.

“The two big winners from this bill clearly are Russia and China,” Moore said, adding that he thinks the bill is not just bad for the U.S. economy but it’s “really bad for national security to give up our energy dominance.”

Moore pointed out that China—which is responsible for around five times more carbon emissions than the United States—is now building dozens of massive coal plants and “obviously, they don’t care about climate change.”

As a major exporter of fossil fuels, Russia also stands to gain from efforts to accelerate curbs on U.S. carbon emissions as that would keep crude prices elevated and bolster Russia’s revenue stream, Moore said.

The economist argued that the Biden administration has “basically declared a war on our fossil fuels,” while pointing to Germany’s “experiment” of going all-in on clean energy a decade or so ago that he said “basically led to a complete economic collapse.”

“Let’s not follow in their footsteps,” he said.

Markets or Government Subsidies?

The Inflation Reduction Act includes $369 billion in climate and energy provisions, with measures like tax credits for buying electric vehicles, making homes more energy efficient, and installing residential solar panels and battery systems.

The measure also reinstates the superfund tax on crude and imported oil, which could lead to higher energy bills for households, and it includes a fee of up to $1,500 per ton for methane emissions.

Overall, the bill is set to more than triple power production from wind, solar, and energy storage capacity installations, according to an analysis from the American Clean Power Association (ACP).

“More simply, it means that roughly 40 percent of the country’s electricity will come from wind, solar, and energy storage by 2030,” ACP said in the analysis, which projects that the Inflation Reduction Act will, overall, deliver an estimated 525 to 550 gigawatts of new non-fossil fuel power by the end of the decade, up from the current 211 gigawatts.

The bill is also expected to generate over $900 billion in economic activity via the construction of clean energy projects between now and 2030, according to the association.

Moore said that he doesn’t object to renewable sources of energy but argued that market forces rather than government subsidies should be their key driver.

“We didn’t have the government subsidize Henry Ford when he invented cars,” Moore said. “We didn’t have the the federal government subsidize Standard Oil when it started making … gas plentiful and cheap for everyone. So why do we need to have the government throw hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars in this industry?”

Moore also argued that, contrary to what its name implies, the bill won’t reduce inflation.

Inflation Reduction?

The Inflation Reduction Act “will increase inflation,” Moore said, adding that, “the reason we have 9 percent inflation today is because of the massive Biden spending spree.”

“There’s two things you don’t want to do when you have massive inflation. You don’t want to spend more government money. And when you’re in a recession, you don’t want to raise taxes. This bill makes both those mistakes,” he said.

Some disagree with Moore about the bill’s impact on inflation.

Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said in an Aug. 9 interview in The Harvard Gazette that “the tendency of this bill will be to reduce inflation because over time it reduces demand by bringing down budget deficits.”

Summers also argued that it would bolster the supply of key commodities in the energy sector, helping push down prices.

Other backers of the bill, like Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), say the government subsidies for clean energy will have a knock-on effect and boost private investment in the sector and so accelerate cutting carbon emissions.

“This is going to be more massive than people realize,” Khanna told Politico in a recent interview.

“If the government invests $300 billion in solar, wind, batteries, and heat pumps, that has the potential to unlock trillions of dollars in private sector investment in climate,” he added.

Moore argued that the bill is less about the environment and more about money.

“This is a massive, now trillion-dollar, industry. This is about money, folks, this doesn’t have anything to do about cleaning up the environment or keeping our environment safe,” he said.

“This is massive numbers of huge companies and huge investors. They’re going to get very, very rich off of these hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidies,” Moore added.

The American Petroleum Institute (API), a fossil fuels industry group, identified six problematic provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act that it argued would undermine the industry’s ability to promote energy security for American consumers.

Besides the superfund tax and methane emission fees, the API also noted additional costs imposed on energy companies with the bill’s minimum book tax provisions and increased rental fees on onshore leases.

The group also panned the bill’s omitting of comprehensive permitting reform, which API believes is key for bolstering domestic energy production, lowering costs for consumers, and helping the country meet its emission objectives.

“Glaringly absent in the bill is permitting reform, which is required for America’s infrastructure needs and to bolster critical oil, natural gas, and renewable supplies to meet our current and future energy demand,” said Mike Sommers, API president and CEO, in a statement.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Over two years of pandemic oversight, Johnson said he’s witnessed money being put before public health

From the early days of the pandemic, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) has been trying to hold U.S. public health agencies accountable on many issues, including why the agencies censored early treatment options for COVID-19, pushed vaccine mandates, and demonstrated a lack of integrity and transparency involving the vaccine data and reporting.

After conducting two years of oversight, Johnson said that the U.S. medical system has been compromised by money from Big Pharma.

“We have a corrupt medical system in this country,” Johnson said in a recent interview for NTD’s “Capitol Report” program. “From the pharmaceutical companies down to the federal health agencies through to the research centers and medical journals. It should concern every American.”

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Agencies including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration have not freely provided the public with accurate data about the vaccine’s origin, efficacy, and adverse effects, said Johnson, and he and others conducting oversight have had to rely heavily on other countries’ data.

“We’ve had to look to either Israel or Public Health England, Public Health Scotland. Now they’re shutting down their information streams as well,” he said. “One of my biggest concerns is our federal health agencies have not been honest. They’ve not been transparent.”

He called what the CDC is doing “willful ignorance.”

Public Health Agencies Contradicting Themselves

Johnson sent a letter to CDC Director Rochelle Walensky in late July, demanding answers as to why there have been conflicting statements about the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

The Epoch Times reported that Dr. John Su, who heads the CDC’s Immunization and Safety Office, claimed that the CDC has been performing Proportional Reporting Ratio analyses on data from VAERS since February 2021. The CDC, however, told the nonprofit Children’s Health Defense that it not only did not conduct the analyses but that the method was outside of the agency’s purview.

“CDC’s assertion and Dr. Su’s statement cannot both be true,” Johnson said in the letter.

“The American people deserve the truth and you have not been providing it. That is why I, together with millions of Americans, have completely lost faith in the CDC and other federal health agencies. It is time to start regaining their confidence and your agency’s integrity by coming clean, being transparent, and telling the truth,” the letter states (pdf).

“It’s all BS,” Johnson said in the interview. “As soon as the safety signals started screaming at them through the VAER system, what do they do? They denigrated the VAER system.”

The CDC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

During the NTD interview, Johnson said he believes the health agencies don’t want to provide truthful information.

“I think, among many disappointments, one of the biggest disappointments in terms of the federal health agencies is they’re just not giving us the information, and I don’t think they really want to,” he said.

From the get-go, the vaccine mandates were “pointless, completely idiotic, and totally destructive,” Johnson said, adding that the agencies’ own data has long confirmed that vaccines do not prevent transmission or reoccurring infection.

Johnson implied that Big Pharma has had a role in pushing the vaccine mandates out of its own self-interest.

“I’ve always been supportive of the pharmaceutical industry,” because the drug companies need billions of dollars to develop new drugs that are important for improving lives, said Johnson. “But now I’ve just witnessed the capture of U.S. regulatory agencies by Big Pharma.”

Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Former President Donald Trump released a dramatic political video, hours after the FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, in which he laments the “declining” state of America and says it’s “time to start talking about greatness for our country again.”

“We are a nation in decline … We are a nation that in many ways has become a joke,” says Trump over the ominous sounds of thunder and rain in the nearly four-minute video in which he lists the apparent failures of the Biden administration, before promising, “Soon we will have greatness again.”

Trump, who is expected to announce that he will run again for president in 2024, released the video on his Truth Social platform late Tuesday.

In the video, he says that America has the “highest inflation in over 40 years” and “highest energy cost in its history.” He adds that in the two years since Joe Biden took office, America has lost its energy independence and dominance.

“We are a nation that is begging Venezuela and Saudi Arabia for oil,” Trump says. “We are a nation that surrendered in Afghanistan, leaving behind dead soldiers and American citizens and $85 billion worth of the finest military equipment in the world.”

Trump accuses the Biden administration of allowing “Russia to devastate a country, Ukraine, killing hundreds of thousands,” and suggests that “it will only get worse.”

‘Weaponization of the Justice System’

“We are a nation that has weaponized its law enforcement against the opposing political party like never before. We’ve never seen anything like this,” Trump says in his video.

Late on Monday, Trump announced that the FBI was raiding his Palm Beach estate, Mar-a-Lago, calling it evidence of “prosecutorial misconduct” and a “weaponization of the Justice System.”

The former president said the raid wasn’t announced and that it was motivated because Democrats do not want him to run again for president in 2024.

“They detest Donald Trump, not just on the Democrat side but the general establishment, because he’s not one of them. Because he doesn’t play their game,” his daughter-in-law Lara Trump told Fox News on Tuesday.

“They are terrified he’s going to announce any day that he’s running for president in 2024. And this is a very convenient way to just throw a little more mud on Donald Trump.”

America ‘No Longer Respected’

In his video, Trump also cites the legacy media as contributing to what he says is a nation in decline, saying America “no longer has a free and fair press. Fake news is about all you get.”

Traditionally, the media acts as a guardian of the public interest and a watchdog on government activities. But Trump has in the past accused legacy outlets of being partisan and colluding with “radical left Democrats … to hide the real facts.”

“We are a nation that is allowing Iran to build a massive nuclear weapon and China to use the trillions and trillions of dollars it’s taken from the United States to build a military to rival our own,” Trump says in the video.

“We are a nation that over the past years is no longer respected or listened to all around the world. We are a nation that is hostile to liberty and freedom and faith.

“We are a nation whose economy is floundering, whose stores are not stocked, whose deliveries are not coming, and whose educational system is ranked at the bottom of every list,” he says.

“We are a nation that in many ways has become a joke,” says Trump. “But soon we will have greatness again.”

‘Soon We Will Have Greatness Again’

Trump’s political video starts in black and white with only the sounds of rain and thunder underscoring it. This sequence features video representative of the Biden administration’s apparent failures, including oil fields, the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

However, the last third of the video becomes colorized and the musical score uplifting as Trump shifts to speak about his promise of America having “greatness again.”

“It was hard-working patriots like you who built this country. And it is hard-working patriots like you who are going to save our country,” Trumps says in his video.

“There is no mountain we cannot climb. There is no summit we cannot reach. There is no challenge we cannot meet. There is no victory we cannot have.

“We will not bend. We will not break. We will not yield ever, ever, ever. We will never give in, we will never give up, and we will never ever back down. We will never let you down.

“As long as we are confident and united the tyrants we’re fighting do not stand even a little chance. Because we are Americans and Americans kneel to God and God alone. And it is time to start talking about greatness for our country again,” he says.

The video ends on a black screen with the words, “The best is yet to come.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

House members will be able to vote by proxy until the end of September, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) announced today, citing the COVID-19 pandemic even as cases, hospitalizations, and deaths continue to trend downward.

Proxy voting, which means that one member of the House can cast a vote on behalf on an absent member, started in May 2020, and Pelosi has extended it multiple times, citing “the public health emergency due to the novel coronavirus.” The proxy-voting period would have ended Aug. 12 had Pelosi not extended it to Sept. 26.

The pandemic did not stop Democratic users of the proxy-voting system from racking up travel expenses for their reelection campaigns. Pelosi’s fellow California Democrat, Rep. Eric Swalwell, last year voted by proxy 141 times while spending $45,000 at luxury hotels. Hawaii Democratic representative Kai Kahele voted in-person only 5 times between January and April, proxy-voting 120 times. Kansas Democratic representative Sharice Davids  cited “the ongoing public health emergency” to justify skipping in-person voting as she stayed in $1,000-per-night hotels for fundraisers.

The Senate has required in-person voting throughout the pandemic. Senate Democrats last week threw out COVID safety protocols to ensure the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) has promised to end proxy voting if Republicans win control of the House in November. McCarthy said in a statement last year that proxy voting is unconstitutional.

“Although the Constitution allows Congress to write its own rules, those rules cannot violate the Constitution itself, including the requirement to actually assemble in person,” McCarthy said.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other GOP leaders have responded to an FBI search of the 45th President’s Florida Mar-a-Lago home after former president Donald Trump said it was “currently under siege, raided, and occupied” on Aug. 8.

Decrying the alleged raid in a post on his social media app, Truth Social, Trump said, “these are dark times for our Nation.”

“After working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate,” he said.

Taking to Twitter following Trump’s post, Republican leaders condemned the alleged raid, with several warning that such a move could set a dangerous precedent, while others accused the Biden administration of weaponizing the Justice Department for political purposes.

Pompeo, the former secretary of state under Trump, said that executing a warrant against a former president of the United States was a “dangerous” precedent to set.

“The apparent political weaponization of DOJ/FBI is shameful. AG must explain why 250 yrs of practice was upended with this raid,” Pompeo wrote. “I served on Benghazi Com where we proved Hilliary (sic) possessed classified info. We didn’t raid her home.”

The raid is mostly likely connected to an investigation regarding Trump’s handling of official papers. His lawyer, Christina Bobb, confirmed with CNN on Monday night that the FBI had seized documents during their search at his Mar-a-Lago home.

The FBI is directed by Christopher Wray who was appointed by Trump.

‘Banana Republic’

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said the raid of Trump’s home represents “another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the Regime’s political opponents,” while noting that people like Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden “get treated with kid gloves.”

Hunter Biden is currently under federal investigation for alleged tax fraud, lobbying crimes, and money laundering in a probe dating back to as early as 2018.

“Now the Regime is getting another 87k IRS agents to wield against its adversaries? Banana Republic,” DeSantis said.

Elsewhere, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) noted on Twitter that the midterm elections aren’t far off. Trump has hinted that he will run for president again in 2024, and teased last week that he could make an official announcement soon, either before or after the November elections.

“Time will tell regarding this most recent investigation. However, launching such an investigation of a former President this close to an election is beyond problematic,” Graham wrote.

Trump Family Reacts to FBI Raid of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) questioned why the FBI had declined to raid the homes of previous administrations, including the Clintons and Obama.

“Bill and Hillary Clinton took $28,000 worth of furnishings from the White House. Obama violated the Presidential Records Act. Why did the FBI not raid their houses? This is a political witch hunt to take down President Trump,” the GOP lawmaker said.

Kevin McCarthy, the Republican minority leader in the House, said in a statement that the justice department had reached “an intolerable state of weaponized politicization” and vowed that, when Republicans take back the House, they will “conduct immediate oversight of the department, follow the facts and leave no stone unturned.”

“Attorney General Garland: preserve your documents and clear your calendar,” he added.

‘Start With Hunter Biden’s Laptop’

Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.) also said on Twitter that the FBI raid on Trump’s home was “unprecedented and highly concerning,” and that “if the FBI is looking for classified info or incriminating evidence, they should start with Hunter Biden’s laptop.” He added the hashtag “#Demdoublestandard.”

Meanwhile, Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, said: “Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Countless times we have examples of Democrats flouting the law and abusing power with no recourse.”

“Democrats continually weaponize the bureaucracy against Republicans. This raid is outrageous. This abuse of power must stop and the only way to do that is to elect Republicans in November,” McDaniel added.

The FBI has declined to comment to The Epoch Times on the alleged raid.

While GOP lawmakers condemned the move, the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump PAC, alleged in a statement that the raid is a “positive sign that Donald Trump may be brought to justice for the myriad of criminal offenses committed by him and his family while President.”

“Never before has a former President’s home been raided in a criminal probe. While this search warrant is seemingly for the mishandling of classified material, it is a serious crime that must be fully investigated,” the group said, adding that the raid is the “first step for law enforcement, or Congress, of holding Donald Trump accountable for the orchestration of a conspiracy to remain in power that resulted in the January 6th attack on our nation’s capital.”

Trump expressed anger at the move, alleging in his Monday statement that it was part of the “political persecution” that has been targeting him now for years “with the now fully debunked Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, Impeachment Hoax #1, Impeachment Hoax #2, and so much more, it just never ends. It is political targeting at the highest level!” he wrote.

“Such an assault could only take place in broken, Third-World Countries,” Trump added. “Sadly, America has now become one of those countries, corrupt at a level not seen before.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Cryin’ Brian Schatz

A Democratic senator was overcome with emotion on Sunday as the Senate prepared to pass legislation that would dramatically expand the IRS and permanently solve so-called climate change, the Washington Post reports:

Even before the vote was final, Democratic lawmakers on the chamber floor rejoiced and cheered, shaking hands and hugging, as their Republican counterparts cast their votes and headed for the exits for a month-long summer break. Manchin made a beeline for Schumer’s desk, as the two men leaned their heads together and clasped their hands. Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), a proponent of climate change provisions, broke into tears.

Schatz praised the passage of what some are calling the “IRS Expansion” bill as a “historic victory for the United States and the planet.” The legislation, which is expected to pass the House later this week, solves climate change by giving Americans earning $300,000 a year tax credits to buy an $80,000 electric SUV for just $72,500. It also allocates $10 million to combat “racial equity issues” within the Department of Agriculture.

Cryin’ Brian is best known for supporting colonialism and exploiting indigenous land; he claims to “represent” Hawaii despite being a white man born in Michigan to a Canadian doctor.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

‘I don’t want to answer that question because we have not—that’s not—yeah, I don’t want to answer that question,’ Rep. Cori Bush (D.) told reporters

Joe Biden, whose average approval rating sits at just 39.6 percent, insists Democratic voters want him to seek reelection in 2024. Several members of Biden’s own party, however, are refusing to back the 79-year-old president.

“I don’t want to answer that question because we have not—that’s not—yeah, I don’t want to answer that question,” Rep. Cori Bush (D., Mo.) told reporters last month when asked whether she would back Biden in the next presidential election.

Source: The Washington Free Beacon

In June, Toyota warned buyers of its bZ4X electric SUV not to drive their vehicles for fear the wheels could fall off. Toyota said at the time the cause was a mystery, but it would look into the glitch.

Toyota has not yet found a solution to the problem and is offering to buy back the SUV from its owners, according to CNN.

“We know that our customers have many choices when it comes to purchasing a vehicle. We appreciate their loyalty and are supporting them through this recall,” Toyota said in a statement, according to The Verge. “However, if a customer does not want to proceed with the provided options, we will offer to repurchase their bZ4X.”

Plan B for owners who want to keep a vehicle they may never be able to drive is to have free use of another Toyota vehicle until such time as Toyota figures out what went wrong and how to fix it.

Toyota offers to buy back recalled bZ4X fully electric SUV from customers | A headline writer’s dream. Toyota’s first full #EV recalled and a buyback offer literally because the wheels keep falling off! How can a car maker get something so basic, so wrong? https://t.co/lDJo4u43Zr pic.twitter.com/n9lcYPTgIo

— Martyn Dews (@Yorkie71) August 8, 2022

As part of that deal, Toyota will pay $5,000 toward an owner’s car payments or as a partial refund. Toyota also said that it will extend the factory warranty on the bZ4X by whatever length of time it becomes before an owner gets her or his vehicle back, according to CNN.

The offer for those who do not sell their vehicle back also includes free EV charging once the owners get the vehicle back and the cost of gasoline for their loaner, according to Autoweek.

It was unclear in the announcement how owners of the vehicle, whose price starts at $43,215, would handle dealer markups, according to Car and Driver.

In June, the company announced that all 2,700 of its new electric bZ4X SUVs were a danger to their drivers, with only 260 to date having been delivered in the United States.

“After low-mileage use, all of the hub bolts on the wheel can loosen to the point where the wheel can detach from the vehicle,” Toyota said in a June 23 statement on its website.

“If a wheel detaches from the vehicle while driving, it could result in a loss of vehicle control, increasing the risk of a crash,” the company said. “The cause of the issue and the driving patterns under which this issue could occur are still under investigation. No one should drive these vehicles until the remedy is performed,” Toyota said.

“No remedy is available at this time,” Toyota said in its June release.

Toyota’s somehow gone from “The best built cars in the world” to “The hub bolts loosen which may cause a wheel to fall off, & almost two months later we don’t know how to fix it”https://t.co/wOJjNc44pW

— Thomas McGuire (@thommcg1980) August 7, 2022

Related:

E-Scooter/Bike Battery Sparks Apartment Blaze, Kills Woman and Child, Leaves Father in Critical Condition

In a column for Bloomberg, Anjani Trivedi, who covers industrial companies in Asia, wrote, “If that’s the level of quality and safety traditional auto giants are willing to commit to, then investors and regulators should increase their scrutiny.”

The bZ4X debuted in Japan in June, according to CNBC.

The company’s president, Akio Toyoda, said in December that Toyota planned “to roll out 30 BEV models by 2030.”

“Toyota has been under pressure to up its game in EVs, so will be very disappointed that a recall has been necessary on its first mass-market electric cars,” David Leggett, automotive editor at GlobalData, told CNBC.

SURPRISE! THE LEFT STILL CAN’T MEME.

Dark Brandon’ is the Biden White House’s cringetastic effort to win back the “Let’s Go Brandon” meme that haunted the perennially COVID-hit President through late 2021 and early 2022. The efforts, shared by taxpayer-funded White House staff, combines an almost year-late rebuttal to the Brandon memes with the Byronic aethestic of the well established “Dark MAGA” movement.

One more problem: it’s extremely ‘Third Reich‘ in nature.

That’s right. On the day the media wants us to buy the idea that Donald Trump demanded his Generals behaved like Nazis, the current White House is actually promoting Nazi memes to hype its passage of the Inflation Recovery Act (IRA). The timing by the White House isn’t bad, to be honest, since the IRA (another irony not lost on us) does in fact empower the U.S. government with a Stormtrooper-style IRS to snoop through your taxes (all at your expense, of course).

But there’s more to this story than the White House using the Reichsadler or Parteiadler in its memes. 

The first thing to note is that this “Dark Brandon” stuff is actually being promoted by corporate media outlets. Check out Slate’s take, which concludes: “If he can muster a smidge of momentum from the al-Zawahiri assassination by pulling up the cowl of Dark Brandon, then that is surely better than whatever he’s got going right now. After all, Joe Biden’s approval rating is already cresting back toward 40 percent. Dark Brandon strikes again!”

MUST READ: REVEALED: CNN, CNBC, AP Met With Chinese Communist Party Propagandists in July.

Sycophantic though Slate may be, the author isn’t wrong. Rasmussen polling has consistently noted that when Biden is away in his basement, hiding from COVID-19, his approval numbers go up. No wonder the White House would rather use cartoon images of him on social media. The left’s pro-Nazi memes are literally more popular than the real Joe Biden.

Mel Magazine – which appears to be some kind of soy-sponsored blog site for, uh, funboys – offers, “Okay, I pledge my soul to Dark Brandon. What’s the worst that could happen? Not like Regular Brandon was doing such a bang-up job. Trust the process. We’re finally winning.”

Sounds totally normal.

Even Rupert Murdoch’s Sun newspaper has been hyping “Dark Brandon,” alongside the Daily Dot, as well as the Independent newspaper (which ironically is hyper-dependent on Russia and Saudi oligarch largesse).

But there’s one more part of the Dark Brandon saga. The cherry on the cake. And that is the aesthetic origin of the entire thing.

“You have this very exaggerated image of a very ‘evil Biden,’ but also, his ability to mobilize these public intellectual zombies in an image is also kind of funny because it has long been China’s accusation of the U.S. government, that the U.S. is using folks like public intellectuals and scholars within China to carry out ‘peaceful evolution,’” Victor Shih, associate professor at UC San Diego, told POLITICO.

That’s right – it comes from China. Specifically, by an artist named Yang Quan, who sought to portray Biden in a negative light in early 2022.

Yes, the pro-Biden memes being disseminated from the hallowed halls of the White House are both Third Reich in nature, and hail from the Chinese Communist Party’s fellow travelers.

MUST READ: EXC: Wuhan Institute of Virology’s ‘Bat Woman’ Is Still Hunting Bats For ‘Recombinant’ Research.

Even when the left tries their very hardest to meme: they end up being utterly, utterly cringe.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has criticized Democrats for pushing their so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which he warns is a “terrible bill.”

The bill will double the size of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). But IRS agents are not designed to go after “billionaires and big corporations,” Cruz said in an interview with Fox News. “They’re designed to come after small businesses and working families across this country … The Democrats are making the IRS bigger than the Pentagon, plus the Department of State, plus the FBI, plus the Border Patrol combined … This is a massive power grab.”

Senate Democrats passed the Inflation Reduction Act on Aug. 7 with a 51 to 50 vote, with Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris casting her tie-breaking vote in favor of her party. The estimated $740 billion package now heads to the House for vote.

Over $300 billion will go to climate change and energy, which is the largest clean energy investment made by a federal government in American history. It also includes tax credits for electric vehicles. The bill institutes a 15 percent minimum tax for corporations making over $1 billion a year.

Cruz warned that the Inflation Reduction Act will “drive up gas prices” and “kill manufacturing jobs.” The bill has “billions in new taxes” charged against U.S. gas and oil production, a decision that will raise gas prices at the pump, he said.

According to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the bill will “reduce” the U.S. budget deficit.

But a recent report by the Congressional Budget Office (CRO) shows that even though the budget deficit will be lowered by $101.5 billion over a 10-year period, the deficit will actually increase by $24.6 billion in the first six years between 2022 and 2027.

Widespread Criticism

Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas on Saturday, former president Donald Trump warned that the Inflation Reduction Act will worsen inflation, which is already at a four-decade high.

Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) will pay a political price for backing the spending bill, he predicted.

In an Aug. 8 Twitter post, Sen. Masha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) called the $80 billion set aside to double the number of IRS agents as practically giving “every American a personalized tax auditor.”

Instead of increasing taxes, the government should be focusing on reducing them, she insisted. The Democrats’ “socialist agenda” will make the life of Tennesseans “more difficult and expensive.”

“It’s a special kind of stupid to raise taxes during both a recession and inflation—that’s called stagflation, which is what we have right now as a result of Biden’s policies,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said on Twitter.

There are also worries about the 15 percent book minimum tax affecting small and mid-sized businesses that make below $1 billion a year.

An analysis of the tax rules by Americans for Tax Reform states that the minimum tax will be applicable to any company that has private equity in its capital structure, since the firm will be considered a subsidiary of the private equity firm for tax purposes.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Republicans say a Democrat-backed bill worth $740 billion includes funding to hire 87,000 new Internal Revenue Service (IRS) agents, which they say will target Americans.

The bill, known as the “Inflation Reduction Act,” was approved in a 51–50 vote as Vice President Kamala Harris served as a tie-breaker for Democrats. A provision includes the hiring of 87,000 agents, a move that was defended by Democrats, who said that the funding would target people who cheat on their taxes.

“Millions of Americans aren’t going to be impacted by that other than getting better service from the IRS having their telephone answer getting the questions they need in order to comply with our tax laws,” Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) told Fox News on Sunday. “The auditing is going to be focused on those of high income, the large corporations, etc.”

Meanwhile, Democrats have pointed to a May report from the Government Accountability Office showing that IRS audits have dropped over the past decade, including audits for the wealthy.

In a recent letter to Congress, IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig said that if an additional $80 billion is given to the agency via the legislation, it would not increase audits for households that earn less than $400,000 per year.

“These resources are absolutely not about increasing audit scrutiny on small businesses or middle-income Americans,” Retting wrote in the letter. “As we have been planning, our investment of these enforcement resources is designed around Treasury’s directive that audit rates will not rise relative to recent years for households making under $400,000.”

Warning

But Republicans warned that the IRS will target middle-class Americans with the tens of thousands of extra agents.

“Seriously, how out of touch do you have to be to brag about forcing a purely partisan bill through the Senate that raises taxes on the middle class, makes inflation worse, lowers after-tax income for Americans at every income level, decreases economic growth during a recession, and sends an army of IRS enforcers after grandma?” Republican National Committee spokesman Tommy Pigott asked, according to the Washington Examiner.

And Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said that those agents will “target Americans with 1.2 million new audits, more than half of which would be for people making less than $75,000 a year.”

“This bill is a give-away to the Democrats’ radical leftist base at the expense of middle-class Americans. It’s a betrayal of Biden’s promise to not raise taxes on the middle class. Make no mistake—this bill will hurt America and hardworking Americans at a time when we can least afford it,” Cruz wrote.

Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, disputed Democrat claims that the new funding will be used to target tax cheats and millionaires.

“My colleagues claim this massive funding boost will allow the IRS to go after millionaires, billionaires and so-called rich ‘tax cheats,’ but the reality is a significant portion raised from their IRS funding bloat would come from taxpayers with income below $400,000,” he said in a statement Sunday.

On Monday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that GOP claims about more IRS audits or changes to the U.S. tax code are false.

“This is just the latest example, again, of those who do nothing to protect tax welfare for the rich at the expense of everything else,” Jean-Pierre told reporters Monday on Air Force One. “They’re blatant lies.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

A doctor who was banned from Twitter for posting about COVID-19 vaccines is willing to serve as the lead plaintiff in a potential class-action lawsuit against the social media company, his lawyer has informed the tech giant.

Dr. Andrew Bostom “stands with a growing number of similarly situated people who have had their Twitter accounts suspended for sharing their views and opinions on COVID-19,” James Lawrence III, Bostom’s lawyer, told Twitter in a letter dated Aug. 6.

“Dr. Bostom is ready, willing, and able to serve as a lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit against Twitter for breach of contract if that becomes necessary,” Lawrence added.

Bostom, with the Brown University Center For Primary Care and Prevention, was permanently suspended in June after sharing the results of a study that linked Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine with lower sperm and semen concentration in men.

After Lawrence contacted Twitter on Bostom’s behalf, the company reversed the suspension, admitting he did not appear to violate any rules with the post.

Just two weeks later, Bostom was banned for asserting that the only randomized controlled trial data on children shows zero hospitalizations prevented by COVID-19 vaccination, while trial data from adults showed the vaccines caused more severe adverse events than the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations it prevented.

Twitter told Bostom in the suspension notice that he violated the company’s policy on spreading misleading information related to COVID-19.

New Letter

But the post does not violate the policy, Lawrence told Vijaya Gadde, head of legal, policy, and trust at Twitter.

The first portion of the comment is backed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s briefing document (pdf) analyzing Pfizer trial data in children aged 6 months to 23 months, the lawyer said, noting that there were zero hospitalizations in the placebo arm but one in the vaccinated arm.

The second portion is supported by a recent paper that analyzed serious adverse events from the original Pfizer and Moderna vaccine trials and concluded that people who were vaccinated were at higher risk of an event than those who did not get a shot.

“His comments can be substantiated by actual pediatric and adult data. This is not ‘misinformation’ by any means, but rather a restating of actual scientific analysis of the data from clinical trials of Pfizer and Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccines,” Lawrence wrote.

Both the vaccines are built on messenger RNA, or mRNA, technology.

Even if the comment did violate Twitter’s policy, the company failed to follow its own five-strikes rule, which gives users five violations before a ban, the lawyer said.

He recently represented journalist Alex Berenson in a case against Twitter in which a judge said Twitter violated its own rule in its ban of Berenson. The suit was settled, and Berenson was reinstated.

Twitter is being urged to restore Bostom’s account by 8 p.m. on Aug. 12.

Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Former President Donald Trump has warned Americans to brace for something “a lot worse than a recession” while blaming the Biden administration’s poor stewardship of the economy for soaring inflation and denouncing the tax hikes in the latest Democrat spending bill.

Trump made the remarks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas on Saturday, where the former president raised the alarm on the state of the union.

“Our country is being shot. It’s being destroyed,” Trump told attendees, while touting his administration’s record on the economy and national security.

Trump spoke of “creating the most secure border in American history, record tax and regulation cuts, $1.87 gasoline, no inflation, low interest rates, record growth in real wages, record growth in our economy.”

Soaring Inflation, Recession

During Trump’s tenure, the highest the Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation gauge came in at was 2.9 percent in July 2018, while in his final month in office, January 2021, inflation clocked in at 1.4 percent.

Under Biden, inflation has climbed steadily, soaring 9.1 percent year-over-year in June 2022, a figure not seen in more than 40 years.

In his speech, Trump drew a contrast with the economy under Joe Biden, blaming the president for the highest inflation in decades that Trump estimates is costing American families as much as $7,000 a year.

“After the pandemic, we handed the radical Democrats the fastest economic recovery ever recorded, the history of our country, ever recorded,” Trump continued. “They’ve turned that into two straight quarters of negative economic growth, also known, despite their protestation to the contrary, as a recession.”

Two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth are a common rule-of-thumb definition for a recession, although recessions in the United States are officially declared by a committee of economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) using a broader definition than the two-quarter rule.

Despite a number of economists arguing that the United States is in a recession based on the two-consecutive-quarters rule, the Biden administration insists that the economy isn’t in a recession, citing NBER’s consideration of a broader range of indicators.

A key argument against recession made by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and others in the Biden administration is that the U.S. labor market remains tight, with unemployment at 3.5 percent and, at 10.7 million, the number of job openings remaining well above the 6 million or so people classified as unemployed.

Worse Than Recession

In his CPAC speech, Trump then issued an ominous warning that, absent a course correction, the recession could spiral into something even worse.

“Just hope that the recession doesn’t turn into a depression, because the way they’re doing things, it could be a lot worse than a recession,” Trump said, echoing similar remarks he made at a rally in Arizona at the end of July, where he warned that “we’re going to have a serious problem” unless political change takes place.

“We got to get this act in order, we have to get this country going, or we’re going to have a serious problem,” Trump said at a rally in Arizona, warning that “we’re going to have a much bigger problem than recession. We’ll have a depression.”

During his appearance at CPAC, Trump issued a call for urgent action at the polls in the upcoming midterms.

“The future of our country is at stake. We don’t have time to wait years and years. We won’t have a country left. What I used to say about Venezuela is true. We have to save the economy, defeat the Biden, Pelosi, Schumer tax hike, which is happening right now tonight,” Trump continued, referring to the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” that cleared the Senate not long after his speech.

Senators passed the sweeping bill, estimated at $740 billion, in a 51–50 vote on Aug. 7, with the package next going to the House for consideration.

During the deliberations, Senate Democrats rejected an amendment offered by Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) that sought to ban any of the $80 billion for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) from being used to target Americans making less than $400,000 per year.

“My colleagues claim this massive funding boost will allow the IRS to go after millionaires, billionaires and so-called rich ‘tax cheats,’ but the reality is a significant portion raised from their IRS funding bloat would come from taxpayers with income below $400,000,” Crapo said in a statement.

Crapo’s amendment was rejected on a party-line vote, with the Democrat bill including softer language that features a non-binding statement of intention not to squeeze more revenue from America’s middle class.

Tax Hikes

According to an analysis by Americans for Tax Reform, a U.S. advocacy group, the spending bill includes a number of tax hikes on American households and businesses.

This includes a $6.5 billion natural gas tax that ATR says will increase household energy bills, a $12 billion crude oil tax that will end up being passed on to drivers in the form of higher gas prices, and a $52 billion income tax hike on mid-sized and family businesses.

In a separate analysis, ATR said that the Democrat bill’s changes to the book tax threaten small businesses.

Elaborating on that theme, economist and author Antonio Graceffo wrote in an op-ed for The Epoch Times that the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” would drive up prices for American households.

“Nearly half of these new taxes will be paid by manufacturers, creating disincentives to produce. Diminished industrial output will drive up the cost of goods and reduce the variety and quantity of goods available on store shelves,” Graceffo wrote.

“Beyond the manufacturing sector, the act increases taxes on businesses in general, which, combined with higher interest rates will decrease new investment and hamper job creation. Ultimately, these increased costs will be passed on to customers,” he added.

‘We Have to Win’

During his CPAC speech, Trump revealed what he sees as the key to bringing the country and its economy back on track.

“We have to win an earth-shattering victory in 2022. We have to do it, coming up in November,” Trump said.

“This election needs to be a national referendum on the horrendous catastrophes the radical Democrats have inflicted on our country,” he continued.

“The Republican party needs to campaign on a clear pledge that, if they are given power, they’re going to fight with everything they have to shut down the border, stop the crime wave, beat inflation, and hold the Biden administration accountable. They have to hold it accountable. Job number one for the next Congress,” Trump said.

The national midterm election takes place on Nov. 8, with 34 Senate seats and all 435 House seats up for grabs.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Supply chain woes have more companies eyeing manufacturing here at home

It wasn’t long ago that Sherman, Texas, might have been best known as the birthplace of Buck Owens, the late country-and-western star, or as the home of Austin College, one of the state’s oldest colleges. More recently, however, the city of nearly 44,000 people located about 65 miles north of Dallas has had something else to brag about: a growing reputation as a center of high-tech manufacturing.

In June, Taiwan-based semiconductor manufacturer GlobalWafers announced plans to build a state-of-the-art, $5 billion silicon wafer factory in Sherman, which beat competing sites in South Korea and Ohio for the facility. The plant will produce advanced, 300-millimeter wafers—which are currently manufactured in Asia—and could support as many as 1,500 jobs over time.

The GlobalWafers announcement came on the heels of Dallas-based Texas Instruments saying that it would put up as many as four new semiconductor (or chip) manufacturing plants in Sherman, potentially investing $30 billion and employing up to 3,000 people. Before selecting the North Texas city, the company had considered Singapore for the facilities, which also will produce 300-millimeter wafers.

The latest developments are a far cry from previous decades in Sherman, when factories there making surgical dressings and automotive glass products were shuttered, with some of the jobs going to other countries.

“We’ve suffered our ups and down,” Sherman Mayor David Plyler said. “But as the economy changed and we started telling our story, things turned. Now folks want to be here.”

Sherman’s success at luring new factories underscores how some cities and towns across the country are enjoying a manufacturing renaissance. That renaissance comes after the United States spent decades shipping manufacturing jobs overseas—mainly to lower-cost suppliers in East Asia, especially China. In 1990, the United States made 37 percent of the world’s computer chips, a figure that since has fallen to about 12 percent. Now, however, some of the manufacturing is coming back, promising communities new jobs and new life.

The return of manufacturing to the United States, known as “reshoring,” got a kick-start in about 2010. But it took on new urgency after COVID-19 lockdowns revealed vulnerabilities in global supply chains. Shipping costs soared and ports were logjammed, resulting in shortages of products ranging from masks and toilet paper to computer chips, which are critical components in everything from smartphones and computers to appliances and automobiles.

“You’ve got by far the most momentum we’ve had at any time in the 12 years we’ve been tracking it,” said Harry Moser, founder and president of the Reshoring Initiative, a nonprofit that promotes the “return-manufacturing-home” message. “Where I’ve had to go to companies in the past and sort of hustle them, now I get more calls from companies saying, ‘I’ve been told we have to get our work out of China and find a source in the U.S. Can you help me find a source?’”

While other kinds of manufacturing are experiencing a U.S. revival as well—there are plans for more than a dozen new electric vehicle battery factories in the South and Midwest, for example—semiconductor plants have taken center stage lately, in part because of the $280 billion CHIPS and Science Act.

The bipartisan measure, which passed the House and Senate last week and was headed to Joe Biden’s desk, provides $52 billion in federal subsidies for domestic chipmaking. Both GlobalWafers and California-based Intel, which plans to build two big semiconductor plants in Licking County, Ohio, had stated that the projects in Sherman and Ohio might not have proceeded as planned unless the legislation was successful. The Biden administration pushed the measure partly on national security grounds, citing U.S. reliance on China for “mature” chips, as well as China’s threats against the island of Taiwan, which the United States has depended on for the most advanced chips.

Offshoring Declines

As recently as the 1970s, the United States had a robust manufacturing sector and balanced trade. The country ran a trade surplus of $8.9 billion in 1975, and manufacturing employment in June 1979 climbed to a record 19.5 million. After that, however, both figures went south. Manufacturing employment plunged to 11.5 million in 2010 before recovering some to 12.5 million in 2021. And the export-import trade balance has been underwater for more than 45 years, with a record deficit of about $860 billion in 2021.

It’s also been about four decades since U.S. companies started “offshoring” jobs overseas. Attracted by the lower cost of labor in Latin America and Asian countries such as China, manufacturers in industries including textiles, steel, and electronics decided to relocate some of their operations there, ostensibly to stay competitive by paring production costs. By 2011, however, an analysis by the Boston Consulting Group was questioning this strategy. The influential consulting firm stated that China’s labor-cost advantage was quickly eroding and predicted that, by 2015, “manufacturing in some parts of the U.S. will be just as economical as manufacturing in China.”

Companies such as Caterpillar and General Electric got the message. Over the past 12 years, the rate of offshoring has declined, while the rate of “reshoring plus foreign direct investment (FDI)” in the United States has been accelerating, Moser said. Combined, the latter two categories were responsible for a record 261,000 manufacturing job announcements last year, up from 6,000 in 2010, he said. That brought the total number of jobs announced because of reshoring and FDI since 2010 to more than 1.3 million.

Most of the jobs came back from Asia. Eliminating the trade deficit by making in the United States what’s currently being imported would result over time in a 40 percent increase in domestic manufacturing, generating 5 million more manufacturing jobs, he said.

The best candidates for reshoring include companies in those manufacturing sectors with high freight costs, volatile demand, frequent design changes, and processes that can be automated, Moser said. Among them are machinery, transportation equipment, appliances, electric batteries, semiconductors, personal protection equipment, pharmaceuticals, and rare earth materials. To help companies better understand the benefits of reshoring, his nonprofit has developed something called a “Total Cost of Ownership Estimator” (TCO). The TCO is a free online tool that calculates the “true” total cost of outsourced products, including such factors as overhead, balance sheets, corporate strategy—and risk.

Risks such as the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s war on Ukraine pale in comparison to the risk of China “decoupling,” which these days hangs over companies like the sword of Damocles, according to Moser.

“I tell companies, ‘Figure out what you can bring back now, and get it back here now—or if you have to, get it to Mexico,” he said. “Because if the [expletive] hits the fan and nothing is coming from China to anyone, you’re going to be one of 30,000 companies trying to find a foundry or a machine shop, and you’re not going to get it.”

Hitendra Chaturvedi, a professor of supply chain management at Arizona State University, agrees that Mexico is a good alternative location for U.S. companies exiting China. “Nearshoring” from China to Mexico—as well as to Latin America and Canada—would make supply more accessible, he said. And manufacturing in Mexico is about 20 percent cheaper than in China.

Besides considering the advantages of nearshoring, Chaturvedi suggested a more targeted approach to reshoring itself.

“We should not take a shotgun approach to this,” he said. “You don’t want low-paying sewing jobs coming back to the U.S. You want high-paying jobs. I want us to focus strategically on sectors that we want to onshore.”

‘Just Getting Started’

For its part, Sherman attracted the two new chip facilities with incentives such as tax abatements, in Texas Instruments’ case, and a package of cash, cheap land, and other breaks for GlobalWafers. The Taiwan-based company also received a $15 million grant from the Texas Enterprise Fund, the state’s “deal-closing” fund, and is eligible for more incentives under the CHIPS Act. The CHIPS subsidies should also benefit Texas Instruments’s Sherman projects (as well as South Korea-based Samsung’s plans to build multiple semiconductor plants in the Austin area).

Plyler said his city also touted its ample workforce, abundant water supply, “business-friendly” approach, and diversified economy. Among the city’s top employers are Tyson Foods, beverage company Sunny Delight, and II-VI, a high-tech optical firm and Apple supplier.

“We’ve taken a lot of hassles out of City Hall for developers and people who want to come in and start a business,” he said. “We walk them through the process of getting permitted, sometimes in a fast-track manner. Making that process easy goes a long way in getting some of these projects off the ground.”

As a result of Sherman’s success, smaller towns around the city are preparing to accommodate the Texas Instruments and GlobalWafers workers with new housing, and industrial facilities for high-tech suppliers and vendors “are really hopping” in the region, the Dallas Business Journal reported.

“We’re expecting a lot of businesses to fill in,” Plyler said. “We’re expecting a lot of new restaurants, a lot of quality-of-life improvements. I think we’re just getting started.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

he Wuhan Institute of Virology, whose research into coronaviruses is believed by many to be the source of COVID-19, is engaging in similarly risky studies tracking bats and their ability to infect humans in caves across China.

The unearthed paper follows the controversial lab using funds from Anthony Fauci’s National Institutes of Health (NIH) agency in collaboration with EcoHealth Alliance to gather bat samples. Beginning in 2014, led by EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak and the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s “Bat Woman” Shi Zhengli, researchers used the samples to conduct risky “gain-of-function” research, as now-deleted webpages reveal the lab manipulating bat coronaviruses to “replicate efficiently in primary human airway cells and achieve in vitro titers equivalent to epidemic strains of SARS-CoV.”

The new study, published in May of 2020, appears to be engaging in similar research methods.

Researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, including “Bat Lady” Shi Zhengli, tracked and sampled the Cave Nectar Bat since it is “known to carry both filoviruses and coronaviruses,” according to the paper.

“In this study, we tracked 16 bats in Mengla County, Yunnan Province, China, using miniaturized GPS devices to investigate their movements and potential contact with humans. Furthermore, to determine the prevalence of coronavirus and filovirus infections, we screened for the nucleic acids of the Měnglà virus (MLAV) and two coronaviruses (GCCDC1-CoV and HKU9-CoV) in anal swab samples taken from bats and for antibodies against these viruses in human serum samples,” explains an overview of the researcher’s work.

The study also shows that researchers worked with “recombinant proteins,”  a term that commonly appears in “gain-of-function” research.

MUST READ: REVEALED: CNN, CNBC, AP Met With Chinese Communist Party Propagandists in July.

The research was published in the journal Zoological Research and was funded by several Chinese Communist Party-run scientific organizations including the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC). The National Pulse has previously exposed the NSFC’s deep ties to China’s military.

The group’s 2020 funding guidelines identify “innovative research in defense and military and civilian integration” as receiving “preferential” funding. The foundation also inked a 2016 “strategic cooperative agreement” with the Science and Technology Committee of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Military Commission – the regime’s paramount military policy-making body.

Annual reports from NSFC reveal several researchers from PLA-run institutions received millions in funding.

The paper also follows lies from EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak about the lab’s work with live bats, which were proved false through recovered footage from the lab. Deleted webpages and patents filed by the Wuhan Institute of Virology also show that researchers worked closely with bats despite the lab acknowledging that “the risk of being bitten by a bat still exists” even when protective gear is worn.

WASHINGTON—Lawmakers and experts highlighted the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) history of violence and bloodshed, while recognizing a new milestone reached by a global movement calling for people to relinquish their ties to the world’s largest communist regime.

The number of Chinese who have severed their ties to Chinese communist organizations reached over 400 million on Aug. 3, according to the Global Center for Quitting the CCP, an organization dedicated to processing and tracking online declarations denouncing CCP memberships. The global movement is known as “tuidang,” which means “quit the Party” in English.

“The Chinese Communist Party has the blood of tens of millions of Chinese on its hands, so it is no wonder that over 400 million Chinese civilians have left the CCP over the past two decades,” said Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) in an emailed statement.

“Mao’s Great Famine, Tiananmen Square, the persecution of the Falun Gong, and the genocide of Uyghur Muslims are all proof that the CCP only cares about its grip on power,” continued Burchett, who sits on the Asia subcommittee of the House Committee of Foreign Affairs.

“Chinese people would be better served by an open and truly representative government, so I hope the tuidang movement picks up steam.”

A ‘Self-Healing’ Movement

In the past decades, more and more Chinese have been questioning the CCP’s representation of the people, according to Ryan, one of the authors of “Nine Commentaries of Communist Party,” a 2004 book first published by the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times that inspired the global movement. Ryan is an alias used to protect his identity and family in China.

Ryan described the tuidang as a “self-healing” and “self-redemption” movement. According to him, Nine Commentaries helped the Chinese people unwind decades of CCP propaganda that instilled the idea that the Party equates to China, and the Chinese civilization. People were finally able to separate the CCP from the people, and the nation.

Before the book systematically illustrated the Party’s history of deceit and use of mass struggle to solidify its power over society, the CCP had controlled the Chinese people and dictated their mentality without the people’s knowledge, said Ryan. While he himself grew up in this environment, Ryan credited his belief in Falun Gong for helping him to transcend the communist regime’s indoctrination.

Falun Gong is a spiritual practice involving meditative exercises and a set of moral teachings underpinned by the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.

Putting these principles into practice helped Ryan to extricate himself from the CCP’s hold on people’s psyche. This is because the Party has been able to manipulate and control the populace by appealing to the ignoble parts of human nature: greed, fear, and jealousy, he said. Such a tactic is most clearly shown in the CCP’s continual efforts in its 100-year history to pitch one group of society against another for no other reason than to consolidate its own grip on power, and eliminate threats to its control.

Falun Gong, itself, became singled as a target of the CCP’s wrath in 1999, after the Party deemed the spiritual disciplines’ huge popularity—with up to 100 million people practicing—a threat to its hold on power. The CCP has sought to wipe out the spiritual discipline with an all-society-wide campaign of arrest, torture, and vilification for the past 23 years and counting.

“Whether Chinese people have read the ‘Nine Commentaries’ or not, they have begun to discuss social issues with the verbiage and logic presented in the book,” Ryan said about the book’s impact. “Their mentality change is as important as the action of quitting the Party.”

Chinese people have quit the Party or its affiliate organizations by submitting online statements to the Global Center for Quitting the CCP. Most use an alias to do so.

“Chinese as a group are rediscovering their identity, one that is separate from the CCP,” Ryan added.

‘An Exemplar’

Ambassador Andrew Bremberg, president of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, a Washington-based advocacy group, highlighted the tuidang movement as a model for peaceful resistance against communist oppression.

“Congratulations to the Tuidang movement for reaching a new milestone. Tuidang is an exemplar of a peaceful, civil society movement where activists reach the conscience of their fellow citizens and persuade them to renounce communist ideology and control,” he said in an emailed statement.

“The efforts of the movement to end communist domination are admirable, and the free world must stand with the people of China in such brave acts of resistance against the tyranny of the Chinese Communist Party,” Bremberg continued.

Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio) on the House Energy and Commerce Committee welcomed the latest progress of the tuidang movement in an emailed statement: “This week’s milestone is a clear signal to the CCP that their oppressive ways will not stand forever, and personal freedom will eventually carry the day, even in their own country. This is progress for those who stand against communism and the harm its policies have across the globe.”

Ryan said he has also seen the knock-on effects of the movement in the United States. It’s now the norm for U.S. officials to clarify that they don’t target the Chinese people or China the nation when they criticize the CCP.

Communist Insider Decouples from the CCP

Cai Xia, a former professor at the CCP’s elite Central Party School in Beijing, was a Party insider.

Now based in Washington, Cai, in a January interview with The Epoch Times’ sister media outlet NTD, described her journey of how she walked away from the CCP.

The first time Cai thought of quitting the Party was in 2016. She had retired from teaching then and was living in Beijing. The impetus for her change in thinking was statements made by Ren Zhiqiang, an outspoken real estate tycoon in China, who questioned whether the government was the same as the Party and criticized the CCP for “taking the taxpayers’ money but not working for them.” That was his response to the CCP general secretary Xi Jinping’s statement that “the media’s last name is ‘dang’”—a term referring to the CCP.

Known as “Ren the canon” for being vocal in criticizing the Party, the real estate mogul is a “red princeling”, a term for descendants of former CCP senior officials. Thus many thought Ren would get into trouble but wouldn’t have to pay a hefty price. However, Ren was sentenced to 18 years in September 2020 for alleged graft after criticizing the CCP for its mishandling of the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, which led to the global pandemic.

Cai told NTD that the Party school reprimanded her in 2016 for publishing an article supporting Ren. “I didn’t have a voice because the Party discipline bound me, and I was considered a CCP member first and foremost,” said Cai. “I would rather have abandoned my CCP member identity to keep my right to speak up.”

Cai had written a formal application to quit the CCP then. But her friends persuaded her not to submit it because of the expected financial retaliation, including losing her pension. When Ren was sentenced to 18 years in 2020, Cai again wanted to quit the Party. At that time, she was in the United States. Once again, her friends in the United States persuaded her not to leave the Party so that she could keep her pension income.

But the decision was ultimately made for her. The Party expelled her on Aug. 17, 2020.

Cai said she felt “completely relieved” upon receiving the news.

“I completely decoupled with the Party. From then on, I would have no relationship, economic or interest involvement, with the Party anymore,” she said.

Cai’s transition from a CCP insider to a member of ordinary Chinese citizens brought her sense of happiness mixed with relief. She acknowledged that she had to deal with some financial difficulties due to the loss of her pension, but it was something that she could overcome.

“Once you have joined the Party, you don’t have the freedom to quit it. They strictly forbid members from quitting the Party,” Cai told NTD, adding that this was equivalent to making people accomplices to the CCP’s criminal activities.

She urged people to have the courage to break this bind. Such an act doesn’t only amount to the liberation of a person’s mind and spirit, Cai said.

It will also “offer a person an added layer of protection when China goes through a transition in the future,” she said.

“The Party is evil; it doesn’t mean the 90 million members are all like that.”

Renouncing Their Pledge

Many Chinese who quit the communist organizations state their reason as wanting to rid themselves of the CCP’s control and avoid being considered an affiliate if or when the CCP is held accountable in or outside China.

These people also include those who were once members of the CCP’s junior organizations: the Young Pioneers for elementary- and middle-school-aged children, and the Communist Youth League for those who are middle- and high-school-aged.

Although memberships in these organizations are not mandatory on paper, they are in practice. Students who haven’t joined these two groups by a certain age face increasing pressure and even discrimination in being eligible to receive education benefits.

With each progressive level from the Young Pioneers up until fully-fledged Party member, the initiates’ pledge evolves from “contributing to” to “fighting for,” and eventually, “ready to sacrifice everything for” the CCP.

Even though the membership in the Young Pioneers supposedly ends at 14 and the Youth League at 28, members don’t go through a formal process to rescind their pledge to the CCP. Therefore anyone who has ever been a member of these youth organizations is encouraged to submit a statement withdrawing their affiliation at the Global Center for Quitting the CCP platform.

This explains why the 400 million figure who have quit the CCP organizations vastly outstrips the official number of CCP members, which is 90 million.

The movement was also welcomed by Rep. Bill Posey (R-Fla.), a member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology: “We spent decades fighting the Cold War to stop the spread of communism because we knew back then that it is evil and capable of great atrocities.

“The Chinese Communist Party is not only a great threat to democracy and freedom but also our national security. We must stop its growing influence around the world and here at home.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Australia’s shadow defence minister has called on the West to “see China with clear eyes” as he warned Australia’s “greatest vulnerability” is its failure to recognise the communist regime’s “fundamentally different vision for the world.” 

Andrew Hastie on Sunday said that Australia is in an “immensely difficult” position where it can neither forsake its closest allies, the United States, nor turn away from its largest trading partner, China. 

Hastie added that Australia has “failed to recognise how mobile our authoritarian neighbour has become” and ignored the role that ideology plays into China’s actions across the Indo-Pacific region. For example, Australia keeps using its own categories to understand China’s actions, such as its motivations for building ports and roads, rather than those used by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), he said.

“The West has made this mistake before. Commentators once believed Stalin’s decisions were the rational actions of a realist power,” Hastie said.

“Right now, our greatest vulnerability lies not in our infrastructure, but in our thinking. That intellectual failure makes us institutionally weak.”

Read More

Appeasement of the CCP?

The shadow defence minister warned that the West and the Chinese communist regime has “a fundamentally different vision for the world” and urged Australia to be “intellectually honest and take the Chinese leadership at its word.”

“Xi’s view of the future is one where capitalism will be eclipsed and ‘the consolidation of and development of the socialist system will require its own long period of history … it will require the tireless struggle of generations, up to 10 generations.’”

“If we don’t understand the challenge ahead for our civil society, in our parliaments, in our universities, in our private enterprises, in our charities—our little platoons—then choices will be made for us. Our sovereignty, our freedom, will be diminished.”

Meanwhile, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong on Aug. 5 called out China for its “destabilizing” live-fire drills near Taiwan, noting that Australia will monitor the situation closely.

On Aug. 4, China launched live-fire military drills in the seas surrounding Taiwan, which was seen as a campaign of military coercion against the island in apparent retaliation for U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) visit.

The CCP declared six exclusion zones encircling the island for its war games. Warplanes and vessels crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait that separates Taiwan from mainland China.

Calling the military drills “highly provocative,” Taiwan’s defense ministry said that Chinese military jets and warships had been seen in waters near Taiwan on Aug. 4, with some crossing the median line. Also known as the Davis Line, the median serves as an unofficial air and maritime buffer between China and Taiwan.

Victoria Kelly Clark contributed to this article. 

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

President Donald Trump said on Aug. 7 that if he returns to the White House in 2025 he’ll rehire the service members who lost their jobs by refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine.

“I think it’s a disgrace what happened to them,” Trump said, answering a reporter’s question.

Trump was responding to questions from the press before he took the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas on Saturday.

“I’d let them back. I’d give back pay,” Trump said. “So I would give them their back pay and I would let them back, and they understand that. They know it.”

Back pay is “a common remedy for wage violations” where “the employer makes up the difference between what the employee was paid and the amount he or she should have been paid,” according to the Department of Labor.

Trump’s comments came weeks after the U.S. army announced plans to cut more than 60,000 guards and reserve soldiers for refusing COVID-19 vaccines.

“Soldiers who refuse the vaccination order without an approved or pending exemption request are subject to adverse administrative actions, including flags, bars to service, and official reprimands,” a July 1 statement on the U.S. Army’s website reads.

More than 19,000 U.S. Army personnel have refused to take the COVID-19 vaccine, as of July 14, 2022, according to U.S. Army data. The Army approved a total of 24 medical and 19 religious exemptions from the COVID-19 vaccine.

Jan. 6 Pardons

In response to another question, Trump said he’ll “very strongly” consider pardoning nonviolent political prisoners who have been indicted as a result of participating in the January 6 Capitol breach.

“We’ll certainly be looking at it, and very strongly,” Trump said, adding that he has made previous statements about potentially pardoning January 6 political prisoners.

“I think many people are being treated very unfair … having to do with that. And we will be looking at that very strongly,” Trump said. “I think you know the answer.”

The president hinted strongly at but stopped short of announcing a 2024 run.

“Well, it’s not a long period, regardless, whether you go before or after, certainly not a very long period of time,” the former president said. He raised the same point in an interview with the New Yorker earlier this year, when he said he’s undecided on whether to announce his decision on a 2024 run before or after the midterms.

“It’s coming,” Trump said, “and I think people are going to be very happy.”

“Our country has never been in a position like this. We lost everything. We’ve lost energy independence. We’ve lost our prestige. We’ve lost every single thing you can lose,” Trump said, noting the withdrawal from Afghanistan—which he previously called “the greatest tactical mistake in history“—and the border crisis.

“So we’ll be making an announcement in the not-too-distance future.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Critics say the bill will slash economic growth and spur further inflation

I’m with the critics. Just because you have checks in your checkbook…and who in the hell thinks you can spend your way out of inflation? Oh yeah. I forgot. Mathematics is racist, so we can’t use it anymore. [US Patriot]

Despite Democrats’ claims that the Inflation Reduction Act (Destroy America Act) will ultimately serve to reduce consumer prices and spur economic growth, experts remain divided, with some predicting that the bill will worsen inflation and lead to stagnation in growth.

The bill, hammered out as a compromise agreement between moderate Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), serves to fulfill a series of broad Democrat aspirations: increasing federal revenue by closing so-called tax “loopholes,” climate change policies, expansion of the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as “Obamacare,” and reducing prescription drug prices.

The act, according to its supporters, will also help to slow the growth of the ballooning U.S. national debt by decreasing the deficit.

Though it authorizes around $433 billion in new spending, Democrats’ internal estimates suggest that the bill will bring in around $725 billion in new revenue to the federal government, thus reducing the federal deficit and slowing the growth of national debt. Specifically, Democrats estimate that the bill will reduce the deficit by around $292 billion annually.

Joe Biden issued a statement on July 27 expressing support for the new proposal, which he called “the action the American people have been waiting for.”

“This addresses the problems of today—high health-care costs and overall inflation—as well as investments in our energy security for the future,” Biden said.

IRS to Receive $80 Billion for Stricter Tax Code Enforcement

Proponents of the measure hope to offset the cost of new spending in the bill by altering the tax code, which would then be enforced by a substantially bulked-up Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which is set to gain around $80 billion through the package.

Among other provisions, the bill would impose a new 15 percent minimum tax rate on all corporations that bring in more than $1 billion per year. Though the current corporate tax rate is technically 21 percent, Democrats say that the new minimum tax rate will target large corporations who pay substantially less than 21 percent by using loopholes.

This change, Democrats estimated in a one-page summary of the bill, will bring in an additional $313 billion annually for the federal government.

Proponents of the bill suggest that, in addition to the new tax code changes, a bulkier IRS will bring in an additional $124 billion annually through the enforcement of the package’s tax code reforms.

Broken down, the roughly $80 billion appropriation to the IRS will go toward “necessary expenses for tax enforcement activities … to determine and collect owed taxes, to provide legal and litigation support, to conduct criminal investigations (including investigative technology), to provide digital asset monitoring and compliance activities, to enforce criminal statutes related to violations of internal revenue laws and other financial crimes … and to provide other services.”

In addition, the funds would go to hire tens of thousands of new IRS agents to further aid enforcement of the new tax rules—which likely will mean far more audits across the board.

Unsurprisingly, the effort to expand the IRS is not popular with Republicans, who have generally opposed such efforts in the past.

“Democrats are scheming to double the size of the IRS by hiring an army of 87,000 new agents to spy on Americans,” wrote House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in an Aug. 4 tweet.

In their one-page summary of the bill, Democrats insisted that the tax code changes would have no effect on families making less than $400,000 annually, a position carried over from the original effort to pass the Build Back Better Act (BBB).

“There are no new taxes on families making $400,000 or less and no new taxes on small businesses—we are closing tax loopholes and enforcing the tax code,” the summary says.

Some critics have expressed doubt about this claim, however, noting that the increased scope and funding of the IRS will affect people across income levels, including some individuals and small businesses making less than $400,000.

Prescription Drug Pricing Changes

Further helping to cushion the cost of the bill, Democrats say, are new provisions designed to lower the amount that the federal government pays for Medicare recipients’ drugs.

Currently, Medicare is not allowed to negotiate the price of prescription drugs with pharmaceutical companies, in contrast to private insurers who do have such power. Under the Inflation Reduction Act, Medicare will be authorized to begin such negotiations on the cost of 10 “high-spend” drugs, beginning in 2026.

In addition, the bill would cap out-of-pocket costs for Medicare beneficiaries, who are largely senior citizens, to $2,000 per year, or around $150 per month.

These changes, Democrats claim in their summary of the bill, will bring in an additional $288 billion in revenue to the federal government.

However, critics have questioned the focus on prescription drug pricing, noting that spending on pharmaceuticals only comprises around 15 percent of Medicare spending. Topping the list of Medicare expenditures are things like hospital inpatient care.

Further, the bill contains provisions designed to lower Americans’ premiums under the Affordable Care Act.

New Climate Policies, Spending

Since the failure of the BBB in December, Democrats have remained as desperate as ever to make wide-reaching changes to climate policy, and the Inflation Reduction Act would create a series of new programs and appropriations to that end.

The top line price of the climate policies in the bill comes out to around $369 billion.

Among other elements, the Inflation Reduction Act emphasizes tax incentives for companies and individuals who switch to renewable energy sources.

For instance, the bill would dole out as much as $28,500 in tax incentives to American households who buy more energy-efficient electric home appliances, install solar panels on their homes, and buy new electric vehicles. Though households would need to do all of these to come close to that $28,500 figure, it represents one of the largest government climate incentives ever put forward for individual households.

According to a study by Rewiring America, families who take advantage of all of these programs could see energy savings of as much as $1,800 per year.

Proponents of the bill have also pointed to an Energy Innovation study that suggests that by 2030, the Inflation Reduction Act’s climate incentives could create as many as 1.5 million new jobs.

Also, front-and-center for Democrats in the bill is its potential effect on reducing U.S. carbon emissions.

During negotiations on the bill, Manchin insisted on including several provisions designed to help the energy sector in West Virginia—which is dominated by coal mining.

In addition, the bill would require the reinstatement of three oil and natural gas leases that were halted by the White House near the beginning of Biden’s term. Solar and wind project permits on federal lands would also only be permitted if these oil and natural gas leases are retained.

Nevertheless, a key focus for Democrats was to de-incentivize fossil fuels as much as practicable.

Just as the bill would incentivize individual households to switch to renewable and efficient energy sources, corporations also stand to gain tax incentives, loans, and grants to do the same on a larger scale.

Proponents of the bill have cited various analyses suggesting that these policies would cause a net reduction in U.S. emissions of somewhere around 40 percent over their 2005 levels.

Democrats supporting the bill have said that the effects of pro-fossil fuel provisions in the bill—which angered environmentalists—would ultimately have a negligible effect on emissions. Proponents say that for every additional ton of greenhouse gas emissions in the bill, 24 tons of emissions would be cut.

This section comprises by far the largest chunk of spending in the new bill, and critics have pointed to it with concerns that it will reduce U.S. energy competitiveness and have suggested that the new spending may serve to worsen inflation.

Some Experts Applaud Bill as Much Needed, Anti-Inflationary

Marc Goldwein, senior director of policy at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, applauded the bill during an appearance on Yahoo news.

At the beginning of the segment, Goldwein was asked what effect the bill will have on inflation.

“Look, this bill is not gonna get us from nine percent inflation down to the two or three percent it should be,” Goldwein said. “What this bill does is it’s gonna make the Federal Reserve’s job just a little bit easier, so they can fight inflation with fiscal policy moving in the same direction, not the opposite direction.”

Later in the interview, Goldwein reaffirmed this position: “No matter how you look at this bill, it’s gonna be good for inflation.”

“Macro-economically, it’s gonna take some excess money out of the economy, which we need when demand is so overheated, [and] it’s also gonna lower drug prices.

“Micro-economically, it’s gonna reduce the sticker prices that people and businesses see for energy, updates to their homes, for health care, for drugs—and all of that is gonna hopefully feed the inflation expectations.

“I don’t expect the effect to be large, but the direction is pretty clear and it’s gonna help to make the Fed’s job easier.”

However, Goldwein emphasized that, despite Democrats’ hopes that the bill will aid their dismal outlook for the midterms later this year, Americans won’t see any real effect on inflation in calendar year 2022.

“Really this is a 2023, 2024, 2025 game,” Goldwein said. “What this is supposed to do is stop inflation from persisting over the long term—again, make the Fed’s job a little bit easier. It’s not gonna provide relief next month, and we shouldn’t expect that.”

Asked about the implications of the bill on the federal deficit, Goldwein affirmed Democrats’ claims that through the new 15 percent minimum tax and expansion of the IRS, the bill would greatly increase revenue and reduce the deficit by about $300 billion, which, Goldwein noted, is “the largest deficit reduction since 2011.”

Over two decades or so, Goldwein added, that comes out to around $1.5 trillion spared from being added to the national debt.

“That’s not gonna fix our debt just like this isn’t gonna fix inflation,” Goldwein admitted, “but it’s gonna help with our debt, just like this is gonna help with inflation.”

Republican and conservative critics of the bill have argued that through the new corporate taxes, capital investment will diminish, slowing the growth of the economy.

This, Goldwein acknowledged, is true. But, he said, limiting growth is exactly what the economy needs right now.

“The reality right now is that the economy is overheated,” Goldwein said. “We have too much money chasing too few goods. … There’s a lot more we can do. But this is a piece of the puzzle. This is gonna help make it a little bit easier for the Fed to get inflation under control.”

Larry Summers, an inflation expert and former Treasury Secretary often quoted by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), shared Goldwein’s sanguine assessment of the bill.

“This bill is fighting inflation and it’s got a whole set of collateral benefits as well,” Summers said during an appearance on CNN. “It’s fair to call it the ‘Inflation Reduction Act.’”

Bill Will Shrink GDP, Cause Thousands of Lost Jobs: Tax Foundation

These sanguine assessments are far from universal, however. Several conservative and Republican-leaning experts and organizations have been critical in their analysis of the bill, which they have said would at best have a negligible effect on inflation while stagnating economic growth.

In its analysis of the bill the Tax Foundation, a tax information nonprofit, estimated that the bill “would reduce long-run economic output by about 0.1 percent and eliminate about 30,000 full-time equivalent jobs in the United States.”

Further, they estimated, “it would also reduce average after-tax incomes for taxpayers across every income quintile over the long run.”

“By reducing long-run economic growth, this bill may actually worsen inflation by constraining the productive capacity of the economy,” the group argued.

Later down their report, the Tax Foundation explained the claim, noting that while the bill would avoid some of the direct tax increases contained in the original iteration of the BBB, it would nevertheless have a pronounced effect on capital investment.

“While the latest proposal steers clear of some of the major tax rate increases contained in the House-passed Build Back Better Act, this proposal would raise taxes on work and investment, disincentivizing productive activity,” the organization wrote.

“The bill would increase long-run American incomes (as measured by gross national product, or GNP) by less than 0.05 percent, which is entirely driven by the bill’s reduction in the budget deficit over the long run. The bill would reduce the capital stock by about 0.3 percent and wages by about 0.1 percent, while eliminating about 30,000 full-time equivalent jobs.

“The proposed 15 percent minimum tax on corporate book income is the most economically damaging provision in the bill, reducing GDP by 0.1 percent and costing about 23,000 jobs. The tax increase on carried interest also eliminates about 5,000 jobs.”

Bill Will Disincentivize Capital Investment, Causing Long-Term Stagnation: Heritage Foundation Tax Expert

Preston Brashers, a senior tax policy analyst for the right-leaning Heritage Foundation, shared the Tax Foundation’s pessimistic appraisal in an interview with The Epoch Times.

Specifically, Brashers emphasized the negative effects that the new tax laws, including the new corporate minimum tax, will have on capital investment.

The problem, Brashers said, is the way that the bill would change the rules about determining whether a corporation meets the standard for the minimum tax.

Under the Inflation Reduction Act, corporations with an annual income of $1 billion or more will be subject to a 15 percent minimum tax. Though current tax law sets the corporate tax rate at 21 percent, many corporations ultimately pay less once write-offs, exemptions, and workarounds in the tax law are taken into account. Through the corporate minimum tax, Democrats hope to end these practices.

However, rather than using tax income—which takes into account exemptions and write-offs—to determine whether the minimum tax applies, the Democrats’ bill would use the “book income” to determine applicability.

The “book income,” reported under standards developed by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and enforced by the Securities and Exchange Commission, is the figure handed to investors to show a company’s annual income before any taxes paid or written off are taken into account.

Under current rules, when corporations reinvest their income into the business—by purchasing things like new equipment, machinery, factories, and other types of capital—they are permitted to write the cost of such investments off as a matter of tax income.

Book income, on the other hand, does not take such expenses into account—it is simply a report of the net revenue a corporation brings in over an annual period.

“If I’m a business, and I buy some new machinery—put some new machinery in my factory—that expense, under the book income system, I wouldn’t be able to deduct that [from book income] right away,” Brashers explained.

“The whole point of book income is totally different from taxable income,” Brashers argued.

Because of this, the new corporate minimum tax is “a major disincentive for companies to invest. So what’s gonna happen then is they’re gonna invest less—there’s gonna be fewer factories.”

Brashers said that those hardest hit by these new rules will be manufacturers and other capital-intensive industries like mining, which, by the nature of their enterprises, necessarily have far more capital expenses if they hope to continue growing.

However, new and growing firms will also be hit hard, to the benefit of older and more established firms. Older firms often see dwindling opportunities for reinvestment, and instead opt to pay investors dividends while they run “on autopilot,” Brashers said. Newer and growing companies, on the other hand, often have many capital investment needs.

Thus, this bill will also serve to make it harder for new competitors to enter established markets.

Brashers said that the new rules will also muddy the waters around FASB-compliant financial statements in a way that may drive investors away from investing in U.S. companies. Because companies will have tax incentives to reduce their book income, Brashers explained, the figures investors see may be somewhat bleaker financially than the actual facts on the ground at the firm.

“What companies are gonna be doing for their financial statements is gonna be driven more by tax incentives—which is not a good thing,” Brashers said. “It’s gonna lead to investors having worse information about what’s going on with companies, because now [companies] have an incentive to reduce their financial statement income if it’s just gonna cause them to have this book minimum tax.”

In addition, Brashers predicted, basing these new tax rules on FASB financial statements could lead to a new genre of lobbyists who, instead of lobbying Washington lawmakers, lobby the FASB to encourage it to change its financial statement rules.

On an international scale, these changes could drive investors out of U.S. markets, Brashers suggested, to countries like China, where these rules are not in place.

Taking these things together, Brashers contended: “there’s gonna be fewer jobs, and the people who are working in those jobs are gonna have less capital around them—less tools, less equipment—which means that each worker [will be] less productive.” Workers producing less, in turn, will lead to lower wages and slowing wage growth—meaning that individual Americans will also be hit by the unintended consequences of the bill.

In summary, Brashers said: “This bill is exactly the wrong approach. We’re heading into a recession—and they wanna raise taxes; we’re dealing with inflation—and they want to add to the cost of doing things in this country. This approach is exactly wrong because rather than unfettering the economy and allowing businesses to produce and workers to work more and do more, we’re just making it harder.”

Bill on Track to Pass the Senate in Coming Days

Whatever the truth of the varied expert assessments of the bill, it now appears to have a straight shot through the Senate.

Because the Inflation Reduction Act uses the reconciliation process, it is exempt from the normal 60-vote filibuster threshold that kills most partisan bills in the Senate. Instead, only 51 votes are needed for the passage of a reconciliation bill.

Currently, Democrats hold just enough seats to pass the bill, including 50 Democrat senators and the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris.

In the past, Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Manchin, the two swing-voting members of the Democrats in the upper chamber, have been the largest threat to the passage of any overly ambitious reconciliation bill from their party. As soon as the agreement was unveiled by Manchin and Schumer, Manchin vowed his support for the legislation, leaving a question mark only on Sinema.

Despite some hopes among critics that Sinema would hold out against the bill, denying it of the 50 votes needed to activate Harris’ tie-breaking vote, her office announced late in the evening on Aug. 4 that Sinema had decided to back the bill.

The original draft of the bill would have closed the “carried interest loophole,” a tax code workaround that allows money managers to pay a lower tax rate than normal on profitable investments. This proposal, which was part of the original BBB plan, would have brought in another $14 billion in revenue, Democrats said.

As part of committing her support for the bill, Sinema demanded that this provision be removed, despite Manchin’s expressed demands that the provision remain in the bill. Democrat negotiators acceded to Sinema’s request, paving a way forward for the bill.

“We have agreed to remove the carried interest tax provision, protect advanced manufacturing, and boost our clean energy economy in the Senate’s budget reconciliation legislation,” Sinema said.

Only the approval of the Senate parliamentarian, a nonpartisan referee in the upper chamber whose go-ahead is necessary for reconciliation bills, remains left for the quick passage of the bill through the Senate.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has expressed support for the bill, and it is likely that the House will take up and pass the bill following its passage in the Senate.

Biden, likewise, is likely to sign it upon its approval by both chambers of Congress.

Source: The Epoch Times

Joe Biden, 79, remains on Death Watch™ with COVID-19

Democratic lawmakers spent the better part of two years assailing their Republican colleagues for not taking the COVID-19 pandemic seriously enough for their liking. Nevertheless, these same Democrats are flagrantly disregarding COVID safety protocols to ensure the timely passage of a massive tax-hike and spending bill before Congress adjourns for the summer recess.

“Senate Democrats, some of whom have decried their G.O.P. colleagues’ lenient attitude toward masking, have adopted an unofficial ‘Don’t Test, Don’t Tell,’ protocol of late, particularly as they endeavor to pass the historic Inflation Reduction Act this weekend,” Tara Palmeri of Puck reports.

(Note: It is not clear what the word “historic” means in this context. There is no evidence to support this claim.)

A senior Senate aide told Puck the upper chamber would not delay a vote on the Inflation Reduction Act in the event that a senator tests positive for COVID. Some members have even said they plan to stop testing themselves for the virus. “It’s not an official mandate but we all know we’re not letting COVID get in the way,” the aide said. “The deal is happening. Less testing, just wear masks and get it done.”

(Note: We are literally shaking right now.) 

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) has said there is no “plan B” when it comes to passing the controversial spending package, insisting that Democrats are “going to stay healthy.” Another source told Puck that senators who contract COVID, which has killed more than 620,000 Americans on Joe Biden’s watch, could “bring [their] ventilator and still vote.”

(Note: This is reckless behavior and should not be condoned. People are going to die.)

Speaking of Biden, the 79-year-old president remains on Washington Free Beacon Death Watch™ as he continues to test positive for COVID-19, a virus that is most likely to be fatal for individuals over the age of 65. Biden, who will turn 80 in November, has already outlived the average life expectancy for American men (75.1 years).

READ MORE: Joe Biden Death Watch, By the Numbers

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Sen. Maggie Hassan plays up her appeal to independents. NH voters say she’s a reliable vote for the Biden admin.

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Sen. Maggie Hassan’s reelection campaign ads tout that the Granite State Democrat is the “most bipartisan” lawmaker in the Senate. But state residents across the political spectrum say they consider Hassan a reliable vote for the Biden administration.

Sean Chambers, a 43-year-old construction worker and registered independent, said Hassan’s time in the Senate has been “nothing but broken promises.” He said he has yet to decide on whether he will vote Republican in November but refuses to back Hassan.

“She says she’s for the worker but hasn’t done anything,” Chambers told the Washington Free Beacon. “I don’t buy the bipartisan talk. There’s a big divide and nothing is getting done.”

Hassan won her seat in 2016 by just about 1,000 votes in a $120 million campaign battle largely focused on her appeal to independents, who make up roughly 40 percent of the state’s registered voters. Her reelection campaign is set to be equally competitive as residents grow frustrated with the Biden administration’s handling of the economy—only one-fifth of state residents want Joe Biden to seek reelection in 2024, according to a University of New Hampshire poll released last month.

Hassan has attempted to distance herself from the Democratic Party establishment, but New Hampshire voters who spoke to the Free Beacon, including Republicans, Democrats, and independents, share the view that the Democratic senator is a reliable supporter of the White House’s agenda.

Al Macaloan, a retired project manager and an independent who voted for Biden in 2020, said he will vote for the New Hampshire Democrat, who has voted with the president 96 percent of the time, for just this reason.

“In the present environment I don’t think you can be bipartisan,” Macaloan told the Free Beacon. “I would like to see it, but it’s not possible.”

Democrats and their allies are prepared to make the race a top spending target: Hassan has raised $26 million, including $3.2 million in individual contributions between April and June alone—88 percent of which came from out of state. These funds helped her launch a series of campaign ads in recent weeks that tout her “bipartisan” record on issues such as small businesses and federal budgets. Hassan declared in one campaign ad that “fiscal responsibility is the New Hampshire way.”

The ad comes after the senator voted to pass Biden’s American Rescue Plan and infrastructure bill, which total more than $3 trillion in spending. She also backed the $739 billion climate spending bill that gained traction with Democrats in recent weeks. Many economists point to these price tags as sources of the four-decade-high inflation rate—an issue that led two-thirds of voters in the state to disapprove of Biden’s economic policies.

Hassan said in another ad that she is “taking on members of my own party to push a gas tax holiday” and “pushing Joe Biden to release more of our oil reserves.”

But as governor, Hassan signed a gas tax increase in 2014 and proposed a budget in 2015 to increase taxes and fees by $100 million, the New Hampshire Journal reported. As a senator, she voted against former president Donald Trump’s tax cuts in 2017, which saved an average of $1,400 for New Hampshire residents.

The Hassan campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

T.J. Duffy, a 26-year-old U.S. Postal Service driver, plans to vote for Republicans up and down the ballot in November. Hassan’s campaign message, he said, is a desperate reversal to appeal to blue-collar workers in the state.

“If you’re going to vote one way for the majority, it’s pretty unfair to say you’re bipartisan,” Duffy told the Free Beacon. “The people who don’t see gas prices as an issue don’t drive to work every single day.”

Hassan’s campaign message relies in part on her award from the Lugar Center, which in May crowned her the “most bipartisan” senator in 2021. The organization noted that Hassan rallied a Republican cosponsor on all 48 bills she introduced last year. Only two of these bills passed, though, both of them directing the Department of Health and Human Services to bolster public health programs.

Danielle Ovellette, a 32-year-old waitress, wore a “fuck Trump” bracelet as she served several Trump supporters last week at Ryan’s Place, a veteran-themed diner in Epping, N.H. Ovellette supported Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) in the 2020 presidential primary and refused to vote for Biden in the general election. She said she plans to vote for Hassan because of her support for a progressive agenda.

“You vote for what’s best for you,” Ovellette told the Free Beacon.

Polling data show Hassan has a narrow lead against her potential Republican challengers. Hassan ran a series of campaign ads that criticize the Republican candidates’ pro-life records after the overturn of Roe v. Wade in June. The New Hampshire primary is not until Sept. 13—a little more than a month before the election.

Paul Lessard, a 58-year-old former New Hampshire Department of Transportation employee born and raised in Manchester, N.H., said Hassan’s bipartisan message will fall flat come Election Day.

“She’s full of shit,” Lessard, a registered Republican, told the Free Beacon. “She only sides with Democrats.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Manchin-backed Inflation Reduction Act would more than double agency’s size

If Democrats have their way, one of the most detested federal agencies—the Internal Revenue Service—will employ more bureaucrats than the Pentagon, State Department, FBI, and Border Patrol combined.

Under the Inflation Reduction Act negotiated by Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.), the agency would receive $80 billion in funding to hire as many as 87,000 additional employees. The increase would more than double the size of the IRS workforce, which currently has 78,661 full-time staffers, according to federal data.

The additional IRS funding is integral to the Democrats’ reconciliation package. A Congressional Budget Office analysis found the hiring of new IRS agents would result in more than $200 billion in additional revenue for the federal government over the next decade. More than half of that funding is specifically earmarked for “enforcement,” meaning tax audits and other responsibilities such as “digital asset monitoring.”

That would make the IRS one of the largest federal agencies. The Pentagon houses roughly 27,000 employees, according to the Defense Department, while a human resources fact sheet says the State Department employs just over 77,243 staff. The FBI employs approximately 35,000 people, according to the agency’s website, and Customs and Border Protection says it employs 19,536 Border Patrol agents.

The money allocated to the IRS would increase the agency’s budget by more than 600 percent. In 2021, the IRS received $12.6 billion.

Although Democrats say the hiring of additional IRS agents will help root out tax cheats and other criminals, federal tax revenues have steadily risen over the past several decades. Federal tax receipts are projected to hit $5.7 trillion in 2027, up from just over $4 trillion last year without additional IRS agents.

But the roughly $450 billion in new spending proposed by Democrats requires new funding mechanisms. Some of the new spending includes $161 billion for clean electricity tax credits and $64 billion in new Affordable Care Act subsidies.

The majority of new revenue from IRS audits and scrutiny will come from those making less than $200,000 a year, according to a study from the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation. The committee found that just 4 to 9 percent of money raised will come from those making more than $500,000, contrary to Democrats’ claims that new IRS agents are necessary to target millionaires and billionaires who hide income.

Senate Republicans argue that the roughly $45 billion the bill puts towards hiring IRS agents could be better spent on other priorities, such as helping students rebound from the learning loss suffered during COVID school closures. A proposal by Sen. Tim Scott (R., S.C.) would amend the spending bill to put the IRS money towards education tax credits.

“When faced with the decision to spend $45 billion on America’s largest revenue collection agency, or give it back to parents to help them get their kids the help they need, the Senate needs to choose the latter option every single time,” Scott told the Free Beacon.

The Washington Free Beacon previously reported that, despite White House claims to the contrary, the Inflation Reduction Act does little to combat inflation. A report from Moody’s Analytics found the Democratic bill will shave just .33 percent from the Consumer Price Index over the next decade.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) used COVID-19 for biological warfare, according to a new report by nine experts with the Center for Security Policy (CSP).

Generals, medical experts, and foreign policy experts including former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra and former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense Lieutenant General William “Jerry” Boykin contributed to the report, which is available in book form on Amazon.

The report, titled “The CCP is at War with America,” stated that there is no evidence COVID-19 was a natural virus, arguing that there is significant evidence it came from a CCP lab. It also stated that the CCP deliberately allowed the virus to spread worldwide by allowing international flights while locking down movement within China.

The CSP describes the report as an “exercise in competitive analysis that strongly challenges the Director of National Intelligence’s September 2021 conclusion.”

The Plague War

U.S. intelligence experts in 2021 concluded that they might never know for certain where COVID-19 came from. But the CSP put the blame squarely on the Chinese communist regime.

“The preponderance of evidence indicates that SARS-CoV-2 was lab-manufactured,” the report stated. “In any event, Beijing acted with murderous intent in spreading the disease beyond China’s borders.”

As proof of these claims, the report pointed to genetic features of COVID-19 not found in natural viruses. It noted that China’s military has a biological warfare program.

Finally, it highlighted that the Chinese regime restricted internal travel to stop the spread of COVID-19 but kept its international borders open. At the same time, it bought up global supplies of personal protective gear.

Even if the original release of the virus was an accident, its worldwide spread was intentional, the report stated. The likely motive was to ensure that the rest of the world would be set back economically by the virus to the same degree China would be.

“Xi’s regime clearly saw the imperative need to ensure that it would not suffer economic privation alone, to the advantage of its enemies, especially the United States,” the report read. “Actively spreading the virus was, thus, a means of waging economic warfare, and the Chinese Communists applied themselves to doing so with a vengeance.”

According to the report, the CCP worked to spread its COVID-19 quarantine policies around the world so it could weather the pandemic at an advantage. The damage COVID-19 measures did to America’s economy put the CCP ahead.

“A principal beneficiary of such economic trauma would be the Chinese Communist Party,” the report read.

Weapons of Choice

The report also stated that the Chinese regime has a history of biological warfare. In the early 1990s, Chinese general Chi Haotian told China’s biological weapons program that it should depopulate America so China could take it over, according to the report. But China kept these plans secret.

“Right now, it is not the time to openly break with [America],” the general said. “Our reform and opening to the outside world still rely on their capital and technology.”

Biological weapons could be China’s road to world domination, the report stated. Chinese military journals have openly published articles about genetically-targeted biological warfare. China has collected genetic profiles of foreigners while keeping a close guard on the genetic profiles of Chinese people, it added.

“If Chinese scientists succeed in designing pathogens targeting only foreigners, the next germ, virus, or microbe from China could end non-Chinese societies,” the report stated.

“Xi will be the first supremo to possess a weapon making worldwide Chinese rule possible,” it read.

The report suggested that COVID-19 fatalities outside China should be considered “murder victims.”

The paper offered several conclusions. These include that the CCP and any who colluded with it must be held accountable for the pandemic’s results; the government shouldn’t impose vaccine mandates on the vulnerable; the United States should develop deterrents against Chinese bioweapons; and future medical health measures shouldn’t follow Chinese totalitarian lockdown advice.

“We must never again allow our constitutional freedoms to be denied on the pretext of a public health emergency, especially at the insistence of foreign powers, let alone our mortal enemy,” the report stated.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

China’s ruling communist regime announced Friday that it would cancel or suspend dialogue on several issues with the United States ranging from military communications to climate change initiatives.

A statement from the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) foreign ministry said that the regime would cancel all direct communications between military theater leaders, working meetings between defense departments, and maritime security dialogues with the United States.

Additionally, the CCP would suspend all cooperation with the United States related to illegal immigrant repatriation, criminal justice assistance, climate talks, transnational crime, and anti-drug programs.

The announcement is part of a suite of retaliatory measures by China against the United States and its partners following U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan earlier in the week.

Moreover, the canceling of communications between military commanders in the Indo-Pacific is likely to be seen as a major escalation by the international community, as such contact is often a key tool in helping militaries avoid miscommunication or harmful accidents.

The CCP statement follows a barrage of explosive rhetoric and hostile actions from Beijing this week.

On Thursday, the CCP launched 11 ballistic missiles into the waters around Taiwan, some of which passed over the island and into the exclusive economic zone of Japan. The regime has also seemingly launched a sustained series of cyberattacks on Taiwanese infrastructure, and has implemented import bans on more than 2,000 items from Taiwan. The Chinese military’s encirclement of Taiwan has also formed a sort of blockade, forcing international air and sea traffic to back up as it attempts to wrap around the most dangerous areas.

International forums including the G7 and ASEAN have called on the CCP to end its provocations and pursue a peaceful solution to ongoing tensions.

The White House, meanwhile, summoned the Chinese ambassador for a reprimand over the unprecedented escalations.

The U.S. leadership said that it would not give in to China’s erratic and dangerous behavior and that, in spite of CCP threats to regional stability, it would pursue deescalatory measures including postponing one of its own missile tests.

“As China engages in destabilizing military exercises around Taiwan, the United States is demonstrating instead the behavior of a responsible nuclear power by reducing the risks of miscalculation and misperception,” said White House National Security Council communications coordinator John Kirby during an Aug. 4 press conference.

“This is how we’re going to defend America’s national security interests and our values.”

The CCP maintains a so-called One China principle, which states that Taiwan is a breakaway province that must be reunited with the mainland. The regime has not ruled out the use of force to achieve this goal. Taiwan has been self-governing since 1949 and has never been controlled by the CCP, however. And Taiwan maintains a democratic government and thriving market economy.

U.S. relations with Taiwan and China are governed by a series of treaties and diplomatic cables stretching back to the 1970s. Notably, the United States adheres to a One China policy, which provides an acknowledgment, but not endorsement, of the CCP’s One China principle. The policy also mandates extensive unofficial ties with Taiwan. The Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 further mandates that the United States will provide the arms to Taiwan necessary for its self-defense.

At the heart of the ongoing tensions between the CCP and the United States is their long-standing agreement that neither side will attempt to unilaterally change this status quo through force or coercion.

CCP authorities maintain that Pelosi’s visit was intended to unilaterally change that status quo. U.S. officials say the same of China’s increased military and economic aggression in the region, and have accused the CCP of manufacturing a crisis to justify military expansion around Taiwan.

“Beijing’s provocative actions are a significant escalation in its long-standing attempt to change the status quo,” Kirby said.

“We’re not going to accept a new status quo. And it’s not just the United States, but the world as well.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said it will conduct “flyovers” of the Permian Basin region in Texas and New Mexico to “survey oil and gas operations to identify large emitters of methane” amid the Biden administration’s climate policy initiative.

“The flyovers are vital to identifying which facilities are responsible for the bulk of these emissions and therefore where reductions are most urgently needed,” said Earthea Nance, an EPA official, in an Aug. 1 news release.  The flyovers, which will use infrared cameras, will be conducted until Aug. 15, the agency said.

With the announcement, it means the administration will continue to target the oil and gas industry, coming after Joe Biden sent letters to the heads of major oil companies in June and threatened to take action to increase supply. The move drew pushback from the CEOs of ExxonMobil and Chevron, who both accused Biden of taking an increasingly hostile approach to the industry.

The Permian Basin accounts for 43 percent of the nation’s oil supply, meaning any federal regulation or rules may impact gas prices nationwide.

“The flyovers will continue through August 15. By emphasizing identification of potential super-emitters, this effort builds on previous aerial surveillance efforts in the Permian Basin area starting in 2019,” the EPA release said.

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Its announcement came days after an Associated Press report claimed that 533 gas and oil facilities in the Permian Basin are emitting what it described as excessive amounts of methane. But an EPA spokesperson told the Washington Post this week that the flyovers are not connected to AP’s article.

Republican Criticism

Republicans are poised to target the EPA’s flyover announcement and blame the Biden administration for causing further pain at the pump.

Several weeks ago, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, warned that an EPA proposal reversing a 2017 decision to designate certain regions in the Permian Basin as compliant with 2015 Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards would imperil the U.S. oil supply.

“While you express concern about out-of-control gas prices, your Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is threatening to increase them even further,” Abbot wrote in a letter to the White House in late June. “The EPA’s process could interfere in the production of oil in Texas which could lead to skyrocketing prices at the pump by reducing production, increase the cost of that production, or do both.

“Your administration’s announced action is completely discretionary. Thus, you have the power to stop it. If you do not, this action alone might serve as a catalyst for economic harm leading to an even deeper reliance on imported foreign energy and a faster economic decline into the pending recession by forcing even more pain for American consumers to pay at the pump,” the governor said.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Democrat Logic: Spend hundreds of billions of dollars to reduce inflation. Are you F-ing kidding me?! [US Patriot]

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) has reached a deal with Democrats over a multi-pronged spending package that lawmakers say would reform the tax code, lower the federal deficit, lower health care costs, and invest in energy and climate change programs.

The spending package appeared to be a revised, alternate version to the Build Back Better (BBB) bill, which would fulfill a major agenda of Joe Biden.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) previously announced on July 27 that he had reached a deal with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on energy, taxes, and health care to advance the bill, which is dubbed the “Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.”

Sinema, who previously held out on the deal, said in an announcement on Thursday she would support moving forward with the measure and begin debate on the bill.

“We have agreed to remove the carried interest tax provision, protect advanced manufacturing, and boost our clean energy economy in the Senate’s budget reconciliation legislation,” Sinema said. “Subject to the Parliamentarian’s review, I’ll move forward.”

Sinema was referring to a provision that would have closed the so-called carried interest loophole and generate an estimated $14 billion in new revenue over the next 10 years. The loophole is said to help wealthy private equity and hedge fund managers pay less taxes.

She was also separately referring to an agreement to protect manufacturing from the impact of a proposed 15 percent corporate minimum tax, which opponents say would jeopardize economic growth.

“Following this effort, I look forward to working with [Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.)] to enact carried interest tax reforms, protecting investments in America’s economy and encouraging continued growth while closing the most egregious loopholes that some abuse to avoid paying taxes,” the Arizona senator said, referring to tax concerns that affect hedge funds.

Schumer said in a statement on Thursday that the agreement “preserves the major components” of the original bill, which includes “reducing prescription drug costs, fighting climate change, closing tax loopholes exploited by big corporations and the wealthy, and reducing the deficit by $300 billion.”

“I am pleased to report that we have reached an agreement on the Inflation Reduction Act that I believe will receive the support of the entire Senate Democratic conference,” he also said. “I have had many productive discussions with members of our conference over the past three days and we have addressed a number of important issues they have raised.”

Schumer said the final version of the bill will be introduced on Saturday.

The Democratic leader seeks to pass the measure through a procedural tool called “reconciliation” that allows a bill related to taxes, spending, and debt to be passed in the chamber by a simple majority rather than having to pass the 60 vote filibuster threshold. The reconciliation process also limits debate on the bill to 20 hours. That could allow the bill to be passed with only Democratic votes, if necessary, if every Democrat is on board.

The bill is expected to include about $370 billion on energy and climate programs and $64 billion to extend subsidies for Affordable Care Act premiums for three years through 2025.

It also seeks generate about $700 billion in new revenue over the next 10 years, which would leave roughly $300 billion in deficit reduction.

A large portion of the $700 billion—an estimated $313 billion—is expected to be generated by increasing the corporate minimum tax to 15 percent, while the remaining amounts include $288 billion in prescription drug pricing reform and $124 billion in Internal Revenue Service tax enforcement.

Support of All 50 Democrats in Senate

Sinema’s announcement means all 50 Democrats in the 50–50 split Senate will support the measure. Democrats hold a majority due to Vice President Kamala Harris’s tie-breaking vote.

Biden said in a statement from the White House released late Thursday that “we’ve taken another critical step toward reducing inflation and the cost of living for America’s families,” adding, “I look forward to the Senate taking up this legislation and passing it as soon as possible.”

In a Twitter post on Thursday afternoon, Schumer said the legislation “will be the largest package to fight the climate crisis ever passed by Congress.”

“Republicans want to take away people’s health care, cut taxes for the rich, put Medicare and Social Security on the chopping block, raise taxes on working families,” he said in a separate Twitter post. “Democrats are working to lower inflation, lower Rx drug costs, close tax loopholes exploited by big businesses.”

Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) signaled opposition to the spending package.

“Even the Democrats’ favorite estimate says their so-called inflation bill will take nine years to cut the same amount of inflation that our country added every week in June,” he wrote on Twitter on Aug. 3. “Nine years of huge tax hikes and big spending to remove literally one week’s worth of inflation. A joke.”

“Democrats want to raise families’ electricity, gas, and heating bills so they can send rich people rebates for buying $80,000 electric cars. New taxes on American oil and gas,” he said in another Twitter post. “Costly virtue signaling with no meaningful emissions impact as China keeps emitting more and more.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Revisionist powers, nations whose leaders seek to undermine American leadership in the world, seem to be on the march.

Russia persists with its heavy bombardments in Ukraine. Its army holds on, at least for now, not only in eastern Ukraine but also on the Black Sea coast, shutting off Ukraine from supplies and trade with the rest of the world.

China is threatening retaliation for Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan. The regime of President Xi Jinping may be mollified for the moment by the Biden White House’s hints that it wasn’t their idea, or deterred by the staging of U.S. naval forces nearby. But there’s no doubt that China has much more military capacity to attack Taiwan and inflict damage on U.S. forces than when Speaker Newt Gingrich visited Taiwan in 1997.

Iran, meanwhile, is showing little interest in Biden administration efforts to reinstate the JCPOA, the nuclear pact signed by the Obama administration in 2015 and from which the Trump administration withdrew in 2018. The mullah regime seems unblushingly intent on achieving nuclear weapons capability.

In reflecting on these threats, I am struck by how much longer the leaders of each of these revisionist polities have been in power, how secure their hold on it has been, how short the tenure has been and how weak the hold of elected leaders here in the United States and among our allies.

Consider Vladimir Putin. When he took power in the last hours of 1999, he was unknown beyond Moscow and not expected to be around a generation later. Yet he’s still there 22 years and eight months later, longer than the reign of Tsar Nicholas II (1894-1917) and not that many years less than the 29 years of Joseph Stalin (1924-1953). There’s speculation that the 69-year-old Putin’s hold on power has been endangered by the failure of his apparent plan to absorb Ukraine, but last year, he signed a law that would allow him to serve until 2036.

Speaking of changing term limits, China abolished its limit of two five-year terms in 2018. Xi is expected to be granted another 10 years in power this fall. Those term limits were established by Deng Xiaoping, a close observer and sometime victim of the violent lurches in the nearly 27-year rule of Mao Zedong (1949-1976).

Now Xi, at age 69, is positioned to challenge that record, though not that of the 18th-century Emperor Qianlong (1735-1796). But Xi may want to stick around for the 100th anniversary of the Communist takeover in 2049, at which point the regime hopes to become the world’s dominant power, according to Michael Pillsbury’s “The Hundred-Year Marathon.”

The supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, is already a record-setter. He has held that position since the death of Ayatollah Khomeini in June 1989, 33 years ago. That’s nearly as long as the 37-year reign of the Shah Reza Pahlavi (1941-1979).

There’s an obvious contrast here with Western leaders. The two most recent American presidents won a majority of electoral votes by margins of 77,000 and 42,000 popular votes in three states. Though there’s some continuity in their administrations’ policies, they’re not on speaking terms. Oh, and they’re also currently 76 and 79 years old.

Other Western countries are in similar flux. Britain awaits a vote of some 160,000 Conservative Party members that will determine who becomes prime minister next month. France’s Emmanuel Macron lost his parliamentary majority last month. Germany’s Olaf Scholz, in office since December, leads an unwieldy coalition. Japan’s prime minister lacks the counsel of his long-lasting predecessor Shinzo Abe, assassinated July 8.

Successive Western leaders have supposed that they can change the behavior of revisionist leaders. American China policy since Henry Kissinger assumed that China could be prodded to be more open, more democratic, less aggressive. It didn’t work much before Xi, and under Xi, China has been moving in the opposite direction.

The first three presidents this century sought some kind of reset with Russia, and Donald Trump had some positive words for Putin (but the charge he colluded with Russia was always a hoax). But these approaches never worked out better than Hillary Clinton’s mislabeled reset button. As for Iran, presidents including Reagan, Obama and now Biden have reached out for better relations — and have gotten nothing for their concessions.

Putin and Xi are both 69, and Khamenei, the only one older than Biden and Trump, is 83. None will last forever. But deaths are hard to forecast and regime change even harder. There are underlying geopolitical forces behind Russia’s and China’s challenge to American leadership, and a religious motivation behind Iran’s.

The downside risk is that revisionist leaders, or Western mistakes, may plunge much of the world into destructive war. That has happened in Ukraine, although the violence is minuscule next to the carnage of the 20th century’s two world wars. The negative potential in Taiwan could be worse, and the reverberations of communist conquest more profound, as defense analyst Elbridge Colby argues. But those are subjects for another column.

In the meantime, let’s hope recent events have made the West’s wobbly buttressed leaders skeptical of the possibilities of enticing the revisionist leaders to see things our way. They’ve played this game before.

SOURCE: Right and Free

The need for medical patients to have their own advocates has become critical in light of increasing reports from family members who believe their loved ones died in the hospital because of the COVID-19 treatment protocols prescribed by doctors.

To assist in breaking up what Priscilla Romans called “an unhealthy co-dependency” between patients and the health care system, Romans launched Graith Care, a patient advocacy business that takes the ultimate authority out of the hands of the “white coats” and returns it back to the patient.

“People have believed the hospitals are going to take care of them, only to find that this isn’t always the case,” Romans told The Epoch Times.

Many hospitals mechanically adhere to treatment protocols outlined in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), but with the help of patient advocates, patients and their families can override these one-size-fits-all treatment plans.

It’s a solution to a problem long overdue, Romans said.

Romans is launching Graith Care at a time when many health care professionals are leaving a medical system that they say was broken long before COVID-19 brought its corruption to the surface.

The tipping point has caused some doctors and nurses, including Romans, to find alternatives outside of the system.

‘It Was Worse Than I Thought’

As a nurse who later worked in the health insurance industry, Romans said she’s seen the many faces of the medical industrial complex, only to find that “it was worse than I thought.”

Among the issues is the fact that hospitals are paid large incentives by health insurance companies to follow a pre-set treatment plan, she said, which has led to hospitals exchanging patient care for lucrative payoffs.

For example, hospitals that receive federal funding from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act receive a 20 percent increase in reimbursement for inpatient stays resulting from COVID-19, she said.

There there are also incentives for treating COVID-19 patients with sedatives and the antiviral drug remdesivir, and then putting them on a ventilator, which often ends in death.

Even before the pandemic began, Romans said, she had been feeling a spiritual calling to step out of the comfort zone of a steady paycheck after years of observing the mechanics of a machine fueled by money, not by compassion.

“I launched Graith Care from my own home not knowing what was around the corner with all the vaccine mandates, protocols, and the use of drugs like remdesivir that, in many cases, have been deadly,” Romans said.

Since then, she’s expanded her business through word-of-mouth to help people throughout the United States and internationally, she said.

“I just felt like this was the right thing to do for people at the worst time in their lives,” she said.

Rescue Operations

Patient advocacy requires quick, critical thinking skills and a good understanding of the health care system to properly advocate for the average person, who may not understand that starving patients while keeping them on drugs like remdesivir, fentanyl, and precedex only makes them sicker, Romans said.

“These hospitals will make it seem like they are giving an individual plan of care while the patient and the family have no clue what is happening, and they just go along with what the white coats tell them,” Romans said.

Patient advocacy is about helping families understand their rights, she said, and how to navigate through the bureaucracy of the system that tells them they only have one option, like remaining trapped in the hospital.

In the case of the Anne and Scott Quiner in January 2022, Graith Care had Anne’s husband Scott flown out of a hospital in Minnesota to another hospital in Texas that allowed patients to choose a COVID-19 protocol recommended by America’s Frontline Doctors, which involved hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and vitamin C.

Anne Quiner had to seek legal counsel to file a restraining order to prevent the Minnesota hospital from taking Scott off a ventilator. The hospital responded by objecting on the basis that Anne’s position wasn’t “supported by medical science” before requesting that the court issue an order authorizing the hospital to take Scott off the ventilator, which would have killed him.

The judge sided with the Quiners’ lawyer, and on Jan. 15, it was Graith Care that helped organize a team to transfer Scott.

When Scott arrived in Texas, it was reported that he was malnourished, dehydrated, and 30 pounds underweight, and that his doctors there were “horrified” at his condition, but on Jan. 20, he reportedly became responsive and was “making tremendous progress.”

Scott Quiner later died on Jan. 22.

“He had already been put through too much and had so much thrown at him without the proper nutrition,” Romans said. “After a period of time, all of his organs were just suffering.”

‘Nobody Ever Flies Out of This Hospital’

Graith Care had another patient flown out of a top-tier hospital in South Dakota where the doctor was refusing a patient alternative treatment, Romans said.

The physician there said that a ventilator was the only option, so Graith Care worked to have the patient transferred, she said.

“The doctor told me, ‘Nobody ever flies out of this hospital—they fly to us,’” she said. “I told him we were going to try because it’s what the family wants.”

Within about 24 hours of his stay at the new hospital, the patient was healthy enough to return home, she said.

“He probably would have died at the other hospital because the only option they gave him was to be put on a [ventilator],” Romans said.

But there are many people who didn’t have the option to transfer their loved ones out of hospitals where they were receiving poor care.

Katrin Crum, Aletha Chavez, and Ashley Wines said their husbands were each isolated and given a combination of sedatives and the antiviral drug remdesivir, a drug reported to cause acute kidney failure. The doctors said the kidney failure was a symptom of COVID-19.

Though individual treatment had previously been left up to the physician and was an open discussion between the physician and the patient, Crum told The Epoch Times that all of that was “thrown out the window” when it came to her husband’s care.

“My 58-year-old husband in Washington received the exact same treatment as a 40-year-old woman in Florida who had none of the same health issues that my husband had,” Crum said.

For Romans, the pandemic has exposed the frayed wires of a medical system that can’t be fixed. The behavior of some physicians and nurses in the face of families who have had their lives turned upside down has revealed a disconnect in health care, she said.

“I think the system is going to implode on itself,” she said. “As a result, people are going to start shifting where they get their advice and medical care.”

As with all change, she said, it won’t be comfortable.

“It’s been painful, but it’s opened our eyes so that we can start looking for better solutions,” she said.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

SURPRISE! ANOTHER BIDEN HIRE IS A CCP SHILL!

A Co-Chair of Joe Biden’s forthcoming White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health has appeared in documentaries produced by Chinese Communist Party-run outlets; lauding the regime’s agriculture and food policy as an approach that should be “learned by the whole world.”

Ertharin Cousin, one of five individuals selected by Biden to lead the conference, has also repeatedly praised the Chinese Communist Party’s agricultural policies, with her quotes frequently appearing on regime-run media.

Set to take place in September, the White House’s conference is slated to address nutrition and health in addition to food security and agriculture. It comes as inflation and food shortages plague the economy, dovetailing with efforts by left-wing activists and billionaires to eliminate meat from Western diets to supposedly combat climate change.

Cousin, who was a former executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme, appeared on an episode of China Global Television Network’s (CGTN) show Full Frame titled “The Hunger Paradox.”

Cousin is the sole interviewee in the 20-minute program aired by CGTN, which is entirely owned and operated by the Chinese Communist Party. It has been described by the Freedom House think tank as “a long-standing weapon in Beijing’s arsenal of repression” whose “mission is to attack designated enemies of the Communist Party.”

The episode peddles Chinese Communist Party talking points surrounding the success of its agriculture methods despite the regime’s notoriety for famine and food rationing during the Cultural Revolution.

“In China, agricultural reforms ensured most rural farmers had land to grow on, allowing them to be food self-sufficient. China’s poverty reduction efforts have contributed to 70 percent of the world-wide poverty reduction since the 1980’s,” asserts the host, who makes no mention of China’s history of famine.

MUST READ: REVEALED: Pelosi-Linked Lobbyists Are Pushing China’s Social Credit System For American Citizens.

“One of the things I’ve heard you say, which I think is fascinating and true, is that policies do make a difference and you point to China. So many people lifted out of poverty, so many people hungry that now have meals, so policies do make a difference don’t they,” he continues.

“Yes they do,” responds Cousin, adding “You would often hear me use China as an example of a country that the world said would never feed itself. That it would always depend upon assistance from the global community because 50 years ago, China was WFP’s largest recipient, and that all evolved to the point where President Xi now says that he will eradicate poverty by the end of 2020.”

“I’m looking forward to that,” Cousin exclaims.

Cousin proceeds to explicitly praise the actions of the Chinese Communist Party, praising the regime for its “commitment”:

“It did take commitment from government to developing the programs, investing in the activities that were necessary to ensure the agricultural system was one that could provide access to food, but also ensuring that people who could not afford food had access to food. And that made a difference in the evolution of China, and there are many other factors involved there but the reality of it is is it began with a commitment by leadership to ensure that they were self-sustained in food access.”

Cousin, who served in the Obama administration as the Ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture, has made similar comments throughout her public service tenure.

MUST READ: EXC: Anthony Fauci Is STILL Funding China’s Military-Run Labs With U.S. Taxpayer Cash.

“China has made enormous progress in dealing with hunger and its experience can be learned by the whole world,” Cousin said during a visit to China in 2013, which was hyped in an article by state-run media outlet China Daily.

In 2016, speaking with another state-run media outlet Xinhua, she claimed that “China has created significant lessons for the world and established a true benchmark for what the world can achieve.”

As recently as July 2021, while delivering a keynote address at a conference, Cousin again praised the Chinese Communist Party for “despite the fact that some 60 years ago, the world said China would never be able to feed itself, not only does it feed itself today, but it is also a donor country, supporting food access across the globe for developing countries.”

In addition to Cousin’s praise for China potentially complicating her leadership role for the upcoming White Conference, she has also served on the Advisory board of pharmaceutical giant Bayer since 2019.

Five ballistic missiles launched by China landed in the waters of Japan’s exclusive economic zone on Aug. 4, prompting an international outcry against the communist regime.

The missiles were launched as part of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) retaliatory military exercises against Taiwan, which have cut off several international air and sea paths to the island in a sort of blockade.

“To have five Chinese missiles fall within Japan’s EEZ like this is a first,” Japanese defense minister Nobuo Kishi said.

“We have protested strongly through diplomatic channels.”

Shortly before the launches, CCP authorities canceled a previously planned meeting between China and Japan’s foreign ministers, citing displeasure with Japan’s signing of a joint statement by the G-7 that called on China to resolve its tensions with Taiwan peacefully.

“We call on the PRC not to unilaterally change the status quo by force in the region, and to resolve cross-Strait differences by peaceful means,” the document said.

Taiwan Warns CCP Could ‘Invade’ Local Waters

The military exercises are the largest ever conducted by the CCP across the Taiwan Strait. They include joint naval, air, and missile forces, operating in six areas surrounding Taiwan.

Notably, some of the exercise areas, which the CCP has declared “prohibited” to international travel, occur within 10 miles of Taiwan’s coastline. A nation’s sovereign waters end 12 miles from the coastline, according to international law.

Such maneuvers would constitute an invasion of Taiwan’s territorial waters if Chinese forces were to travel the full breadth of the exercise areas, Taiwan lawmaker Wang Ting-yu told Axios.

“If they send in their fighters or their warships to enter our territorial sea, that means China invaded our territory and we will have our standard operation procedure to respond to that,” Wang said.

“We don’t want to provoke any conflict here, but whoever dares to invade our country, our home, we have our obligation to defend our home.”

CCP authorities claim that Taiwan is a rogue province of China that must be united with the mainland at any cost. As such, China’s state-owned propaganda organs have issued articles claiming that Taiwan’s territorial waters are actually China’s territorial waters.

Despite China’s claims, Taiwan has been self-governed since 1949, has never been controlled by the CCP, and boasts a democratic government and thriving market economy.

The White House said that China was positioning itself to take further aggressive actions against Taiwan following the announcement of the exercises, which have effectively blockaded many important international trade routes to the island.

“China has positioned itself to take further steps, and we expect that they will continue to react over a longer-term horizon,” said White House National Security Council communications coordinator John Kirby during an Aug. 2 press briefing. “The United States will not seek and does not want a crisis. [But] we are prepared to manage what Beijing chooses to do.”

“What we’ve seen thus far is consistent with the playbook that we expected them to run.”

US, China at Loggerheads Over Status Quo

The CCP’s escalations in the region follow a highly publicized visit to Taiwan by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, which the CCP leadership loudly protested. Both China and the United States have used the ensuing tensions to accuse one another of unilaterally attempting to change the status quo regarding Taiwan.

The United States maintains a “One China” policy, which acknowledges but doesn’t endorse the CCP’s principle that there is one inalienable China of which Taiwan is a part. It’s also bound by treaty to supply Taiwan with the arms necessary for Taiwan to defend its de facto independence. Further, the documents that form the basis of China and the United States’ agreement on the Taiwan issue demand that neither side seek to unilaterally change the current status quo through force or coercion.

To that end, the CCP has said it would “start a war no matter the cost” in order to prevent Taiwan’s independence from being recognized on the international stage.

Likewise, however, former U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said that the language of the United States’ agreements with China indicated that the nation would be willing to go to war to defend Taiwan from a CCP invasion.

“Going back 50 years, our views on this issue [have] been clear in that regard, that this would be a matter of ‘grave concern,’ which is often diplomatic language that we would be willing to go to war over this,” Esper said during a speech last month.

“It’s China that is undermining the “One China” policy as all sides have understood it now for 50 years, and it’s China changing the status quo through force. Those are just the facts of the matter.”

Despite the CCP’s claims that Pelosi’s visit constituted a “secessionist” push away from the status quo, the White House was quick to note that congressional delegations visit Taiwan with some frequency, including multiple times this year which received relatively little or no attention from the CCP.

Taiwan’s political and military leadership have also defended the visit, and have vowed to defend Taiwan’s territory and democratic way of life from CCP aggression.

“We are not eager for a fight, nor will we shy away from one,” Taiwan’s defense ministry stated in a video released on social media. “We have the capacity and the will to uphold our valued liberty and democracy, and maintain our region’s stability.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

DeSantis’s office has expressed ‘serious concerns’

With less than a week to go before the official kickoff of Florida’s 2022 primary election cycle, documents obtained exclusively by The Epoch Times expose how one supervisor of elections has repeatedly overstepped his authority to implement COVID-19 mandates and voting procedures that appear to challenge numerous Florida laws.

Early voting in Florida runs between Aug. 13 to 20, and “Each county Supervisor of Elections may offer more days of early voting from one or more of the following days: August 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 21.” Florida’s Primary Election day is Aug. 23.

In a letter dated Nov. 4, 2021, Paul Stamoulis, Supervisor of Elections for Florida’s Charlotte County informed “all applicants interested in serving as a Poll Worker” that they were “required to complete an enclosed Certification form,” verifying that they had “been inoculated for the COVID-19 virus.”

Applicants were told they had to identify the type of vaccine they received and the dates the vaccine was administered. By signing the form, applicants were also acknowledging that they understood they would be required to wear a mask or a face shield, covering their nose and mouth, “at all times.” Applicants who could not “comply with this new policy” for “whatever reason,” were told they were “ineligible to work the 2022 Elections.”

On April 2, 2021, seven months before Stamoulis mailed his letters, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed Executive Order 21-81 (pdf), banning vaccine mandates and “so-called COVID-19 vaccine passports,” saying it “would create two classes of citizens based on vaccination.”

On May 3, 2021, six months before Stamoulis mailed his letters, DeSantis issued Executive Order 21-101 (pdf), which suspended all local COVID-19 restrictions and mandates on individuals and businesses, and further stated that “no county or municipality may renew or enact an emergency order or ordinance, using a local state of emergency … that imposes restrictions or mandates upon businesses or individuals due to the COVID-19 emergency.”

The order was effective immediately. The same day, DeSantis signed Executive Order 21-102 (pdf) suspending all remaining states of emergency effective July 1, 2021, four months before Stamoulis mailed his letters.

Due to immediate backlash, Stamoulis rescinded this vaccine mandate policy.

Pandemic Procedures

But after his failure to force a vaccine mandate on local poll workers, Stamoulis has released a new set of polling room procedures that would prohibit voters from entering any one of their three early voting locations.

According to Page 8 of Stamoulis’s “Polling Location Pandemic Procedures 2022” manual, Stamoulis wants poll deputies to take the temperature of every voter—including accompanying children or any assistors they bring to help mark and cast their ballots—who wants to cast a ballot during Charlotte County’s 15-day early voting period.

Under the heading, “CHANGES DURING COVID,” the new manual says “each location would be provided with a thermometer,” and “Deputies stationed at the entry to the polling location” will be responsible for that thermometer throughout the day.” Deputies will also “instruct that “EVERYONE WISHING TO ENTER A POLLING LOCATION IS TO HAVE HIS OR HER TEMP CHECKED (kids, assistors, poll watchers, etc.).”

If anyone registers a temperature of 100 degrees or more, “claims to be uncomfortable entering the location” or “claims to feel ill and does not want to enter the polling location” or “refuses to have their temp taken,” a costly, resource and time-consuming procedure ensues.

‘Alternate Voting’ Procedures

When any of the aforementioned situations take place, the “Alternate Voting” procedures are to be implemented.

The deputy must stop attending to their other outside duties—which include ensuring that only voters and qualified individuals are admitted into the polling room, maintaining the peace outside, and ensuring enforcement of the 150 feet “No Solicitation Zone”—in order to find the clerk, at which time the clerk must also stop performing their many inside duties, such as assisting voters casting a provisional ballot, providing assistance to the EViD Operator/Inspector who operates the electronic poll book when they are unable to locate a voter in the registry, ensuring the maintenance of adequate supplies, filling in for poll workers who are on breaks, and managing the overall voting process within the polling location.

Under the heading, “DEPUTY AND CLERK RESPONSIBILITIES,” it describes how the clerk must next go outside and approach the voter, “wearing a mask and single use gloves.” Then, the Clerk is to “explain the new Alternate Voting process” and “request the voter’s photo/signature identification and inform the voter they will be right back.” The clerk must then go back inside and interrupt the check-in procedure of a voter—who already went through the temperature screening process—in order to have the EViD Operator/Inspector force the machine to issue a voting pass, as the voter has not yet provided a signature for verification purposes.

One Voter, Three Poll Workers

Now the clerk goes back outside, with the voter’s ID, Voting Pass, Signature Slip, ballot, and secrecy sleeve. After having the voter sign the Signature Slip, the clerk then compares the signature with the signature on the voter’s ID. If all is well, the voter is directed to a voting booth that has been set up outside, in the Florida summer heat, to mark their ballot.

The deputy must now juggle their normal duties with monitoring the voter to make sure they don’t leave with the ballot and/or that they aren’t approached by a third person. Once the voter has completed their ballot, they are told they must take their ballot to the deputy, who is not permitted to touch the ballot, so the deputy can go inside to get the clerk, who must again stop what they were doing inside in order to go back outside to get the voter’s ballot.

Now the clerk must explain to the voter that they are going to take their ballot away from them and go inside the polling room where they will cast the voter’s ballot into the tabulator. In the meantime, a third poll worker, the assistant clerk, must also stop their inside duties, which consisted of covering for the clerk in their absence, in order to document the procedure for the voter with a “recording device,” leaving no one left to assist voters and other poll workers with ballot casting and check in issues. “The Assistant Clerk records the ballot going from the voter to insertion into the DS200,” the manual describes. Then the clerk “returns to show the voter the video that their ballot was tabulated.”

“Once the voter sees the video it is deleted (in front of the voter).”

Florida Election Laws

According to Fla. Stat. § 102.031, “No photography is permitted in the polling room or early voting area.” Florida’s Voter’s Bill of Rights states that an elector has the right to “Vote free from coercion or intimidation by elections officers or any other person.”

According to Fla. Stat. § 104.20, “Any elector who, except as provided by law, allows his or her ballot to be seen by any person; takes or removes, or attempts to take or remove, any ballot from the polling place before the close of the polls; places any mark on his or her ballot by which it may be identified; endeavors to induce any elector to show how he or she voted; aids or attempts to aid any elector unlawfully; or prints or procures to be printed, or has in his or her possession, any copies of any ballot prepared to be voted is guilty of a misdemeanor of the first degree.”

Forcing a voter to have possession of their ballot outside of the polling location, where anyone could walk up and see it, subjects the voter to committing a third-degree felony.

Stamoulis Responds

When asked by The Epoch Times about his policies and procedures that appear to violate at least three executive orders and several statutes in Florida’s election laws, Stamoulis said in an email: “Regarding the sanitizing and social distancing issues, please see Governor Ron DeSantis’ Executive Order cited, in part, below.” He then pasted the following:

STATE OF FLORIDA
OFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR
EXECUTIVE ORDER NUMBER 20-149
Section 3.  Election Administration Coordination A.  Each Supervisor of Elections shall ensure proper social distancing and cleaning procedures are implemented for Early Voting and Election Day, insofar as is practicable.  This may include, but is not limited to, spacing out voting stations, the use of physical barriers for poll workers interacting with voters, providing personal protective equipment to poll workers and making hand sanitizer and other cleaning products readily available.

DeSantis signed Executive Order 20-149 (pdf) on June 17, 2020. The three aforementioned Executive Orders superseded that one.

“Masks are optional but not required of voters or poll workers in Florida,” Stamoulis said further.

However, his manual clearly states on Page 6, under the heading, “WHAT WE EXPECT OUR VOTERS TO DO FOR OUR COMMUNITY,” that voters are expected to “Arrive with sanitized hands and a face mask.” Under the heading “WHAT WE WILL DO FOR YOU,” it says poll workers will “Provide masks for those without.”

“We are awaiting a ruling on the temperature issue,” Stamoulis added.

However, on the last page of his manual, Stamoulis insists “THE SUPERVISOR OF ELECTIONS IS THE FINAL AUTHORITY WHEN IT COMES TO DECISIONS SURROUNDING COVID IN OUR OFFICES AND POLLING LOCATIONS.”

“In response to me being the final authority on COVID issues, please be advised that I follow the law in all matters, including Executive Orders, no exceptions,” Stamoulis insisted.

Rebuttal from DeSantis Office

The office of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis disagrees.

“Florida law is the final authority when it comes to elections in the state,” DeSantis’s Executive Press Secretary Christina Pushaw told The Epoch Times. “Supervisors of Elections must follow state law. If a supervisor is found to be in violation of the law, the governor has the authority to suspend that person from office.”

Under state law, Pushaw asserted that Floridians cannot be required to wear a mask by any government official or entity, which means that a mask mandate for voting would not be permissible.

“Beyond the mask issue, this document as a whole is concerning because it could scare citizens into thinking they must comply or simply not show up,” Pushaw explained. “In other words, this could be seen as voter suppression. It needs to be rectified to be clear to voters about their rights. We do not accept ‘COVID protocols’ that could suppress legal votes or prevent anyone from voting in person.”

Florida Department of State Weighs In

The Epoch Times also reached out to the Florida Department of State for comment.

“We were made aware of the document and reached out to Charlotte County Supervisor of Elections (SOE) Stamoulis to discuss,” FLDOS Director of External Affairs, Mark R. Ard, told The Epoch Times. “After our conversation, Supervisor Stamoulis understands the concerns presented within the document in question and is revising his policy so that all voters in Charlotte County will [have] equal access to ballots and there are no restrictions on voting. We appreciate Supervisor Stamoulis for being very collaborative throughout the process as we continue to work together to ensure safe, transparent elections in Florida.”

The Epoch Times has asked for an update on how the policy has been revised, but has not heard back from either Stamoulis or Ard as of press time.

Questionable Equipment Security

During the course of the investigation, The Epoch Times also received another manual, which raises serious questions regarding election equipment security at “polling locations that do not have a secured/locked room to store equipment.” According to the “2022 Election Cycle” training manual for “Clerks and Assistant Clerks,” the Charlotte County SOE’s security procedure for storing EViDs and ballot tabulators at unsecured locations consists of laying a large tarp “flat on the floor,” placing the equipment on the tarp, pulling the tarp over the equipment and fitting the U-bar of a combination lock through grommeted holes.

While the manual indicates “there should be no holes to allow access” to the equipment inside the tarp, there is nothing to prevent anyone with a pair of scissors from cutting through the tarp to access the equipment. Should any of the seals be found broken, the equipment would have to be replaced. This is not a simple matter as there is a complicated procedure involved in staging an EViD for an election.

A meticulous and time-consuming Logic and Accuracy Testing procedure must also be performed with ballot tabulators, including the DS200 (pdf), used by Charlotte County, and the ritual must be witnessed and verified by a canvassing board. Considering the high cost of election equipment, odds are that there are limited spare ready-to-go ballot tabulators and EViDs sitting around in some other secure location ready for use when security measures at a polling location have failed.

‘Serious Concerns’

Pushaw said that given the Pandemic Procedures manual is already in the hands of poll workers, some of them are still going to believe that they must enforce the outlined rules.

“Our position is that these policies need to be revised to make clear that voters cannot be required to participate in COVID protocols in order to exercise their right to vote,” Pushaw asserted. “More broadly, no official anywhere in the state is permitted to enact policies that violate Florida law. To summarize, we have serious concerns about this document and this Supervisor’s approach to elections administration.”

Correction: The headline of this article has been updated to more accurately describe the election concerns.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Small businesses seeking to grow their overseas sales are supposed to be the primary beneficiaries of loan guarantees by the U.S. Export-Import Bank (EX-IM), but a new analysis by a nonprofit government watchdog finds most of the funds go to corporate giants and corrupt regimes overseas.

“Small businesses, supposedly the intended beneficiary of the Export-Import Bank, received only $54.8 billion of the over $234 billion in total assistance since 2007, or about 23 percent” of the bank’s total funding, according to the report by Open The Books (OTB), a Chicago-based nonprofit that monitors government spending.

By filing more than 40,000 federal Freedom of Information Act requests and posting the checkbooks of 49 state governments, OTB has posted to the internet more than $6 trillion in public spending. The non-profit’s goal is to “post every dime in real-time.”

By far the biggest beneficiary of EX-IM lending is the Boeing Corporation, the largest U.S. aircraft manufacturer and one of the world’s most successful designers and builders of commercial airliners.

Boeing’s headquarters is currently in Chicago, but the company is planning a move to Arlington, Virginia, in the near future.

“The Export-Import Bank has been nicknamed ‘Boeing’s Bank’ by critics, and it is easy to see why. From 2007-2021, the aircraft giant received 33 percent of all of the Export-Import Bank’s assistance, totaling over $66.4 billion, while the second largest vendor received just over $5 billion. That’s more than all small businesses received combined,” the OTB report said.

“Boeing subsidiary Boeing Satellite Systems International reaped another $1.4 billion in assistance. Major international airline companies like Ryanair, Emirates Airlines, and Air Canada have all received assistance for Boeing purchases. Boeing employs a small army of 18 lobbyists to advocate for the Export-Import Bank,” the report said.

The second largest beneficiary of EX-IM funding is the Reston, Virginia-based Bechtel Corporation, which ranked only behind Boeing despite getting assistance for only seven contracts since 2007.

“The engineering and construction company received just over $5 billion from the bank for petroleum engineering in wealthy countries like the United Kingdom, Australia, and India, as well as with governments like Serbia and Kenya,” according to the OTB report.

General Electric Corporation and its subsidiaries whose exports of industrial engines and machinery in over 265 transactions earned them third place on the list of top vendors. The report said GEC got $4.7 billion in assistance between General Electric International Operations Company and General Electric Energy Parts alone.

About EX-IM’s overseas funding activities the report said, “the mandate of EX-IM is ‘filling the gaps’ to provide liquidity—facilitating the wheels of commerce. [A total of] 147 countries have received some amount of aid since 2007.

“While the United States sent billions of aid to some of the most corrupt countries and repressive regimes in the world, equally disturbing is the amount that went to wealthy countries that don’t need our aid.”

Ranked by countries, the largest beneficiary of U.S. taxpayer-guaranteed EX-IM loans is Nigeria, ruled by a regime that is ranked among the world’s most corrupt. “Ranked 149th in the world on a scale from least to most corrupt by Transparency International in 2020, importers in Nigeria received over $570 million from the Export-Import Bank.

“It would be a miracle if any of those dollars actually reached their intended recipient,” the OTB report said.

China, with the world’s second-largest economy, was also a large beneficiary of EX-IM resources.

“Second to only the United States in [Gross Domestic Product] GDP, businesses in China nonetheless received more than $6.4 billion in U.S. Export-Import Bank assistance. Even amidst Donald Trump’s trade war with China, $128,062,638.20 flowed to China from 2017 to 2020,” the report observed.

Russia and Turkey are also big beneficiaries of EX-IM funding.

“At least part of the over $1.9 billion that went to Russia likely went to line the pockets of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s oligarchs, who control most of the commerce in the country.

“Sberbank, Russia’s largest financial institution, was recently sanctioned by the United States for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, though they were approved for $29,103,807 of assistance from the Export-Import Bank,” the report said.

“Human Rights Watch warned in 2021 that Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been ‘dismantling human rights protections and democratic norms in Turkey on a scale unprecedented in the 18 years he has been in office.’ Still, the Export-Import Bank has sent over $6.2 billion to Turkey since 2007,” OTB reported.

The EX-IM bank currently has 396 employees, with 321 of them, or 81 percent, being made more than $100,000 annually. The highest paid employee made $199,300.

The bank has been the source of controversy for nearly a decade, with conservative Republicans demanding it is abolished as a corrupt example of crony capitalism, and Democrats defending it as an essential tool of U.S. foreign policy.

The then-Republican-led Congress allowed EX-IM to expire in 2015 but reversed itself five months later.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Didn’t he already admit it does not prevent the spread of infection? WTF? [US Patriot]

Dr. Anthony Fauci has once again sounded the warning bell over COVID-19, saying in an interview on Tuesday that those who are not up to date on vaccines will “get into trouble” this fall and winter.

“If they don’t get vaccinated or they don’t get boosted, they’re going to get into trouble,” Fauci told Los Angeles radio station KNX-AM.

A large part of the U.S. population is not up to date on the COVID-19 vaccines.

The Kaiser Family Foundation found that as of July 21, 227.8 million Americans either had not received a primary series of shots or had not gotten a booster dose. That is about 70 percent of the population.

“In each state, at least half the population is not up to date on COVID-19 vaccines. In Alabama, North Carolina, and Virginia, over 80% of people are not yet up to date on COVID-19 vaccines,” KFF noted.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 107,924,198 Americans have gotten the first booster. That makes up 48 percent of vaccinated people.

The number of Americans who have received the second booster shot is even lower.

The CDC recommends that people over the age of 50 receive the second booster. Only 19,935,913 members of that demographic — about 31 percent — have done so.

In the Tuesday radio interview, Fauci called the overall vaccination and booster rates “quite discouraging.”

“If you want to get your arms around — metaphorically, as it were — the outbreak, you want to get as many people in our community — and by community I mean our nation and the world — vaccinated and boosted so you don’t give this virus such ample opportunity to freely circulate,” Fauci said.

He insisted that the only way to get the virus under control and to keep it from continually mutating is to get everyone vaccinated.

Fauci called getting vaccinated and boosted a “communal responsibility.”

“People say, ‘Well, the risk to me is low, so why get it?’ It is about you as an individual, but it’s also about the communal responsibility to get this outbreak under control.”

Gabriel Nadales and Barrington Martin II say young Americans should ‘speak confidently about why they love this country’

After turning away from left-wing politics, a former Antifa activist and Democratic politician are launching a new campaign to challenge what they see as pervasive anti-Americanism among the country’s youth.

Gabriel Nadales, an Antifa protester turned conservative activist, and Barrington Martin II, a former Democratic congressional candidate, launched a half-million-dollar ad buy last week through their new group Our America, aimed at empowering young people across the United States to “celebrate a pride in, connection to, and a responsibility for our community and country.” The organization, whose advisory team includes conservative commentator Deroy Murdock, will also spend $2 million to produce online content that promotes what they say are America’s unifying values: patriotism, freedom of expression, respect, dignity, and equal opportunity.

“Our America is specifically here to give people the full faith and confidence to be able to speak confidently about why they love this country,” Martin, who primaried the late Democratic congressman John Lewis (Ga.) in 2020, told the Washington Free Beacon. “When I say ‘I love this country, it’s one of the greatest gifts in the world,’ you shouldn’t scoff at me when we are all Americans.”

Just 58 percent of Americans ages 18-29 believe the United States is “one of the greatest countries” in the world, according to a Pew Research survey in December, compared with 75 percent of Americans across all age groups. Nadales and Martin aim to bolster patriotic views among young Americans by challenging the narrative, promoted by left-wing media, politicians, and activists, that America is systemically racist and oppressive. Left-wing pundits like MSNBC host Al Sharpton, for example, spent Independence Day criticizing the United States, saying, “We’ve gone from Jim Crow to Jane Crow.” Wisconsin Democratic Senate candidate Mandela Barnes that same month called the founding of the United States “awful.”

Still, almost 90 percent of Americans of all races “love” the United States, Our America polling shared with the Free Beacon shows. Yet the minority of the population who believe America is racist and evil are the loudest voices in the room, Martin said.

Nadales, who came to the United States from Mexico as a child, said his public school education encouraged him to believe that America hates immigrants like himself. Nadales said he was recruited by the left-wing movement Antifa, known for its violent rioting and looting in cities such as Portland during the Trump administration, before he graduated high school.

After he became disillusioned with the group’s political extremism, however, he said he realized the far-left movement is a symptom of the division plaguing America.

“They’re incredibly dangerous, and they represent what is wrong with America today that people are so divided that they’re willing to go fight on the streets and recommend violence against one another,” Nadales said.

Nadales said Our America hopes to provide an uplifting message about the United States, bridging political differences with peaceful civil discourse.

“The American dream is not about having a fancy car,” Nadales said. “It’s the idea that we are not subject to the government. We are free people who are masters of our destinies. We can make our choices and we have the ability to choose to succeed. Your life is up to you and no one can take that away from you.”

Our America, which has 125,000 email subscribers after launching two months ago, will air its ads on TBS, TNT, BET, Univision, and MTV.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Two doctors and a former Harvard Medical School professor have signed onto the lawsuit that alleges the U.S. government and Big Tech colluded to censor dissenting voices.

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff, who authored the Great Barrington Declaration, on Aug. 2 joined the states of Missouri and Louisiana in the case, which is moving forward with discovery after a recent ruling.

Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, who was fired for refusing to get a COVID-19 vaccine, also joined the legal action.

All three say they have been affected by Big Tech censorship, and believe the punitive measures have been influenced or directed by government officials.

In April 2021, for instance, Google-owned YouTube deleted a video of Bhattacharya and Kulldorff questioning whether masks were effective in stopping the spread of SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19.

Kulldorff, a former Harvard Medical School professor who now works at the Brownstone Institute, was also suspended by Twitter for several weeks after positing that masks give people a false sense of security, which makes them more likely to expose themselves to the illness. That’s the same theory put forth by top U.S. officials until they pivoted to endorsing widespread mask-wearing months after the pandemic started.

Kheriaty also says he was censored by Twitter.

“I have always shared peer-reviewed research findings as well as my own opinions and perspectives on Twitter and LinkedIn. It was not until I began posting information about COVID and our COVID response policies, however, that I encountered censorship on the Twitter platform,” he wrote in a declaration filed in the new case.

Multiple platforms, meanwhile, took action against the declaration, which called for focused protection of the elderly while letting the rest of society live their lives normally and was vociferously opposed by top U.S. health officials, including then-National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins.

Search results on Google initially placed the declaration’s website near the top but soon ranked it lower than articles that were critical of the document, according to declarations from Bhattacharya and Kulldorff. Reddit removed links to the declaration and Facebook removed a page dedicated to the document, though it later restored it.

‘Self-Censor’

The scientists say they’ve had to “self-censor” in order to try to remain on the platforms.

That has sometimes meant not posting at all, and other times posting by using “imaginative phrasing,” Kulldorff said.

They also say the timing of the censorship decisions support the assertion that the moves were induced by the government, including how censorship of the declaration happened soon after Collins called for a “quick and devastating … take-down” of the document in private and disparaged it in public.

“These are clear indications to me that government is in collaboration with Big Tech to suppress scientific dissent,” Bhattacharya told The Epoch Times.

Government officials such as former White House press secretary Jen Psaki have openly admitted to flagging “problematic posts” for Facebook and raising issues with posts on Twitter, the complaint notes, while some of the platforms have acknowledged consulting with government officials on content moderation.

“The government’s sweeping campaign to suppress the perspectives of the plaintiffs, and others like them, represents the most severe abrogation of the First Amendment in modern times, and we look forward to seeing this constitutional atrocity rectified in a court of law,” Jenin Younes, a lawyer for the New Civil Liberties Alliance, which is representing the new plaintiffs, said in a statement.

The plaintiffs were added in an amended complaint, filed in response to the government’s motion to dismiss.

More Defendants

The revised effort drops one defendant, Psaki, who is no longer with the federal government, and adds a number of others.

Carol Crawford with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); the U.S. Census Bureau; Jennifer Shopkorn, a senior adviser for the bureau; the Department of Commerce; Robert Silvers and Samantha Vinograd, Department of Homeland Security officials; the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency; Jen Easterly, director of the agency; and Gina McCarthy, a White House national climate adviser were named as defendants.

None were named in the original filing.

Joe Biden, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas were among the defendants named in both complaints.

The additions came after new information came to light, including emails between the CDC and top executives at Big Tech companies like Twitter.

The messages show Crawford and colleagues met with and discussed taking action against alleged COVID-19 misinformation.

The Census Bureau was involved in the coordination, according to the missives.

The messages, the amended filing states, “confirm the allegations of collusion between [government] officials and social-media platforms to censor disfavored speech, speakers, and viewpoints, as alleged herein.”

Source: The Epoch Times

WAIT UNTIL THE ‘FACT CHECKERS’ HAVE TO TRY AND FIND A WAY AROUND THIS ONE.

A study on the efficacy of shutting down bars and restaurants to stop the spread of COVID-19 found that the restrictions were “not an efficient way” to decrease virus transmission, concluding that it “does not contribute to the suppression of SARS-CoV-2.”

“Using a large-scale nationally representative longitudinal survey, we found that the early closure of restaurants and bars decreased the utilization rate among young persons and those who visited these places before the pandemic. However, symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 did not decrease in these active and high-risk subpopulations,” explains a summary of the research paper.

The study – SARS-CoV-2 Suppression and Early Closure of Bars and Restaurants: A Longitudinal Natural Experiment – was conducted by researchers in Japan and published in the peer-reviewed journal Scientific Reports. 

Researchers used Japan as a case study because during the first two months of 2021, the early closure of restaurants and bars was the only mitigation strategy adopted by officials. This gave researchers the unique opportunity to isolate the closure of restaurants and bars as variables they could assess the efficacy of.

Data for the study was provided through a large-scale nationally representative survey.

“From the perspective of public policy implications, our study suggests that the early closure of full-service restaurants and bars, without any other concurrent policies, is not an efficient way to suppress SARS-CoV-2. Given the large detrimental effects on employment, alternative measures for full-service restaurants and bars should be considered before they are closed completely,” summarized the paper.

Despite the data showing a reduction in the use rate of restaurants and bars among Japanese people, researchers found “no discernible decrease in the symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 except the reduction of “cough” among college graduates.”

MUST READ: New England Journal of Medicine: Unvaccinated COVID Patients Are Contagious for LESS Time Than those Vaxed or Boosted.

The other symptoms tracked by researchers included high fever, sore throat, headache, and smell and taste disorder.

“These results suggest that the early closure of restaurants and bars without any other concurrent measures does not contribute to the suppression of SARS-CoV-2,” posit researchers.

The study follows months of mandated closures of restaurants and businesses throughout the world, with health officials floating the measure as a potential solution to combat supposedly new variants of COVID-19. Dr. Birx, in her book Silent Invasion, professes to be the leader of the mass lockdown measures in the United States. She claims to have been supported by President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and Vice President Mike Pence.

A survey published by the Small Business Roundtable found that 31 percent of small businesses were not operating as a result of the lockdowns.

The German government may tax individuals with high carbon footprints at heavier rates than their fellow, eco-friendly citizens.

Activities that could trigger a higher tax rate, as reported by German media outlets, include driving gasoline-powered or large cars, engaging in frequent air travel, and living in a large place of residence.

The policy enjoys support from the country’s left-wing Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection Robert Habeck, who recently floated a “climate tax” on new car registrations, according to a strategy paper by the government agency obtained by the German news outlet Handelsblatt.

The government described the tax initiative as “a CO2-dependent climate tax for new car registrations,” so “as a result, e-cars are cheaper than the respective combustion cars.”

Katrin Göring-Eckardt, Vice President of Germany’s federal parliament, echoed the proposal, emphasizing how basing taxes on citizens’ environmental impact was imperative to advancing the goals of “social justice.”

As newspaper Die Welt explained in reference to Eckardt’s proposal:

“Therefore, in the future, those who cause a particularly large amount of climate-damaging CO2 should be taxed more heavily – for example with a large apartment, two cars or permanent air travel, she demanded. “A temporary wealth levy would also be conceivable. We need a new justice contract.” In the future, social justice will no longer be separate from climate justice, said Göring-Eckardt.”

“Companies have to check whether they can turn down the heating and air conditioning in the offices and workshops. The same applies to public buildings, golf clubs or fun pools,” added Göring-Eckardt, who also blamed the potential levying of new taxes on the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine.

“The climate crisis will demand many more restrictions from us,” she emphasized.

The German government floating a potential environmental tax follows concern over left-wing and globalist advocacy groups such as the World Economic Forum (WEF) exploiting COVID-19 and the climate to implement their “Great Reset” agenda.  The group seeks to abolish property ownership at its core, summarizing this objective through its controversial expression “you will own nothing and be happy.”

IT’S ALL ADDS UP NOW.

Writing in her book Silent Invasion, former White House COVID task force member Ambassador Deborah Birx admits that her “go to” connections to push pro-lockdown policies in the White House were none other than Vice President Mike Pence, and President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

The National Pulse has previously reported from Birx’s book how she admitted to “subterfuge” in the White House, going so far as to implement changes in policy without authorization, and contrary to the Trump White House’s instructions.

Chapter 10 of her book further explains:

Just as I knew that in a pandemic getting people to change their behavior was very hard, that was true of those shaping the pandemic response as well. Better to leverage those who could help me impact the response than those who resisted me. There was Jared and there was the vice president, and those two men would be my go-to people in the White House, then and for the next nine months, to move the pandemic response forward.

Throughout the book Birx explains how she was pro-lockdown to the extreme, even refusing to attend meetings with those who opposed her perspective. In Chapter 13, Birx admits to her petulance:

Somehow, I had to cut [Dr. Scott] Atlas off from any degree of influence he might try to exert on anyone short of the president, whether during my absence or while I was still there. Individually, I contacted Marc Short, Mark Meadows, and Jared Kushner. I communicated clearly to everyone: “I won’t be in any meetings any longer if Scott Atlas is present at them. If that means a meeting in the Oval Office[,] it doesn’t matter. If it’s at the task force, it doesn’t matter. If it’s at the Covid Huddle, I don’t want him there.”

The news comes as the former Vice President increasingly attempts to carve out a role for himself in the conservative movement, with many speculating he intends to challenge President Trump for the Republican nomination for 2024.

MUST READ: New England Journal of Medicine: Unvaccinated COVID Patients Are Contagious for LESS Time Than those Vaxed or Boosted.

Earlier in the book, Birx admitted to “devis[ing] a work-around for the governor’s reports,” where she claims she would “reinsert what [the White House] had objected to, but place it in… different locations. I’d also reorder and restructure the bullet points so the most salient—the points the administration objected to most—no longer fell at the start of the bullet points. I shared these strategies with the three members of the data team also writing these reports. Our Saturday and Sunday report-writing routine soon became: write, submit, revise, hide, resubmit. Fortunately, this strategic sleight-of-hand worked. That they never seemed to catch this subterfuge left me to conclude that, either they read the finished reports too quickly or they neglected to do the word search that would have revealed the language to which they objected.”

Ambassador Birx says she was recruited into her role by National Security Advisor Matt Pottinger, and was championed for the position by New Hampshire congressional hopeful Matt Mowers.

If Republicans aggressively communicate the details of the Manchin-Schumer bill, it will become prohibitively expensive for any Democrats to vote for it.

During the August break, every Republican House and Senate candidate should challenge their Democrat opponents to defend the new, destructive, and unpopular Joe Manchin-Chuck Schumer bill.

Democrats hope to camouflage the bill by calling it the “Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.” In the business world, this title would lead to a lawsuit over false advertising. As I wrote in my latest best-selling book, “Defeating Big Government Socialism,” this kind of dishonest branding is standard procedure for the Orwellian party that modern Democrats have become. An accurate title of the bill would be the “Higher Taxes, Bigger IRS, and More Inflation Act of 2022.”

If Republicans aggressively communicate the details of the Manchin-Schumer bill, it will become prohibitively expensive for any Democrats to vote for it.

Scott Rasmussen highlighted the American public’s opposition to this bill once it is accurately explained. In a poll this weekend, Rasmussen discovered that 55 percent of Americans favor cutting government spending and taxes, while only 23 percent favor higher taxes and spending. Just on this overview Republican candidates will have a more than 2:1 majority opposing higher taxes and bigger spending. And by 44 percent to 17 percent Americans believe higher taxes and government spending will increase inflation.

According to Rasmussen, “when told half the tax burden will fall on manufacturing industries, 63% say it is likely to make supply chain problems worse.” Only 19 percent of Americans think the bill’s so-called book tax will not affect the supply chain. I would add that increasing taxes on our manufacturing industries when we are competing with China is totally backward-thinking – and virtually suicidal in terms of national security.

Democrats should also take notice: The pain caused by the bad energy policies supported in the bill is undermining support for green policies. Some 66 percent of Americans now think reducing the price of gas is more important than reductions carbon emissions.

In fact, according to Rasmussen, 46 percent say more spending on climate change and clean energy programs will increase the price of gasoline, while only 21 percent think it will lower the price of gas.

When told the new Manchin-Schumer bill will lead to 86,000 additional Internal Revenue Service agents (the IRS currently has 78,661 full-time staff) the American people oppose it by 53 percent to 31 percent. But the intensity factor is huge. Some 29 percent strongly oppose the plan while only 9 percent strongly favor it. That is a more than 3:1 opposition at the extremes.

When people realize most of these IRS agents will not be going after billionaires and big companies – but instead will be auditing waitresses, uber drivers, self-employed people, and small businesses – I expect the opposition will grow even more intense.

As Rasmussen described it, “The new legislation being considered would double the size of the IRS so that the agency can conduct audits on an additional 1.2 million taxpayers every year. The agency has set a goal of increasing the audits of small business owners by 50%.”

Finally, despite the Democrats’ deeply dishonest title, the bill will increase the rate of inflation in the near term – not reduce it.

As the Daily Wire reported, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania found that the bill “could lead to a slight increase in inflation over the next two years.” While the bill is expected to eventually reduce inflation after 2024, the Wharton School study found: “These point estimates are statistically indistinguishable from zero, thereby indicating low confidence that the legislation will have any impact on inflation.” So, not only will the bill increase inflation over the next few years, it will ultimately have no impact long-term.

The Manchin-Schumer bill is an enormous opportunity for Republicans – and a genuine learning moment for the American people.

It is crystal clear that the current economic performance failures of the Democrats are caused by the underlying destructive policies they promote. Further, Republicans should also clearly expose the consistently dishonest and hypocritical language Democrats use to try to fool Americans.

Every Republican candidate for House and Senate should challenge his or her Democratic opponent to a series of focused debates during the August recess. Republicans should assert that the Manchin-Schumer bill is a higher tax, bigger IRS, more inflation bill which will be bad for America. Every Democrat should be made to debate the point.

When Democrats try to hide behind the bill’s phony title and dishonest talking points, Republicans should be ready to challenge them on substance with clear examples.

Republican Georgia Senate Nominee Herschel Walker has already challenged Sen. Raphael Warnock to defend the bill. After saying for weeks that Walker was afraid to debate, Warnock is now avoiding his opponent.

Take note of every Democrat who refuses to defend the bill. Their reluctance will demonstrate just how bad it is.

This is a great opportunity for Republicans to define the real choice for November.

They should grab it now and not let go.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has claimed that there was no known association between heart inflammation and COVID-19 vaccines as late as October 2021.

CDC officials made the claim, which is false, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request for reports from a CDC team that is focused on analyzing the risk of post-vaccination myocarditis and pericarditis, two forms of heart inflammation. Both began detected at higher-than-expected rates after COVID-19 vaccination in the spring of 2021.

The team focuses on studying data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a passive surveillance system co-run by the CDC and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The date range for the search was April 2, 2021, to Oct. 2, 2021.

“The National Center for Emerging Zoonotic Infectious Diseases performed a search of our records that failed to reveal any documents pertaining to your request,” Roger Andoh, a CDC records officer, told The Epoch Times. The center is part of the CDC.

No abstractions or reports were available because “an association between myocarditis and mRNA COVID-19 vaccination was not known at that time,” Andoh added.

Both the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines are built on messenger RNA (mRNA) technology.

Earliest Myocarditis Reports

Reports of heart inflammation after COVID-19 vaccination were first made public in April 2021 by the U.S. military, which detected the issue along with Israeli authorities well before the CDC.

While Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC’s director, said that month that the agency had looked for a safety signal in its data and found none, by the end of June CDC researchers were saying that the available data “suggest an association with immunization,” and in August described (pdf) the issue as a “harm” from vaccination.

The claim that the link wasn’t known “is provably false,” Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center, told The Epoch Times via email. “Either the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing at CDC, or federal health officials are disseminating misinformation about what they knew about myocarditis following mRNA COVID vaccines and when they knew it.”

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said that the FOIA response “raises even more questions about the agency’s honesty, transparency, and use, or lack thereof, of its safety surveillance systems, such as VAERS, to detect COVID-19 vaccine adverse events.”

“I have sent two letters to the CDC about the agency’s inability to find records demonstrating its use of the vaccine surveillance systems. To date, the CDC has failed to respond to my letters,” he added.

‘Correction’

“Apparently CDC needs to make a correction!” a spokeswoman for the agency told The Epoch Times in an email.

The agency is acknowledging that by June 2021, data began to indicate a link between the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines and heart inflammation, outlined that month in two presentations made to government vaccine advisory panels.

“Additional data accumulated in subsequent months, ultimately leading to the conclusion that a causative association did indeed exist. However, such a conclusion required time to accumulate and analyze data,” the spokeswoman said.

It remains unclear how the CDC looked for a signal in April 2021. The CDC has declined to provide any details.

The CDC’s records office did not respond to a request for comment.

The correction is the second time in recent weeks that the agency has backtracked on a claim.

Andoh in June told the nonprofit Children’s Health Defense that staff from the agency’s Immunization and Safety Office informed him that the agency would not perform data mining on VAERS, even though several CDC documents said the agency would perform the analyses.

Questioned about the matter, Dr. John Su, a CDC official, told The Epoch Times that the agency started performing the data mining in February 2021.

Noting the conflicting statements, Johnson wrote to Walensky asking her for answers. “CDC’s assertion and Dr. Su’s statement cannot both be true,” he said.

Source: The Epoch Times

‘That pill makes people seem crazy, insane,’ says a persecuted Uyghur man

“You will no longer shout after I give you a shot,” said the director of the Hebei Provincial Brainwashing Center in China, while threatening a Falun Gong adherent who kept saying out loud, “Falun Gong is good!”

Hua Fengxiang was arrested for his belief in the persecuted spiritual practice of Falun Gong. Yuan Shuqian, who has been serving as the director of the brainwashing center since 2001, ordered his officers to stuff a towel in Hua’s mouth before forcibly injecting him with an unidentified drug. Shortly after the shot, Hua’s health deteriorated, his spine became distorted, his neck became stiff, and he had difficulty walking, reported Minghui.org, a U.S.-based nonprofit organization that provides firsthand information on the ongoing persecution of Falun Gong.

Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa) is a mind-body practice rooted in the universal principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. The officially atheist Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been persecuting the practice since July 20, 1999. Over the past 23 years, tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have been arrested, detained, tortured, and even killed for their organs. Adherents are routinely tortured in detention centers, brainwashing centers, and mental hospitals.

Over a decade ago, the U.S. Department of State expressed concerns over China’s “ankang” facilities, or psychiatric hospitals (the Chinese term ironically translates as “peace and health” facilities), which are under the direct administration of the Ministry of Public Security. The report stated that these “high-security psychiatric hospitals”—meant for the “criminally insane”—even housed Falun Gong practitioners, other underground religious believers, and political activists together with mentally ill patients. Those detained in these hospitals were allegedly “medicated against their will and forcibly subjected to electric shock treatment.”

Whether an individual is diagnosed with mental disorders, what medications he is given and how they are administered, and when he is released are all under police control.

China’s first Mental Health Code that came into effect on May 1, 2013, states that people with “severe symptoms” and those who present a “danger of harming others” can be forcibly detained in mental hospitals, according to the Minghui report titled “The 20-Year Persecution of Falun Gong in China.” The 437-page book, which extensively details the brutality faced by Falun Gong practitioners, says that the code doesn’t protect citizens from “being arbitrarily labeled as mentally ill,” and that there is a “huge gray area that police and relevant government agencies have exploited” in persecuting Falun Gong while deciding if any person is of any potential threat to the safety and security of others.

“There is no third-party oversight of ankang facilities. Police departments both administer ankang hospitals and decide who to take to these facilities. Whether an individual is diagnosed with mental disorders, what medications he is given and how they are administered, and when he is released are all under police control,” states the report.

Read More

Prisoners of Conscience in Communist China Injected With Nerve-Damaging Drugs

Chinese Police Inadvertently Admit Psychiatric Abuses

Falun Gong Practitioner Dies From Drugged Prison Food

Nerve-Damaging Drugs

Minghui.org has documented over 100 different torture methods used by the CCP to coerce Falun Gong adherents into renouncing their belief. Forced administration of unknown nerve-damaging drugs is one of the most common tools of persecution.

The side effects from the unidentified drugs include heart problems, stiffness of tongue, memory loss, numbness of body, damaging effects on the central nervous system, loss of speech, and vision problems, as reported in the few selected cases that follow.

Peng Yuxin, 55, from Hefei City, Anhui province, was injected with toxic medications for a total of six times before his release from prison in 2020. He lost almost all his ability to speak, and could only utter a few words. Moreover, he could not write his own address. He nodded his head when asked if he was injected with drugs.

Liang Zhiqin, a Falun Gong adherent from Tangshan City, Hebei province, was tied up and injected twice with toxic drugs when she was detained at the Tangshan City Ankang Hospital in 2000. She lost consciousness and had acute cardiac problems and chest pain after the first injection. Her memory became worse after she was released in September 2001. She often gave the wrong change to customers when helping at her family’s business. “I was on the verge of death,” Liang recalled. “I was in so much pain that my eyes could not even move. My tongue became rigid, and my mind was unclear.”

Yang Baochun, from Handan City, Hebei province, was arrested in the winter of 2000. The guards at Handan Forced Labor Camp poured hot water on his feet after ordering him to stand barefooted in the snow. The torture resulted in an infection in his blistered leg and his right leg had to be amputated. The authorities covered up the incident saying Yang was insane and his infection was self-inflicted. To back their claims, he was sent to Ankang Mental Hospital in Feixiang County, where he was given food with unidentified drugs mixed in. He was released in 2004, but only to be arrested again in 2005; he was imprisoned and tortured at the Yongkang Mental Hospital, which left him truly insane.

Xu Guiqin, from Taian City, Shandong province, was arrested in 2001 and sent to No. 1 Female Labor Camp in Jinan City. Two days before her release, she was beaten for several hours and forcibly injected with four bottles of drugs that damage the central nervous system, leading to numbness of the body, swelling of the face, severe memory loss, anorexia, and dizziness. When she was released, the guards told the family, “Watch out for her and don’t let her go by herself, or her life will be at risk.” However, she died nine days later due to failure of her nervous system.

Li Zhongming, from Luzhou City, Sichuan province, was saying out loud “Falun Dafa is good! Truthfulness, compassion, forbearance is good!” when she was arrested from her home in 2011. Her shouts attracted the attention of people, who saw police officers injecting something into Li’s arms. Immediately, she could not speak; her mouth and tongue became stiff as saliva dripped from her mouth.

Gao Yumin, a police officer from Fuxin City, Liaoning province, was previously involved in persecuting Falun Gong practitioners. However, after he learned more about the spiritual system and the CCP’s propaganda against it, he started practicing it too; like any other adherent, he too was arrested and severely tortured. Two months before his 3 1/2-year term expired, he was injected with a high dose of nerve-damaging drugs, rendering his intelligence to that of a 3-year-old child. His family later found through the urine sample test that the concentration of the drug in his body was so high that it could poison him.

Read More

Psychiatric Torture and the Unspeakable Suffering It Causes

‘That Pill Makes People Seem Crazy, Insane’

Uyghur men and women detained in Xinjiang re-education camps in China are forcibly given drugs that can negatively affect their fertility.

Omir Bekli, a Kazakhstan national born in Xinjiang, told The Epoch Times how Uyghur men, including himself, were forced to take a pill daily “to stop their sexual feelings forever.” Bekli, who was detained for six months in 2017, said that he “survived” by hiding the pill under his tongue and spitting it out later.

“That pill makes people seem crazy, insane, and as if they don’t know what they’re doing. They just do as they’re told. It’s as if they’re high. You can see they’re not normal,” he said.

Gulbakhar Jalilova, a Uyghur and Kazakhstan national who was detained for 15 months in an internment camp in Xinjiang, told The Epoch Times that one fellow inmate died after being injected.

“She was injected but her body was still warm, and other girls were ordered to wash her body. She just died like that in front of me,” she said.

Gulbakhar added that they were given unknown medicine every day and injected with a drug every month. “The injection makes you feel like you have no memory,” she said. “You don’t miss your family, you don’t feel like you want to get out. You feel nothing—it’s a very strange feeling.”

A house Christian from Sichuan province was detained for 10 months in 2018, after the church was raided. While in detention, he was locked in solitary confinement and became suicidal, leading him to bang himself against the wall.

Once, when he was “groggy” and couldn’t open his eyes, a few police officers grabbed him and pinned him to the ground, he told Radio Free Asia (RFA). “They injected me with some drug, and brought me back to consciousness,” he said.

Human-rights activists such as lawyers have also been subjected to forced medications.

Jiang Tianyong, a prominent human rights lawyer in China, was forced to take an unidentified medication twice a day while detained in prison in 2018. His wife told RFA that the drugs had caused his memory to deteriorate. ChinaAid reported in its Annual Persecution Report 2020 that Jiang’s vision was also affected.

Source: The Epoch Times

Rayne Barton, 62, didn’t expect that her first visit to the doctor in months would end in arrest, but there she was on July 22, in the waiting room with her wrists handcuffed behind her back.

She would not be seeing the doctor that day.

Barton, of Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, would not leave as requested after she refused to wear a COVID-19 face mask, which is required at Hypertension and Kidney Specialists in Lancaster.

Hypertension and Kidney Specialists is an independent practice with an office on the Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health Suburban Pavilion property.

At the request of the office manager at Hypertension and Kidney Specialists, the East Hempfield Township Police removed Barton from the building, according to a criminal complaint. She was taken in a wheelchair, put in a squad car, and driven to the police department to be fingerprinted and photographed.

On the way to the police station, the car rounded a corner and Barton fell on her side and hit her head on the car door.

“The officer looked in his rearview mirror, saw me gone, and he said, ‘Are you okay?’ I said ‘Yeah, I’m just fine.’ And then I went to get myself up, and I’m like, ‘oh no, I can’t get up,’” Barton told The Epoch Times.

Her back is compromised due to spinal stenosis, and with her hands still cuffed behind her back, she was unable to pull herself up.

“They pulled over off the road to lift me upright in the back of the cruiser,” she said.

After she was processed at the police department, Barton was released and told that charges would arrive in the mail. She was charged with defiant criminal trespass, a misdemeanor, and must appear in court in September.

It is unknown when she will see a doctor.

Past Issue With Masks

This wasn’t Barton’s first confrontation with medical office staff who told her she couldn’t see her providers unless she wore a mask.

The Epoch Times published a report in March 2022 about Barton’s struggle to receive medical care throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. She is unable to wear a mask due to childhood trauma stemming from an assault during which she nearly suffocated.

Barton has been banned from all Penn Medicine facilities since Feb. 17, 2022, because of the mask dispute.

Since then, she has not seen a doctor nor had her prescriptions filled. Her pacemaker must be checked every four months but hasn’t been looked at in over two years.

However, she has tried to be seen by her long-time doctors. She is not sure where else to turn.

When she’s really needed medical care in recent months, Barton has called her former doctors’ offices and tried to set appointments, but until recently, the computer system wouldn’t allow schedulers to add her to the calendar.

Then one day, when she called to request an appointment at Hypertension and Kidney Specialists, the receptionist on the phone added Barton to the calendar on July 22 without issue, she said.

Barton said she figured it would be OK to see the doctor again, and that it was a relief because she needed care. She did not intend to get arrested.

But when she arrived at the office, it was the same situation as before.

“The office manager called the police because I wasn’t going to leave. I was there for a scheduled appointment,” Barton said. “I was not going to be bullied into leaving.”

Extensive Medical Needs

In addition to spinal stenosis, Barton has a painful cyst about the size of a grapefruit on the back of her knee that must be removed. She also suffers from diabetes, high blood pressure, and kidney issues, and she has a pacemaker.

Before she was banned in February, Barton had been seeing the same group of physicians for 40 years at Penn Medicine, which is part of the University of Pennsylvania Health System.

Barton was served without a mask a few times, but most offices refused her care without the mask.

She was once offered the accommodation of taking a COVID-19 test in her car. If negative, she could have used a separate entrance for a planned medical procedure. But because the test involved a swab being pushed into her nose, Barton couldn’t take the test and didn’t have the procedure.

A few times in late 2021, she entered medical offices without a mask and was told to mask up, but she refused. Barton explained her trauma history, which she had kept private for years, and demanded to be seen by her doctors.

Office staff called the police once, but Barton was not arrested that time.

Soon after that, Barton tried to set an appointment with a Penn Medicine doctor and the scheduler told her the computer would not let her. She could not get in to see her general practitioner, cardiologist, or any other doctors.

In February 2022, Barton received a letter saying Lancaster General Health Physicians had terminated the provider–patient relationship.

The letter stated: “You have refused our offers to accommodate and have been rude and argumentative to staff. We no longer believe that we are able to work together regarding your health care needs. You are prohibited from being on the property or entering any LG health facility with the exception of Lancaster General Hospital emergency department. In the event of a medical emergency you may always seek care at Lancaster General Hospital emergency department. We will happily facilitate the transfer of your records to an alternative provider.”

But Barton didn’t know where she could go when the medical providers in her community all required masking. She wanted to stay with the close-to-home doctors she had been working with for decades. They knew her case.

Barton says she made 30 to 40 calls to Lancaster General Health CEO John Herman, but never received a return call or connected with him directly.

Then in March, she got a letter from Kathryn Weinrich, executive director of legal services at Lancaster General Health, warning Barton that her calls to Herman were harassment and that she was to have no further contact with the organization.

She was not to call or step foot in any facility related to the University of Pennsylvania Health System, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Lancaster General Health, and other named satellite offices.

Trauma Survivor

At age 5, Barton was playing with other little girls near the train tracks in the city of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, when a large group of teenage boys came upon the girls, separated them, and assaulted them.

They threw Barton down on her back in the dirt. Two boys held her legs, and another sat on her waist and held her down at the elbows.

Barton recalls how they put their fingers down her throat and smashed dirt in her face, up her nose, and in her ears. They stepped on her face, then flipped her over and rubbed her face in the dirt.

She recalls how she couldn’t breathe and thought she was going to die. There was a police report at the time. After that, her parents moved out of the neighborhood to get away from the scene of the crime.

The attack left an imprint in Barton’s mind to always protect her face.

She has discomfort when she’s pulling a shirt over her head and it takes too long to slip past her face. Turtlenecks are out of the question because they are too restrictive. She never wore a Halloween mask, and before sleeping, she makes sure the blanket is clear from her face.

She has sought counseling through the years but still guards her face and avoids situations that would require her to cover it. Once COVID-19 mask requirements were implemented, she stayed home, except to see the doctor.

Accommodations for Trauma Survivors

Trauma-informed care is not a new concept.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration published a 2014 booklet, titled “SAMHSA’s Concept of Trauma and Guidance for a Trauma-Informed Approach.”

It describes a trauma-informed approach to care, including ensuring that individuals feel physically and psychologically safe, share in decision making about their care, are able to self-advocate, and are offered service that is healing and responsive to their traumatic experiences.

The Epoch Times asked Penn Medicine to describe its current masking policy and any trauma-informed services for survivors of rape, child abuse, and other trauma. Penn Medicine did not respond.

But the regional health care provider is not unfamiliar with trauma-informed care, and it trains others on how to care for trauma victims.

Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health offered a 2019 community training titled, “Trauma 101: Understanding Trauma, Resilience and Trauma Informed Care.”

A July 19, 2021, press release announced that the City of Lancaster and Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health jointly received a $300,000 grant from the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency “to Build a trauma informed Lancaster City.”

The grant was for Penn Medicine to train community groups using a dedicated Lancaster City trauma-informed training specialist.

“A trauma informed community strives to do no harm and recognizes past and ongoing traumas such as historic and structural racism, exclusion, isolation and the chronic, daily stressors of concentrated poverty and exposure to community violence,” the Penn Medicine press release said.

“Penn Medicine LG Health has served as the backbone organization convening the community and providing education and training on the impact that positive and adverse childhood experiences have on health and well-being, and steps organizations can take on the path to become trauma informed.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

My blood is boiling.

The Deep State Cabal inside the DOJ and FBI went out of their way to hinder the investigation of Hunter Biden’s laptop just weeks before the 2020 Presidential election. By blocking the disastrous news, it kept America in the dark and aided Biden’s so-called victory.

When America was being distracted with COVID, mandates, lockdowns, and BLM riots, our freedom was being taken away without most people noticing because our government was conspiring against us.

How can we trust our so-called “top law-enforcement” agency to do their job when they actively hid Hunter’s investigation in a RESTRICTED SUBFOLDER on their network?

Now Biden’s handpicked Attorney General has no problem turning a blind eye to the actions of the Biden family. This isn’t just refusing to investigate Hunter’s laptop, this is ACTIVELY HIDING EVIDENCE so no one else would investigate.

That’s why you and I must continue to stand up to them.

If you want to see Hunter investigated and the Big Guy impeached, then I need your URGENT Contribution of $25, $50, or $100 today!

We need to let these Deep State hooligans know that we’re going to do the job they were supposed to do. I’m opening up a congressional investigation into the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop and exposing the criminality of Hunter and the Big Guy. I told you my blood is boiling, right?

If the DOJ didn’t cover up Hunter’s crimes and the intelligence officials didn’t peddle the lie that Hunter’s Laptop was “Russian Disinformation,” Donald Trump might still be President.

The 18-month-long nightmare we all have been living under Biden’s illegitimate reign would not have happened.

No hyper-inflation. No borrowing trillions of dollars to pay for Marxist social programs. No baby formula shortages or selling of oil reserves to Hunter’s friends in China.

That’s what the DOJ took away from us when they covered for the Biden family’s criminal enterprise.

If you’re as upset as I am, then chip in $50, $100, or $250 today to help me investigate and expose the truth behind Hunter’s and the Big Guy’s criminal enterprise… and those who helped cover it up!

Here’s the problem. The Swamp knows I’m a woman of my word. They know that I will not rest until Congress finally investigates Hunter and impeaches Joe Biden.

That’s why they have been working overtime to make sure I’m not in Congress after November. From filing lawsuits to kick me off the ballot to donating millions to my Democrat opponent, I’m having everything AND the kitchen sink thrown at me.

Do you really think Nancy Pelosi has ignored the behavior from AOC and the Jihad Squad by mistake?

Do you think the Democrats accidentally forgot to sanction their own member who gave the middle finger on National TV to GOP Members of Congress at the Congressional Baseball game the other day?

Somehow no one is being held accountable for their actions… except me. Because in Washington, some people do as they’re told while I’m fighting to do what Americans expect from their duly elected Representatives—SERVE THE PEOPLE!

That’s why I URGENTLY need your help to fight back and win this November with your $100, $500, or $1,000 donation today. Otherwise, Hunter and Brandon are going to keep enriching themselves off the backs of the U.S. government and no one will stop them.

But if I win in November, all bets are off.

That’s why we can’t let Hunter and Brandon get away with it simply because I wasn’t there to lead the charge in Congress. Help me win so I can investigate Hunter and impeach Joe Biden! Please donate today.

Thank you. God Bless America.
Marjorie Taylor Greene
Congresswoman (R-GA)

Executives at CNN’s parent company are struggling to set a new direction for the network amid declining viewership and the lowest profits in years, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

With former President Donald Trump mostly out of the political picture, CNN has struggled to retain an audience that tuned in for a reliable stream of partisan content directed against Trump.

It has had an average primetime viewership of 639,000 this quarter, a 27 percent drop from a year ago.

The network’s ratings trail even those of MSNBC, which itself has seen a decline in primetime viewership of 23 percent, according to the Times.

Meanwhile, Fox News — the only large media company in the United States generally critical of Joe Biden — has increased its viewership, with a primetime increase of 1 percent relative to 2021.

Executives now expect CNN to make a profit of $950 million this year, well short of the original goal of $1.1 billion, the Times reported.

That would be the network’s lowest yearly profit since before the network reinvented itself with 24/7 criticism of Trump in 2016.

Executives of the media company Discovery have sought to set a new course for CNN after merging with the network’s former parent company, WarnerMedia, earlier this year.

Warner Bros. Discovery management wanted CNN to eschew the network’s “red-hot liberal opining” and instead focus on hard news, Axios reported in February.

Some of the network’s most partisan commentators, such as Brian Stelter and Jim Acosta, are on shaky ground, according to a report in June.

Chris Licht, an experienced television news executive appointed as CNN’s chairman after the departure of Jeff Zucker, has faced questions about his long-term plans for the network.

Some of Licht’s advisers have suggested that CNN sell sponsorships to tech corporations and other advertisers, potentially jeopardizing the network’s claims of editorial independence free of corporate influences, the Times reported.

CNN also is considering expanding its operations in China, a country where freedom of speech is severely curtailed by the communist government.

The collapse of failed streaming service CNN+ has taken a chunk out of the network’s profits. Some personalities the company hired for the service came at a significant expense.

Related:

Former CNN Cameraman Sentenced for Threatening to ‘Put a Bullet’ in Rep. Matt Gaetz, Harm His Family

The Times said the network “finds itself facing big questions about how it can continue to expand its business with its moonshot streaming service dead and the traditional TV business in structural decline.”

Warner Bros. Discovery could implement wide-ranging cuts at CNN if the network’s bottom line doesn’t improve.

Licht emphasized at a recent meeting that the network wasn’t considering job layoffs.

“No one has said to me, ‘You’re going to have to go cut this,’” he told employees, according to the Times.

“I think there’s an acute understanding that they don’t know our business,” Licht said of Warner Bros. Discovery executives.

Michael Shapiro joins Blackstone from the Department of Transportation

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s son-in-law has joined private equity giant Blackstone as a “managing director of government affairs,” the latest addition to the New York Democrat’s family lobbying empire.

Michael Shapiro, who recently served as Joe Biden’s deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the Department of Transportation, will focus on infrastructure investments and projects at Blackstone, according to the firm. Shapiro lands the new gig as Schumer is poised to decide the fate of legislation on infrastructure spending and tax loopholes of interest to Blackstone. The move was first reported by Capitol Account, a newsletter founded by two former Bloomberg reporters devoted to covering the intersection of Wall Street and Washington.

Schumer is already under fire for blocking a vote on legislation opposed by companies that employ other members of his family. Progressive groups and Republicans have unsuccessfully pressured Schumer to schedule a vote on antitrust legislation that would rein in Big Tech firms. Schumer’s daughters, Jessica and Alison, are lobbyists for Amazon and Facebook’s parent company Meta, respectively. Shapiro married Jessica Schumer in 2016, after meeting at the Obama White House. The New York Times described their courtship as a “real West Wing romance.”

Blackstone said Shapiro, who advised Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 presidential campaign, will not lobby his father-in-law on issues related to the firm. But the private equity behemoth, which manages nearly $900 billion in assets, has lobbied the Senate on the Build Back Better Act, the massive infrastructure spending program. Blackstone also lobbied the Senate on carried interest, the loophole by which private equity firms obtain lower tax rates for income. Schumer is leading negotiations on the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes language to close the carried interest loophole.

Schumer has ties to other lobbyists for Blackstone. Steve Elmendorf, a prominent Democratic donor who runs the firm Subject Matter, in the past has defended Schumer over the senator’s ties to Wall Street. “In working with him for 25 years, he very aggressively represents the state of New York. Sometimes that means he’s representing one interest over another,” Elmendorf said in 2015.

Schumer’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Thomas Friedman criticized Nancy Pelosi’s Taiwan trip

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman last month hosted a delegation from a think tank helmed by a Chinese government adviser deeply enmeshed in Beijing’s propaganda operations.

Friedman met in July with Wang Huiyao, the president of the Center for China and Globalization, to discuss “megatrends and the transformation of globalization in the post-pandemic era.” Friedman also hosted the group at Planet Word, a Washington, D.C.-based language museum run by his wife, Ann.

Wang advises the Chinese government, is an official at two united front organizations, and helped develop China’s controversial “Thousand Talents” program, which the FBI says Beijing uses to steal trade secrets from American companies and create national security risks for the U.S. government. The think tank has been linked to China’s united front system, which the Communist Party uses to influence “universities, think tanks, scholars, journalists,” and government officials, according to a Trump administration report.

Friedman, reportedly one of Joe Biden’s favorite newspaper columnists, wrote in a Times column on Tuesday that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D., Calif.) trip to Taiwan is “utterly reckless.” The columnist has repeatedly urged government officials to take a softer stance toward Beijing. Chinese state media last year touted Friedman’s remarks in an interview with Wang that America could not succeed without a “healthy relationship with China.” He conducted a glowing interview in 2019 with the head of the Chinese tech giant Huawei, in which he asked what “America loses” by blocking the company from building 5G infrastructure because of its links to Chinese intelligence.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist has also made inaccurate claims about China’s efforts to deter Russia’s actions in Ukraine. While criticizing Pelosi’s trip in an interview last week, Friedman said that “China is helping us” in Ukraine and cautioned against “poking the bear right now.” But U.S. officials have publicly criticized Beijing for supporting Russia, as the Times reported last month. The State Department said in May that Chinese Communist Party media outlets “routinely amplify Kremlin propaganda, conspiracy theories, and disinformation.”

Like Friedman, Wang also criticized Pelosi for her Taiwan visit, calling it a “very, very bad move” in an interview with Bloomberg News over the weekend. And he portrayed China as a potential peacemaker in Ukraine in a Times op-ed in March. The Gray Lady came under fire for the piece for failing to disclose that Wang is a Chinese government adviser.

The Center for China and Globalization has downplayed its links to the Chinese government, saying that it is “independent from direct government control.” But the organization acknowledges that Wang advises several Chinese government agencies and serves on two organizations—Western Returned Scholars Association and the China Overseas Friendship Association—that are both part of the CCP’s united front.

The Biden administration in an intelligence memo last month sounded the alarm about the united front. The director of national intelligence called the united front “a coalition of entities working towards CCP goals” that plays a leading role in China’s “foreign influence efforts.”

The center touted the stateside trips as an overseas think tank “engagement mission … filled with productive meetings.” Wang met with leaders of several groups known for sympathetic views toward China, including the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, the Asia Society, and the U.S.-China Business Council. After meeting with Friedman, Wang visited with the head of CGTN America, a TV station controlled by the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda department.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

CURIOUS TIMING, WOULDN’T YOU SAY?

Major U.S. news outlets including CNN, CNBC, and the Associated Press recently met with Chinese Communist Party propagandists flagged by the U.S. government for seeking to “malignly influence” U.S. politics, The National Pulse can reveal.

Bureau chiefs for the Associated Press, CNN, and CNBC took a meeting with the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC), which is part of China’s billion-dollar “United Front” effort.

The United Front aims to “to co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition to the policies and authority of its ruling Chinese Communist Party” and “influence foreign governments to take actions or adopt positions supportive of Beijing’s preferred policies,” according to the federal U.S.-China Security and Economic Review Commission – U.S. government initiative from 2018.

United Front groups such as the China United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF) have used tactics including free trips to China to garner “favorable coverage” from mainstream media outlets according to Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) filings.

The CPAFFC has been dubbed the “public face” of the United Front Work Department and “avowedly an arm of the party-state” in addition to being flagged by the U.S. State Department for its campaigns to “directly and malignly influence” American officials and business leaders.

Journalists met with the President, Lin Songtian, at the group’s Beijing headquarters on July 26th, 2022.

As a press release from the group’s Chinese-language website reveals, the meeting “enhanced mutual understanding and friendship”:

“On July 26, President Lin Songtian met with Mori Tsijian, Director of the Greater China News Department of the Associated Press (AP), Jiang Xin, the Beijing Bureau Chief of CNN, and American Consumers at the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries. Representative of mainstream American media in Beijing, including CNBC. The two sides had a candid and friendly exchange of views on China’s domestic and foreign policies, China-US relations, non-governmental exchanges between the two countries and issues of common concern, which enhanced mutual understanding and friendship.”

The CPAFFC President appeared to instruct the media representatives to portray China as an ally as opposed to a “major competitor” to avoid “misjudgment and misleading public opinion”:

“In today’s era of political multi-polarization, economic globalization, and democratization of international relations, the United States still views China from the outdated perspective of “you lose, we win, and either friend or enemy is an enemy”. Positioning China as a major competitor will inevitably lead to strategic misunderstandings, misjudgment and misleading public opinion.”

The unearthed webpage follows The National Pulse linking other individuals and organizations, who are often publicly soft on China, affiliating with the CPAFFC. Similarly, mainstream media outlets have repeatedly published stories lauding the Chinese Communist Party and uncritically echoing the regime’s propaganda and talking points.

Mandela Barnes won’t say if U.S. is in recession

Wisconsin Democratic Senate candidate Mandela Barnes said the U.S. economy is dealing with “unprecedented growth,” and declined to say if the country is in a recession after six months of declining production, during an interview on Sunday.

Barnes, the presumptive Democratic nominee, tried to put a positive spin on the grim economic news by blaming U.S. economic problems on job creation and a low unemployment rate.

“Are we in a recession?” asked a reporter with WKOW-TV.

“Well, I’ll tell you, we have seen unprecedented growth for a long time right now,” said Barnes.

When asked what he meant by growth, Barnes responded that “growth is what leads to inflation.”

“The fact that we’ve had more job growth, the fact the unemployment rate is so low, the unfortunate reality that oil and gas companies are having record profit years while gas prices continue to rise across the country,” he said.

Barnes’s comments come as the Biden administration has scrambled to redefine the term “recession,” which has been traditionally characterized by two straight quarters of declining GDP.

Barnes is expected to face off against Republican incumbent senator Ron Johnson in the November election, after clearing the Democratic field last week. The Democratic primary is scheduled for next Tuesday.

Barnes, the current Wisconsin lieutenant governor, has had a rocky start when it comes to public speaking. During a major address last week, he said he was running against “Scott Walker,” who he called “one of the worst senators this state has ever had.” Walker is the former governor of Wisconsin who left office in 2019.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

West Virginia senator’s deal provides tens of billions of dollars in electric vehicle tax credits.

Sen. Joe Manchin’s $485 billion budget reconciliation package includes a provision he once called “ludicrous” and counterproductive to fighting inflation, according to a Washington Free Beacon review of the bill.

The deal Manchin struck with Senate Democrats to fight inflation includes tens of billions of dollars worth of electric vehicle tax credits, a policy once considered a non-starter for Manchin. As recently as April, Democrats thought negotiations reached an impasse after he said electric tax credits “make no sense to me whatsoever.”

“There’s a waiting list for EVs right now with a fuel price at $4.00, but they still want us to throw $5,000 or $7,000 or a $12,000 credit to buy an electric vehicle,” Manchin said on the Senate floor. “We can’t produce enough product for the people that want it and we’re still going to pay them to take it. It’s absolutely ludicrous, in my mind.”

Despite those words, the Inflation Reduction Act includes electric vehicle tax credits for up to $7,500 per vehicle. Those tax benefits apply to any family making up to $300,000 and can be used on any electric vehicle that costs up to $80,000.

The electric vehicle provision is the latest reversal for Manchin, who held up Democratic Party spending plans for more than a year over a litany of concerns that have been seemingly tossed aside. Last week, the bipartisan Joint Committee on Taxation concluded that the budget reconciliation package would raise taxes by billions on Americans making less than $200,000. Manchin previously said he would never support tax hikes during a recession, which the U.S. economy entered in July. Why Manchin caved on electric vehicle subsidies is unclear. Manchin said in March that he was “reluctant to go down the path of electric vehicles” over concerns about the ability for manufacturers to meet demand.

“I’m old enough to remember standing in line in 1974 trying to buy gas. I remember those days,” he said. “I don’t want to have to be standing in line waiting for a battery for my vehicle, because we’re now dependent on a foreign supply chain, mostly China.”

Republicans are unanimous in their opposition to the spending package. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell blasted Manchin over hypocrisy last week and called the Inflation Reduction Act a “reckless taxing and spending spree that will delight the far left and hammer working families even harder.”

“They want Americans to be faced with skyrocketing prices and higher taxes and fewer jobs, all at the same time,” McConnell said. “Democrats have outlined a giant package of huge new job-killing tax hikes, Green New Deal craziness that will kill American energy.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Tehran slated to sell China $27 billion in oil this year

Iran’s illegal oil trade has boomed under the Biden administration, with the hardline regime selling more than $44 billion worth of its heavily sanctioned oil to malign regimes like China, Syria, and Venezuela, according to figures published by a watchdog group.

From January 2021, when Joe Biden took office, to June 2022, Iran sold around $44.7 billion in oil primarily to China. The regime’s export revenues between March 2021 and March 2022 from oil, gas, and related products “totaled $39 billion, compared [with] $22 billion for the previous year—a rise of 77 percent and an extra $17 billion,” according to United Against a Nuclear Iran (UANI), a watchdog group that tracks Iran’s network of illegal oil tankers.

“This drastic increase in revenue is not surprising when you look at the increase in oil exports that have occurred under the Biden administration,” UANI chief of staff Claire Jungman told the Washington Free Beacon. “This is the result of terminally lax sanctions enforcement.”

In addition to looser sanctions on Iran, the Biden administration has turned a blind eye to enforcement as it seeks to ink a revamped version of the 2015 nuclear deal. These moves are meant to appease Iran and cajole it into signing a deal that will remove virtually all sanctions on the hardline regime, including its oil trade. China is the primary beneficiary of this policy, with Iranian oil imports quadrupling to the country in 2021 to $23.1 billion. The China-Iran oil pipeline is on pace to hit around $27 billion in 2022, according to UANI’s figures.

If sanctions on Iran are lifted as part of a new nuclear deal, Iran-China trade could reach around $60 billion per year, according to one former U.S. official.

“China made a mockery of the credibility of our sanctions programs and emboldened rogue actors across the world to follow suit,” Gabriel Noronha, a State Department special adviser for Iran during the Trump administration, told the Free Beacon.

Iran’s foreign currency reserves— which were nearly drained under the Trump administration’s maximum pressure campaign—will have “increased nearly tenfold by the end of this year,” according to Noronha.

“The United States refused to enforce its sanctions even while Iran was continuing to advance its nuclear program and its regional terror attacks,” Noronha said. “The result was that Iran’s economy revived itself.”

This financial relief gave Iran a cushion and lessened pressure that could have forced it into accepting a more stringent nuclear deal.

“The Iranian leadership does not feel pressure to finalize the nuclear deal because they’ve already enjoyed the benefits of effective sanctions relief,” Noronha said. “The fact that the Biden administration can’t even manage a return to the notoriously weak [nuclear deal] is evidence of the sheer diplomatic malpractice carried out by the Biden administration, particularly Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. envoy for Iran Rob Malley.”

As Iran and China boost their oil alliance, the U.S. emergency crude stockpiles dropped to their lowest levels in 37 years. This comes after the Biden administration agreed to sell China several million barrels from the U.S. stores, sparking a congressional investigation.

In July, Iran sold 746,915 barrels of oil per day to China, according to UANI.

Under pressure from watchdog groups like UANI, the Biden administration is beginning to issue new sanctions on Iran’s oil trade.

The State Department announced on Monday that it is “designating six entities” for their role in “facilitating illicit transactions related to Iranian petroleum.”

The administration says it is committed to reviving the nuclear deal, but will issue sanctions until the agreement is signed.

“The United States has been sincere in pursuing a path of meaningful diplomacy to achieve a mutual return to full implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA),” the State Department said, referring to the 2015 deal by its official name. “Until Iran is ready to return to full implementation of the JCPOA, we will continue to use our sanctions authorities to target exports of petroleum, petroleum products, and petrochemical products from Iran.”

UANI’s Jungman said the new sanctions are a good first step, but that “there are many gaps that need to be filled.” The administration still has not designated several oil tankers known to be ferrying illicit Iranian oil.

“Without designation on the vessels, the tankers will just register under new companies and continue to assist Iran in exporting its oil,” she said.

Noronha says these sanctions have come too late.

“China took advantage of the Biden administration’s weak posture and blatantly flouted our sanctions on Iran for over 16 months before the United States made any attempt to stop the trade,” he said.

The State Department says that it continues to engage China diplomatically as part of its efforts to crack down on its oil partnership with Tehran.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Several pathogenic microbes were identified and quantified on masks worn during the pandemic, according to a Japanese study that was published in Scientific Reports.

The study is one of the first to address the probable hygiene issues caused by bacterial and fungal growth on masks worn daily in the community.

“Since masks can be a direct source of infection to the respiratory tract, digestive tract, and skin, it is crucial to maintain their hygiene to prevent bacterial and fungal infections that can exacerbate COVID-19,” the authors wrote.

The study involved 109 participants aged 21 to 22 years who were asked about the type and duration of mask used and their lifestyle habits. Bacteria and fungi were collected from the three types of masks—gauze, polyurethane, and non-woven—worn between September and October 2020.

The researchers found that the face side of the masks had more bacteria, whereas the outer side of the masks contained more fungi.

In addition, longer use of the mask resulted in an increase in fungi but not in bacteria because “fungi and their spores are resistant to drying, they can survive under the condition where masks dry out.”

Non-woven masks were found to have fewer fungal colony counts on the outer side compared to the other two mask types. Non-woven masks have three layers, two-layer fabric with a non-woven middle layer filter.

Researchers said they were surprised to find that there were no significant differences in the numbers of bacteria or fungi on washable or reusable masks that had been washed.

“The proper cleaning method for cotton face masks has been recommended to reduce the microbial load on the masks,” the authors wrote. “However, in the current experiments, we did not find significant differences in bacterial or fungal colony numbers on the masks based on washing.”

Lifestyle Habits

The researchers also examined whether certain lifestyle habits such as gargling, consumption of natto, and use of the different modes of transportation—public transportation, personal vehicle, and walking or biking— had any effect on the microbial counts on the masks.

“We found no differences in the bacterial or fungal colony counts on both sides of the masks among the three transportation systems,” the authors wrote.

There were also no differences in microbial counts on masks of participants who gargled once a day. Gargling is a Japanese custom believed to prevent respiratory infections. The practice is often recommended by the Japanese health authority alongside hand washing as a preventative measure against influenza.

A study from Penn State College of Medicine published in the Journal of Medical Virology in September 2020 found that several types of mouthwash and nasal rinses were effective at neutralizing human coronaviruses, suggesting that the products may have the potential to lessen the amount of SARS-CoV-2 load, or the amount of virus inside the mouth. SARS-CoV-2 is the virus that causes COVID-19.

A small pilot study is currently being conducted by the University of California, San Francisco on whether gargling with certain mouthwash or gargling solutions will reduce viral load in patients diagnosed with COVID-19. The study is expected to complete this September.

Gargling with antiseptic mouthwashes is part of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care (FLCCC) Alliance’s protocol for “both chronic (ongoing) prevention as well as to avoid getting sick” after an individual has been exposed to the virus.

FLCCC Alliance is a nonprofit organization consisting of critical care specialists who’ve dedicated their time to developing treatment protocols to “prevent the transmission of COVID-19 and to improve the outcomes for patients ill with the disease.”

As for the consumption of natto, soybeans that are fermented with a bacterium called bacillus subtillis or B. subtilliss, the researchers said that the participants who consumed the sticky soybeans, “had a significantly higher incidence of large white B. subtillis colonies on both sides of the masks than those who did not.”

B. subtillis is a bacterium found in soil, water, decomposing plant residue, and air. It is used for “industrial production of proteases, amylases, antibiotics, and specialty chemicals” and is “not considered pathogenic or toxigenic to humans, animals, or plants,” according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (pdf).

Pathogenic Microbes

While most of the bacteria and fungi cultured from the masks were not harmful to humans, some were opportunist pathogens, while others were found to cause diseases like bacteria that cause food poisoning and staph infections, and a fungus that causes ringworm, athlete’s foot, and jock itch.

From their findings, the authors of the study suggest that people with a weakened immune system should “avoid repeated use of masks to prevent microbial infection.”

The CDC says that immunocompromised people or those at high risk for severe disease should wear a mask or respirator when there is a high community level of COVID-19.

The health agency did not respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment on the findings of the Japanese study.

Supporters of universal masking during the pandemic say that masks help to prevent or reduce transmission of SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Scientific Evidence

Epidemiologist and researcher Dr. Paul Alexander disagree. He says that there are over 150 studies and articles that conclude cloth and surgical masks are not effective in slowing the spread of COVID-19 and does more harm.

“To date, the evidence has been stable and clear that masks do not work to control the virus and they can be harmful and especially to children,” Alexander wrote in a February op-ed for The Epoch Times.

In a critical review (pdf) of cloth masks used during the pandemic, the authors stated that evidence does not support community masking with cloth masks to limit the spread of the virus.

“The available clinical evidence of facemask efficacy is of low quality and the best available clinical evidence has mostly failed to show efficacy, with fourteen of sixteen identified randomized controlled trials comparing face masks to no mask controls failing to find statistically significant benefit in the intent-to-treat populations,” the authors wrote.

“Although weak evidence should not preclude precautionary actions in the face of unprecedented events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, ethical principles require that the strength of the evidence and best estimates of amount of benefit be truthfully communicated to the public,” they added.

Prior to the pandemic, researchers conducted a small randomized controlled study in 2008 among health care workers in Japan to examine whether surgical masks reduced the incidence of the common cold.

They found that participants in the mask group “were significantly more likely to experience headache during the study period” and concluded that “face mask use in health care workers has not been demonstrated to provide benefit in terms of cold symptoms or getting colds.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The subpoenas and discovery requests sent out as part of a lawsuit against the federal government are going to bring back reams of information, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry says.

Landry and Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, both Republicans, sued the Biden administration in May, arguing the government colluded with Big tech companies to violate the constitutional rights of Americans.

U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump appointee, recently ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. Government officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci and companies including Facebook were served soon after.

“We’ve got a treasure trove of information that we think are going to come to us here shortly,” Landry said on EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders.”

“The subpoenas have gone out. They’re being served. I think Dr. Fauci got served, and he and other members of the president’s Cabinet, and they’re gonna have to send us communications between them and the platforms. And what we believe we’ll find is communications between them telling them what they should and shouldn’t put out or what they should suppress, and what they should amplify,” he added.

Government officials have said they have not acted improperly.

Officials have for years commented on how social media platforms operate, and the federal government is not responsible for how platforms moderate content, U.S. lawyers said in a filing in the case, Missouri and Louisiana v. President Biden et al.

“Those companies independently chose to combat misinformation years ago, before this administration took office, and before the federal officials sued here made the comments at issue. Indeed, although the Complaint cites numerous statements by government officials, it does not identify how those statements are connected to the moderation decisions that purportedly harmed their resident,” they said.

The government is seeking to dismiss the case.

Violating Rights

Landry said that the government is violating citizens’ rights by pressuring companies to ban or take other punitive action against users. In a separate case, documents released this month showed U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials highlighting specific posts in messages to Twitter executives while complaining about alleged misinformation from those users. Whistleblower documents released by two U.S. senators in June, meanwhile, showed that U.S. officials had been in touch with Twitter over purported disinformation.

“I think what we found, and what the whistleblowers put out, was that the government was actually engaged, and the White House, in directly communicating with Big Tech on stories and information that they either wanted suppressed or put out,” Landry said.

Related Coverage

‘This Is the Government Colluding With Big Tech’—AG Jeff Landry on the First Amendment Lawsuits He’s Leading

His office, after putting out a call for information from people who have been censored in some way by platforms, has also collected a number of examples. Those may be used in the suit in question, as well as other suits with which he’s involved.

Landry himself has witnessed censorship from Big Tech, with his posts initially drawing many shares, but engagement quickly falling off.

“We’re trying to get information out to our constituency in a medium—I guess you would say, in a new medium—under which everyone is using more than the other, traditional mediums,” Landry said. “And they are creating a filter between us and our constituents.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

AS PELOSI STAYS MUM ON TAIWAN, HER NETWORK IS LOBBYING FOR CCP SOCIAL CREDIT COMPANIES.

Ant Group – a payment platform used to implement “vaccine passports” and a “social credit” system in China – has retained a number of American lobbying firms, including some with ties to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former President Barack Obama, and failed presidential candidate Senator Mitt Romney.

Ant Group is an offshoot of the Chinese company Alibaba, previously flagged by the U.S. State Department as a “tool” of the Chinese Communist Party and crucial to the regime’s build-up of “technology-facilitated surveillance and social control.” Ant Group also owns AliPay, a digital payment platform used by Beijing to institute vaccine passports, which have been used to render citizens unable to leave their houses and forced into quarantine.Ant Group is a key component of China’s broader “social credit” system, sharing the data it collects on users’ spending habits and online activity with Chinese Communist Party regulators.

Social credit systems have raised concern in the West, with many fearing the weaponization of government and business surveillance to restrict individuals’ access to the economy and services based on specific behaviors – or even ideologies.

Despite these fears, several American lobbyists are working on behalf of Ant Group, appearing to help broaden the company’s operations and reach inside of the U.S.

Throughout 2021 and 2022, Ant Group hired four external lobbying and public affairs firms to help with objectives including “outreach regarding corporate profile and operations of Ant Group and its subsidiary Alipay US.”

The OB-C Group has been representing Ant Group since January 1st, 2022 on “matters regarding regulatory issues for ANT Group and its subsidiaries.”

MUST READ: REVEALED: CNN, CNBC, AP Met With Chinese Communist Party Propagandists in July.

Among the firm’s consultants working for Ant Group is Larry O’Brien, who has been described by the Washington Post as a “major Democratic operative.”

“Mr. O’Brien has been a long-standing participant in the House Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s (DCCC) maximum level individual donor program, the Speaker’s Cabinet, and in the “Pelosi Team 100” program.  Over a period of two decades, Mr. O’Brien has had an extensive degree of involvement and interaction with the House Democratic leadership, with myriad Democratic members across a wide array of House committees and with the leadership of the DCCC,” explains his professional bio.

He has also worked “at the most elevated participation level with the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee (DSCC),” charging its “premier individual donor group, the Legacy Circle, since the inception of the program in 2006.”

“He was designated a “Lifetime Member” of the Legacy Circle in 2014. In addition, he is the recipient of what the DSCC describes as one of the highest honors it can bestow, an award of lifetime membership in its “Majority Trust” program. In the award letter to Mr. O’Brien, Senator Schumer, then Chair of the DSCC, stated, “I can’t think of a more qualified Democrat to receive this honor,” his bio continues.

Another Ant Group lobbyist on behalf of the OB-C Group, Thomas J. Keating, served in the House of Representatives in the Office of Sergeant at Arms for over 13 years, with his most recent role as Director of Police Services.

Several other establishment D.C. figures – including advisors to the campaigns of George H.W. Bush and Mitt Romney – are also working on behalf of Ant Group according to the OB-C Group’s lobbying registration. For three months of work, the firm received a retainer of $60,000.

MUST READ: EXC: Anthony Fauci Is STILL Funding China’s Military-Run Labs With U.S. Taxpayer Cash.

Lobbying firm Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld is also currently representing Ant Group, beginning its work for the Chinese company on January 27th, 2022.

In addition to Democratic congressional staffers and advisors to George W. Bush, Ed Pagano, who served as Senate Liaison and Deputy Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs in the Obama administration, is also working on behalf of AliPay.

Another government affairs firm – Rich Feuer Anderson – began lobbying for AliPay on January 1st, 2022, conducting “outreach regarding corporate profile and operations of Ant Group and its subsidiary Alipay US.”

Among the consultants working on behalf of Rich Feuer Anderson are alumni of the U.S. Treasury Department, Senate finance committees, and Democratic officials.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has made much of her trip to Asia this week, though upon landing in Singapore, appeared to intentionally leave out references to China or Taiwan.

Commentator Dan Bongino held nothing back Saturday as he excoriated Joe Biden over Biden’s failure to put a dent in the flood of illegal drugs corroding lives across America.

Bongino said Biden’s deliberate action to allow drugs to flow across the border by refusing to put in place barriers to illegal immigration is a root cause of the spread of illegal drugs such as fentanyl.

“Listen, I had a bad week, and I’ve had it with the Biden administration. I’m done. My goose is cooked here,” he began.

“Joe Biden is a disgrace to humankind. He is — he’s completely turned his back on the disastrous crisis on our southern border,” he said.

“And because of that, he is a direct accomplice to the mass murder of thousands of American citizens,” Bongino said.

WATCH: @dbongino has an explosive message for Biden on his disgraceful handling of the deadly border crisis👇

“Joe Biden is a disgrace to human kind. He is. He has completely turned his back from the disastrous crisis at the southern border” pic.twitter.com/uwCppixKXg

— Unfiltered with Dan Bongino (@UnfilteredOnFox) July 31, 2022

Bongino said he was being accurate, not slinging mud.

“Listen, I use my words carefully and very deliberately, and I mean every single word of that. Before you say, ‘Hey, slow down,’ let’s take a look at the definition of the word accomplice,” he said.

“According to Merriam-Webster, an accomplice is, quote: ‘One associated with another, especially in wrongdoing.’ Keep that in your head as I go through the rest of this here,” he said.

Bongino then linked the lack of border security with the spread of illegal, deadly drugs.

Biden’s open border policy is turning every state into a border state.

The fentanyl crossing the border is coming to your community.

Tennessee now ranks top five in the country for drug overdoses.

— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) July 27, 2022

“It’s a fact, our kids are being intentionally killed and poisoned, intentionally using fentanyl brought in through the border by drug cartels in Mexico, and it originates with the Chinese Communist Party, the chemicals for the fentanyl,” he said.

“Listen, the stats don’t lie, folks. They don’t lie. U.S. overdose deaths in the year ending in February of 2022 surged nearly 20 percent in just one year. And the number’s going up, it’s not going down,” he said.

Related:

YouTube Kicks Bongino Off Platform for Anti-Mask Stance; Same Day, CDC Updates Its Masking Guidance

“But what happens when thousands of these same migrants are put on busses at the border and sent to blue cities like Washington, D.C.? Suddenly it’s a crisis so overwhelming, the Democrats demand federal intervention,” he said.

Bongino said the crisis is not limited to the illegal immigrants seeping through America.

“The drugs brought in by the cartels are poisoning thousands of Americans,” he said, citing Denver, Nashville and Chicago as cities where overdose deaths are ”skyrocketing.”

When will the insanity be stopped? https://t.co/8yY9cxXfuX

— Jules (@julievriahi) July 31, 2022

Noting the deaths due to fentanyl, Bongino doubled down on his bottom line: “Biden is an accomplice to mass murder.”

Speaking of parents who have been pleading for action to stop the fentanyl crisis, Bongino said, “This disgraceful administration has the nerve to spit in their faces and lie to us as our children are dying.”

Despite a mother of five’s desperate appeal to the University of Michigan (UM) hospital for a life-saving heart transplant, the state-run facility will not budge from its refusal to consider her for surgery until she is vaccinated against COVID-19.

The university hospital, which has deep ties to vaccine maker Pfizer, also denied 35-year-old Katie Shier’s application for a religious exemption.

In a recent, heart-wrenching email about her condition, Katie Shier describes how the pump she relies on to keep her heart beating has become engulfed in a bacteria that is no longer responding to the series of antibiotics she’s been prescribed by University of Michigan doctors.

As a result, Shier has been repeatedly hospitalized for blood infections. She and her husband Ron are worried it will eventually lead to sepsis, which can be fatal.

“It just feels like no one at UM cares what they are doing to us and to our kids,” Ron Shier told The Epoch Times.

Ron Shier, who works full-time as a mental health counselor, said his children, who range in age from 3 to 11, are constantly worried that mommy is “not coming home from the hospital.”

The University of Michigan (UM) has strong ties to Pfizer, dating back to at least 2008 when it purchased the pharmaceutical company’s giant Ann Arbor facility and all its content.

According to a 2008 press release from the university, the college quickly recruited 13 Pfizer scientists after taking over its facility with most of them still working for the state college today. Ten of them specifically were hired to staff the UM’s College of Pharmacy.

David Canter, senior associate vice president and executive director of UM’s North Campus Research Complex, ran Pfizer pharmaceutical research operation in Ann Arbor; and Scott Larsen, who received the Pfizer Achievement Award in 2007, today is a research professor of medicinal chemistry at the university.

Several executive-level Pfizer employees are also university alumni including Pfizer director Lynne Pauer and 2020 grad Sarah Kusisto, a senior manager at Pfizer’s Portage, Michigan, location.

Also, last year, Pfizer was among three companies that the university’s Tauber Institute for Global Operations chose to receive its annual longevity awards.

According to UM’s website the award is given “in recognition” to companies “for their commitment to operations education through their active participation in Tauber team projects.”

Pfizer also remains a major employer in Michigan, with its largest manufacturing plant located in Kalamazoo where it makes its prescription drug Paxlovid, a pill that the FDA approved last year for the treatment of COVID.

Katie Shier provided The Epoch Times with a notarized authorization to speak to UM about her case. The authorization was sent to the university’s transplant team, clinical ethics services, and CEO Marschall Runge with a request for comment about her case.

It was also sent to the eight-member Board of Regents, elected officials who govern the public hospital. None of them responded.

On July 29, Mary Masson, director of public relations at the university, released a one-line statement by email to The Epoch Times in response to Shier’s case, but refused to answer any questions, even refusing to provide The Epoch Times with her phone number.

“Michigan Medicine does not discuss pending litigation,” was the only response from the taxpayer-funded hospital.

The Epoch Times asked the hospital for a copy of its COVID vaccine mandate policy, if it applied to transplant patients only, and under what circumstance does it grant or consider granting a religious exemption from it.

The Epoch Times never inquired about any pending litigation.

Last month, the Pacific Justice Institute did file a court complaint on behalf of Shier and another university transplant patient against the state college’s Board of Regents seeking declaratory relief from its transplant center’s COVID vaccine policy and its refusal to consider both Shier and the other patient’s request for a religious exemption from it.

The other patient, who is in need of a kidney transplant is not nearly as critical as Shier.

Both were on the list for a transplant but were removed after the university adopted a new policy that the COVID vaccine would be required in order to stay on the list.

The complaint charges that regents “have violated their duty of care to the patients by imposing arbitrary and capricious dictates and effectively giving patients a choice to die or to submit to government-inspired diktats that are not for a legitimate medical purpose.”

Katie Shier told The Epoch Times she is strongly opposed to the vaccine because she believes it is dangerous and will lead to cause her already frail heart, which is functioning at only 7 percent of its full capacity, to fail.

She said she believes their concerns are validated by the growing number of people who have reported experiencing heart problems after getting a COVID injection.

“It’s just an evil experiment on humanity,”  said Shier, ” and I don’t want to be part of it.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

As an independent news organization dedicated to reporting the truth, The Epoch Times has been subjected to excessive censorship by Big Tech. 

In the latest such incident, Twitter on July 28 censored all of our content by putting up a blockade to our website, describing it as “unsafe,” and encouraging users not to proceed. 

Twitter’s actions—just like those by other tech giants such as Facebook and YouTube—specifically targeted the reach of our independent news and video content.

Twitter hasn’t responded to multiple requests for comment and appeal, nor has the company explained what led it to censor our content or what caused it to lift its blockage two days later following a public outcry.

The move by the social media giant came less than a week after we published our new documentary “The Real Story of January 6” and on the same day posted an interview with sex trafficking survivor Eliza Bleu, on our program “American Thought Leaders.”

While it remains unclear why Twitter targeted us, what is clear is that The Epoch Times is different from most other major news organizations, in that we dare to follow the stories where the facts lead.

In our Jan. 6 documentary, our reporters take an unvarnished look at the events of that day and present new witnesses and evidence that challenge the prevailing narratives. It provides extensive evidence of excessive use of force by police that broke protocol and policy, and raises questions on the lack of security that day. So far, the documentary has received more than half a million views on our EpochTV platform.

In recent years, there have been other major stories on which The Epoch Times, because of our independence and adherence to traditional journalism, has differed from other major news organizations, only to be proven right.

For example, The Epoch Times reported accurately on events surrounding allegations that then-candidate and later President Donald Trump had colluded with Russia. From day one, The Epoch Times reported on the facts and through our reporting uncovered significant problems with the FBI’s probe of Trump’s campaign, which included problematic conduct involving surveillance. 

While other news organizations won Pulitzers for their articles suggesting collusion between the president and Russia, The Epoch Times was, in fact, correct in reporting that the allegations had no support—as confirmed through investigations by special counsel Robert Mueller and the Department of Justice inspector general, as well as the ongoing probe of the origins of the FBI’s investigation by special counsel John Durham.

The Epoch Times was also among the first to report on the possibility that the novel coronavirus was leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. Our April 2020 documentary on the subject was censored by Facebook. Today, a lab leak is now held as the most likely explanation for the spread of the virus, by both media organizations and many government officials. 

The dangers of allowing platforms such as Twitter to take on the role of arbiter of the truth is that they, in many cases, are plainly wrong. The most prominent example was Twitter’s suppression of the New York Post over its reporting on a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden, the son of then-presidential candidate Joe Biden.

This censorship behavior, which is antithetical to the protections Big Tech receives under Section 230, has also raised concerns about social media platforms censoring content on behalf of the government. Most recently, a federal judge ordered the government to cooperate in a lawsuit that alleges behind-the-scenes efforts to target the dissemination of information of stories related to COVID-19—including its possible origins and alternative treatments—that didn’t fit the government’s narrative.

“Government can’t outsource its censorship to Big Tech,” Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt said.

Public Outcry

The public outcry against Twitter’s censorship of The Epoch Times was swift, with three U.S. senators publicly questioning the platform—which in recent years has repeatedly found itself in hot water for acts of censorship—over its targeting of the news organization. 

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) demanded that Twitter “explain itself for this outrageous act of censorship.”

Meanwhile, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) asked, “Where’s the respect for free speech and freedom of press, Twitter?”

“We all remember your biased censorship of [the New York Post] and how that ended for you,” Scott said.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) described the action by Twitter as “alarming.”

“Twitter is censoring [The Epoch Times] under the guise of ‘unsafe’ speech. Remember what happened the last time corporate media and big tech tried to censor my investigation on Hunter Biden corruption?” he wrote. “The truth always prevails.”

Kevin Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation, described Twitter’s action as “an outrageous act of censorship.”

Stanford professor Jay Bhattacharya called out Twitter’s suppression, writing: “It is perfectly safe to click through to the [Epoch Times] site in the quote tweet. For some reason, Twitter decided that today was a good day to suppress access to Epoch Times.”

Sex trafficking survivor Bleu, who was among the first to notice the censorship by Twitter due to its blockage of her interview with EpochTV’s program “American Thought Leaders,” posted a video condemning the platform’s actions that went viral. 

It also created a stir among Twitter users, with many condemning the platform’s actions. 

The Epoch Times wants to thank everyone who spoke out against this latest instance of censorship.

We will keep reporting the only way we know how, rooted in our tagline Truth & Tradition, without favor or fear. The fight for truth is one that has no shore and that is as old as the ages. We believe that only with brave individuals going the distance and striving to record the truth of what happens, can the world have an accurate picture of events and history.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Over the past week the entire mainstream media complex has launched an immense attack on my character, Gab, and Christianity itself–calling it a “toxic religion.” Echoing this hateful sentiment Jonathan Greenblatt–head of the Jewish Nationalist organization the ADL–called me “one of the most toxic people in public life right now” on national television. It’s interesting that his organization explicitly endorses, promotes, and defends Zionism, or Jewish Nationalism, while attacking me and others for promoting Christian Nationalism. Do as I say, not as I do. Unfortunately for Jonathan, Christians don’t answer to Jewish Nationalist organizations like the ADL and Godless media outlets. We answer to Jesus Christ. 

VIDEO: GAB Response to ADL

Discussion starts at 2 minutes 30 seconds in.

Naturally I responded to this media onslaught and defended the Gospel of Jesus Christ as well as my personal character. I said we are forming a Christian Nationalist movement and in order to be in any position of influence or leadership in the movement you must be a Christian. I said we are no longer going to answer to people who do not share our values and represent a diametrically different worldview that only 2% of the country holds. We are the 70%+ super majority in this country and we are going to do everything we can to take dominion and disciple this nation for the glory of Jesus Christ our King. 

In typical fashion the media machine has taken short clips from my 30-45 minute long show and twisted them into something that they are not to fit their narrative. What are they so afraid of? Certainly not me. The answer is Jesus Christ and the awakening of hundreds of millions of Christians across this country and around the world. As I have said in my previous articles and videos they have pushed us too far by locking down our churches, masking our children, and forcing us to inject a foreign substance in our bodies in order to keep our jobs. We are no longer being silent. The silent majority is getting loud and speaking the Truth of God’s Word and the Biblical worldview boldly. The Jonathan Greenblatts of the world are not going to tell us how to live our lives, run our businesses, or practive our faith ever again. 

What I hope to show to the millions of you who will read this is that if you double down and do not bend the knee when the mainstream media and our enemies call you a silly name, you win. That’s it. That’s the secret to surviving and thriving against their attacks. The weapons forged against you will not prevail if you stand strong in Truth. These people have great power, but we serve an all powerful God. We need to remember that and start acting like it. 

We need your help to fight back against this attack. For almost six years now Gab has been fully funded and kept online from support by people like you. We can’t do this without you. We ask for your prayers. We ask that you let your friends and family know about Gab to help us grow our community which has grown exclusively through word-of-mouth advertising since 2016.

Finally we ask that you prayerfully consider supporting us by upgrading to GabPRO, purchasing some merchandise from our shop, or running ads on Gab for your business to reach an audience of people who share your values. We don’t have big corporate investors or special interests funding this platform. It’s the grassroots support from people like you that keeps Gab online and we need your support now more than ever. 

To God Be The Glory,

Andrew Torba
CEO, Gab.com
Jesus Christ is King of Kings

Published in Christian Nationalism

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said on July 31 that he expects there to be an agreement to conceal an indictment of Hunter Biden.

Johnson predicted in a Fox News interview that law enforcement “may indict Hunter Biden, but they’ll probably seal—they’ll do a deal—they’ll seal all the information.”

“The American public will never get the full truth,” he said.

Both Johnson and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) have been involved in a yearslong investigation into the business dealings of Joe Biden’s son in places such as China, Ukraine, and elsewhere. The pair released a report in September 2020 that detailed extensive financial connections between Chinese Communist Party-linked entities and individuals and Hunter Biden.

“We’ve known that the Bidens are a corrupt family for years,” Johnson told Fox News’ Dan Bongino, noting that the “corrupt mainstream media has been covering it all up” and “even the FBI.”

Johnson also predicted that legacy news media outlets will now turn on Biden amid increasingly low poll numbers.

In March, both Republican senators presented bank records on the Senate floor showing CEFC China Energy, a now-defunct firm, made payments to Hunter Biden. That included a $100,000 wire payment to one of the younger Biden’s companies, Owasco, from CEFC.

Other payments include a wire transfer of $5 million to Hudson West, a company Hunter Biden invested in and managed, from Northern International Capital, a business that partnered with CEFC. A contract also made public by the senators shows that $500,000 went to Hunter Biden as a “one-time retainer fee.”

Two others show a $1 million payment made to Hudson West by CEFC and a transfer of $1 million from Hudson West to Owasco, with the money appearing to go to Hunter Biden for the purposes of representing Patrick Ho, a Chinese businessman who has helped CEFC gain advantages through bribery.

FBI Interference

In a recent letter, Johnson further claimed that the FBI attempted to undermine their congressional investigation in mid-2020.

Amid recent “whistleblower revelations,” they “would strongly suggest that the FBI’s August 6, 2020 briefing was indeed a targeted effort to intentionally undermine a Congressional investigation,” he wrote in a letter (pdf) to top Department of Justice officials and members of other intelligence agencies.

“If these whistleblower allegations are accurate, how can your agency, Director Wray, be capable of investigating the president’s son?” Johnson wrote in his letter. “Unfortunately, the FBI can no longer be trusted to investigate Hunter Biden with integrity and the equal application of law.”

He was referring to whistleblower complaints issued by unnamed FBI officials, as detailed by Grassley in a July 25 letter (pdf).

“The allegations provided to my office appear to indicate that there was a scheme in place among certain FBI officials to undermine derogatory information connected to Hunter Biden by falsely suggesting it was disinformation,” wrote Grassley, who has long been involved in crafting legislation to support federal government whistleblowers.

“If these allegations are true and accurate, the Justice Department and FBI are—and have been—institutionally corrupted to their very core to the point in which the United States Congress and the American people will have no confidence in the equal application of the law.”

Department of Justice officials didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.

Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times