What’s considered “good” and “bad” on Earth, it might surprise us to hear, is diametrically the opposite of how things work in the afterlife. Earthly comforts are not coveted in eternity. But hardships are gladly taken as joy.
So says Penny Wittbrodt, 52, a retired nurse from Kentucky, who attests to having two distinct near-death experiences (NDEs), respectively in 2014 and 2016, after suffering anaphylactic episodes that rendered her comatose. She describes transiting to a void between Heaven and Earth and encountering spiritual beings radiating loving energy—including her late grandmother and none other than God Himself. These experiences pivoted her perspective on life a full 180 degrees. Awakening from her second NDE, she said she became cured of her anaphylaxis. Her decision to return was made with profound reluctance, for she described the other side as almost Heaven—on its threshold—yet she hadn’t fulfilled her purpose on Earth.
“I had a history of anaphylaxis to shellfish, but I hadn’t had an attack in years and years. I just kind of kept those EpiPens around obligatory, because you’re supposed to,” she said in an interview with Shaman Oaks in 2021. “I started having difficulty breathing and swallowing … I’m a nurse and I was like, ‘Holy cow! This is anaphylaxis.’ So I gave myself my EpiPen. My son drove me to the hospital.”
While awaiting treatment—racked by stridor in a hospital hallway, feeling like death—Penny was approached by a PA who saw how horrible she looked. Just as someone mentioned the possibility of imminent death, Penny quit breathing and “popped” out of her body. She experienced seeing herself: “I’m thinking, ‘Man, who is that girl? She’s pretty sick,’” she said. “I didn’t realize that was me.”
Leaving her corporeal shell, entering the spirit world, Penny manifested a state she describes as “not solid,” and entered a dark void of an “oppressive nature.” Her senses were altered, including her sense of time. “Time here [on Earth] is so structured, and time there really gets away from you,” she said. “If I had to compare this earthly time with the time that I spent in the void, I would say it was probably about 10 years.
“It just occurred to me that the spiritual space that I was in was a picture of the spiritual space that I had made on the Earth realm. … Since my divorce many years ago, I had kind of built this wall around myself to protect me and protect the kids. The isolation that I had built on this side followed me over to this side.”
With this realization, she experienced the smothering darkness instantly “shattering” like glass, and a brilliant light shining forth. Then a spirit appeared before her. It was Penny’s grandmother, not appearing as an old lady but as a golden, angelic woman with hair of fire. “I’m so relieved that someone’s there and I’m not alone. And the dark is gone … I’m just overcome and I’m crying,” Penny said. “She says telepathically, because they don’t speak … ‘Calm yourself dear one.’” The words were a sedative; such was the spirit’s comforting energy.
Then, without realizing, Penny was alone again, floating in the light. She recounted how a thought becomes reality in that realm. “I would think something, and as soon as I thought it, the answer was there,” she told The Epoch Times. “I remember thinking ‘flowers,’ and then suddenly … I looked down and my thought had created flowers.” They were yellow, not as we understand yellow but “brilliant.”
“Each flower has its own vibration, and its own song, and its own smell and taste. And you don’t have to get near it to experience it,” she said. “You can just look at it. And none of the flowers clash with each other. And every blade of grass had its own resonance and song. And it all just worked together. It is so much richer than any experience I’ve ever had on Earth.”
Penny then described meeting her Creator, God, and attested to harboring bitterness toward Him for what she and her loved ones were dealt in life. Then, He revealed to her that the so-called “bad” things, as seen on Earth, when protracted into eternity, bear redemptive fruit beyond the minute comprehensions of mortal beings.
(Illustration – Evannovostro/Shutterstock; Inset: Public Domain)
“‘I’ve seen what you’ve allowed my own children to go through,’ and I said, ‘Here their dad abandons them when they’re just babies, and him leaving me was hard enough, and not deserved,’” Penny told Shaman Oaks. “I can take whatever he did to me, but watching those kids talk to him on the telephone and then go to the mailbox every day to check for a gift that he said he was going to send—it’s never coming—and watch them walk back heartbroken every day … What kind of God allows that?”
This “injustice” had fueled her resentment. Along her NDE journey, God revealed His designs and cleared up her human misunderstanding of the true situation. They flashed forward and Penny saw her eldest son, David, watching his own son from the bleachers as he played soccer. David said, “Mom, I’m going to be the dad to him that I deserved.” Sure enough, she recalled, years later—and she hadn’t told her son that story—David uttered those exact words as they watched his son on the field.
“It just sucks the air out to you. I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, that happened and it was this confirmation from God!’” she said. “‘You were here.’ There’s times you doubt that near-death experience, because so many people doubt it. And [God’s] like, ‘No, you were here.’”
Many apparent injustices—children enduring torturous cancers or being born with horrible deformities—have their higher purposes in Heaven. “Those are the most sacrificial spirits,” Penny said of these ones. They endured so much just for the opportunity to show people a love that transcends speech.
Dwelling in the presence of God, floating weightless in blissful light, Penny agonized over the prospect of returning. She felt a cord connecting her to her earthly body and knew she could go back. She also knew she hadn’t lived life as God intended—not even close.
“I had avoided doing the things I was supposed to do. I can’t tell you how heartbroken I was to leave [the spirit realm],” she said. “My husband’s like, ‘Why would you not want to come back to me?’ And I’m like, ‘I can’t make you understand that until you’ve been there.’
“‘I knew you’d be okay eventually.’ And so I made that decision to come back, and I was crying. … I told God, I said, ‘At least let me remember it, because if I can’t remember this I don’t think I’ll have any hope.’”
Penny in the hospital on the ventilator and in a medically induced coma when she had her NDE; (Inset) Penny after having recovered. (Courtesy of Penny Wittbrodt)
Mortal beings are born with eternal designs, which are atypical of what we think of as “good”: when everything is smooth sailing. That’s actually not good, Penny said. When we’re nested in comfort, idle, that’s bad. We’re meant to move forward, meet challenges, and share kindness. It was to complete her purpose that she solemnly chose to reenter her human body in the mundane world.
“Before we come to this life, there’s actually a decision-making process that we go through, with some consultation of spirit guides and things like that, about what family we want to come to and what general lessons we’d like to learn while we’re here,” she said. “I think we forget it when we get here. I try to remind people that, because before you came, you knew what traumas you were gonna face. And you were like, ‘That’s the life I want to live. I want to have those lessons because those are going to contribute to the growth of my spirit.’”
Having returned, Penny continued where she left off. She shared her experience with the world on social media and in interviews on various podcasts and platforms. She has endeavored to offer evidence attesting to her NDE, presenting things seen from outside her body which she otherwise could not have known—be it a mismatching outfit her sister was wearing on a certain day, a text she sent on Facebook, or what have you.
This account is a fraction of what Penny has shared of her experiences in offering to humanity.
Studies have found that many cancers are related to obesity. Nowadays, more and more people are becoming obese. However, doing two things can easily achieve the effect of cancer prevention and weight loss.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), obesity will increase the risk of 13 types of cancer, and these cancers account for 40 percent of all cancers diagnosed in the United States each year, including breast cancer, colon cancer, stomach cancer, liver cancer, esophageal cancer (esophageal adenocarcinoma), pancreatic cancer, kidney cancer, ovarian cancer, uterine cancer, gallbladder cancer, thyroid cancer, meningioma (a type of brain cancer), and multiple myeloma (a type of blood cancer).
Increased Risk
Compared to those with normal weight, the risk for several cancers increases substantially for those who are obese or overweight:
Endometrial cancer: The risk is seven times higher for those with severe obesity, and two to four times higher for those who are obese or overweight.
Esophageal cancer (esophageal adenocarcinoma): The risk is 4.8 times higher for severely obese people and 1.5 to three times higher for obese or overweight people.
Stomach cancer (gastric cancer): The risk is twice as high for obese people.
Liver cancer: The risk is twice as high for obese or overweight people.
Kidney cancer: The risk is twice as high for obese or overweight people.
Pancreatic cancer: the risk is 1.5 times greater for obese or overweight people.
Colorectal cancer: The risk is 1.3 times greater for obese or overweight people.
Gallbladder cancer: The risk is 1.6 times greater for obese people and 1.2 times greater for overweight people.
Meningioma: The risk is 1.5 times greater for obese people and 1.2 times greater for overweight people.
Breast cancer (after menopause): The risk is 1.2 to 1.4 times greater for obese or overweight people.
Thyroid cancer: The risk is 1.2 to 1.3 times greater for obese or overweight people.
Multiple myeloma: The risk is 1.1 to 1.2 times greater for obese or overweight people.
Ovarian cancer: The risk increases 1.1 times for every five-point increase in body mass index (BMI).
From 2005 to 2014, among Americans with new cancers, the cancers unrelated to obesity decreased by 13 percent. However, the incidence of obesity-related cancers increased by 7 percent, with the exception of colorectal cancer, which can be detected and prevented in advance with screening.
The most common type of cancer in obese men is colorectal cancer. In women, it’s breast cancer after menopause.
Among the above 13 types of cancer, more than 90 percent of new cancer cases occur in people aged 50 years or older. The longer a person stays obese or overweight, the greater the risk of cancer.
Dr. Chih Ying Liao, director of Radiation Therapy and Integrative Oncology Department at MOHW Taichung Hospital in Taiwan, pointed out that obesity is only one of the “manifestations” of these problems. Obesity is related to poor dietary habits, lifestyle, and metabolic factors, which themselves have the risk of promoting cancer.
For instance, frequently consuming fried foods, desserts, barbecued meats, and other unhealthy foods and not doing enough exercise are contributors to obesity, as well as cancer. After being fried, pan-fried, or grilled, meat will produce carcinogenic substances, such as heterocyclic amines and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.
In particular, after being roasted or prepared through other high-temperature cooking methods, red meat tends to produce advanced glycation end products (AGEs), resulting in chronic inflammation and increasing the chance of cancer. If too many desserts are consumed, the sugar in them can bind to the protein molecules in the body and, after a series of reactions, can also form glycation end products.
Long-term chronic inflammation and metabolic syndrome related to obesity, as well as higher than normal levels of insulin and insulin-like growth factors, will cause cancer cells to grow.
There are usually cancer cells circulating in the body. When the body is in good shape, the immune cells can kill the cancer cells. However, when the metabolic system and the immune system become weakened, it will be very difficult to kill cancer cells. Obesity allows cancer cells to multiply more easily and continuously.
In addition, a study conducted in Taiwan in 2017 confirmed the relationship between obesity, adipocytes (fat cells), and cancer. Researchers found that an MCT2 protein on the membrane of breast cancer cells acts as a gateway, sending metabolites that are spit out by adipocytes to breast cancer cells as nutrients, thus helping breast cancer cells grow.
Losing Weight can Reduce the Risk of Cancer
The definition of obesity is different for everyone because of factors such as height, muscle mass, body shape, and so on. Body mass index (BMI) can be used as one basis for determining whether someone is obese, but it has limitations as well, since it doesn’t account for muscle mass or waist circumference.
For most people, however, BMI is a good indicator of healthy bodyweight, since it’s based on weight and height.
According to Liao, if someone has a BMI higher than 25, he or she is overweight; higher than 27 is mild obesity; and higher than 30 is moderate obesity. The higher the BMI, the stronger the cancer-causing factor of obesity, so attention should be paid to those with a BMI of higher than 27.
The CDC divides obesity into classes. People with a BMI from 30 to 35 are class 1, 35 to 40 are class 2, and 40 or higher are class 3, sometimes categorized as “severe” obesity.
Another simple way to determine obesity is to measure the waist circumference. This can also correlate with cancer risk. Women with a waist circumference of 32 inches or more and men with a waist circumference of 35 inches or more have a higher risk of developing cancer. Liao said the longer the waist circumference, the more serious the abdominal obesity and the higher the visceral fat content, meaning that the body is in a state of chronic inflammation with abnormal metabolic problems.
Therefore, obese people need to lose weight to reduce the risk of cancer. However, how much weight should they lose to be safe?
“Obese people who lose 5 percent of their current body weight will have reduced the risk of cancer,” Liao said.
In other words, a 150-pound person who loses 7.5 pounds will have a statistically relevant drop in their risk of cancer. He pointed out that although the ideal state is to reduce the weight to a BMI value of 25 or less, for many obese people, that would be difficult, and they might give up halfway.
Another method is to keep the waist circumference less than 31.5 inches in women and 35.5 inches in men, in order to reduce visceral fat.
Anti-Cancer Weight Loss Methods
There are various ways to lose weight. However, using the wrong way or unsuitable ways to lose weight will make the body even more unhealthy.
According to Liao, exercise, a balanced diet, and consuming a lot of fruits and vegetables are ways that everyone can use to lose weight. In terms of diet, he recommended the Mediterranean diet, as well as eating fewer carbohydrates. People tend to eat too many carbohydrates, especially the over-processed carbs found in processed foods.
The Mediterranean diet is composed of vegetable-based meals, with high-quality proteins, whole grains, and healthy oils.
The word “fats” may make dieters feel uneasy, but the Mediterranean diet doesn’t avoid fats while having the same weight-loss effect. A study published in the American Journal of Medicine found that the Mediterranean diet is more effective than a low-fat diet. People who adopt the Mediterranean diet can lose up to 22 pounds of body weight in one year.
Another study of more than 32,000 participants, which was conducted in Italy, shows that long-term adherence to the Mediterranean diet was associated with a reduced risk of abdominal obesity over a five-year period.
The Mediterranean Diet
The Mediterranean Diet is already linked to healthy longevity, meaning researchers have found that people who follow this diet live longer and with fewer illnesses. The following are the key components of the Mediterranean diet.
Vegetables and Fruits
This diet is based on eating lots of vegetables with an appropriate quantity of fruits.
Vegetables and fruits are rich in dietary fiber, which can absorb toxins in the intestines and slow down the rise of blood sugar and the rate of blood glucose absorption. When the absorption of blood sugar becomes slower, the secretion of insulin and insulin-like growth factors will be reduced.
Fiber-rich foods can also balance and reduce the intake and absorption of fats and cholesterol, so that the body is less likely to accumulate visceral fat or produce excessive cholesterol. The more dietary fiber you consume, the easier it is to feel satiated. Fiber also promotes intestinal motility and helps with bowel movements.
A 2018 review study in Nutrients shows that eating more vegetables was associated with lower body weight and reduced waist circumference.
Eating multicolored fruits and vegetables also provides access to a wide range of nutrients, including phytochemicals, which help the body resist oxidation and improve chronic inflammation.
We should consume more vegetables than fruits because of the higher sugar content in fruit, which can interfere with blood sugar control and cause weight gain.
High-Quality Proteins
This diet includes eating plenty of legumes, seafood, eggs, white meat, and dairy products, such as Greek yogurt.
Eating soybeans, black beans, chickpeas, and other legumes, as well as bean products, can help you lose weight. An analysis published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition compiled data from 21 clinical trials and concluded that adding legumes to the diet may be a beneficial weight loss strategy—even if there’s no intention to restrict calories—and can result in a moderate weight loss.
Adopting the Mediterranean diet can also reduce the intake of red meat. However, when cooking seafood and white meat, we should also avoid pan-frying, grilling, frying, and other high-temperature cooking methods.
Whole Grains
Brown rice, black rice, quinoa, and oats are examples of healthy whole grains people eat on this diet.
According to Liao, people who want to lose weight should reduce their intake of foods high in refined starches, such as pastries, white bread, and over-processed pasta. Replace these kinds of staple food with whole grains.
Fish and Plant-Based Fats
Fish, olive oil, avocados, nuts, and seeds are the main sources of fats on the Mediterranean diet.
Fatty fish, such as salmon, are high in omega 3 fatty acids, which are linked to several health benefits. And all of these plant-based fats have been shown to have cancer-preventive effects. When cooking with good oils, such as olive oil, you can also add some herbs or spices to enhance flavor and reduce the amount of salt used.
Train Muscles to Secrete Cancer-Fighting Hormones
In addition to adjusting our diet, exercise is also important. Liao said both aerobic exercise and muscle training should be taken into account.
In particular, weight training to strengthen muscles can reduce insulin resistance, increase basal metabolic rate, and improve fat metabolism. This is because muscles can secrete more than 3,000 types of muscle hormones. Muscle hormones can promote lipolysis, which is the process by which fats are broken down so that their stored energy can be used by the body. In particular, exercise can promote lipolysis of visceral fat, and several muscle hormones have potential anti-cancer effects.
In 2021, a study found that muscle hormones can inhibit tumor growth and even help actively fight cancer cells. Long-term exercise can produce a cancer-inhibiting environment in the body.
Finally, during aerobic exercise, the heart rate should reach at least 130 beats per minute, which means that the person will be panting. You’ll know you’ve reached the appropriate level of exertion if you can still talk, but singing is impossible.
This is the only way to effectively burn calories and improve metabolic problems.
The Plano Police Department in Texas won’t investigate whether a Sept. 17 LGBT pride festival violated state obscenity laws, according to a state representative.
The North Texas Pride Festival was marketed to children 12 years old and under.
At the event there were low tables where magnets bearing obscene phrases were openly displayed.
Rep. Matt Shaheen (R-Plano) told The Epoch Times that he requested an investigation this week in a Sept. 28 meeting with the Plano city manager and the Plano police chief but was told law enforcement “won’t do anything” due to a lack of resources.
The festival was approved through the city’s special events process, according to a Sept. 20 city council meeting where several residents complained.
“I was shocked to hear of an event that was held this past weekend but not so much by the gay aspect of the event, but the Satanists, the exorcisms, the drag queens interacting with small children, the pornography on the tables, and the van to check for sexually transmitted diseases,” Plano resident Diane Neal told council members.
Donna Biscayne, a Plano native, was angered by the fact that the festival was pitched as family-friendly.
“The vendor tables were very low to the ground, and they had all these cute little magnets with beautiful colors. The kids got to pick one and on those cute little magnets is pornography and obscenity,” she told council members.
“I didn’t see friendly, and I didn’t see family. I felt like it was an assault on our traditional values, our children, and our families.”
Under the Texas Penal Code Sec. 43.21, displays or the distribution of obscenity can be charged as a misdemeanor, or a third-degree felony depending on the circumstances.
Before apologizing publicly, Morris Garcia, co-founder and president of the North Texas Pride Foundation, thanked the city council and Sergeant Brian Frantz who was present at the festival along with other Plano police officers.
“We want to thank you again, and we also want to sincerely apologize for any unnecessary presence or unwelcome presence and promise to do due diligence in our screening in the future of our vendors to be sure that no one is exposed to anything that would be offensive,” Garcia said at the council meeting.
The Plano police department did not immediately comment.
Russia said on Thursday that pipeline leaks emitting natural gas into the sea appear to be the result of state-sponsored terrorism.
The European Union is investigating the cause of the leaks in the Gazprom-led Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines under the Baltic Sea and has said it suspects sabotage.
“This looks like some kind of terrorist act, possibly at the state level,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, according to TASS news. “This is an extremely dangerous situation that requires urgent investigation,” he stressed.
A day before, Peskov dismissed claims that Moscow was behind the damage to the pipelines and described those allegations as “predictably stupid.” He questioned why Russia would sabotage its own pipeline system, which would lead to the loss of significant amounts of “expensive” gas.
A report from CNN alleged that European security officials had observed Russian navy support ships and submarines not far from the sites of the leaks. When asked to comment on the CNN report, Peskov said there had been a much larger NATO presence in the area.
Russia has also said the leaks off the coasts of Denmark and Sweden occurred in territory that is “fully under the control” of U.S. intelligence agencies.
Explosions
The Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines were not supplying gas to Europe when the leaks were first detected on Monday but still had gas in them. Russia had halted deliveries via Nord Stream 1, saying Western sanctions had hampered operations. Nord Stream 2 had not started commercial operations.
Earlier this week, researchers with seismology agencies in Denmark and Sweden found that the damage to the pipelines was most likely caused by explosions and ruled out the possibility of natural cases.
A senior U.S. official told reporters Wednesday that the United States was not involved in the damage to the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines and said “the jury is still out” on what happened. “We were absolutely not involved,” the official said in response to a question.
“Many of our partners, I think, have determined or believe it is sabotage,” the official remarked. “I’m just—I’m not at the point where I can tell you one way or the other.”
Danish Defense Minister Morten Bodskov met with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg to discuss the damage to the pipelines on Wednesday. Both said it was an act of sabotage, although they did not publicly say who could be responsible.
“There is reason to be concerned about the security situation in the Baltic Sea region,” Bodskov said in a statement to media outlets. “Russia has a significant military presence in the Baltic Sea region, and we expect them to continue their saber rattling.”
No nation-state or group has claimed responsibility.
Meanwhile, Andrei Kortunov of the Russian International Affairs Council think tank, told the BBC that such an attack by Russia would make no sense.
“They always point finger at Russia but I think since it’s the Russian property it would be not very logical for Russia to inflict damage upon it,” he told the broadcaster. “There are other ways to make European lives harder. They can simply stop the gas deliveries without damaging the infrastructure.”
The FBI must produce information from Seth Rich’s laptop computer to a Texas man, a federal judge ruled on Sept. 29.
The bureau improperly withheld the information from Brian Huddleston, the Texas man, according to a 53-page ruling from U.S. District Judge Amos Mazzant.
Seth Rich was a Democratic National Committee staffer who was murdered around 4:20 a.m. in July 2016 in Washington. Officials have claimed the killing was done as part of a botched robbery.
The FBI has acknowledged it has files from Seth Rich’s computer but tried withholding them from Huddleston, citing a portion of federal law that enables agencies to withhold information that would be a clear invasion of privacy interests when the interests are not outweighed by the public interest.
The bureau said that Rich’s family members have a privacy interest in preventing the release of the information that outweighs the public interest, but Mazzant, an Obama appointee, rejected the argument.
“The Court is not persuaded by the FBI’s argument that Seth Rich’s survivors have a privacy interest in withholding the entirety of the information contained on Seth Rich’s laptop,” he said.
“Pointedly, the FBI cites to no case law for the proposition that survivors of the deceased have a privacy interest in information related to the deceased’s favorite music or relationship history,” he added.
Previous rulings in other cases have found that loved ones of dead people have a substantial privacy interest in preventing the disclosure of autopsies, death scene photographs, and other materials from a person’s final moments. Those rulings don’t apply to this case, Mazzant said.
He ordered the FBI to produce the information to Huddleston within 14 days.
Seth Rich. (LinkedIn)
‘Major Victory’
Ty Clevenger, a lawyer representing Huddleston, said the ruling was a victory.
“The FBI has fought tooth and nail to conceal evidence about Seth Rich, so Judge Mazzant’s order is a major victory for us,” Clevenger told The Epoch Times via email.
The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Queries sent to lawyers who represented Rich’s parents in a different matter were not immediately returned.
Clevenger said any files not of a personal nature will be posted online after Huddleston receives them.
“As soon as we can get it ready to post I’ll put it up on my blog for everybody to look at,” he said.
False Claims
The bureau falsely told Clevenger when he asked for information on Seth Rich that it didn’t possess any. Emails disclosed in a separate case proved the FBI wrong. The bureau identified some potentially responsive 20,000 files in response to Huddleston’s requests, later narrowing it down to 1,563 pages.
The FBI has only produced 75 pages to date, while withholding hundreds of others.
During the litigation, the FBI admitted for the first time that it had come into possession of files from Rich’s laptop.
But Michael Seidel, an FBI official, said in a declaration that the FBI was provided “information and material extracted from Seth Rich’s personal laptop.” He also said, “since the FBI had no involvement in the extraction of the data from Seth Rich’s personal laptop, there is no way to know with certainty if the information provided by the source and maintained by the FBI in the Special Counsel’s Office record collection, accurately depicts the contents of the information contained on Seth Rich’s personal laptop at the time of his death.”
Still, the official said that the computer “may contain information of family (parents and siblings), friends or acquaintances (professional or personal), his favorite music and other material that would reveal details concerning both personal and sensitive relationships.” At the same time, he acknowledged that Seth Rich himself “has no privacy interests due to being deceased.”
Clevenger and Huddleston have an expert ready to analyze the information from the laptop to see whether it was tampered with after Rich’s death.
Thirty former FBI agents have issued messages of support for suspended whistleblower Steve Friend, who alleged political bias at the agency over its handling of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach probe.
Among the former agents expressing support for Friend include a retired deputy assistant director and five former SWAT team members, according to the New York Post.
Friend wrote in a declaration made public on Sept. 26 that the FBI had been using heavy-handed tactics on some suspects in the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol, citing a case in which a SWAT team was used to make an arrest on misdemeanor charges, which he called “inappropriate.”
The whistleblower also accused the agency of violating the Justice Department’s guidelines for the FBI’s domestic investigations (pdf) by resorting to “atypical” procedures in the handling of Jan. 6, 2021, probes.
He claimed that the FBI had diminished the role of field offices and field agents in the Jan. 6, 2021, investigations by centralizing case management to the FBI’s J6 Task Force.
“Resultantly, there are active criminal investigations of J6 subjects in which I am listed as the ‘Case Agent,’ but have not done any investigative work,” Friend stated.
The whistleblower added that J6 Task Force members are listed as affiants on search and arrest warrant affidavits where he’s listed as a “case agent” but never interviewed the subjects or investigated the cases.
He also alleged that the FBI was deprioritizing child sexual abuse investigations in favor of domestic terror probes.
Friend’s lawyer told The Epoch Times in an earlier emailed statement that Friend is still employed by the FBI but remains suspended without pay.
Messages of Support
“It’s time to stop the FBI from being the enforcer of a political party’s ideology,” stated one of the messages attributed to retired FBI agent Ernie Tibaldi, according to the NY Post.
“We need to reestablish the FBI as the apolitical and independent law enforcement entity that it always was.”
Regarding Friend’s allegations that the FBI used excessive force in arresting suspects accused of misdemeanor offenses, five former SWAT team members agreed.
Retired FBI Special Agent David Baldovin, who spent some two dozen years in SWAT, told the NY Post, “The current use—or should I say abuse—of Bureau SWAT teams has been outrageous.”
He praised Friend for having the courage to say no “to the current bunch of FBI bureaucrats and tyrants.”
Another former SWAT team member told the NY Post he had taken part in numerous raids, all of which were limited to “serious felonies.”
Other messages were in a similar vein, with some commending Friend for showing “courage” and another calling him “an American hero.”
Friend, who has refused to take part in future operations relating to the Jan. 6, 2021, probe, has had his security clearance suspended pending an investigation. He has also been stripped of his credentials, firearm, and badge.
Lawmakers Allege FBI Retaliation Against Friend
Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who released Friend’s whistleblowing declaration, accused the FBI of retaliation.
“Ultimately, rather than reassigning Special Agent Friend other tasks as he requested, FBI leadership apparently made the choice to retaliate against and make an example of him,” the senators wrote in a Sept. 26 letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray.
“The alleged actions by FBI senior leadership are unacceptable and send exactly the wrong message.”
The FBI stated in an earlier email to The Epoch Times that it had received the letter from Grassley and Johnson and that whistleblowers are “protected against retaliation.”
“While we cannot comment on the specifics of personnel matters, all FBI employees understand they are held to the highest standards because their work is critical to fulfilling our mission of protecting the American people and upholding the Constitution of the United States. Employees who don’t carry out their responsibilities are held accountable through an objective administrative process,” an FBI spokesperson wrote.
“FBI employees who report evidence of wrongdoing through a protected disclosure are protected from retaliation. Such reporting supports the FBI’s mission and is fully consistent with our core values.”
I think all of these reporters that push climate change should be hung for treason. We are in a grand solar minimum. Temperatures this year (even in summer) have been lower than ever in the past, and right now we are 15 degrees below average every day. See this site for more info. [US Patriot]
Not so fast.
As some members of the news media gleefully rub their hands together preparing for Part Two of “Let’s Take Down a Republican due to a Hurricane,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is wise to them.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa – give me a break,” responded DeSantis to a reporter claiming FEMA’s director said Florida was lacking adequate response to Hurricane Ian.
“That is nonsense. Stop politicizing, okay?” the governor said. “Stop it!”
There’ll be no rolling of this guy as there was of President George W. Bush following Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
In reality, FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell indicated a close working relationship between her office and Florida officials, as she urged Floridians — especially those who have never experienced a hurricane — to pay close attention to the instructions of local authorities.
Midday Wednesday, category 4 Ian was making landfall in southwest Florida, with winds gusting to 112 mph at Naples Grande Beach Resort and 107 mph near Sanibel Island, according to The Weather Channel.
The storm also was affecting Florida’s east coast, with a gust of 54 mph at Cape Canaveral and in the south, Key West had its third-largest storm surge since 1913.
Do you think the left is trying to politicize Hurricane Ian?Yes No
Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
At a news conference, a reporter queried DeSantis on the state’s response to the storm.
Reporter: “FEMA Administrator Criswell said today that she acknowledged concerns that Florida, as we said, lacks response to the storm so far and that…”
““Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,” interrupted DeSantis. “Give me a break. That is nonsense. Stop politicizing, okay? Stop it!
“We declared a state of emergency when this thing wasn’t even formed.
“We’ve had people in here – you’ve had counties doing, they’ve done a lot of hard work, and, honestly, you’re trying to attack me, I get, but you’re attacking these other people who’ve worked very hard and so, that’s just totally false.
“I don’t think we’ve ever – certainly since I’ve been governor – declared a state of emergency this early. We made sure we were very inclusive with it. We said there was a lot of uncertainty and then we’ve worked to make sure the preparations have been done and all this stuff.”
At another news conference in Washington, Criswell was asked about complacency in Florida.
“I do have concerns about complacency,” she replied, but as she expanded her answer she seemed to be addressing complacency among Florida residents inexperienced with hurricanes as opposed to an apparent inference of complacency among state officials.
“We’re talking about impacts in a part of Florida that hasn’t seen a major direct impact in nearly a hundred years,” Criswell said. “There’s also parts of Florida where there’s a lot of new residents that have never experienced this type of threat.
“So my message to them is: take this very seriously. Listen to your local officials and [to] those Floridians who have been through this before: help your neighbors who may not have had to go through this.”
Criswell said President Biden early on had instructed her to be in contact with DeSantis and that FEMA’s regional administrator was with the governor and there was focus on saving lives.
So far, the media’s oft-repeated game of let’s-you-and-him-fight (especially where a Republican is involved) is going nowhere.
In the face of Ian, DeSantis has to be aware he’s a political target, given the media attacks on Bush surrounding Katrina.
But with mid-terms approaching, the White House may be treading softly, realizing that while they can stir up the leftist base by attacking what they call MAGA Republicans, politicizing a natural disaster may be, even for them, beyond the pale.
As members of the leftist base, some in the media, of course, have no such reservations, so they attempt to pack political grenades in their questions.
I think all of these anchors that push climate change should be hung for treason. We are in a grand solar minimum. Temperatures this year (even in summer) have been lower than ever in the past, and right now we are 15 degrees below average every day. See this site for more info. [US Patriot]
CNN host Don Lemon was joined by Jamie Rhome, the acting director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Hurricane Center on Tuesday to discuss the storm track and expected effects of Hurricane Ian.
Lemon opened the interaction by framing his questions regarding the storm in a context focusing on “climate change,” after discussing the particulars of the storm itself which it seemed Rhome was interested in answering.
According to Fox News, Lemon told his audience that meteorologists have said Hurricane Ian could enter “another period of rapid intensification,” prior to making landfall.
He asked Rhome, “What effect climate change has on this phenomenon?”
“We can come back and talk about climate change at a later time. I want to focus on the here and now. We think the rapid intensification is probably almost done,” Rhome answered.
“There could be a little bit more intensification as it’s still over the warm waters of the Eastern Gulf of Mexico, but I don’t think we’re going to get any more rapid intensification.”
He then attempted to continue describing the hurricane’s development, “If you look here, you can actually see pretty interesting for your viewers,” he said.
This is amazing. Don Lemon tries to blame Hurricane Ian on climate change. NOAA’s hurricane director shuts him down. pic.twitter.com/svTjHtE8hl
“You can actually see a second eyewall forming around the inner eyewall, and that’s basically the second eyewall has overtaken the original eyewall, and that should arrest development,” he added before being interrupted by Lemon.
Will Don Lemon continue to be corrected by guests?Yes No
Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
The CNN host was undeterred and continued, “So, listen, I just — I’m just trying to get that you said you want to talk about climate change, but what — what effect does climate change have on this phenomenon that — that is happening now. Because it seems these storms are intensifying. That’s the question here,” he asked.
Rhome replied, “I don’t think you can link climate change to any one event. On the whole, on the cumulative, climate change may be making storms worse. But to link it to any one event, I would caution against that.”
Lemon then began to argue with the National Weather Service expert who possesses twenty-plus years of experience studying hurricanes, according to the National Weather Service.
“OK. Well, they — listen, I grew up there and these storms are intensifying something is causing them to intensify. So, this storm is just — it’s a massive one. Its effects are also being felt in the southern part of Florida.”
Lorrie Goldstein, editor emeritus of the Toronto Sun tweeted the exchange observing, “This is just hilarious. Don Lemon gratuitously insults actual hurricane expert by claiming his anecdotal evidence — ‘I grew up there’ — makes him an expert, too.”
The exchange hearkens back to a Sept. 19 interview with Hilary Fordwich, a British-American businesswoman and commentator on the royal family following the death of Queen Elizabeth II.
During the interview, Lemon asked if the British royal family should pay reparations for African slavery and appeared surprised when Fordwich suggested that not only should African nations who originated the slave trade pay reparations, but that said funds should be given to the descendants of Britons who fought to end the Atlantic slave trade.
“I think you’re right about reparations in terms if people want it though, what they need to do is — you always need to go back to the beginning of a supply chain. Where was the beginning of the supply chain? That was in Africa,” she said.
“Across the entire world when slavery was taking place, which was the first nation in the world that abolished slavery? First nation in the world to abolish it … was the British.”
CNN’s @DonLemon tells royal commentator Hilary Fordwich the royal family should pay reparations — immediately regrets it pic.twitter.com/LotCfBoAym
Bethany Mandel, a Contributor for Desert Media and Fox News Columnist suggested in a tweet, “With his job reportedly on the line, it is not great for Don Lemon that every video of him going viral is just getting owned.”
Lemon is currently transitioning off of his primetime show on CNN to a morning co-hosting role with Poppy Harlow and Kaitlan Collins. He recently made headlines for ardently arguing that this change from a solo primetime show to a morning show with two other hosts does not represent a “demotion.”
A former Democratic congressman is going to prison for election fraud.
Michael “Ozzie” Myers of Philadelphia was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison on Tuesday, according to a Justice Department news release.
The politician served nearly two terms in the House of Representatives from 1976 to 1980, representing what was then Pennsylvania’s 1st Congressional District.
Myers admitted to orchestrating the fraudulent stuffing of ballot boxes in Pennsylvania elections in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018, according to the Department of Justice.
The political operative worked with elections judges Marie Beren and Domenick Demuro in his fraud operation, according to Fox News. Demuro admitted in May 2020 to taking bribes from Myers, and Beren “pleaded guilty to the scheme in October 2021.”
Myers arranged ballot stuffing in favor of Democratic candidates who had paid him “consulting fees,” according to the Justice Department.
The corrupt election workers would add ballots in favor of Myers’ clients and proceed to certify the compromised results.
In a remarkable twist, this isn’t even the first time that Myers has been locked up for corruption.
Myers served three years of prison time for accepting bribes from FBI agents posing as wealthy Arab sheikhs seeking political favors in the so-called “Abscam” scandal, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Do you think 30 months is a long enough sentence?Yes No
Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
The Democrat would be expelled from the House in 1980 for the scandal, becoming one of the few representatives in the history of Congress to be given the boot.
Prosecutors are pointing to Myers’ crimes as poison to election confidence in Philadelphia.
“Voting is the cornerstone of our democracy,” United States Attorney Jacqueline C. Romero said in the Justice Department news release.- story continues below
“If even one vote has been illegally cast or if the integrity of just one election official is compromised, it diminishes faith in process.”
FBI agent Jacqueline Maguire had even sharper words for Myers.
“Through his actions, Ozzie Myers pointedly disdained both the will of Philadelphia voters and the rule of law. He’s now a federal felon twice over, heading back behind bars, with time to consider the great consequence of free and fair elections.”
Myers was remanded immediately into federal custody after his Tuesday sentencing, with U.S. District Judge Paul S. Diamond expressing his belief that the corrupt politician had learned nothing 40 years after his first federal prison bid, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Advertisement – story continues below
Myers’ son briefly interrupted proceedings in an attempt to “say goodbye” to his father before U.S Marshals prepared to haul him away, according to the Inquirer.
Twitter might not be the only tech platform in the sights of megabillionaire Elon Musk.
Musk suggested he’d be willing to consider a partnership with Rumble, a streaming service considered to be one of YouTube’s most pressing competitors, in a series of Wednesday tweets.
The Tesla CEO responded to actor and populist commentator Russell Brand, after Brand posted a video explaining why he was moving his video show to Rumble. Brand encouraged his viewers to move to Rumble with him in response to YouTube’s censorship of his content.
Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Musk did douse the idea with cold water in response to a question from conservative commentator Dan Bongino. The engineer all but admitted he’s preoccupied with a legal battle with Twitter, having agreed to purchase the censorious Big Tech platform.
Free-speech supporters didn’t miss Musk’s interest in Rumble, with some pointing to the development as a potential milestone in restoring internet freedom.
The future just unfolded and you are here to see it.
Musk’s Twitter acquisition was complicated by litigation after he reached a deal to become the platform’s new owner.
Musk alleges that Twitter’s value is inflated by the presence of fake bot accounts, claiming that the company is defrauding advertisers by presenting their content to a padded audience.
Court proceedings on Musk’s stalled deal with Twitter are slated for October, with Twitter’s lawyers seeking to compel Musk to finish his acquisition of the company.
Rumble recently began trading publicly on the stock market, according to Observer.com.
The streaming service has proven its own enduring appeal as other platforms hoping to compete with Big Tech have failed to seize market share.
The company attained an average monthly user base of 44 million in the second quarter of 2022, according to an internal news release.
We should deport ex-presidents from Kenya first and foremost [US Patriot]
With the midterms on the horizon and Joe Biden’s dismal approval numbers causing alarm within the Democratic Party, Barack Obama is playing the race card trying to shift the narrative from Biden’s failed leadership to falsely insinuating that Republicans are “racists” for opposing mass illegal immigration.
On Sunday at the L’Attitude conference, an event for Latino business professionals in San Diego, Obama said, “Right now, the biggest fuel behind the Republican agenda is related to immigration and the fear that somehow America’s character is going to be changed if, people of darker shades, there are too many of them here,” according to The San Diego Union-Tribune.
Huh? Has Obama forgotten that when he and his former Vice President Joe Biden occupied the White House, their administration deported millions of illegal immigrants, earning him the moniker “deporter in chief”?
“For a Democrat, Obama took a fairly tough stance, particularly early in his presidency, toward undocumented immigrants,” Newsweek said in 2017. “From 2009 to 2016, his administration oversaw the forcible removal of more than 3 million undocumented immigrants — most of whom were sent back to Mexico. Neither Bill Clinton, nor George W. Bush, Obama’s two predecessors, came close in reaching his tally over their two terms.”
Now, in Obama’s defense, some of those counted in deportation tallies while he was president were due in part to a redefinition as to how Immigration and Customs Enforcement recorded the statistic, particularly when it came to including “voluntary returns,” otherwise known as “catch and release.” But even with that change in definition, which one could argue would have lowered the overall deportation tally, it was still very high and a “big mistake,” as Biden conceded during a 2020 interview with Univision host Jorge Ramos. “We took far too long to get it right,” Biden said. “I think it was a big mistake. Took too long to get it right.”
And when it came to Obama’s “deporter in chief” nickname, that didn’t come from a right-wing group; it came from immigration activists who were upset the Obama-Biden administration deported hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who didn’t have criminal records. “In March 2014, Janet Murguia, president of the National Council on La Raza, a Latino advocacy group, called Obama ‘the deporter-in-chief.’ It was a criticism that activists leveled at Obama throughout his presidency,” according to Newsweek.
In more recent times, we didn’t hear a peep from the 44th president when 50 Venezuelan migrants arrived at Martha’s Vineyard this month, where he owns a $11.75 million manse. Instead of welcoming the Hispanic migrants, liberal elites at the wealthy enclave called in the Massachusetts National Guard and quickly transported them off the island to a military base on mainland Massachusetts without any known resistance from the Vineyard’s most famous homeowner. Why didn’t Obama use his power and enormous influence to help those migrants find housing and jobs on the exclusive island occupied by mostly rich white liberals? That would’ve made his vacation spot more diverse!
The hypocrisy is beyond …
That said, when it comes to mass illegal immigration, it’s certainly not “racist” to oppose millions of unknown and unvetted individuals — from any country — violating U.S. immigration laws. Border security is national security, as all sovereign nations, including the U.S., must know who is coming into one’s country, why they are entering and, most importantly, whether any of the illegal migrants pose a public safety threat. Remember it only took two radical Islamist terrorists to cause mass carnage at the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings and 19 Muslim al-Qaeda extremists to execute 9/11, killing nearly 3,000 Americans.
With that in mind, consider that under Team Biden, there have been over 2 million migrant encounters this fiscal year, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics released this month. The prior fiscal year, there were 1.7 million migrant encounters in addition to an estimated 900,000 known “gotaways” since Biden took office. If that’s not alarming enough, a record 78 suspected terrorists on terror watch lists were apprehended at ports of entry this fiscal year attempting to infiltrate our country under Sleepy Joe.
What could possibly go wrong?
It’s also not “racist” for any American to be against Mexican drug cartels who’ve murdered over 100,000 Americans with fentanyl poisoning streaming into our communities via the porous southern border. And no, it’s not wrong to oppose the despicable human trafficking taking place or staggering influx of an estimated 267,000 unaccompanied minors who’ve entered the U.S. so far on Biden’s watch. Where are these vulnerable children going? Who is caring for them? And how many will be abused, sex trafficked or killed? So, contrary to what Obama says, being concerned about these terrifying real-world scenarios isn’t “racist”; it’s compassionate to not want any human to suffer such horrors.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is refusing to release the results of autopsies conducted on people who died after getting COVID-19 vaccines.
The FDA says it is barred from releasing medical files, but a drug safety advocate says that it could release the autopsies with personal information redacted.
The refusal was issued to The Epoch Times, which submitted a Freedom of Information Act for all autopsy reported obtained by the FDA concerning any deaths reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System following COVID-19 vaccination.
Reports are lodged with the system when a person experiences an adverse event, or a health issue, after receiving a vaccine. The FDA and other agencies are tasked with investigating the reports. Authorities request and review medical records to vet the reports, including autopsies.
The FDA declined to release any reports, even redacted copies.
The FDA cited federal law, which enables agencies to withhold information if the agency “reasonably foresees that disclosure would harm an interest protected by an exemption,” with the exemption being “personnel and medical files and similar files the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”
Federal regulations also bar the release of “personnel, medical and similar files the disclosure of which constitutes a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”
The Epoch Times has appealed the denial, in addition to the recent denial of results of data analysis of VAERS reports.
‘Easily Be Redacted’
Kim Witczak, a drug safety advocate who advises the FDA as part of the Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee, said that the reports could be released with personal information blacked out.
“The personal information could easily be redacted without losing the potential learnings from [the] autopsy,” Witczak told The Epoch Times via email.
People make the choice to submit autopsy results to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, Witczak noted.
“If someone submits their experience to VAERS they want and expect to have it investigated by the FDA. This includes autopsy reports,” she said.
Autopsies are examinations of deceased persons performed to determine the cause of death.
“Autopsies can be an important part of postmortem analysis and should be done especially with increased deaths following COVID-19 vaccination,” Witczak said.
FDA Responds
An FDA spokesperson noted that deaths following COVID-19 vaccination are rare, citing the number of reports made to VAERS.
As of Sept. 14, 16,516 reports of death following COVID-19 vaccination have been reported. Approximately 616 million doses have been administered in the United States through September.
The spokesperson declined to say whether the FDA would ever release the autopsy results, but pointed to a paper authored by researchers with the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The paper, which has not been peer reviewed, analyzed the approximately 9,800 reports of death to VAERS following COVID-19 vaccination lodged from Dec. 14, 2020, to Nov. 17, 2021. Researchers found that reporting rates were lower than the expected all-cause mortality rates.
“Trends in reporting rates reflected known trends in background mortality rates. These findings do not suggest an association between vaccination and overall increased mortality,” the researchers wrote.
The researchers noted that prior studies have found that adverse events reported to VAERS are an undercount of the true number of events.
Dr. Anthony Fauci’s net worth almost doubled during the years spanning the COVID-19 pandemic, according to financial disclosure forms obtained through litigation by a nonprofit government watchdog.
“The Fauci household disclosed net worth increased from $7.6 million (Jan. 1, 2019) to over $12.6 million (Dec. 31, 2021),” according to OpenTheBooks.org (OTB) CEO and founder Adam Andrzejewski, writing on Substack, about the financial position of the director of the National Institutes for Health’s (NIH) National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
Fauci also is chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, and held a similar position under former President Donald Trump from the outset of the pandemic in 2020.
In addition, he’s the highest-paid federal employee, earning more than $456,000 in 2021 in compensation. His federal salary increased to $480,000 in 2022, topping that of the president, vice president, and Supreme Court justices.
“During the ongoing pandemic year of 2021, the Fauci’s household income, perks and benefits, and unrealized investment gains totaled $2,832,876—including federal income and benefits of $903,497; outside royalties and travel perks totaling $919,205; and $910,174 in investment gains,” Andrzejewski wrote.
Fauci’s finances were further augmented by a $1 million award he received for the Dan David Prize at Tel Aviv University in Israel. Fauci kept more than $900,000 of the award, with the rest going to fund scholarships, according to his disclosure forms.
“Fauci also collected awards of $12,500 from the Eliot Richardson Prize in Public Service on July 31, 2021, and the Abelson Prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Science on Feb. 8, 2021,” Andrzejewski continued.
Fauci is heavily invested in the market, with the disclosure forms showing $910,174 through stock, bond, and money market interests during 2021. The Fauci portfolio gained $794,369 in 2020. The total value of Fauci’s investment account was $10,271,626 and his wife’s investments totaled another $2,405,887, as of Dec. 31, 2021.
“These funds were held in a mix of trust, retirement, and college education accounts. Fauci has an IRA worth $706,219 (up $67,700); a defined benefit brokerage account totaling $2,551,210 (up $147,688); and a revocable trust worth $7,014,197 (up $1,718,299).
“His wife’s revocable trust is worth $2,269,225 (up $306,406) and an IRA totaling $136,662 (up $16,385),” OTB reported.
Fauci didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.
Four separate federal lawsuits have been filed by OTB in its efforts to force the NIH to make public data concerning royalties valued at $134 million paid to more than 1,600 of the agency’s executives, scientists, and researchers by outside firms thought to be primarily from the pharmaceutical industry, between 2010 and 2014.
The royalties were first reported by The Epoch Times in May.
Based on the numbers for that period, OTB projects that about $350 million in such royalty payments were made by outside payers to NIH employees between 2010 and 2020.
Royalty payments also went to at least three of the top echelon of NIH leaders, including Dr. Francis Collins, the immediate past director of NIH, who got 14 payments. Fauci received 23 payments and Fauci’s deputy director at NIAID, Clifford Lane, received eight payments.
Collins resigned as NIH director in December 2021 after 12 years at the helm of the world’s largest public health agency.
His acting successor, Dr. Lawrence Tabak, conceded during a congressional hearing earlier this year that “there may be an appearance of a conflict of interest” in the royalty payments.
Her title is currently listed by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management as “social science” with a pay level of $238,970, according to data compiled by OTB. The current top pay rate for federal government executive-level officials is $226,300.
Grady’s compensation is at the center of one of the four OTB suits as a result of NIH officials’ refusal to disclose information sought via an OTB Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request dated April 8. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
The OTB request sought “all employment contracts, modifications, and addendums” for Grady since assuming her present position, as well as “all confidentiality agreements/documents, conflicts of interest waivers or documents, ethics disclosures, and financial interest and/or economic interest disclosure documents.”
In addition, the FOIA request sought a copy of Grady’s current official job description.
All federal employment jobs are required by law and regulation to have an official position description that describes the specific duties and responsibilities for which the individual can be held accountable.
“I shot somebody. It was an accident,” said a 74-year-old Michigan homeowner in a Sept. 27 video interview with TV-8 News of Grand Rapids.
The Odessa Township man admitted to shooting an 84-year-old pro-life volunteer who was knocking on doors in her community trying to persuade people to vote “No” on a proposed amendment to the Michigan constitution that would make abortion on demand a right.
The shooting occurred on Sept. 20 during daylight hours.
TV-8 reported earlier that law enforcement sources described the prelude to the shooting as “an alleged verbal altercation while she [the volunteer canvasser] passed out pamphlets.”
The man said in the Sept. 27 interview that he was in his barn when he heard his wife arguing loudly with a visitor who had come to the door of the house.
Pro-abortion protesters argue with Tyler, a pro-life protester outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, on May 15, 2022. (Jackson Elliott/The Epoch Times)
He said he grabbed his wife’s .22-caliber rifle and fired a “warning shot” into a pine tree in front of the farmhouse.
He then joined the two women.
In the interview, the man alleged that the elderly female visitor was “ranting and raving” and waving a clipboard around.
“I’m thinking she’s going to smack [my wife] with it. So, without thinking, I went to club it away with the rifle and my finger was still on the trigger guard.”
He said the gun went off accidentally and a round struck the volunteer in the right shoulder.
The man told TV-8 that he knew he could be facing charges.
As of press time, the police report isn’t yet completed, and no charges have been filed.
Right to Life communications director Anna Visser told The Epoch Times on Sept. 26, “No one deserves to be shot for their beliefs, whatever they may be.”
In a Sept. 27 press release, Visser said: “The 84-year-old woman is hardly imposing, standing about 5 feet tall.
“The idea that shooting this woman is at all excusable is a dangerous claim for Americans across the country who engage in peaceful door-to-door canvassing.
“No one should fear violence while peacefully exercising their constitutionally protected right to free speech.”
In a Sept. 24 statement, Michigan Right to Life said the wounded woman wants to remain anonymous pending the completion of an investigation by the Michigan State Police.
Pro-abortion activists protest in front of the Supreme Court in Washington on May 3, 2022, in response to a leaked draft opinion showing the court’s intention to overturn Roe v. Wade. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Right to Life described the interaction between the volunteer and the elderly female homeowner as a “heated conversation.”
It said the unarmed volunteer was peacefully leaving when she was shot in the back.
According to a Sept. 27 Right to Life press release, the victim told authorities she was “dazed” by the shot and feared she would be shot again.
A single bullet passed through the flesh of her shoulder and entered her back.
The wounded woman then drove herself to the Lake Odessa Police Station to report the attack.
From there, she was transported to the hospital for treatment and was later released.
The elderly female homeowner told TV-8 that the woman knocked on her door and said she was visiting as part of “a coalition to save women and babies [and] she needed me to vote ‘No’ on Proposal 3.”
When the female homeowner replied that she couldn’t do that and asked her to leave, “the argument was on,” she said.
According to the female homeowner, as their voices got louder and louder, what she describes as a “warning shot” rang out from the barn.
She made no reference to the shot that wounded the volunteer.
As the shooting incident illustrates, passions on both sides are running high over Proposal 3.
The ACLU of Michigan, a strong backer of the proposition, stated on its website that the new constitutional amendment would ensure that safe medical care and a “broad range of reproductive health care, including abortion” is accessible.
“This proposal will affirm that every Michigander has the fundamental right to reproductive freedom, which involves the right to make and carry out decisions without political interference.”
The exact language of the proposed constitutional amendment reads, “Every individual has a fundamental right to reproductive freedom.”
That wording worries James Moffett, spokesperson for Citizens for Traditional Values, a group opposing Proposal 3.
Moffett expressed his concerns in a recent phone interview with The Epoch Times, saying: “The amendment says, ‘every individual.’ It does not say ‘every adult and every minor with permission.’
“It also includes ‘sterilization’ among the fundamental reproductive rights. We think they worded it that way to get the LGBT folks on board.”
David Kallman, chief legal counsel for the Great Lakes Justice Center, told The Epoch Times that, in his opinion, the language of Proposal 3 was carefully crafted to undermine the legal rationale for every Michigan law that restricts, regulates, and limits matters pertaining to sexuality.
The language reads, “A state interest [in regulating such matters] is ‘compelling’ only if it is for the limited purpose of protecting the health of an individual seeking care … and does not infringe on the individual’s autonomous decision making.”
“In other words, ‘Do your own thing. Anything goes,’” Kallman said.
“The language of the proposed amendment lays the groundwork for future lawsuits brought by individuals and liberal organizations to strike down every socially beneficial statutory restriction currently on the books as unconstitutional.
“The courts will inevitably expand the definition of what sexual practices and other conduct will be protected by this new ‘right,’” Kallman said.
Alan Cropsey, a former Republican state legislator and grandfather of 16, told The Epoch Times: “Proposal 3 puts women supporting abortion in an awful position. By voting for the proposal to ‘preserve the right to an abortion,’ they may end up losing their rights over their own children.”
The head of a U.S. oil industry association warned that the Biden administration is wantonly draining the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve in a bid to keep Democrats afloat ahead of the 2022 midterms.
“This is the first time in history, honestly, that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve has been used as a campaign credit card to buy down political risk for the midterms,” Tim Stewart, the head of the U.S. Oil and Gas Association, said in a recent interview with Just the News.
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve as of Sept. 23 dropped to 422.58 million barrels of oil, or the lowest level since 1984. That’s down from 617 million barrels since Oct. 1, 2021.
“Let me put it in perspective if I could,” Stewart said. “At the current rate, the U.S. is selling more oil out of its emergency reserves than the production of most medium-sized OPEC countries like Algeria or Angola.”
“We’re selling twice as much per day than we’re producing out of Alaska. That puts us somewhere between Exxon and Conoco in terms of … the impact we’re having on the daily supply—and this is happening without new oil going in to replace it.”
President Joe Biden in March set a plan to release 1 million barrels per day over six months from the SPR to tackle high U.S. fuel prices, which have contributed to soaring inflation.
“The scale of this release is unprecedented: the world has never had a release of oil reserves at this 1 million per day rate for this length of time,” the White House said at the time. “This record release will provide a historic amount of supply to serve as bridge until the end of the year when domestic production ramps up.”
The Biden administration is weighing the need for further Strategic Petroleum releases after the current program ends in October, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told Reuters this month. A Department of Energy spokesperson later said the White House at that time was not considering new releases beyond the 180 million barrels.
The Energy Department also has proposed to replenish the reserve by allowing it to enter contracts to purchase oil in future years at fixed, preset prices. The administration said it believes the plan would help boost domestic oil production.
Data from the American Automobile Association (AAA) shows that gas prices have increased in the past week. As of Wednesday, the price for a gallon of regular gas is about $3.76 nationwide, up from $3.68 a week ago. In California, the average price is around $6 per gallon.
The Epoch Times has contacted the White House press office for comment.
House Republicans are investigating the Department of Education’s dispersal of federal funds to academic institutions that “suppress free speech,” according to a letter from Rep. James Comer (R., Ky.), the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, and Rep. Virginia Foxx (R., N.C.), the ranking member of the House Committee on Education and Labor.
The oversight committee is requesting a briefing on what steps—”if any”—the department has taken to safeguard academic freedom on campus, according to a copy of the letter obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. Delivered to Biden education secretary Miguel Cardona on Wednesday, the letter rattles off a string of cases in which taxpayers have indirectly footed the bill for censorship, including the $620 million the Education Department sent to Yale University, where administrators investigated a law student for using the term “trap house” in an email.
“Institutions of higher learning are places where faculty and students should test, develop, and fine-tune theories, thoughts, and ideas,” Comer and Foxx write. “Unfortunately, colleges and universities are stifling free thought and expression.”
The letter states that the “proliferation of cancel culture” extends to public institutions, which are funded entirely by the taxpayer and bound by the First Amendment. At the University of Washington, for example, administrators disciplined a computer science professor who refused to include a “land acknowledgment” in his syllabi.
The Department of Education did not respond to a request for comment.
Delivered just six weeks ahead of the midterm elections, the letter reflects the growing partisan divide over higher education. Only 31 percent of Republicans say that liberal and conservative views are respected equally on campus, according to a March poll from the American Council on Education; among Democrats, the number is 57 percent.
The gap has grown as universities themselves have become more liberal. Between 1990 and 2014, the share of “conservative” and “moderate” professors dropped 6 and 13 points, respectively, a survey from the Higher Education Research Institute found, while the share of self-identified “liberal” professors rose by 18 points. The trend is even starker among college administrators, whose ranks have exploded over the past two decades and among whom liberals now outnumber conservatives 12 to 1.
That partisan tilt may explain why university censorship disproportionately targets right-leaning faculty. In just the past year, the letter notes, Princeton University, Georgetown Law School, and the University of Pennsylvania have either punished or investigated professors whose views do not “align with ever-changing norms of political correctness.” These cases reflect an empirically verifiable trend: Data from Acadia University’s Jeffrey Sachs suggest that conservative professors are at least twice as likely as liberal professors to be fired for political speech.
The universities engaging in such censorship are flush with federal cash. In 2019, government data show, the Department of Education doled out $830 million to the University of Pennsylvania, $370 million to Georgetown, and $1.2 billion to the University of Washington. Total federal funding for higher education hovers at around $190 billion annually.
As long as “American taxpayers make a significant investment in colleges and universities,” the letter argues, those schools “should be havens of free speech.”
Report shows powerful public sector unions have stepped up lobbying efforts amid member exodus
The nation’s four largest government unions lost more than 200,000 members after the Supreme Court ruled that public sector workers could opt out of union membership, according to a report released Wednesday.
In the four years since the landmark Janus v. AFSCME ruling, the National Education Association, American Federation of Teachers, Service Employees International Union, and American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees lost almost 219,000 union members. The report, published by the Commonwealth Foundation, found that the Supreme Court decision escalated a decades-long decline in dues-paying members at the public sector unions.
Despite the drop in membership, labor groups have scored legal and political victories that are buoying their political power. Union bosses scored a major victory last year in Virginia, where they attained collective bargaining rights for government workers for the first time through the then-Democratic-controlled state house. The Missouri Supreme Court last year voided a law that would have required unions to have regular recertification votes and annual reports on political activity. Colorado, meanwhile, passed a law in 2020 that unionized its 30,000 state government employees.
Overall, the Commonwealth Foundation downgraded five states in their annual report card, which measures workers’ freedoms across the country. Jennifer Stefano, vice president of the Commonwealth Foundation, said the report shows there is still much progress to be made on expanding workers’ rights—even as unions lose members.
“Government unions continue to exert undue influence on policymakers, advancing controversial causes counter to the interests and beliefs of their membership, while creating barriers that prevent civil servants from making their own decision about whether or not to associate with unions,” Stefano told the Washington Free Beacon.
The decline in union membership comes as Democrats in Congress push for the PRO Act, which would limit employment for independent contractors and put an end to “right-to-work” laws in 28 states that ban union membership as a term of employment. The bill, which passed in the House, is supported by President Joe Biden, who refers to himself as the “most pro-union president” in history.
The top government unions have made passage of the PRO Act a top priority: The NEA, AFT, and AFSCME were the top three public political spending unions in the 2020 election—totaling $80 million that overwhelmingly went to Democratic candidates and groups.
AFSCME lost a total of 15,562 union members since the Janus decision. The NEA lost 84,980, SEIU lost 78,295, and AFT lost 39,773. The unions also had a significant number of members opt out of paid dues, as they lost 379,184 fee payers in total.
Rebecca Friedrichs, a public school teacher who challenged mandatory union membership at the Supreme Court in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, said workers will continue to opt out of membership as they learn more about their rights.
“I was abused by my unions for 28 years, while they pilfered money from my paychecks and picked on me for putting my students ahead of union politics,” Friedrichs told the Free Beacon. “In every major decision the union faced in my career, they prioritized adults over children and valued their own pocketbooks more than the best interests of teachers.”
The NEA, AFT, AFSCME, and SEIU did not respond to requests for comment.
Biden’s tax credits for electric vehicles damage South Korean auto makers
Joe Biden’s recent incentive for Americans to buy electric vehicles hurts South Korea’s auto industry, upsetting one of America’s top allies, the Wall Street Journal reported.
In May, South Korean auto maker Hyundai Motor Group, parent company of Hyundai Motor Co. and Kia Corp., pledged to invest $5.5 billion in U.S. electric vehicles. Biden visited Seoul that month, promising the heads of the company, “I will not let you down.” But in August, Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes a $7,500 tax credit to customers who buy EVs assembled in America, representing a devastating blow to foreign EV manufacturers.
Biden promised Americans he would “restore America’s standing in the world,” yet South Korea is not the first ally Biden has managed to upset while president. Last year, Biden infuriated France for sabotaging the country’s $66 billion submarine deal with Australia by making his own deal to help Australia develop a nuclear-powered submarine. France responded by recalling its American ambassadors, a first in the French-American alliance.
Hyundai and Kia, which currently assemble their EVs in South Korea, complained that Biden’s new stipulation does not provide a “level playing field for customers and workers.” Senior officials from Seoul have come to Washington in recent weeks to express their dissatisfaction. South Koreans’ frustration with Biden’s massive climate and tax bill, which many critics at home argue will do nothing to reduce inflation, highlights the Biden administration’s struggle to maintain both its domestic agenda and foreign alliances.
“There is a mismatch between Biden’s domestic agenda and foreign policy in terms of trying to promote supply-chain cooperation and coordinating with allies on critical emerging technologies,” Andrew Yeo, an expert on South Korean issues, told the Journal. “What it comes down to fundamentally is an issue of trust for South Korea.”
“The public is shocked, dismayed, disappointed,” said Kim Byoung-joo, a policy adviser to former South Korean trade ministers. “The U.S. government has to do something about it. They can’t just sit there.”
On Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris spoke to South Korea’s prime minister in Tokyo about the concerns. She promised the United States would consult its allies in the future.
South Korea has provided 35,000 jobs for Americans so far this year, largely driven by EV investments, according to Reshoring Initiative. South Korean media report that Kia plans to start assembling EVs in the United States in 2024 in order to stay competitive in the market.
Amid historically high inflation and a massive market sell-off, Democratic Rep. Jahana Hayes (Conn.) has no regrets with how her party has governed the last two years.
Hayes, who is running in a hotly contested reelection race against Republican George Logan, boasted about the success of the nearly $2 trillion American Rescue Plan, which is widely credited with fueling inflation. In a wide-ranging interview with Connecticut Public Radio on Tuesday, Hayes was pressed on whether the size of the bill—at nearly $2 trillion—was too large. Hayes responded with a question of her own: “Who would you leave behind?”
The rescue plan, Hayes said, “did stabilize the economy.” The same day Hayes made those comments the S&P 500 hit a low for the year and the Dow Jones Industrial Average entered bear market territory.
Hayes’s interview reveals the struggle Democrats face when discussing the economy, an issue rated as the most important by voters in myriad surveys. But Hayes has also taken a different track than some other Democrats by refraining from attacking President Joe Biden or expressing second thoughts on the wisdom of her party’s unprecedented spending spree. Some Democrats in tight races, such as Cheri Beasley (D., N.C.) and Mandela Barnes (D., Wis.), have avoided appearing with Biden on the campaign trail. Sen. Maggie Hassan (D., N.H.) has said that if she is reelected, she will “continue to stand up to the Biden administration.”
Later in the interview, Hayes disputed that the U.S. economy is in recession, despite traditional indicators saying otherwise. Instead, Hayes said, “in some areas [we] are back to pre-pandemic strength.”
“In some areas there’s need for improvement, but I think we should all be focused on the solution,” Hayes said in the interview before disputing the idea that Democratic Party COVID-19 policies shut down the economy. “Right now I think the steps that are being taken are helping us to the fastest recovery we have ever seen.”
Hayes has remained loyal to her fellow Democrats, despite running in a D+2 race that is a major target for Republicans. During a meeting with teachers’ union leaders in May, Hayes said she was “incredibly blessed” and “incredibly privileged” to serve under Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
Those words were a reversal from Hayes’s position in 2018, when she promised she wouldn’t back Pelosi’s latest bid for House leadership. Hayes ultimately said a vote against Pelosi was “a vote for the Republicans.”
Hayes will face Logan in November. Outside Republican groups, such as the Congressional Leadership Fund, are spending heavily on the race.
CLF released two televised ads last month, with one highlighting Logan’s parents’ journey from Guatemala to the United States. The other features a picture of Hayes with Pelosi and Squad members Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.). Hayes appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone with Omar and Cortez in 2019.
Urooj Rahman was ‘quite drunk’ during George Floyd riots, court filings show
A left-wing lawyer who pleaded guilty to firebombing a police cruiser is asking for a commutation of her sentence, pointing to the fact that she was inebriated at the time of the offense and coping with “unprocessed trauma,” according to court filings.
Attorneys for Urooj Rahman argue the self-described human-rights activist was “numb, disassociated, and inebriated” when she threw a Molotov cocktail into a New York City police car during the George Floyd riots in May 2020. Lawyers say Rahman was also reeling from her many “abusive partnership relationships” and processing “early trauma” from being taunted as a Muslim after 9/11.
On the night of May 29, 2020, Rahman “became quite drunk” after drinking vodka on “an empty stomach” with fellow lawyer and later getaway driver Colinford Mattis. Rahman’s attorneys say the pair’s decision to firebomb an NYPD cruiser was an “aberrational” act meant to protect others from future police violence.
“Tossing the Molotov cocktail was a way of expressing anger at those police officers around the country for whom Black lives did not matter,” Rahman’s attorneys wrote in a September memo to U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan. “It was an act of protest intended to avoid exposing others to harm.”
Rahman’s attorneys have requested she be released on “time served,” saying “her conduct that night was a marked deviation from her otherwise exemplary life.”
The request for a special dispensation builds on a sweetheart deal already reached by Justice Department prosecutors in the case. In June, Rahman and Mattis entered into a second plea agreement that broke their potential 10-year sentences down to a maximum of 5 years. Prosecutors want Judge Cogan to go even lower, arguing for just 18 to 24 months based on the “history and personal characteristics of the defendants.”
Rahman and Mattis each confessed to counts of conspiracy to commit arson and to making and possessing an unregistered destructive device, dodging a previous domestic terrorism sentencing enhancement. The two had pleaded guilty in October 2021 to one count of possessing or making a destructive device, which could have earned them each 10 years in prison.
Since their arrest, Rahman and Mattis have won the sympathy of national media and liberal elites. New York magazine, NPR, and other outlets have run favorable profiles of the two. Rahman has remained under house arrest with electronic monitoring since June 2020, when a former Obama administration intelligence official helped post her $250,000 bail.
Their defenders have said the Trump administration wished to make a political example of the pair, bringing federal charges for a crime that is usually dealt with by local authorities. Rahman’s attorneys in their memo argue the defendant has received harsher treatment compared with another federal case involving an NYPD van firebombed in July 2020. Rahman’s attorneys also say their client’s “commitment to social justice” should earn her a more lenient sentence.
But prosecutors who first took up the case emphasized Rahman and Mattis had a higher obligation to uphold the rule of law. The two “abdicated their responsibilities as attorneys” when they chose to not only throw but make and distribute the Molotov cocktails. A witness testified that Rahman passed the explosives out earlier to rioters. Prosecutors also revealed text messages between Rahman and Mattis showing they planned the attack.
“Bring it to their neck,” Mattis texted Rahman before sharing the location of police headquarters. “Molotovs rollin’,” Rahman responded. “I hope they burn everything down. Need to burn all police stations down and probably the courts too.”
Rahman also gave a video interview before distributing the explosives. “This shit won’t ever stop unless we fuckin’ take it all down,” she said. “The only way they hear us is through violence.”
Rahman and Mattis say they have each been diagnosed with anxiety and depression, for which they have received psychiatric care. Both have also been treated for alcoholism.
A clinical psychologist who analyzed Rahman at the behest of her attorneys said the defendant “[b]eneath her surface functionality is gravely compromised.” Rahman, she says, has two therapists, regularly attends meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, and is prescribed an array of psychiatric medications.
A graduate of Fordham University’s law school, Rahman was a public interest lawyer with Bronx Legal Services. Mattis, a graduate of Princeton and New York University Law School, was an associate at Pryor Cashman, a midsize corporate law firm.
Rahman was due at a sentencing in a Brooklyn federal court on Thursday but successfully petitioned for the hearing to be moved to November 9.
As Annette Taddeo accuses oil companies of ‘price gouging,’ she won’t tell voters if she’s still invested in Exxon
Florida Democratic congressional hopeful Annette Taddeo illegally omitted stock holdings from her candidate financial disclosure, a new complaint says. A look into her past disclosures may explain why—Taddeo in 2016 reported a sizable stake in a U.S. oil giant and now accuses oil companies of “price gouging.”
In her July 6 financial disclosure, Taddeo—who is running to unseat Rep. Maria Salazar (R., Fla.)—violated federal law and House ethics rules by failing to disclose the stocks held within her investment accounts, a Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust complaint obtained exclusively by the Washington Free Beacon states. During her failed congressional run in 2016, however, Taddeo did disclose the stocks within those accounts, which included a $100,000 stake in America’s largest oil company, ExxonMobil.
That holding may explain why Taddeo is hesitant to reveal her investments during her second congressional campaign. Taddeo on July 15 accused Salazar of failing to stand up to oil companies, which the Democrat accused of “price gouging at the pumps.” On her campaign site, meanwhile, Taddeo pledges to “be a champion in Congress for taking on [the] corporate greed that’s worsened our current economic crisis” and “push for solutions to stop big gas companies from price gouging.” But Taddeo earned up to $5,500 in Exxon dividends from January 2015 to April 2016, profit that could undermine her attempts to vilify big oil companies should she still hold the stock.
Taddeo’s campaign did not return a request for comment. The Democrat’s criticism of Salazar on gas prices stems from Salazar’s May vote against House Democrats’ so-called Consumer Fuel Price Gouging Prevention Act. While the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Kim Schrier (D., Wash.), said the legislation would “protect families’ wallets at the gas pump,” other Democrats acknowledged that it would do nothing to address inflation. Jason Furman, who chaired former president Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, called the bill “dangerous misguided nonsense,” and Taddeo’s fellow Florida Democrat, Rep. Stephanie Murphy, said it would “strangle production.”
“I think vilifying one sector doesn’t actually address the inflation issues that my constituents are facing,” Murphy, who voted against the bill, told ABC News in May.
Taddeo has a long history of losing campaigns. Prior to her bid against Salazar, Taddeo in 2008 ran for Congress unsuccessfully in Florida’s 18th Congressional District. Two years later, Taddeo ran for an open seat on Miami’s county commission, which she also lost. In 2014, Taddeo served as Democratic gubernatorial nominee Charlie Crist’s running mate—the pair lost to incumbent Republicans Rick Scott and Carlos López-Cantera. Not long after, in 2016, Taddeo ran for Congress in Florida’s 26th Congressional District but did not advance past the primary, losing to fellow Democrat Joe Garcia.
During that 2016 race, a leaked Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee research document said Taddeo’s failed runs for office could make her look “incompetent.” The memo also noted Taddeo has “called herself a member of the middle class despite being worth $5.7 million and living in a 6,500-square-foot mansion,” leading many to “view her as a wealthy elitist who lacks commonality with everyday middle-class families.” Taddeo quickly sold the “mansion,” property records show.
Following her four losing campaigns, Taddeo managed to win her 2017 campaign for a Florida state Senate seat, which she still holds. Taddeo in October 2021 launched a campaign for governor but vacated the bid in June to run against Salazar. She will face the Republican in November, having raised $681,000 to Salazar’s $3.9 million as of Aug. 3.
Princeton University celebrated Constitution Day in mid-September with an event featuring a panel of academics who spent 90 minutes deriding the country’s founding document as “a tool of geopolitical gaslighting” that “furthers a racial crisis and a democratic crisis.”
The event, titled “Citizenship and Its Discontents in Our Evolving Democratic Republic,” was billed as “a public occasion to consider the Constitution and its lived implications throughout United States history”—almost all of which, according to the panelists assembled, have been negative.
“There is a debate in this country as to whether the Constitution should be abolished,” said sociology professor Patricia Fernández-Kelly, who moderated the panel. She went on to argue that “the Constitution doesn’t provide an aspirational program to fulfill.”
A spokesman for the university, Michael Hotchkiss, declined to comment.
Fernández-Kelly was joined by panelists Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, a professor of gender and sexuality studies at the University of Southern California, who described the Constitution as “a tool of geopolitical gaslighting”; the political analyst Rich Benjamin, who argued that “the fact and the dogma of the Constitution” have caused a “racial crisis and a democratic crisis”; and history professor Rosina Lozano, who barely even addressed the Constitution, choosing to focus on how a lack of bilingual ballots caused the “disenfranchisement and mistreatment” of the Spanish-speaking community—including undocumented immigrants—in America for decades.
Princeton—like every other university that receives federal funds—is required to host an annual event marking Constitution Day that includes “an educational program about the U.S. Constitution for its students,” according to the Department of Education.
The event was once hosted by Princeton’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institution, run by prominent conservative legal scholar and public intellectual Robert P. George. The Princeton administration in 2007 transferred responsibility for the event to the Program in American Studies, which was recently folded into the university’s new Effron Center for the Study of America. In the years following the change, the James Madison program cosponsored the event alongside the American Studies Program, but this year the James Madison program was not invited to do so.
The event was billed as a discussion of present-day “‘discontents’ as they are shaped by the American constitutional framework,” according to a web posting advertising the discussion. “Panelists will explore how citizens’ discontents are codified in laws, cultures, and practices, and how we might rethink the Constitution according to how American discontents are framed and enacted.”
The panelists also took aim at the Republican Party as the source of many of the country’s ills. According to Benjamin, the GOP aims to “disrupt the country for ideological ends” and Republicans hold “anti-democratic sentiments.” Parreñas added that she “would not put it past Congress—if they [sic] became a Republican majority—to appease white nationalists, those who wish to go back to the time when it had been only whites … could be citizens of this country, and to repeal the citizenship clause of the First Amendment.”
Parreñas argued that the country can’t work its way out of the morass of racism, bigotry, and inequality. “It’s just kind of depressing. I don’t think we can get out of this,” Parreñas said, prompting laughter from the other panelists. She expressed fear about the current political climate, arguing that the United States is experiencing “threats to the 14th Amendment,” which granted citizenship and equal rights to all native-born citizens.
Alexandra Orbuch is a sophomore at Princeton University.
Indian officials are repurposing a controversial COVID-19 contract-tracing app to be used as a key component of the country’s healthcare infrastructure.
The app, Aarogya Setu, was developed in 2020 by the the country’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and was initially advertisrd as a “temporary solution to a temporary problem.”
The government, however, now plans to broaden usage of the app, with a senior official announcing Aarogya Setu will become the country’s sole healthcare app. Citizens can use the app to book appointments amongst other features.
The decision follows Aarogya Setu’s rollout being met with significant controversy over the app’s potential threat to data privacy and allowing for government intrusion into healthcare.
It stores location data and requires constant access to the users’ Bluetooth, with the app justifying its invasive measure as essential to letting people know if they’ve been near a person infected with the COVID-19.
The app then allows for authorities to upload the gathered information to a government-owned and operated “server”, which “provides data to persons carrying out medical and administrative interventions necessary in relation to Covid-19”.
A clause in the app’s Terms and Conditions also states that the user “agrees and acknowledges that the Government of India will not be liable for … any unauthorised access to your information or modification thereof”.
Despite the invasive tracking feature, millions were left with no choice but to download the app, as the government announced that downloading it would be mandatory for both government and private employees. Some Indian suburbs such as Noida made downloading the app compulsory for all residents, threatening six months of jail time if they failed to comply.
In response, Rahul Gandhi, leader of the Congress party, criticized the app as a “sophisticated surveillance system” in a Tweet:
The Arogya Setu app, is a sophisticated surveillance system, outsourced to a pvt operator, with no institutional oversight – raising serious data security & privacy concerns. Technology can help keep us safe; but fear must not be leveraged to track citizens without their consent.
Digital rights groups have also flagged many of the app’s features as problematic, including the Software Freedom Law Centre, which explains how the government can share data collected by the app with “practically anyone it wants”.
The MIT Technology Review also rated the app one out of five stars, citing concerns over data storage and collection of unnecessary information.
Though the aforementioned criticisms prompted the Indian government to make the app’s source code public, independents technology experts maintain that its server-side code had not yet been publicly released.
The Indian government is also repurposing its COVID-19 vaccination website, CoWIN, to serve the country’s universal immunization program.
The news comes amidst concern in the West over digital identity and payment platforms being used to advance certain political agendas favored by left-wing groups such as the World Economic Forum (WEF).
The British government is funding projects pushing Africans to farm and consume insects, including school-age children, in randomized trials, to assess their effects.
The United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI) – a subsidiary of the country’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy – is responsible for backing the projects taking place in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zimbabwe.
With a roughly $320,000 grant from the aid office, researchers in Zimbabwe will be experimenting with using mopane worms in porridge served to children in schools. Poor children aged seven to 11 in the towns of Gwanda and Harare will be fed the concoction derived from the caterpillars, which researchers allege are high in vitamins and minerals.
UK GOVERNMENT WEBSITE.
Ultimately, a randomized trial will be carried out to compare if children consuming insects perform better in school than their counterparts.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, researchers will use a roughly $55,000 grant to “promote the production of insects for human food and for use in the manufacture of animal feeds,” according to a synopsis from the Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office’s development tracker website. The funds are being provided by the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (Cafod).
Among the insects being pushed for consumption are caterpillars, migratory locusts, and black soldier flies. The project, which began in March and will conclude in December, is a response to water shortages allegedly due to stress placed on the environment from animal farming.
It is unclear whether or not the conclusion from the work in Africa will be applied back in the United Kingdom, though, experts in the field interviewed by mainstream media outlets have claimed it is likely.
Dr. Sarah Beynon, for example, the founder of the Bug Farm in Pembrokeshire and an academic entomologist, claimed these aid projects were “a sure way to save lives and improve nutrition of the poorest people on planet Earth,” while speaking with The Guardian.
“We are also actively encouraging people in the developed world to include insects in their diets,” she later added.
“With a population that has an appetite set to far exceed the planetary limits, and with current agriculture decimating biodiversity and changing the climate, we have no option but to change how we produce and consume food … and our views on the topic too,” Dr. Benyon continued.
Similarly, a spokesperson from the UKRI admitted:
“We support specific research projects with funding, but we anticipate that the learnings and knowledge gleaned will benefit citizens around the world irrespective of their economic status. The protein and environmental benefits of consuming insects have been widely reported globally.”
The unearthed grant is the latest example of the environment and climate being used as an excuse to push radical changes to traditional diets and farming practices.
Dr. Stephen Iacoboni is part of the baby boomer generation. Born in 1952, he came of age during the 1960s when the country was living in the bubble of the ideal American Dream.
“I was raised as a Roman Catholic, and I was very faithful,” said Iacoboni, “but there are some inherent contradictions with Christianity, and when you’re young and idealistic, you don’t understand that humans are imperfect, and so you blame them for things that are just part of being a frail human with faults.”
Iacoboni’s disillusionment came in the early 70s, when the societal problems festering in America’s inner cities rose to the surface with civil rights protests and anti-war movements against the Vietnam War.
Anti-war demonstrators, wearing black armbands, fill the steps of the United States Capitol Building and hold hands on the day of the National Moratorium in Washington D.C., to protest against the continuing war in Vietnam, on Oct. 15, 1969. (AFP/Getty Images)
“I was raised to be patriotic and believed that everyone was equal; I became a young adult and [realized that] people of color don’t have the same rights and [we have been] slaughtering innocent people in Southeast Asia [in the Vietnam War],” Iacoboni told The Epoch Times during a phone call.
The United States withdrew from Vietnam once the casualties were too much for the country to bear.
In the aftermath of the lost war, Christians, who mostly held conservative views were blamed for the anti-communist policies that led to the United States’s eight-year intervention in the Vietnam War. This included the mounting casualties, traumatized veterans, and stories of brutal killings by the U.S. military upon the Vietnamese civilians.
While Christians faced attack in the public forum for pushing the war agenda, modern science was spouting exciting new discoveries, framed in narratives that denied the existence of a higher being.
“Science of the 60s and 70s had come out and said, ‘well, we have solved the riddle of life: the riddle of life is divisible to biochemistry, that everything that you do, every thought that you have, every emotion that you have, is based on the DNA and you’re just a chemical machine.’”
From the late 50s to 70s, discoveries in DNA molecular biology exploded.
In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick found that the DNA’s structure was a double helical structure. Jérôme Lejeune demonstrated in 1959 that diseases are genetic with a study showing that Down syndrome is attributed to being born with an extra chromosome 21 in every cell.
By 1965, the first transfer RNA (tRNA) was sequenced and it was discovered that RNA sequences in sets of three corresponded to specific amino acids that link together to form proteins.
“I was a chemist at the time and … I was young and well educated and stupid, meaning I wasn’t wise. I wasn’t able to see the fallacy in that argument, and the argument went all the way to saying that there is no reason to believe in the God of Abraham.”
Dr. Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins, 46, of Greenwich, England, stands with a model of a DNA molecule during a news conference in the New York office of the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research on Oct. 18, 1962. (Anthony Camerano/AP Photo)
Iacoboni was given a book in medical school that shaped his younger years and influenced many medical students of that time. The book was “Chance and Necessity,” written by biochemist Jacques Monod, a Nobel laureate and atheist.
Monod shared the award with François Jacob and André Lwoff in 1968. The three of them proved that information carried in the DNA is translated into proteins by means of a messenger, which we now know as messenger RNA (mRNA).
They also showed, using lac operon (required for the transport and metabolism of lactose) from Escherichia coli, that whether the actions of enzymes (proteins that speed up chemical reactions) were activated or suppressed was self-regulated by the DNA.
Monod used this finding to solidify his argument that biomolecular actions are controlled solely by our DNA and, therefore, there was no higher entity.
Despite the debunking of his argument over 30 years later by another atheist scientist with the discovery of epigenetics, Monod’s argument against the existence of God persisted, and the legacy of despair he left for man remained.
“The ancient covenant is in pieces,” Monod wrote, “man knows at last that he is alone in the universe’s unfeeling immensity, out of which he emerged only by chance. His destiny is nowhere spelled out, nor is his duty. The kingdom above or the darkness below; it is for him to choose.”
As an impressionable young adult at the time, Iacoboni took Monod’s arguments as fact. Disillusioned about the world, the anti-religion narrative from both politics and science made sense to him.
“Because Christians are hypocrites,” said Iacoboni, “their religion is based on a fairy tale about something that happened a long time ago, and now we have proof in science that there is no God.’”
For Iacoboni at the time, it was easy and probably more comfortable letting go of God than believing in something the respected seniors in sciences were wholeheartedly denying.
“When you’re 20 years old, it’s not that hard to let go of God because believing in God requires certain constraints.”
“[The 70s was] the time of free love. There was birth control … Everyone was looking for change.”
However, Iacoboni would soon find that his departure from faith in his early 20s would end up requiring a long and emotional road back to where it all began.
Coming Back to Faith by Treating Cancer Patients
“In the first decade of the 21st Century, somewhere around 2000 to 2010, I very slowly came around [and returned to faith].”
Iacoboni’s book “The Undying Soul,” published in 2010, told of his emotional journey back to faith as he treated cancer patients, documenting his very first patients while he was still a fellow, to when he became a practicing specializing oncologist.
Iacoboni practiced his fellowship in MD Anderson, which remains to this day, a world-renowned university-based teaching hospital, and one of the premier cancer research facilities in the world.
“I belonged at Anderson—philosophically, I mean. As a young, atheist intellectual, fresh out of med school and full of hubris, I chose oncology because I wanted to prove that science and logic could triumph over anything—even cancer,” Iacoboni wrote in his book.
MD Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas, on Oct. 1, 2018. (Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images)
However, he would soon realize, starting with the very first patient he treated at Anderson, that more often than not, modern science could not stop the cancer from leaching away his patients’ lives.
Even worse, Iacoboni soon realized that while treating patients was difficult, he also had to face another challenge he was ill-prepared to deal with. His patients wanted more than a physician, they wanted an emotional healer and guide; they wanted him to help them face their deaths.
“Being an atheist, of course, I had no answers.”
“[As the] atheist doctor dealing with patients who are largely agnostic, the dying is very hard on everybody,” Iacoboni said, “my patients who would not allow themselves to have faith were very, very tormented on their deathbed.”
This reality agonized Iacoboni. He knew something was missing and in the middle of his career began searching for answers to help his patients on the emotional journey.
Things started changing for him once he started practicing in a small rural town, a place where almost all of his patients belonged to a faith.
The first patient who led him on his journey back to faith was a man from Ukraine named Pavel. Pavel was a simple farmer. He tended the livestock and crops near the Chernobyl nuclear reactor in Ukraine. When the Chernobyl disaster happened in 1986, the radiation turned his tomatoes yellow, green beans red, and his wheat shriveled up.
Yet Pavel’s wife and the other women ground the grains into flour for bread and they ate the strangely colored vegetables. Pavel and his family had no choice. They either ate what they planted or they starved.
It was therefore not surprising that Pavel developed radiation-induced leukemia from the contaminated food he ate.
Pavel’s local hospital in Ukraine was unequipped to treat his cancer, but he had Russian relatives in Washington. After his relatives told Pavel’s story at their church, the church passed it to the state and their congressman, who was Tom Foley—at the time the Speaker of the House. Foley secured compassionate dispensation and a passport for Pavel and he was then flown into Washington for treatment.
Iacoboni was Pavel’s doctor, and though his family could provide no money for his treatment, knowing all of the sacrifices made to bring the man to his office, Iacoboni was determined to do all that he could to help Pavel.
However, Pavel was already in the advanced stages and would soon be on borrowed time. His first blood test showed that he was severely anemic with his red blood cell volume at 10 percent with the normal range 38-45 percent.
Yet, upon meeting the man, Iacoboni was taken aback by how happy the man was with no obvious sign of illness.
At their meeting in the hospital room, Pavel jumped out of bed and shook Iacoboni’s hand so hard that he could feel the calluses on his palm.
As Iacoboni recalled in his book:
“And then, slowly and ceremoniously, he bowed his head.
“I found myself taken aback by such formal deference. I assured him by word—and then, discovering he spoke almost no English at all, by body language—that no bows were necessary.
“Pavel smiled slightly, offering me an expression that spoke as clearly and plainly as possible: this isn’t about what’s formal or necessary, it’s about appreciation…
“And, in a word, grace.”
Iacoboni put Pavel on blood transfusions for the anemia and then started chemotherapy. Pavel achieved remission, but only for 9 months as the drugs slowly lost effectiveness.
Soon the leukemia took over and spread all over his body. Pavel’s spleen grew from the normal size of a potato to a watermelon.
Pavel was dying.
However, throughout the 9 months Iacoboni treated Pavel, he was amazed to find that not only was Pavel not anxious about death, he was anticipating death with eagerness and wonder.
Pavel was a Christian, like the many people in the town. Iacoboni has treated many Christians who, in their death, found no comfort in their faith. Pavel’s faith, however, served him very well.
“Unable to speak to me in words, he communicated through the light in his eyes, his easy smile, and his contented attitude. He interacted with everyone this way, not just me.”
On his own spiritual journey and while looking for answers, Iacoboni was drawn to Pavel’s grace and strength. Iacoboni knew his optimism and smiles were not a façade. Cancer strips away all kinds of veneers, and he has seen all sorts of patients.
Even as the damage from leukemia became obvious, Pavel remained gracious and did not complain of the pain he was in. While many patients may put up a brave front and act stronger and healthier in the clinic to have Iacoboni support them in their denial of death, Pavel did not.
“His optimism never felt forced in any way. When his dying body sagged, and his energy began to ebb, he didn’t fight it. He just let it happen,” he wrote in his book.
Eventually, the final days came for Pavel and Iacoboni had to hospitalize him. Even on his deathbed, Iacoboni was amazed to find that Pavel was smiling, comforting his friends and relatives.
It was hard for Iacoboni to communicate with Pavel, given their language barrier, so he stayed with Pavel through the final three or four hours by the bedside trying to understand this small simple man so full of grace and strength.
“During that vigil I observed for the very first time in my career the rare and overwhelming beauty of a spiritually contented death,” he wrote.
Contrary to all the patients Iacoboni had treated during the past 15 years, Pavel chose to die naturally without sedatives.
This allowed Iacoboni to stay emotionally connected to Pavel to the end. Pavel kept his eyes open, and Iacoboni watched him intently.
Then in the final minutes, Pavel’s gaze changed, it looked “unworldly”—a look of serenity and selflessness Iacoboni had never seen before.
At first, Iacoboni thought that Pavel was becoming comatose, but his pulse was going strong and breathing unlabored.
Then Pavel’s “unworldly” expression changed slightly, and just enough to startle Iacoboni with the conviction that he was being watched by another sentient entity.
“Someone other than Pavel the man—his ego or his persona. But who…or what…could it be?” Iacoboni asked in his book.
The truth seemed to be leaping out at him, yet it was difficult for him to accept it.
Iacobini stared and held his breath. He did not know how long it took him before he relaxed and finally admitted. He wrote:
“Yes my friend, I see…’it’…”
“…I see your soul.”
“In that moment of epiphany, of recognition and actualization…Pavel let go. His eyes closed, his breathing stopped and the room fell still.”
That night, Iacoboni learned with conviction an answer to the question that was haunting him after each death of his patients.
“Never again would I wonder if there was something more.”
“The Undying Soul” by Stephen Iacononi. (Courtesy of Dr. Iacoboni)
Pavel was the first, important piece in Iacoboni’s journey back to faith.
Telos: How Science Proves the Existence of a Designer
In 2010 Iacoboni began working his book “TELOS: The Scientific Basis for a Life of Purpose.” The book was finally published in 2022.
He expected if he had spent all his time writing the book, “Telos” would have taken him 6 months, but as a practicing oncologist, it took him 10 years.
While Iacoboni returned to faith emotionally—as documented in “The Undying Soul”—he was also researching intellectually, trying to understand why what he was taught was in complete opposition to what he was experiencing.
He soon found that the science he had a firm belief in was flawed and missing key evidence for its theories, even though the theories were touted as fact.
Throughout the book, he follows the theories of life from various great philosophers and scientists including Aristotle, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, and many more until the readers come to an understanding of the present day.
Pioneers of modern science, including Monod and Bertrand Russell, all argued that life was accidental and that humans were alone in the world with no higher entity.
“Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; his origin, his hopes, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental co-location of atoms,” wrote Russell.
Though these arguments made believers of their doctrine feel liberated, it also led them to the “unyielding despair” Russell faced, just as many of Iacoboni’s early patients experienced.
For, if their bodies and lives were accidental happenings, it eliminated their sense of purpose, the point of living.
“The infamous atheist Bertrand Russell said in a similar tone at a young age, ‘I considered suicide, which I would have done, but for the fact that I found mathematics to be so very interesting,’” Iacoboni wrote.
Contrary to what he was taught, Iacoboni observed nature and noticed life to be brimming with purpose and intention.
It was full of telos, meaning end or an ultimate purpose.
“Telos: The Scientific Basis for a Life of Purpose.” (Courtesy of Dr. Iacoboni)
“The best example of this [purpose-driven life] in the world is the emperor penguins. They walk 60 miles on ice to get food and they fill up their stomachs and they walk 60 miles back and regurgitate the food for the chick,” said Iacoboni.
“Why do they do that? Why doesn’t this penguin say I’m not walking 60 miles to feed some stupid chick. I’m just gonna fill myself up and then I’m gonna relax, they don’t do that.”
Not only do emperor penguins endure this physical labor to breed their young, Iacoboni’s book also showed that they have an innate understanding of thermodynamics in incubation:
“Emperor penguins, which huddle together in an Antarctic blizzard, each one rotating in their turn from the center to the other rim of the circle and back again, sharing the cold and shielding each other in the most hostile environment on earth. Nobody trained the penguin to perform this complex maneuver or explained to them that by cooperating in this way, they would be better able to survive than if they just went it alone. The indwelling knowledge to act with such purpose was already inside them, inherent in their behavior.”
Their inherent drive to rear their young significantly surpasses their natural desire to survive. This understanding of their own physique, and how they should function came completely innate to them.
Emperor penguins (Aptenodytes forsteri) in Antarctica. (National Science Foundation)
Iacoboni gave many examples of these innate drives in his book. He observed how newborn giraffes within 10 minutes of birth stand up on their feet and suckle from their mother, performing a task innate to themselves.
Where did this innate understanding come from?
Iacoboni argued that it was “designed” into the organism.
When we design something, we imbue it with a specific purpose and intention, and seeing that life is filled with a natural drive that surpasses survival alone, Iacoboni argued that there must be a higher designer, regardless of whether we can see this individual or not.
“If you walk down the beach … and you find a sandcastle and nobody is around. You would have to ask yourself the question, what is this thing doing here? Did the sand, the wind, and the water make this thing? Self organized with blind forces? Or did someone with a designing intellect put it together?” asked Iacoboni.
“Those are the only two possibilities right? And I don’t think there’s hardly anybody who’s not impaired, who would say ‘the sand and the wind built a sandcastle.’ They would say ‘no, some dad and his kids built a sandcastle, they played and they went home.’”
That is the same mindset Iacoboni established in the way he looks at life. Though we may not see the dad and the children building the sandcastle, we see the intellect and design in the temporary sandy construction, and in living beings, Iacoboni can see the design and intelligence too.
Sharks have a structure called the Ampullae of Lorizini that no other animals have. It is a unique network of mucus-filled pores across its front and sides that allow the shark to catch prey. Most sharks have a very poor sense of sight, and they cannot swim that fast either, so what it wants is to be able to catch a prey in distress. That’s what its ampullae does; it can detect turbulence at a distance.
One may, like Charles Darwin, argue that it arose out of evolution, meaning that sharks once did not have ampullae but then gained it through mutation (random change in the DNA).
That may sound great in theory, but reality often tells a different story.
“The problem is if you have random mutations you don’t go anywhere constructively. Everything is destructive,” said Iacoboni, “In medical fields, we know what mutations do, they kill you.”
In humans, mutations are the basis of genetically inherited diseases and cancer. Apart from creating drug-resistant bacteria and viruses, most mutations for animals and plants lead to disease.
Further, sharks have 16,000 billion pairs of DNA, so it is also a question of chance to not only have the mutations useful, but also that there must be combinations of mutations in the appropriate area, given that the other mutations elsewhere do not kill the shark first.
Even in the hypothetical scenario that the ampullae did come from mutations, it raises the question of survival for the shark without an ampullae, with poor eyesight and an average ability to swim. How would it have survived over many generations to gain the ampullae?
If the shark had good eyesight and could catch prey without the ampullae, then the sharks that are living now should be both keen in sight and with ampullae, having the sharks gradually lose their eyesight contradicts the theory of survival of the fittest where the one with the most beneficial traits survive and pass on their traits.
Therefore, Iacoboni argued that the other plausible reason is that it was all designed, with all the functions and purpose naturally fused into the final model of life.
“Organisms are about organization,” Iacoboni wrote. Even the very etymology of the word organism is rooted in order, and design.
Like a whirl of shiny flakes sparkling in a snow globe, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope catches an instantaneous glimpse of many hundreds of thousands of stars moving about in the globular cluster M13, one of the brightest and best-known globular clusters in the northern sky. This glittering metropolis of stars is easily found in the winter sky in the constellation Hercules and can even be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies. M13 is home to over 100 000 stars and located at a distance of 25 000 light-years. (NASA)
A ‘Call to Arms’
TELOS is a “call to arms,” said Iacoboni. It is not simply an exercise, nor a read, but rather the recognition that a higher creator exists. Faithless individuals are doomed to the same misery and chaos experienced by Monod, Russell, and other atheist scientists cited in his book.
“I’m not interested in naming God, I’m not a theologian,” Iacoboni said.
“I only want you to believe in a supreme designer and understand that there’s a greater purpose that permeates life and that you need to get in touch with if you want to have a life worth living.”
Just like how people survive on food, cancer cells survive on sugar.
Around one century ago, Otto Warburg, well-known German physiologist, discovered that cancer cells are addicted to sugar.
Normal cells depend on oxygen for their growth. Cancer cells, however, grow by devouring large amounts of glucose, even in an oxygen-rich environment. This phenomenon occurs in as many as 80 percent of cancers.
The metabolic way cancer cells use sugar as an energy source is called glycolytic metabolism. This phenomenon is known as the Warburg effect.
Cancer Cells Consume 100 Times More Sugar Than Normal Tissue Cells
The metabolism and growth rate of cancer cells are much faster than normal cells, and their consumption of sugar is also faster than we can imagine. It can be said that cancer cells are constantly thirsty for sugar.
In a 2014 paper published in BMC Biology, American scientists showed that many cancer cells specifically choose glucose as their food and consume glucose 50 to 100 times faster than normal tissues.
Cancer cells desperately absorb sugar and consume it rapidly in order to grow, multiply, and spread rapidly.
Sugar can produce carbohydrates, proteins, and fats, which to cells are like bricks, cement, and insulating materials with which to build homes. In addition, sugar also makes DNA and RNA for cells as their genetic blueprints.
Inspired by the Warburg effect, scientists have further developed a new way to diagnose cancer— positron emission tomography (PET).
It works by injecting the patient with a contrast agent (usually fluorinated deoxyglucose) and waiting an hour or so for the fluorinated deoxyglucose to enter the body’s metabolic system, at which point imaging scans are taken. When the glucose is concentrated in a certain area of the body, the image of that area will become brighter.
For example, when a patient is examined for pancreatic cancer, a normal pancreas does not light up on PET scans. However, when parts of the pancreas become brighter, it means that cancer is present.
A Diet High in Sugar Increases the Risk of Many Cancers
Cancer is not just one type of disease. It is a series of genetic or metabolic diseases caused by mitochondrial dysfunction of cells. Moreover, the organs or sites where cancer occurs are often places where the metabolism of the organisms is relatively vigorous.
Since cancer cells prefer glycolytic metabolism as their energy source, high consumption of sugar can lead to faster growth and spread of cancer. This explains why there is much epidemiological evidence that people with diabetes are more likely to develop cancer, especially breast, colon, prostate, liver, and pancreatic cancers.
A growing number of studies have found a direct correlation between sugar intake and increased cancer risk.
Researchers in the United States followed 3,184 Americans aged 26 to 84 from 1991 to 2013 and found that higher juice intake increased the risk of prostate cancer by 58 percent and higher sugary drink intake increased the risk of obesity-related cancers by 59 percent in subjects with over-central obesity.
A Swedish epidemiological cohort study of more than 60,000 women discovered that those consuming diets with high dietary glycemic index, high glycemic load and high carbohydrate intake were more likely to develop breast cancer. In addition, women in the group with the highest sugar intake (over 35 g of sucrose per day, plus consumption of sweet bread and cookies more than three times per week) were at significantly increased risk of endometrial cancer.
Several researchers in the United States jointly conducted a systematic evaluation of 37 prospective studies on sugar and cancer risk published in authoritative journals from 1990 to 2017. According to the results, high sugar intake may increase cancer risk by promoting insulin-glucose dysregulation, oxidative stress, inflammation, and obesity. Among them, two studies on added sugars showed that high sugar intake increased the risk of cancer by 60 percent to 95 percent. Out of 15 studies on sugary foods and beverages, eight found that the higher the intake of sugary beverages, the higher the risk of cancer, with an increase of 23 percent to 200 precent.
Furthermore, consuming too much sugar also increases cancer mortality.
In a study published in the journal Clinical Nutrition, researchers followed 7,447 tested individuals over many years to examine the association between sugar intake and cancer incidence, cancer mortality and total mortality. They found that for every 5-gram increase per day in liquid sugar intake, the incidence of cancer increased by 8 percent. Furthermore, simple sugar intake from beverages and fruit juices was associated with increased risk of overall cancer mortality and all-cause mortality.
Beyond Cutting Sugars
You may wonder, since cancer cells love sugar, if we cut out carbohydrates and sugar completely, can we starve them to death?
Unfortunately, this is not the right way.
This is because our body’s functions are extremely sophisticated and complex. If we simply cut out sugar and carbohydrates, the body will quickly turn to other substances to maintain metabolism and survival. This is especially true of the cunning cancer cells. And those who have undergone specific cancer treatments need to consume adequate amounts of nutrients, including carbohydrates, to help their bodies recover further.
However, it is possible to block the cancer cells from eating sugar and consuming energy through specific treatments.
Dr. Sophia Lunt, associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Michigan State University, gave a Tedx Talk to introduce the public to a promising new direction in cancer therapy, which is to treat cancer by affecting the metabolism of cancer cells.
By blocking multiple genes involved in cancer cell metabolism, Dr. Lunt has attempted to cut off multiple pathways that support cancer cell growth and metabolism at the same time, to stop the growth of cancer cells. Happily, normal cells could continue to grow during this process.
However, the process is very complicated. During her talk, Dr. Lunt presented the audience with a labyrinth-like picture of the metabolic mechanism of cancer cells. She added that the diagram had already been simplified.
According to Dr. Lunt, it is necessary to identify the main metabolic pathways of cancer cells, then figure out the specific role of each metabolic pathway, and finally develop a personalized treatment based on the specific patient’s genes, diet, and living environment.
It can be said that controlling the metabolism of cancer cells is a promising emerging direction for cancer treatment in the future.
Dr. Lunt mentioned in her speech that there are many types of cancer, but they all have one thing in common: the need to eat. She would like cancer cells to be starved to death.
Sugar Restriction
Although we cannot completely cut out sugar and carbohydrates from our diet, we can prevent cancer by consuming sugar correctly.
Control the proportion of carbohydrates in the diet: Carbohydrates are a general term for monosaccharides, disaccharides, and polysaccharides (such as starch). After being consumed, starch is broken down into glucose.
Our body needs carbohydrates, but a diet high in sugar and carbohydrates is dangerous for both healthy people and cancer patients.
To reduce the incidence of cancer, we can use the “plate method” to control the proportion of carbohydrates in each meal.
With the plate method, a typical meal is represented by the amount of food on a plate. We should fill one quarter of the plate with carbohydrate foods, another quarter with protein, and the second half with vegetables (as low on the glycemic index as possible). In the middle of the plate, there can be foods rich in healthy fats, such as avocado.
Choose complex carbohydrates: Complex carbohydrates are dietary fiber and starch. Starch, not easily digested by the body quickly, includes beans, whole grains, and sweet potatoes. They are not quickly converted into sugar in the body and are extremely rich in diverse nutrients.
Due to deep processing, the ratios of fiber, vitamins, minerals and protein in refined carbohydrates decrease. Once in the body, they are quickly broken down into large amounts of glucose. Typical refined carbohydrates include pasta and bread with fine flour, and baked goods, such as cakes and cookies.
We should eat fewer refined carbohydrates. We may want to replace half of our white rice with brown rice or mixed rice, replace white breads with whole wheat breads, or occasionally use steamed corn, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, or taros as staple foods.
We should limit our intake of sugar, especially refined sugar. It is better to eat low glycemic index fruits instead of drinking fruit juices. We should also avoid eating foods with high added sugar. If we want to add sugar to our food, we can replace white granulated sugar with natural sugar substitutes, such as stevia and monk fruit sweeteners. However, we shouldn’t use synthetic sweeteners as sugar substitutes, because they can damage the probiotics in our intestines and harm our health.
When cooking, we should use herbs and spices that have a hypoglycemic effect, such as fenugreek, onions, garlic, shallots, chives, cinnamon, bay leaves, and cloves.
Billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller said at an investor summit in New York City on Sept. 28 that he’s worried that the economic downturn stalking the United States could be worse than an “average garden variety” recession.
Druckenmiller said at the Delivering Alpha Investor Summit that he’s convinced it’s impossible for the U.S. economy to experience a so-called “soft landing,” which is a situation when growth slows but the economy avoids falling into a recession.
Instead, his base-case scenario is for a “hard landing” by the end of 2023, driven by the Federal Reserve’s aggressive rate-hiking fight to curtail soaring inflation.
“We are in deep trouble,” the iconic investor said, arguing that years of the Fed’s ultra-easy money policies fueled an asset bubble that is now deflating as the Fed engages in quantitative tightening in a desperate bid to tame runaway prices.
Druckenmiller added that he wouldn’t be surprised if the U.S. downturn isn’t “larger than the so-called average garden variety” recession.
“I don’t rule out something really bad,” he said.
Even though the U.S. economy met the rule-of-thumb definition for a recession when it recorded two consecutive quarters of negative gross domestic product (GDP) growth earlier this year, it has not yet been officially designated as such by the official recession shot-callers at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).
A number of economists insist, however, that the U.S. economy is already in a recession, with the only real question being how long it will last and how deep it will be.
‘Mission Impossible’ for Soft Landing
Druckenmiller’s remarks dovetail with views expressed by economist Nouriel Roubini, who’s been dubbed “Dr. Doom” for his pessimistic, yet accurate, prediction of a financial market meltdown in 2007–2008.
Roubini recently predicted a “long and ugly” recession in the United States that will send risk assets plummeting.
“Even in a plain-vanilla recession, the S&P 500 can fall by 30 percent,” Roubini told Bloomberg in a recent interview.
Much like Druckenmiller, Roubini said he expects “a real hard landing,” which could send the benchmark equities index down 40 percent.
Roubini added that it’s “mission impossible” for the Fed to manage a soft landing as it pushes interest rates higher at the most aggressive pace of tightening since the 1980s.
Roubini sees a combination of economic stagnation and persistently high inflation, much like the dreaded spell of stagflation in the 1970s.
Worse Than a ‘Normal’ Recession?
Wednesday’s remarks by Druckenmiller also echo a dire prediction made by Michael Wilson, Morgan Stanley’s chief U.S. equity strategist, who recently warned of a corporate earnings recession that could be worse than a “normal” recession.
Wilson said during an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Sept. 26 that his team at Morgan Stanley is looking closely at the U.S. business earnings story and the impact of corporate profits on equities, which have been on a wild ride in recent months.
“We think it’s unavoidable … to avoid an earnings recession, and that’s what matters for stocks,” Wilson said.
His remarks came on the same day that the so-called Wall Street fear gauge soared to its highest level since mid-June, when U.S. equities last hit a bear market bottom.
“Whether it’s earnings or whether it’s the economy, we’re in a cyclical downturn for growth, and that’s the fire and ice scenario to a tee,” Wilson continued, referring to the Fed hiking rates at the same time as growth slows.
Wilson said that businesses are reluctant to cut staff even in the face of deteriorating economic conditions, which would put more pressure on profit margins.
This could lead to a situation wherein corporate earnings plunge but unemployment doesn’t move up meaningfully, he added. Under such circumstances—and if inflation continues to stay high—the Fed is unlikely to hit pause, and so financial conditions would tighten and debt-servicing costs would rise.
“You could have a situation where you don’t get an employment cycle, but the earnings recession is actually worse than if you had a normal recession,” he said.
FAIRFAX COUNTY, Va.—Over 20,000 comments—strong support and objections—were registered during the first two days of the public comment period for Virginia’s new transgender student policies. The new guidelines, released on Sept. 16, overhauled the 2021 version by ensuring parents’ consent to their children’s name or gender identity change and requiring school bathroom use according to students’ biological sex.
In addition, a student LBGTQA+ advocacy group—the Pride Liberation Project—organized walkouts in about 100 schools across Virginia on Tuesday, asking the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) to revoke the new guidelines and their school districts to reject the VDOE model policies. The demonstrations mainly concentrated in Fairfax County, where the student group is based, and the remaining northern Virginia counties: Loudoun, Prince William, and Arlington.
The 2021 VDOE model policies, finalized in March 2021 under the former administration, allowed students to pick their names, pronouns, and gender identities without their parents’ involvement. Therefore, the guidelines were controversial in the state. As of early September, only 10 percent, or 13, of the total 132 school districts adopted them, according to Equality Virginia, an advocacy group for the LGBTQ community. And nine school districts rejected the model policies.
Virginia school districts’ adoption of the 2021 state Department of Education’s (VDOE) transgender student policies according to Equality Virginia’s data. Blue: passed VDOE policy, light blue: partial adoption of VDOE policy, red: rejected VDOE policy. The blue school districts also show the number of schools that participated in the walkout to protest the 2022 policy on Sept. 27, 2022, according to data from the Pride Liberation Project and Loudoun County Public Schools. (Terri Wu/The Epoch Times)
“These new revisions betray the original intent of the law, instead attacking LGBTQIA+ students across Virginia,” stated the organizer in a press release, referring to the law enacted in 2020 by the former Democrat governor and that authorized VDOE to issue model policies on the treatment of transgender students.
Macaulay Porter, spokesperson for Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, said in a statement emailed to The Epoch Times: “The guidelines make it clear that when parents are part of the process, schools will accommodate the requests of children and their families. Parents should be a part of their children’s lives, and it’s apparent through the public protests and on-camera interviews that those objecting to the guidance already have their parents as part of that conversation.”
“While students exercise their free speech today, we’d note that these policies state that students should be treated with compassion, and schools should be free from bullying and harassment,” she added.
Pitting Students Against Their Parents
Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) is one of the 13 Virginia school districts that adopted the 2021 VDOE model policies on transgender students. The school board voted to adopt last year’s guidelines in August 2021, even though the majority of the online comments and in-person public comments speakers were against the policies.
Ian Prior, executive director of parental rights group Fight for Schools, at a rally outside the Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) administration building in Ashburn, Va., on Sept. 13, 2022. (Terri Wu/The Epoch Times)
Ian Prior, executive director of the Loudoun County-based Fight for Schools, a parental rights advocacy group, told The Epoch Times that the LCPS education pitted children against their parents.
“Governor Youngkin received nearly 1.7 million votes in November of 2021, largely on his promise to restore parental rights in Virginia. He has delivered on that promise,” he wrote in an emailed statement.
“The fact that a small minority of high school students are protesting the involvement of their parents in crucial decisions about their emotional, mental, and physical health proves the point that some of Virginia’s public school systems are far more focused on training activists than on providing a world class education,” he added. “It is unfortunate, but predictable, that this has pitted children against the rights of their parents.”
In a Tuesday press release, LCPS said that about 1,375 students, or 1.7 percent of the total 82,000 student population, from 12 LCPS high schools participated in walkouts that lasted, on average, 25 minutes. The statement said the activity was not school-sponsored and that “students who chose to participate will not face disciplinary consequences.”
Hundreds rallied to protest against Loudoun County Public Schools’ adoption of the 2021 Virginia Department of Education’s transgender student model policies outside the Loudoun County Public Schools administration building in Ashburn, Va., on Sept. 28, 2021. (Terri Wu/The Epoch Times)
‘Disconnect’ Between Parents and Schools
Carla, a licensed professional counselor specializing in adolescents, young adults, and women, who has her own business in northern Virginia, has seen first-hand the rise of gender identity issues among her clients in the past few years. Carla is a pseudonym to protect her identity and business practice.
“I have seen more clients [students] disappointed and frustrated that the school allows the lack of boundaries. They’re confused and saddened by the disconnect between their parents and the school,” she told The Epoch Times.
“It feels hidden, covert from their parents, yet free-feeling that they can keep something imperative from their parents. But they’re smart. They intuitively know it is wrong. They feel equal and on the same playing field as their teachers, and they know that’s not OK,” she added.
Pride Liberation Project’s press release quoted a queer student’s worry about the impact of the new policies: “As a closeted student, my friends and I are terrified that we won’t be able to come home if these proposed guidelines go through.”
Carla responded, “My thoughts are, ‘Go home! See what will happen.’ Maybe you’re wrong. You’re not inventing the wheel. Maybe your parents are stronger than you think. Maybe starting at home where you are loved is healthier than a sterile, boundary-less institution whose initial sole mission was to educate, not indoctrinate.”
U.S. troops serving overseas may find that government schools are indoctrinating their children and teaching them to keep secrets from their parents.
According to a report from the Claremont Institute, classes from the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) teach children radical activism, gender ideology, and hiding gender questions from families.
The lesson plans aren’t about teachers helping children learn the basics; instead, they’re about teachers helping children hide facts from their parents.
“Maybe that student is not ‘out’ to other students in their gender identity,” said seventh-grade humanities teacher Genevieve Chavez in a video provided to Claremont by a whistleblower. “They may be out at school; but they may not be out at home.”
Chavez was teaching at David Glasgow Farragut Middle/High School in Rota Spain, which serves the nearby American naval base.
Secret School Sexualities
The video was part of a 2021 summit talk titled “Ally 101—Creating an Inclusive Classroom for LGBTQ+ Students.”
In the same talk, Chavez urged teachers to speak about new gender identities with young children.
The cover of the Claremont Institute’s new report, “Grooming Future Revolutionaries.” Screenshot taken on Sept. 27, 2022. (Jackson Elliott/ The Epoch Times)
“You can talk about LGBTQ+ things in elementary school,” she said. “It’s actually the ideal time. Kids as young as 4 years old are already starting to develop a stable understanding of their gender identity. So elementary school is the perfect time because you can really show students the diversity of gender expression and gender activity.”
Claremont notes in its report that many parents disagree with exposing children to gender confusion at an early age.
“Parents have long taken for granted that cultivating a stable sexual identity is a key to individual development. Our military schools think upsetting a stable identity is the key to education,” the report states.
The 2021 summit urged teachers to filter every aspect of school life through radical gender ideology, the report states.
Prom kings and prom queens should be “homecoming court or royalty” or “partners of distinction,” teachers should say their own pronouns to “normalize” it, and teachers can keep the preferred pronouns of students secret from parents, according to Lindsey Bagnaschi, who was teaching high school drama at Stuttgart High School in Germany, which serves local army bases.
It’s also a mistake to call a roomful of students “guys” instead of “seventh-graders,” Chavez said.
This year, students rejected the idea of scrapping the old titles, the Claremont report said. But there’s always next year.
Instructed in Activism
The DoDEA’s program also encourages students to activism, according to the Claremont report. The DoDEA’s “Strategic Initiatives” seek to provide “equitable learning experiences for all students.”
To do so, the government suggests implementing “programs and supports to address achievement gaps between racial, ethnic, ability, and other identified groups” and provide “learning environments where students feel safe, secure, and supported by the entire learning community.”
The DoDEA also promises to “stand up and grow Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) structures to lead and implement DEI across the organization so that all students, employees, and families feel welcomed, respected, engaged, and empowered.”
The Claremont Institute notes that none of the DoDEA’s focus areas emphasize math, engineering, or any other form of academic excellence, and never define terms like “Key Performance Indicators.”
According to the report, encouraging students to restructure schools to hide the gender binary will teach them to restructure society as adults.
Newly donated LGBT books are displayed in the library at Nystrom Elementary School in Richmond, Calif., on May 17, 2022. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
“If students are used to restructuring their school environment, they will become activists for restructuring the general culture once they leave school,” the report reads. “Future citizens, sons and daughters of military personnel, will become much more like their teachers than like their parents.”
A DoDEA presentation on equity and access tells teachers to instruct students in having conversations about critical race theory, the Claremont report states.
Such a conversation is one that “explores the relationship between identity and power, that traces the structures that privilege some at the expense of others, that helps students think through the actions they can take to create a more just, more equitable, world,” according to the presentation.
Tracy Shelton, a literacy coach at Feltwell Elementary, which teaches the children of Americans serving at Air Force bases in Great Britain, recommended that children study books to learn how to be antiracist, the report said.
Racism and antiracism allow no neutral party, Shelton says.
“Racists, Shelton said, following the work of Ibram Kendi, are those who do not fight for racial equity, while antiracists put the fight for racial justice at the center of their lives,” the report reads.
Ibram X. Kendi, the author of “How To Be An Antiracist,” is seen in a New York City studio on March 10, 2020. (Michael Loccisano/Getty Images)
Even white people being silent is damaging, according to presentations quoted by the report.
“I was reading ‘Me and White Supremacy’,” said one teacher, and what it teaches “about white silence, and I realized the damage I was doing by my white silence,” the report said.
Instructor Insurrection
If teachers can’t get radical books onto reading lists, they can get them to children through independent reading time, book clubs, and literature circles, says Merilee Debus.
Debus is a professional practice improvement specialist at the (DoDEA), according to her LinkedIn page.
“We still have a lot of room for getting the right book in their hands when they need it.”
Another teacher, Betty Roberts of Robinson Barracks Elementary School, which serves five military bases in Germany, recommends reading books without critical race theory using critical race theory interpretations, the report said.
She urged students to “Take a look at their textbooks and [to] identify . . . the biases and how underrepresented groups are represented in these textbooks.”
The Claremont Institute ended its report with a call for action from public officials and Congress. But if they don’t act, military parents have one last nuclear option, the report concluded.
“It seems that members of the military who object to such education are no longer welcomed in the military. Perhaps they should just walk out of the military schools with their children or walk away from the military altogether,” the report reads.
The Epoch Times contacted the DoDEA about these issues, but didn’t receive a response by press time.
Meta, Facebook’s parent company, on Tuesday said it removed accounts linked to two unconnected covert operations in China and Russia seeking to influence political narratives in the United States ahead of the midterms in November.
In addition to seeking to influence U.S. domestic politics ahead of the midterms, the Chinese operation targeted the Czech Republic’s foreign policy toward China and Ukraine, and to a lesser extent, Chinese- and French-speaking people around the world, according to Meta.
Ben Nimmo, Meta’s global threat intelligence lead, said at a press briefing that, unlike previous Chinese operations which bad-mouthed the United States in South Asia, the new efforts targeted messages to “Americans themselves,” pushing narratives aimed at divisive U.S. domestic issues like abortion and gun rights.
When asked about the issue, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said his office is “very concerned” about reports of foreign election interference both new and old, Reuters reported.
Meta said the Russian network was the “largest of its kind” disrupted by the company since the war in Ukraine began. That operation primarily focused on Germany, France, Italy, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom with “narratives focused on the war and its impact.”
The Russia-based operation included a sprawling network of over 60 websites impersonating legitimate news organizations, according to Meta.
The company said it shared information related to its investigation with tech companies, security researchers, governments, and law enforcement, so that “they too can take appropriate action.”
“At the end of our full report, we’re also including threat indicators to help the security community detect and counter malicious activity elsewhere on the internet,” the company said in a news release.
Twitter has also taken down accounts connected to the operations, Reuters reported.
Silhouettes of mobile users are seen next to a screen projection of the Instagram logo, on March 28, 2018. (Dado Ruvic/Reuters)
Chinese Operation
The Chinese operation was active across multiple social media sites, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and two Czech petition platforms.
Meta noted that it was the first time the company disrupted a Chinese operation ahead of the U.S. midterms, as well as one targeting the Czech Republic’s foreign policy toward China and Ukraine.
The Chinese influence operation produced a low volume of posts, mostly during the hours of China’s work day, which helped to identify the activity as coordinated inauthentic behavior; a violation of Meta’s policy.
The operation comprised of four “largely separate,” short-lived efforts over the last 12 months, each focused on a particular audience, and at different times some of the accounts cheer while others criticize both sides of a U.S. domestic political issue.
For example, in its report (pdf), Meta notes one of the efforts by the Chinese network group that targeted both sides of politics with an original meme about President Joe Biden, a Democrat, and another about Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), an outspoken critic of the Chinese Communist Party.
The Biden meme, posted on April 18, featured an image of the president with the words: “One year in. Nothing is built. Nothing is back. Nothing is better.”
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Fla., on Feb. 25, 2022. (John Raoux/AP Photo)
The Rubio meme, posted Aug. 2, featured an image of the senator with accusations of corruption. Both of these posts received one engagement each, and most of the network’s U.S.-focused operations gained almost no traction overall, according to the report.
Some posts included linguistic errors, such as, “I can’t live in an America on regression!”
Its activities in the Czech Republic were mainly anti-government and criticized the state’s support of Ukraine in the war with Russia and its impact on the Czech economy.
Meta noted that the Chinese network tried to influence people to be cautious against antagonizing the Chinese regime.
“Each cluster of accounts—around half a dozen each—posted content at low volumes during working hours in China rather than when their target audiences would typically be awake,” the company said.
“Few people engaged with it and some of those who did called it out as fake. Our automated systems took down a number of accounts and Facebook Pages for various Community Standards violations, including impersonation and inauthenticity.”
Russian Operation
Meta described the network originating in Russia as far larger than the Chinese effort, saying it was “the largest and most complex” Russian operation the company disrupted since the beginning of the war in Ukraine.
“It presented an unusual combination of sophistication and brute force,” Meta said.
The Russian operation created fake websites with careful impersonations of legitimate news websites in Europe, including Der Spiegel, The Guardian, and Bild.
Further, the sites, which featured fake original articles criticizing Ukraine, were available in multiple languages, including English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, and Ukrainian.
“The spoofed websites and the use of many languages demanded both technical and linguistic investment. The amplification on social media, on the other hand, relied primarily on crude ads and fake accounts,” Meta said.
Since May, the network, which featured over 60 websites, sought to influence opinions about the Ukraine–Russia war mainly in Germany but included France, Italy, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom.
The Russian operation promoted the original articles as well as original memes and YouTube videos on a number of platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, Twitter, petitions websites Change.org and Avaaz, and LiveJournal.
“Throughout our investigation, as we blocked this operation’s domains, they attempted to set up new websites, suggesting persistence and continuous investment in this activity across the internet,” Meta said.
The Coast Guard discovered a group of Russian and Chinese warships operating north of one of Alaska’s Bering Sea islands earlier this month.
The cutter Kimball first identified the Chinese guided-missile cruiser Renhai CG 10, 75 nautical miles north of the remote Kiska Island, according to a news release from the Coast Guard.
Kimball’s crew later observed a formation of seven vessels.
Advertisement – story continues below
Four of the foreign ships were identified as Russian, including a navy destroyer, and three belonged to China, the news release stated.
In response to the joint Russian-Chinese naval presence north of the Aleutian Island of Kiska, the Coast Guard is pledging to monitor and meet the vessels of nations it called “strategic competitors.”
“The Kimball crew is now operating under Operation Frontier Sentinel, a Seventeenth Coast Guard District operation designed to meet presence with presence when strategic competitors operate in and around U.S. waters,” the news release stated. The first vessel was spotted on Sept. 19.
A Coast Guard C-130 Hercules proceeded to assist the Kimball in its own response to the Russian and Chinese naval patrol, according to the news release, which was published Monday.
Advertisement – story continues below
The Coast Guard did clarify that the Russian and Chinese ships followed the international rules of the sea.
“While the formation has operated in accordance with international rules and norms, we will meet presence-with-presence to ensure there are no disruptions to U.S. interests in the maritime environment around Alaska,” Rear Adm. Nathan Moore said in the news release.
Do you think this indicates a Russia-China alliance against the U.S.?Yes No
Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
The Russian and Chinese ships were well outside of American territorial waters, which extend 12 nautical miles away from American shores.
However, the ships entered the United States’ Exclusive Economic Zone, which covers 200 nautical miles away from the American coasts.
This isn’t the first time that Russia has sent military vessels in the vicinity of American waters.
Advertisement – story continues below
A Russian fleet practiced sinking an aircraft carrier 35 miles off of the coast of Hawaii last year.
China threatened to stage naval exercises near American territories last year.
China and Russia outwardly maintain strategic ties, but there are some indications that China is uneasy with the invasion of Ukraine.
China’s foreign minister called for respecting the territorial integrity of Ukraine in a carefully worded United Nations statement earlier this month.
Advertisement – story continues below
Russian President Vladimir Putin even admitted that Chinese President Xi Jinping had “concerns” over his plans in Ukraine, speaking at a meeting between the two leaders earlier this month, according to The New York Times.
(Reuters)—The S&P 500 fell to its lowest level in almost two years on Tuesday on worries about super aggressive Federal Reserve policy tightening, trading under its June trough and leaving investors appraising how much further stocks would have to fall before stabilizing.
Stocks have been under pressure since late August after comments and aggressive actions by the U.S. Federal Reserve signaled the central bank’s top priority is to stamp out high inflation even at the risk of putting the economy into a recession.
The S&P 500 was last down 0.6% at 3,632.
After the benchmark index fell more than 20% from its early January high to a low on June 16, which confirmed that the retreat was indeed a bear market, the S&P then rallied into mid-August before running out of gas.
That bear-market rally is now over.
“As long as the Fed continues to raise rates, and investors don’t anticipate an end of the rate hikes, I think this market is going to continue to be weak,” said Tim Ghriskey, Senior Portfolio Strategist, Ingalls & Snyder, New York.
The big blow for the index that re-ignited selling pressure was Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s speech at Jackson Hole that confirmed the Fed’s resolve to fight inflation, followed by a third straight 75 basis point interest rate hike by the central bank last week. The index has tumbled more than 12% since Powell’s speech and has shown little signs of stabilizing.
Many analysts had looked at 3,900 as a strong technical support level for the index. That gave way 11 days ago under four straight days of selling.
“When you have these cascades of selling like we’ve seen since the Fed, really, support doesn’t really matter, you can slice right through it,” said Ryan Detrick, chief market strategist at Carson Group in Omaha, Nebraska.
“Fundamentals and logic are almost thrown out the window because we are all wondering just how hawkish is the Fed, and then you look around this week and all these central banks around the globe hiked rates this week and we are all thinking about how hawkish could not just the Fed be now, but the rest of the globe.”
Robert Pavlik, Senior Portfolio Manager at Dakota Wealth in Fairfield, Connecticut said he is looking at a worst case of 3,000 for the S&P as a support level.
“People are concerned about the Federal Reserve, the direction of interest rates, the health of the economy, and also the next couple of weeks with earnings season coming up and companies reporting lower-than-expected earnings.”
Analysts are still looking for signposts of investor capitulation that can show selling pressure is exhausted. But sell-offs this year have not contained all those ingredients—a sharp drop in prices, a day of unusually high volume, and a jump in the CBOE Volatility index to 40 or above. So, many investors conclude that selling has yet to be depleted.
“It goes down, you get some decent volume but you don’t necessarily have the classic signs of capitulation,” said Brian Jacobsen, senior investment strategist at Allspring Global Investments in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin.
“Maybe enough has changed over the years that some of those indicators aren’t going to be a very good guide for the future.”
That leaves investors looking for the next catalyst to help markets stabilize, or get cheap enough for to start buying again, such as signs the Fed’s actions may be starting to tame inflation, a weakening of the labor market, and what the upcoming corporate earnings season may bring about.
“On (October 7), you get the employment situation report and the following week you get the inflation report so we will be on pins and needles waiting to see what those numbers say, and then you have earnings,” said Jacobsen.
(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; additional reporting by Noel Randewich and Ankika Biswas; Editing by Alden Bentley, Franklin Paul, Nick Zieminski, and Chizu Nomiyama)
Iran sold China $38 billion in oil since Biden took office
Iran has illicitly sold China $38 billion worth of oil since Joe Biden took office and relaxed sanctions enforcement on Tehran. Revenue from the Chinese has kept Iran’s hardline regime afloat as it grapples with the largest outbreak of nationwide protests in years.
China “has proven to be the savior of Tehran by continuing to import millions of barrels of oil every single day,” according to newly released figures calculated by United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), an advocacy group that tracks Iran’s illicit oil trade. “Chinese imports have likely even exceeded the purchases made when the trade was not subject to U.S. sanctions.” Iran’s oil trade is heavily sanctioned by the United States as part of measures aimed at curbing the hardline regime’s revenue sources.
“It is widely acknowledged,” according to UANI, “that China is principally responsible for keeping the Iranian regime in business through oil purchases that have totaled $38 billion since President Joe Biden assumed office.” Entities found to be complicit in violating sanctions can face huge fines and be iced out of the U.S. financial system.
While the Biden administration has not nixed U.S. sanctions on Iran’s lucrative oil trade, it has eased its enforcement of these measures, according to experts tracking the situation. This has allowed Iran to export around 1,000,000 barrels of crude per day to Beijing amid a global supply crisis and enriched Tehran’s hardline regime at a time when its grip on power is more threatened than ever.
Protests have erupted across Iran since the regime’s morality police beat and killed a 22-year-old woman for not properly wearing her head covering, which is required under Iran’s theocratic legal system. Since her death, men and woman have taken to the streets across the country to express outrage at the regime’s human rights crimes, as well as its mismanagement of the country’s economy, which remains in shambles.
The Biden administration has offered tepid support for the anti-regime protests, but continues to walk a diplomatic tightrope as it engages in talks with the hardline government over a revamped version of the 2015 nuclear accord. These talks, and the lax enforcement of sanctions that have sent Iran’s oil revenues skyrocketing, is helping to keep the regime in power amid the protests.
“Protests are occurring all over Iran, some of the most serious in years,” UANI chief of staff Claire Jungman told the Washington Free Beacon. “Men and women are joining the demonstrations denouncing a regime they see as repressive and the cause for isolating the country, inflation soaring, and rampant poverty.”
“All of this,” Jungman explained, “has occurred under the current administration’s lax sanctions enforcement policy, which has enabled the regime to export millions of barrels of Iranian oil and accumulate billions in revenue from these sales. It is clear that only the regime is profiting while the Iranian people continue to suffer.”
Before the Biden administration took office and reentered talks with Iran, China was importing around 400,000 barrels of Iranian oil per day. That number now stands at around one million.
UANI analysts have discovered that Iran is using a so-called Ghost Armada comprising more than 200 oil-carrying ships. Much of this trade is being facilitated by China, which is able to import the illicit Iranian oil at discount prices.
Many retailers are emptying their shelves across the country, but not because of low stock. A concerning increase in thefts has pushed companies to put more products under lock and key, the Wall Street Journal reports.
At one Best Buy store in the suburbs of Houston, where hundreds of items like Bose speakers and Fitbit activity trackers used to sit on the shelves, shoppers will instead find small blue signs that read, “This product kept in secured location.”
Surging crime rates across the country are hitting retailers hard. The National Retail Federation’s 2022 Retail Security Survey found that retailers lost $94.5 billion overall in 2021 mainly due to external theft and organized retail crime. Theft attempts at Home Depot are on the rise compared with before the pandemic, Home Depot vice president of asset protection Scott Glenn told the Journal. Last year, the supermarket giant Kroger for the first time listed organized theft as a factor pressuring profit margins. Starbucks has had to close 16 U.S. stores this year because of drug-related incidents and other disruptions, the Journal reported.
Twelve Democrat-run cities hit record-high crime rates last year, the Washington Free Beacon reported. Voters have responded by turning on left-wing prosecutors who support lighter sentences, less policing, and the elimination of cash bail. President Joe Biden, meanwhile, has blamed the crime spike on “illegal gun trafficking” and has focused on gun control legislation.
“Organized retail crime is more than petty shoplifting, and the economic impact has become alarming,” Retail Industry Leaders Association senior executive vice president of public affairs Michael Hanson said in 2021. “Professional thieves and organized criminal rings are building a business model by stealing and reselling products, increasingly online through marketplace platforms like Amazon or Facebook.”
While Best Buy has always kept its high-valued items locked in the back, the number of locked items is higher in locations like Houston, where police data show that crime rates have risen.
Executives fear that more secured items will inconvenience customers and reduce sales. Some retailers are looking into “customer-friendly, higher-tech” security solutions, while others are giving employees more safety training.
Women in the West Wing make 83 cents for each dollar paid to men, analysis finds
On the 2020 campaign trail, Joe Biden promised to close the gender pay gap in workplaces across the country, but in the second year of his presidency he has failed to close the gender gap on his own payroll, according to a Washington Free Beacon analysis.
Female employees in the West Wing earn a median salary of $83,467, more than $16,000 less than the median salary of $100,000 for male employees, an analysis of a White House salary disclosure found. The 16.5 percent wage discrepancy tracks almost perfectly with the national gender pay gap, according to President Joe Biden’s own proclamation on Equal Pay Day in March, which stated that women across the nation make 17 cents less per dollar than men.
The White House released its annual salary disclosure this summer, which lists the names, titles, and annual salaries of all employees. The Washington Free Beacon surveyed the salaries of all White House employees on the disclosure, which lists 173 men and 235 women. Excluded from the analysis were detailees, who work at other agencies but are temporarily detailed to the White House.
The existence of a gender pay gap at the White House is indicative of the difficulty of closing the gap even for those who view it as an economic injustice. Economic experts say the gender pay gap in the United States is not the result of discrimination against women, but of other factors including the decision to have a family. Studies show that men and women with the same jobs and qualifications are paid equally.
“The next time you hear the Biden administration citing a national gender pay gap of 17 percent based on median earnings and using that difference to advance measures to achieve greater pay equity and address gender discrimination, it should be noted that Biden’s own White House has a similar pay gap of 16.5 percent,” said Mark Perry, a University of Michigan economist and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “In both cases, those differences in earnings by gender are not primarily the result of gender discrimination but are the result of many other factors.”
In March, the Biden administration released a list of commitments to “Advance Pay Equity and Support Women’s Economic Security.” The announcement claimed that a woman makes 83 cents for every man’s dollar. In June 2021, Biden signed an executive order that called on the Office of Personnel Management to review compensation packages and report back to the president on how to advance equal pay.
During his 2020 presidential campaign, Biden pledged to “close the gender pay gap” and fight gender discrimination. His campaign website lists plans to close the pay gap across the country, including increased federal monitoring over salary discrepancies and making it easier for women to unionize.
When Vice President Kamala Harris was a presidential contender, she had one of the most aggressive wage gap remediation plans. Her proposal would have put the burden of proof on companies across the country to prove to the government that their wages were equal, with fines for companies that could not. The radical proposal failed to help her gain traction with voters—a few months later she ended her campaign, before a single vote was cast in the Democratic primary.
Wage discrimination based on gender has been a federal crime since the 1963 Equal Pay Act, and there is no evidence that such discrimination is commonplace in modern workplaces. A national study this year by PayScale found that after accounting for other factors—such as job title, education, experience, industry, job level, and hours worked—the gender pay gap disappears. Its analysis of raw salary data found that women make 82 cents for each dollar earned by men, but with controls women made 99 cents for each dollar earned by men.
The White House figures do not indicate any gender pay discrimination. In fact, more women than men at the time of the summer disclosure were paid the maximum allowed $180,000 salary for executive employees. Those women include press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and top advisers such as Neera Tanden and Anita Dunn.
Much of the statistical disparity is caused by the simple fact that there are more women than men working at the White House, likely one of the most highly sought after employers in the political world. More of the lower level positions, which make up the bulk of the team, are held by women, who will likely move on to high-paying positions after attaining all-important White House experience. Employees with the same job title appear to be paid roughly the same amount, regardless of gender.
These sorts of facts are difficult to account for when looking at the pay gap for the entire country.
“While it’s true that male and female staffers in the same position are paid roughly the same, it’s also true that the national gender pay gap of 17 percent cited by the Biden administration would likewise shrink significantly when male and female salaries are compared on an apples-to-apples basis taking into account the multitude of reasons for pay differences that have nothing to do with gender discrimination,” Perry said.
For this reason, Perry said it’s irresponsible for the White House and others to justify new policy proposals.
“The differences in earnings of men and women are the result of many factors,” Perry said, “and the 16-17 percent raw wage gap at the White House or in the national labor market should not be used as the basis to justify corrective or legislative action because there really is nothing that needs to be corrected.”
For Biden, a gender pay gap among his staffers is nothing new. Over his 35-year Senate career, Biden paid women less than men every single year—at one point, women working for Biden were paid just 44 cents for every dollar paid to men.
Women working for Harris when she was in the Senate were also paid less than men.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on its salary disclosure.
Rep. Tim Ryan (D., Ohio) says the United States is ready to ban gas cars, arguing in 2019 that socialist Bernie Sanders’s plan to ban gas vehicles wasn’t ambitious enough. On the Senate campaign trail, Ryan is sticking to gas guzzlers.
Ryan’s first Senate campaign ad features him riding around with his son in a 2020 GMC Yukon, which gets roughly 14 to 15 miles per gallon around town. When leaving a campaign stop in Zanesville, Ohio, last month, Ryan boarded a 15-mile-per-gallon Chevrolet Tahoe.
Sometimes Ryan prefers his comparatively eco-friendly 2020 GMC Sierra, a truck, which gets around 23 miles per gallon. GMC does make an electric truck, the Hummer EV, which can get around 350 miles on a single battery charge, but it will set consumers back nearly $110,000.
“Tim loves his UAW-built American-made Tahoe,” Ryan campaign spokeswoman Izzi Levy told the Washington Free Beacon, “and wouldn’t trade it for anything—not even the $70,000 BMW that chauffeurs J.D. Vance around Ohio.”
The debate over how much the United States should embrace electric cars has been a flashpoint in Ohio’s Senate race, in which Ryan is facing off against Republican J.D. Vance. Although Ryan is a rubber stamp for President Joe Biden’s green agenda, which has poured hundreds of billions of dollars into renewable energy initiatives, he has remained mum on how much the federal government should be regulating what cars Americans drive.
“When Tim Ryan ran for president, he fully embraced banning gas-powered vehicles and said that Bernie Sanders’s climate change plan didn’t go far enough,” a spokesman for the Vance campaign told the Free Beacon. “Now that he is running for Senate in Ohio, he’s doing everything he can to run away from those radical, far-left positions. Simply put, Tim Ryan will say whatever it takes to get elected and then sell out working-class Ohioans at the first chance he gets.”
Ryan, who votes 100 percent of the time with President Joe Biden, has championed the Democratic Party’s green push. A campaign spokeswoman told a local outlet earlier this month that the “auto industry is quickly moving toward electric vehicles.” After Ryan voted for Biden’s infrastructure bill in February, the congressman’s office released a statement applauding provisions for, among other things, an “equitable network of chargers” for electric cars.
That money for green infrastructure is not much immediate help for Ohio voters. In the last week alone, gas prices there have spiked 10 cents per gallon, according to AAA.
As Ryan can testify, current electric vehicle models also do not offer enough space for large families—or campaign staff. Ryan was spotted last month exiting a gas-powered Forest River Forester RV in Zanesville with his family.
Upon arriving at a fundraiser earlier this month with Paul Simon in Gahanna, Ohio, Ryan exited a Prevost H3-45 passenger bus. The miles per gallon? Seven to eight, according to an owners’ forum.
Ryan will face off against Vance in November for the Senate seat occupied by retiring Republican Rob Portman. A RealClearPolitics average of recent polls finds Vance leading by over 1 point. The site rates the race as “Leans GOP.”
The U.S. government has acknowledged for the first time that five FBI confidential informants were involved with the Oath Keepers on Jan. 6, 2021, but prosecutors failed to disclose that none of the sources provided evidence of guilt, a defense lawyer said on Sept. 26.
FBI officials have repeatedly declined in congressional hearings to say whether there were agents or confidential human sources (CHS) in the crowd when the U.S. Capitol was breached on Jan. 6. But in pretrial communications in the Oath Keepers’ seditious conspiracy case, prosecutors disclosed that there were five sources informing on the Oath Keepers, David Fischer, who is representing defendant Thomas Caldwell, said in the new filing.
“What the Government knew—but only recently disclosed to the Defendants—was that none of the CHSes provided evidence of guilt on the part of the Oath Keepers as an organization, or the individual Defendants in this case,” Fischer said.
He said the fact was confirmed by the government telling defense lawyers that only one of the informants will take the stand during the Sept. 27 trial of former Oath Keepers leader Elmer Stewart Rhodes III and four others, including Caldwell.
Top FBI officials have declined to answer questions on how many, if any, informants were at the Capitol around the time of the breach.
“I can’t answer that,” Jill Sanborn, the FBI assistant director for national security, told Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) during one hearing.
But prosecutors in a recent motion disclosed that multiple sources have been involved in the investigation into the Oath Keepers, a group comprised of former and current members of the military, law enforcement, and first responders.
“At trial, the government or defense may call to testify certain CHSes who were either involved in the investigation that led to prosecution of the defendants, or who became CHSes subsequent to the initiation of the instant investigation,” prosecutors said in the motion, which asked U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, an Obama appointee overseeing the case, to impose a protective order.
Prosecutors want defense lawyers barred from asking any questions seeking personal identifying information from any informant witnesses, including their date of birth; any questions about the witnesses’ participation in investigations outside of the probe in question; and any questions about training in the FBI’s CHS program.
“The protections requested herein, while minimally restrictive, would ensure the integrity of any ongoing investigations and would reduce the security threat posed to any testifying CHSes,” prosecutors said in the filing, which has not yet drawn a ruling from Mehta.
Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers, speaks during a rally in Washington on June 25, 2017. (Susan Walsh/AP Photo)
‘Rhodes Plan’
Prosecutors contend that Rhodes and his co-defendants engaged in a seditious conspiracy to attack the Capitol on Jan. 6 and prevent the counting of Electoral College votes for the 2020 presidential election.
The federal indictment charges the Oath Keepers with stockpiling firearms in a Virginia hotel for use by quick-reaction forces to attack the Capitol. Rhodes has said the weapons were legal and for use only if President Donald Trump invoked the Insurrection Act and raised a militia to guard against Antifa.
None of the informants, however, reported the existence of a “Rhodes Plan” and all of the sources have denied knowing any information about it when questioned by FBI handlers after Jan. 6, 2021, Fischer said, citing disclosures by the government to defense lawyers.
“The potential testimony of these CHSes, along with the corroborating testimony of their FBI handlers, will establish either 1) that the ‘Rhodes Plan’ was so secret that even members of Oath Keeper leadership who interacted regularly with Defendant Rhodes and others alleged to have been involved were kept in the dark both before and after January 6, or 2) that there never was any such ‘Rhodes Plan,’” the defense lawyer said.
“The defendants are entitled to examine the totality of the Government’s investigation and prosecution for the purposes of undermining the jury’s confidence in the work done and the conclusions reached by the agents and prosecutors over the course of the past 20 months,” Fischer added.
The FBI chose to ignore the exculpatory information and has, with prosecutors, “’reverse-engineered’ the existence of such a ‘plan’ through selective use of ‘evidence’ it has cherry-picked out of context, while ignoring all evidence to the contrary,” the filing states.
The FBI has declined to comment on court cases, referring requests for comment to the Department of Justice, which has said it doesn’t comment on ongoing cases.
Mehta recently granted a different motion, which asked to withhold certain information on civilian witnesses, after he reviewed the information behind closed doors. The judge said the information wasn’t relevant to the trial.
The FBI chooses to use CHSes knowing that the sources might be cross-examined by defense lawyers in criminal cases and defendants want to probe “relevant information,” such as the reliability and accuracy of information that originated with a CHS, Caldwell’s lawyer said.
“The Defendants, moreover, do not intend to elicit testimony from a CHS for the sole purpose of exposing the CHS to possible retribution or otherwise place his or her safety at risk. However, given the physical proximity of certain CHSes to the Defendants, cooperators, and unindicted co-conspirators in this case, it is unrealistic to seek to prevent the geographic location of a testifying CHS from becoming known as a result of testifying in this case,” Fischer added.
The piece in the government motion on preventing questions on the FBI CHS program also runs counter to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Kyles v. Whitley, according to the defense. Lawyers want Mehta to reject that and all other portions of the government’s motion.
A federal court has stopped California dead in its tracks on a law intended to spring illegal immigrants from immigration detention.
The United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit on Monday ruled against a state law that would have prohibited privately run immigration detention facilities from operating within the state.
The law, Assembly Bill 32, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2019, would have prohibited the use of any private detention facilities within the Golden State.
It would not only have applied to facilities contracted through the state, but to facilities contracted by the federal government, as well.
It would also have mandated the closure of all privately contracted immigration detention facilities by 2028, according to The Associated Press.
This proved objectionable to the federal government, as Immigration and Customs Enforcement contracts out several detention facilities to private companies in the state.
The federal government sued California jointly with The Geo Group, a contractor that runs immigration detention facilities on the part of ICE in the state.
ICE itself operates only one detention facility in California, the ruling noted. The law would have likely spurred the release of thousands of illegal aliens if it were ever enforced.
The 8-3 ruling against the state and for the federal government by the full appeals court comes after a three-judge panel ruling that overturned the state’s ban last year, according to ABC.
Do you think that this is a step in the right direction for the immigration crisis?Yes No
Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta authored the legislation ending privatized immigration detention when he was a state lawmaker.
The court’s ruling cited the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, declaring that the law would have usurped powers over federal government operations through a state government veto.
“AB 32 would override the federal government’s decision, pursuant to discretion conferred by Congress, to use private contractors to run its immigration detention facilities,” the court’s majority ruled.
Only a small percentage of aliens who enter the country illegally or overstay a visa end up in immigration detention.
ICE had 3.3 million illegals assigned to the “non-detained docket” as of August 2020, according to an agency detention report.
Of these aliens, ICE had the resources “to monitor approximately 5 percent of the total non-detained population, or approximately 100,000 undocumented individuals,” the report stated.
The Department of Homeland Security held around 32,000 aliens in immigration detention as recently as March, according to The Washington Times.
ICE’s 2023 budget requests funds for 25,000 immigration detention beds, a minuscule segment of the broader illegal alien population.
The top Republican on the U.S. House committee tasked with investigating government corruption has made a stunning revelation to Fox News host Sean Hannity, that Joe Biden was personally involved in a deal that sought to give communist China a supply of U.S. natural gas and influence over U.S. natural gas prices.
Congressman James Comer (R-Ky.), the Ranking Member on the U.S. House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform revealed on Hannity’s program documents showing Biden family members, and then-former Vice President Joe Biden himself tried to cut a 2017 deal with the communist Chinese energy company CEFC.
🚨@GOPoversight uncovered a plan by the Biden family to sell U.S. natural gas reserves to China.
Chinese business partners provided the Biden family detailed maps identifying critical U.S. gas reserves.
“Documents and communications obtained by Committee Republicans reveal Joe Biden was involved in the arrangement as a business partner, had office space, and may have benefitted financially from his family’s transaction selling American energy to a Chinese business closely affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party,” Government Oversight and Reform Committee Republicans announced in a statement.
Comer claims to have a 2017 PowerPoint presentation that allegedly details Joe Biden’s involvement in a Biden family business deal to sell U.S. natural gas to communist China, and a whistleblower who confirms, through bank transactions, Joe Biden’s involvement in the deal.
According to Comer, the PowerPoint presentation and obtained emails show Hunter Biden’s company, Hudson West, was negotiating a sale of U.S. liquified natural gas to CEFC.
Comer reports the presentation names Joe Biden as a major investor in the deal, and Joe Biden would have “keys to the office negotiation the deal.”
Notably, CEFC wanted to work with the Bidens to purchase an interest in American drillers, giving them some control over U.S. natural gas prices.
“I think it’s safe to say now that the Oversight investigation into Hunter Biden, is now shifting to an investigation of Joe Biden,” Comer told Hannity.
“Everything about this is a shady business dealing, and this is the first time that there’s proof that Joe Biden was involved. That’s why we are trying to get those suspicious activity reports and those transaction records,” said Comer.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
PRINGFIELD TOWNSHIP, Pennsylvania — Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is in the process of filing a lawsuit against New York Attorney General Letitia James for allegedly leaking to the press a list of donors to her nonprofit Stand for America.
Last week Haley released the findings of the New York Freedom of Information Act request she filed late last month with James’s office.
Haley’s team requested records of all Freedom of Information Act requests about Stand for America from Jan. 1, 2019, to the present. James’ office responded, “Please be advised that the Office of the Attorney General has conducted a diligent search and has located no records that respond to your request.”
The attorney general’s answer raises more questions than answers and leaves open the possibility that the attorney general’s office illegally sent donor data or emailed it via unofficial emails, then leaked it to Documented, the watchdog group that gave Haley’s donor list to Politico.
Last Tuesday, Haley sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland demanding that the Department of Justice investigate the illegal delivery, receipt and public disclosure of a list of the identities of donors to Stand for America. “These illicit acts are subject to criminal penalties, and it is your duty to launch an inquiry, follow the facts wherever they lead, and prosecute,” she wrote. Haley added that once Garland’s office has concluded its investigation, it should prosecute all those responsible to the fullest extent permitted by law.
The materials, which contained donor names — all influential men and women in the conservative movement — were leaked in August to Politico in a chilling act of intimidation against conservative political speech. Haley, a Republican, has been an outspoken critic of New York’s no-bail laws and believes this is an instance of retaliation.
Haley launched Stand for America after leaving the Trump administration in 2019. In an interview with the Washington Examiner while she was campaigning with Pennsylvania Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz in Delaware County, Haley said that when she was first contacted by Politico about the donor list, she was stunned by the outlet’s access to something that was supposed to remain private. “They say they have it,” she said. “We say, ‘Show it to us.’ They send it to us and, look at the back page, it’s stamped by the New York State Attorney General’s Office.”
“This is how liberals behave,” she added. “Once again, they were upset that I was calling out what was going on in New York state, and they are upset that I’m calling out Biden for his failings, and they are trying to intimidate conservatives to be silent or hide in the shadows. We’re not going to let it happen. We’re suing the New York state attorney general, and I am going to Merrick Garland and saying, ‘You need to investigate what happened, and you owe us an answer on this, and we’re going to keep on fighting through this.'”
“Republicans have been too nice for too long,” she said. “At the end of the day, there’s no time to whine and complain about this. This is time to fight, and we go back, and we’re going to hold her accountable.”
Haley has been all over the country with conservative candidates running for office, as was the case with Oz here in suburban Philadelphia. The audience here gave her a warm welcome: After the event, several attendees said they were impressed with her delivery, her willingness to take the fight to the Left and her grace. Some said they would love to see her run for president in 2024.
The first female governor of the Palmetto State has a formidable record of helping candidates in Republican primaries this cycle: Her endorsement record shows she went six for six in GOP primaries in Iowa. She was also successful in her home state’s most competitive Republican congressional primaries in June, when U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., defeated challenger Katie Arrington. In that race, she went head-to-head with former President Donald Trump and won.
Haley’s fall schedule, which included this crowded event with Oz, is packed with travel plans that will take her across the country to headline events with various candidates. Her efforts to stump for candidates around the country could prove to be a wise investment of time and effort if she chooses to run in the Republican primary for president in 2024.
Haley said that when she talks to voters at events such as this one, she finds that it is the media and the Democrats who are myopically focused on Trump. They are missing what is really motivating voters to the polls.
“Frankly, I’m not hearing voters talk about Trump or Biden,” she said. “What they’re talking about is that gas prices are high, and that’s how they get to work. Grocery prices are high, and that’s how they feed their family. And they are frustrated and scared of the very idea that they’re having to dip into their savings accounts to pay for both. The idea that utility bills are going through the roof, or they can’t get basic supplies for their homes or businesses; that’s what they’re talking about. And they’re talking about crime on the streets and border. They’re talking about education for their kids. They don’t feel like they have the luxury of politics. They just want someone to hear them and fight for them because they feel like we got to get things back on track.”
After her event with Oz, Haley left Pennsylvania for Georgia, where she was doing an event with Herschel Walker in his quest to unseat incumbent Democrat Sen. Raphael Warnock. “I feel like we’re in a different state all the time,” she said, laughing. “What I can tell you is we’ve endorsed over 50 candidates. We raised over four and a half million dollars. We’re not going to stop until we get to Election Day.”
As for the release of her documents, Haley said she is not going to back down in demanding answers for that as well — not just for herself, but for all the conservative groups and conservatives whose private information has been illegally leaked by government officials as a form of political punishment.
“These disclosures aren’t just meant to intimidate people,” she said. “They are a violation of federal and state law, and I am not just going to stand aside any longer as liberals use government power as a weapon against conservatives.”
Haley is a true dragon slayer. When she was wrongly accused by “The View” host Sunny Hostin for being a ‘chameleon’ for not using her Indian first name, Haley shot back, saying, “Nikki is my name. It is on my birth certificate. It is an Indian name, and I embrace my Indian heritage. I have written two books that describe the struggles that my family had, what it was like growing up.”
“It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last time that the hosts of ‘The View’ come after me or that liberals come after me in… whatever way,” Haley said. ‘They can’t stand the fact that a minority female would be a conservative Republican.”
As most Americans now realize, America is experiencing a societal breakdown. This should be obvious to anyone, even those facilitating this breakdown as they openly acknowledge they seek to break down American society.
This is a society that teaches its youngest citizens a suicidal lie: that America was founded in 1619, that it was built on slavery and that even today it is systemically racist. At the same time, it does not teach the fundamental moral fact that every culture practiced slavery — Arab, Muslim, African, Asian, Native American — and usually more viciously (e.g., Arab slave masters routinely castrated black slaves so that they could not reproduce) than in America.
This is a society that robs its youngest of sexual innocence. Teachers — nearly all of them women, the sex that society has always regarded as the natural guardians of sexual innocence — now routinely sexualize young people with discussions of sexual behavior and by having drag queens perform for them.
This is a society that has taken as a given that there are more than two sexes; that has Jewish and Christian clergy sign emails with “preferred pronouns”; that will praise the Disney Corporation for dropping all references to “boys and girls” from its theme park announcements.
This is a society in which refusing to say that men give birth can lead to social banning and the loss of one’s job and income.
This is a society that encourages violent crime. It elects prosecutors who allow violent criminals to avoid having to pay bail. Its elites advocate defunding police. It keeps raising the dollar amount of stolen goods that constitutes a felony. In short, America is now a society in which the dominant message to would-be criminals is that crime pays.
This is a society in which fewer and fewer young people are marrying, fewer are having children, and more and are having children without being married, usually without a father in the life of the child.
This all began with the demise of moral authority — and moral, social and intellectual chaos is the inevitable result.
Prior to the 1960s, America had moral authority — God, country, parents, the Bible, teachers, police, and clergy.
Not one of them is a normative authority today.
Starting in the 1960s, each one was overthrown. The ’60s motto “Never trust anyone over 30” perfectly embodied this — given that every one of these was older than 30. Soon, teachers were called by their first names and frequently talked back to, even cursed; on college campuses, “America” was often spelled “Amerika,” and the flag is now declared a symbol of white supremacy; police were referred to as “pigs”; clergy were rendered irrelevant; the American motto, “In God we trust,” was ignored or mocked; and the Bible went from the dominant book in American life to the trash heap of history.
Most important, parental authority rapidly declined.
Moral stability — in other words, civilization — is dependent on parental authority. Once that breaks down, all the others mentioned here also break down.
If you look at the two tablets of the Ten Commandments, you will notice that each tablet has five commandments. The first five are laws between man and God, while the second five commandments govern behavior toward fellow human beings (do not murder, steal, etc.). The first four “rest” on the Fifth; and the second four “rest” on the Tenth.
Taking the second tablet first, the four commandments that precede the Tenth depend on obedience to the Tenth Commandment. When people murder, commit adultery, steal or offer false testimony, it is almost always because they “covet” what their neighbor has — his property, his animals, his spouse.
Likewise, the first four commandments regarding God as the One Moral Authority rest on people obeying the Fifth Commandment: “Honor your father and mother.”
Parental moral authority is the vehicle to divine moral authority. That is why the Fifth Commandment, to honor one’s parents, is the only human-to-human commandment on the first tablet. It is also the only one of the Ten Commandments that promises a reward — “that your days on the land will be lengthened” and “so that it goes well with you.” You will have a long-lived civilization and things will go well with you when parents have moral authority.
Beginning in the ’60s, parents stopped telling their children what to do and instead began asking them to do things. Parents became much more interested in being loved by their children than in being honored by their children. Children stopped fearing parents, and parents began fearing their children. Parents became much more interested in their children’s feelings than in their behavior.
Today, elementary schools and high schools work to diminish all parental authority. The most obvious example is hiding from parents that their 10-year-old says he or she is not their biological sex. And should a parent tell his or her 10-year-old, “This is not so, you were born a boy and you are a boy” or “You were born a girl and you are a girl,” those parents run the risk of having the child taken away from them, not to mention severe condemnation from doctors, psychotherapists and social workers.
One result of the breakdown of parental authority is that we probably have more child-parent alienation than at any time in American history. There are millions of parents whose adult child will not talk to them — many of them because of the way the parent voted (if the parent voted for former President Donald Trump, not if the parent voted for Hillary Clinton or President Joe Biden).
The bottom line is this: when parents don’t rule the home, chaos will rule society. And chaos always breeds tyranny. So, the choice is stark — either we have strong parents, or we will have a strong state.
COMES SOON AFTER UK GOVERNMENT SAYS IT CANNOT PROVIDE REASSURANCE FOR PREGNANT WOMEN WHO TAKE THE VACCINES.
race amounts of Moderna and Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccines were detected in new mothers’ breast milk, according to a study conducted by researchers at New York University.
The report – “Detection of Messenger RNA COVID-19 Vaccines in Human Breast Milk” – was uploaded to JAMA Network Open, which is a project of the American Medical Association, on September 26th.
Noting that “the initial messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine clinical trials excluded several vulnerable groups, including young children and lactating individuals,” the New York University Long Island School of Medicine’s study attempted to address the research gap by tracking levels of the vaccine in a cohort of breastfeeding women.
The study analyzed the breastmilk of 11 healthy women, with five study participants receiving a Moderna COVID-19 shot and the remaining six receiving Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. Researchers sampled breast milk for five days post vaccination, and trace amounts were detected in seven samples belonging to five different participants.
Forty-five percent of study participants, therefore, saw COVID-19 vaccines taint their breastmilk.
NYU STUDY
Of the samples containing trace amounts of COVID-19 vaccine mRNA, two participants received a Moderna vaccine and three participants received a Pfizer vaccine.
The study follows the British government’s Department of Health and Social Care recommending against COVID-19 vaccines in pregnant and breastfeeding women, admitting that “sufficient reassurance of safe use of the vaccine” for the demographic “cannot be provided at the present time.”
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, however, still recommends offering COVID-19 mRNA vaccines to breastfeeding individuals at the time of this study’s publication. Other federal agencies have authorized the use of COVID-19 vaccines following a massive lobbying campaign launched by the pharmaceutical companies responsible for manufacturing the products.
Additional studies into the vaccine have shown adverse effects on the health of its recipients, including altered menstrual cycles in women, lowered sperm count in men, and cardiovascular problems in children and young adults.
Looks like another one of Pelosi’s dreamers [US Patriot]
A 24-year-old Arizona woman was arrested and charged with crimes related to a human smuggling enterprise on Sept. 23, according to the El Mirage Police Department (EMPD).
The woman, Tania Estudillo Hernandez, had allegedly held or processed 80 to 100 illegal aliens per month at a residence in El Mirage over at least a six-month period, the police department stated in a Facebook post.
The illegal aliens were charged as much as $15,000 each in smuggling fees, police said. At $15,000 a person, for 80 people per month over six months, that would be a total of $7.2 million.
Police said the department received a report of a person being held for ransom at the El Mirage address on the morning of Sept. 23.
“The complainant stated in the residence there were multiple people kidnapped, including her husband,” the EMPD stated.
Officers stopped a vehicle leaving the residence and discovered Hernandez transporting a Guatemalan national, the report stated.
“EMPD learned that while conducting the traffic stop, two smugglers left the home with 10 Undocumented Immigrants,” police noted.
During a subsequent search warrant executed at the home, police seized a semi-automatic rifle, two handguns (one of which was reported stolen in Phoenix), and ammunition.
“Ledgers documenting human smuggling, and other evidence of human smuggling was seized, to include evidence that Tania Estudillo Hernandez managed and directed smuggling operations,” the EMPD stated.
A Google Map view of a street in El Mirage, Ariz., where an alleged human smuggler was holding illegal immigrants on Sept. 23, 2022. (screenshot)
Hernandez was booked into Maricopa County Jail on violations of kidnapping, money laundering, illegally conducting or participating in an illegal enterprise, and conspiracy, police said.
El Mirage, which is located in the greater Phoenix metropolitan area, is less than a three-hour drive to the U.S.–Mexico border.
The Tucson Border Patrol sector in Arizona leads the nation in known “gotaways,” who are illegal aliens who Border Patrol detects, but fails to capture. Border Patrol reported about 10,000 gotaways in the Tucson sector per month during the past several months, according to provisional Customs and Border Protection data obtained by The Epoch Times.
Border agents in Arizona have apprehended more than 514,000 illegal aliens in fiscal year 2022, which ends on Sept. 30.
Often, miles of border are left unpatrolled as Border Patrol agents are occupied with processing large groups of illegal border crossers.
Joe Biden’s administration has been hit with the first lawsuits against a recently unveiled order that would—unless blocked—cancel thousands of dollars in debt for millions of Americans.
Biden, a Democrat, and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, a Biden appointee, announced the order in August, revealing that people with student debt could receive up to $20,000 in relief if they meet certain conditions. Administration officials say over 40 million people are likely eligible for the relief.
The problem, according to the suits, is that the order is not legal.
“Nothing about loan cancellation is lawful or appropriate. In an end-run around Congress, the administration threatens to enact a profound and transformational policy that will have untold economic impacts. The administration’s lawless action should be stopped immediately,” one suit, filed in federal court in Indiana, states.
The “plain language and context” of the law that the administration cited does not give Cardona the authority to discharge or forgive student loan debt on a blanket basis, the other suit, filed in U.S. court in Oregon, says.
The Department of Education referred a request for comment to the White House, which did not immediately respond to a query.
“This is a promise that the president made on the campaign trail and this is an opportunity that the president to give Americans, American families a little breathing room,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre later told reporters in Washington when asked about the Indiana suit. She claimed that opponents of the plan “are trying to stop it because they know it will provide much-needed relief for American families,” and added that people who don’t want the cancellations can opt out.
Legal Basis
The U.S. government holds approximately $1.6 trillion in student debt, for more than 45 million people.
The debt is held in part by two systems—the Direct Loan Program and the Federal Family Education Loan Program. Under Cardona’s order, $10,000 to $20,000 in debt would be canceled for individuals who earn less than $125,000 per year or households that earn less than $250,000 per year.
The administration cited the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students (HEROES) Act of 2003, which says that the Department of Education can “waive or modify any statutory or regulatory provision applicable to the student financial assistance programs” when “necessary in connection with a war or other military operation or national emergency.”
Only people who are serving on active duty during a war or national emergency, reside in an area declared a disaster area, or who have suffered “direct economic hardship” as a direct result of a war or national emergency are eligible for the waiver or modification.
Lisa Brown, a Department of Education lawyer, said that the authority can be used because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The Secretary could waive or modify statutory and regulatory provisions to effectuate a certain amount of cancellation for borrowers who have been financially harmed because of the COVID-19 pandemic,” she said in a legal memorandum (pdf).
Christopher Schroeder, an assistant attorney general, also said the HEROES Act enables Cardona to execute his authority.
“We … conclude that reducing or canceling the principal balances of student loans, including for a broad class of borrowers who the Secretary determines suffered financial harm because of COVID-19, could be a permissible response to the COVID-19 pandemic,” Schroeder wrote in a memo (pdf).
The cases challenge that view.
“The bottom line is this—the HEROES Act just doesn’t give the authority for the administration to forgive, on blanket basis, all of these loans,” Steve Simpson, a senior attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), told The Epoch Times.
Plaintiffs
Simpson filed the lawsuit in Indiana on behalf of Frank Garrison, a PLF public interest attorney. Garrison has paid off some, but not all, of his student debt.
Garrison would be left worse off due to having to pay taxes on the amount forgiven under the program, according to the suit. Garrison has also been making regular payments, which makes him eligible for regular debt forgiveness, so his total amount owed will not change his monthly payment or total obligation, according to the suit.
“These taxes would not be owed for debt forgiveness under the Congressionally authorized program rewarding public service,” it states. “Mr. Garrison and millions of others similarly situated in the six relevant states will receive no additional benefit from the cancellation—just a one-time additional penalty.”
The suit says the Department of Education lacks the authority to promulgate the order.
“Yes, we’re technically still in the national emergency. Yes, the US is still technically a disaster area, but the mere fact of living in the United States doesn’t mean that the pandemic is preventing people from paying their loans and it’s just not how that law was intended,” Simpson said.
Daniel Laschober, the plaintiff in the other case, noted that the Department of Justice in 2021 said that the education secretary “does not have statutory authority to provide blanket or mass cancellation … whether due to the COVID-19 pandemic, or for any other reason.”
Laschober said his adjustable-rate mortgage will go up due to interest rates rising in part because of the student debt cancellation, which is estimated to cost $400 billion to $519 billion. The jump in mortgage payments would be higher than the relief he’d get from the administration’s action.
The cancellations are slated to start in October. PLF is asking for a temporary restraining order to be entered that would prevent the administration from starting the cancellations until the case is resolved.
The cellphone and other electronic devices of “Juror X,” whose social-media posts during a high-profile federal case created controversy, will not be subjected to forensic examination, a federal appeals court ruled.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, Ohio, refused to issue an order allowing a probe of the juror’s devices in the case of Alexander “P.G.” Sittenfeld, a former Cincinnati city councilman who was convicted of two federal corruption-related charges in July.
However, one of the judges opined that the Sept. 23 ruling goes too far, opining that the decision should have been tailored more narrowly to Sittenfeld’s case. Instead, the 25-page document (pdf) was issued as a “sweeping opinion” affecting cases throughout the four-state region that the court covers: Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Michigan.
Such controversies over alleged juror misconduct are expected to surface more frequently, experts said, given the near-universal use of electronic devices and difficulty in policing jurors’ use of them during trials.
The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, Ohio, has ruled on a case of alleged juror misconduct involving cellphone use during the trial of a former Cincinnati city councilman. (Photo courtesy of the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals)
Courts’ Authority Over Jurors is Limited
While courts possess “inherent authority” to question jurors about possible misconduct, that authority is limited, wrote Alice Batchelder, a senior U.S. circuit judge.
Courts “cannot search jurors’ personal devices and steamroll their Fourth Amendment rights in the process,” Batchelder wrote. That amendment protects U.S. citizens against the government’s “unreasonable” searches and seizures.
Batchelder noted that she and her colleagues, as well as lawyers in the case, were unable to locate any legal case that analyzed “any authority that would empower a court to order a juror to preserve her electronic communications, surrender her electronic devices or submit to forensic examination.”
Therefore, she wrote, the judges were “left in search of some legal authority that would so empower a court.”
Ultimately, the court concluded that a court’s power to examine juror misconduct “does not include an unlimited, inquisitorial power to order jurors to surrender their personal possessions, such as their electronic devices, or to divulge their passwords,” nor can the court “conduct a criminal inquisition.”
Lower Court Judge Decided Correctly, Court Rules
All three circuit judges agreed that U.S. District Judge Douglas Cole, the trial judge, was correct when he denied Sittenfeld’s request for examination of Juror X’s cellphone.
Toward the end of Sittenfeld’s nine-day trial on July 8, a court employee raised concerns that Juror X had repeatedly posted about her jury service on Facebook during the trial, despite Cole’s repeated admonishments that jurors were forbidden from communicating about the case to anyone by any means while the proceedings were ongoing.
However, previous court rulings have shown that “the mere occurrence of juror misconduct, extraneous information, or improper contact” is insufficient to warrant a new trial, the appeals court noted.
After learning about alleged juror misconduct, a defendant is entitled to a hearing to explore whether a juror’s contact with outside influences affected the outcome of the trial.
When such a hearing occurred in Sittenfeld’s case, Cole found no evidence that Juror X’s conduct robbed Sittenfeld of a fair trial.
This cellphone screenshot is among the exhibits that lawyers submitted in the case of Alexander “P.G.” Sittenfeld, an ex-Cincinnati city councilman who was convicted of bribery and attempted extortion. His lawyers say a juror violated court rules by repeatedly making posts such as this one about her jury service, from June 21, 2022. (Janice Hisle/The Epoch Times)
Juror X’s Actions Caused Reactions
In one Facebook post, Juror X opined that a fellow juror, identified as Juror Y, seemed biased against all politicians. Both jurors were questioned behind closed doors. Juror Y denied any alleged bias, and Juror X said she didn’t think her posts violated the judge’s no-communication orders because she didn’t divulge specifics. Juror X also allowed lawyers in the case to look at posts on her cellphone.
Sittenfeld’s lawyers argued for a deeper examination of Juror X’s social media activity, but Cole saw no reason to allow that. That’s why Sittenfeld’s lawyers directed their request to the U.S. Circuit Court in early August.
The lawyers had also sought, under a sealed request, to subpoena Facebook for the records, court records show. Instead, Cole allowed the questioning of two additional jurors. Lawyers interviewed Juror A and Juror B on Aug. 17. Both denied that any extraneous influence affected the verdict.
Jurors are considered “officers of the court,” the appeals court’s ruling said. “Thus, jurors are entitled to a level of respect or deference beyond that of an ordinary witness. We doubt that other officers of the court would submit meekly to a court-ordered search of their cellphones.”
The appeals court expressed concern over the fact that jurors are pressed into service as part of their civic duty, yet “Juror X was treated as a suspect while Juror Y, Juror A, and Juror B were treated like witnesses—reluctant, confused, and offended witnesses.”
Third Judge Concurs But Raises Concerns
U.S. Circuit Judge Julia Smith Gibbons agreed with her colleagues, Batchelder and Circuit Judge Amul Thapar in declining Sittenfeld’s requested probe of Juror X’s devices. But Gibbons wrote a separate opinion that raises interesting legal issues, said Ken Katkin, a Northern Kentucky University law professor who has followed the Sittenfeld case closely.
In her separate opinion, Gibbons said Cole did have the authority to order the cellphone examination if he thought it was warranted. Katkin agrees.
Such an order would be justified only if the judge had “a very strong idea” that the juror’s alleged misconduct could have affected the outcome of the case, Katkin said in a Sept. 26 interview with The Epoch Times. But Gibbons’ two colleagues said Cole lacked that authority in the first place.
“I think I think that’s not right,” Katkin said; he thinks Gibbons correctly stated that Cole did have the authority to order the cellphone probe, if the situation met “a stringent test” for use of that authority.
Gibbons also noted that her fellow judges strayed from their usual pattern of hearing oral arguments and allowing extensive legal briefings “when we set precedent of the type included in this opinion.”
It’s debatable whether the appellate court’s ruling could be classified as a precedent, Katkin said. The majority opinion interpreted Sittenfeld’s request as an “appeal” of Cole’s denial of the cellphone-probe request. However, Sittenfeld’s action could actually be considered a “separate request for emergency intervention in the middle of the case,” Katkin said, which would not be binding on other courts throughout the 6th Circuit.
More Legal Battles May Follow
A lot depends on what Sittenfeld’s lawyers do in response to the ruling, Katkin said.
Sittenfeld was acquitted of four charges but was convicted of one count each of bribery and attempted extortion in an alleged pay-to-play political fundraising scheme. He is still awaiting sentencing.
His lawyer, Charlie M. Rittgers of Lebanon, Ohio, declined to comment about the circuit court’s ruling. Federal prosecutors assigned to the case did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment Sept. 26.
Katkin predicted that similar disputes over jurors’ use of electronic devices are likely to recur. “Although the issue of what to do about improper juror communications with third parties has been around for a while, the ubiquity of social media and mobile phones today means that this issue is going to arise much more than it used to,” he wrote in an email. “In that sense, although these types of cases are not new, their number and the variety of situations in which they arise is new.”
Marcel Crok is a Dutch science journalist who spent years researching and writing on the topic of global climate change science. In this interview, Crok breaks down several blatant inconsistencies propped up by supporters of climate change initiatives despite the scientific evidence suggesting otherwise.
Crok then reveals the absurd methodology used by the climate science community to reach their “97 percent consensus” figure that is the linchpin to the entire climate change argument.
The conversation shifts to the rising sea levels debate, where Crok suggests that if CO2 were truly the cause of rising sea levels, we would have expected to see a dramatic increase in water levels after 1950 when global CO2 emissions spiked. The science simply doesn’t support this.
Crok concludes the conversation by discussing how faulty climate science is directly impacting his country, as recent evidence suggests as many as 1.2 million households in Holland will not be able to pay their energy bills this winter due to high energy prices that are a direct result of misguided climate policies.
Politicians who enacted strict COVID-19 measures including lockdowns and vaccine mandates should be brought to justice, says Republican MarylandAttorney General candidate Michael Peroutka.
“Nothing could be more on the point that all these lockdowns, mandates, orders, edicts, proclamations, declarations, whatever you want to call them, none of them were lawful. They were all violation of the law, and that can’t continue,” Peroutka told The Epoch Times. “Those people who have violated this document [the Maryland Constitution] need to be brought to justice.”
He believes that implementing the restrictions was an abuse of power under the Maryland Constitution, citing Article 44 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights, a document similar to the Bill of Rights.
Article 44 says “any departure” or “violation” of the provision of the U.S. Constitution and Maryland Constitution, for whatever reason, is subversive of “good Government.”
“I would investigate and prosecute anybody who did that,” he said.
He thinks the science behind the COVID-19 measures is far from being perfect, but even if it is, the law still prohibits the government from implementing such restrictions.
Peroutka was a presidential candidate in 2004 for the Constitution Party. He defeated Jim Shalleck, a former state and federal prosecutor, and won the Republican nomination for attorney general of Maryland in July.
Before running for the attorney general position, he was a council member for Anne Arundel County between 2014 and 2018.
He also holds the view that “overreach” is not enough to define what both the federal government and the Old Line State government did during the pandemic.
“I wouldn’t even call it ‘overreach.’ I think to some extent ‘overreach’ is a bad term. If the government reaches where it has no right to reach at all, that’s not overreaching, that’s just criminal. That’s a misuse of the office,” he said.
Stopping Lawlessness in Government
Peroutka has an uphill battle ahead of him.
The Democrats have held the Maryland Attorney General’s Office for decades. The last time a Republican presided over the office in Maryland was between 1952 and 1954.
As a vehement Constitution originalist, Peroutka believes the Constitution should be interpreted as to how the Founders intended in the context of belief and morality.
“The whole of the [living] Constitution idea is invented by people who don’t want to follow the Constitution at all,” he said.
If elected to preside over the Office of the Attorney General, his utmost priority will be stopping lawlessness in government. In addition, he also strongly supports the Second Amendment and vows to protect the right to life.
Peroutka believes so-called red flag laws are unlawful and don’t have due process.
He said he will prosecute those who try to enforce them.
“Red flag laws say, ‘we’ll take your property now. And then we’ll check into the due process later to see whether that was OK.’ No, that’s not due process. That’s a violation of the Constitution,” he said.
Democrat Candidate’s Policy Agenda
Rep. Anthony Brown (D-Md.), the Democrat candidate, has a long record of public service.
He was elected to the U.S. House in 2016. He was the lieutenant governor of Maryland between 2007 and 2015 and a Maryland state assemblyman between 1999 and 2007.
He served in the U.S. Army as an aviation officer from 1984 to 1989 and in the U.S. Army Reserve for 25 years after that.
The Epoch Times has reached out to Brown’s campaign for comment.
Rep. Anthony Brown (D-Md.) speaks in Baltimore, Md., on May 17, 2021. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
According to his campaign website, Brown is running on a typical Democrat Party platform. His policy priorities include expanding voting access in Maryland, legalizing marijuana, protecting abortion, protecting the environment and fighting climate change, and ensuring equity, equality, and fairness to help black Maryland residents.
He also pledges to continue his long-time work in regulating guns, following introducing and co-sponsoring several bills in the U.S. House intended to regulate guns.
He supports red flag laws, wants to raise the minimum age for gun purchases, and backs microstamping ammunition for semi-automatic handguns.
Texas has joined a Louisiana-led coalition of 17 state attorneys general opposing a rushed U.S. Senate bill they say would let the Biden administration “run roughshod over states’ rights” by advancing a “radically impractical energy agenda.”
Meanwhile, the White House sees the legislation as enabling and connecting “clean energy” into the country’s electricity grid.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Monday co-signed a letter to Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) opposing the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2022, saying it is effectively a back door to the failed Obama-era Clean Power Plan.
According to the letter, the bill contains three interrelated provisions that, when taken together, allow private companies and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to eviscerate states’ ability to chart their own land-use and energy policies.
“First, it would authorize private companies to use eminent domain against state land. Second, it would authorize FERC to command utilities to construct entirely new transmission facilities whenever and wherever FERC deems necessary,” the letter states (pdf).
“And third, it would authorize companies to spread costs of constructing new transmission facilities onto residents of other states, requiring citizens of one state to subsidize the agenda of politicians and bureaucrats in other states.”
Under eminent domain, a governmental authority can seize property from a private or public owner for public purposes.
Paxton’s office said in a statement that this would allow the Biden administration, largely through the FERC, to “run roughshod over states’ rights by advancing a radically impractical energy agenda, all while forcing taxpayers to foot the bill.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Sept. 21 that the legislation, which she said will boost America’s ability to get clean energy built and connected to the grid, has the support of President Joe Biden.
“Today, far too many energy projects face delays—keeping us from generating and shipping critical, cost-saving clean energy to families and businesses across America,” Jean-Pierre said in a statement. “This is an important step forward to further unlock the potential of these projects and the good-paying jobs they support.”
The bill itself states that it directs the president to “develop a plan for the United States to achieve energy independence by 2024.” It also approves the TransCanada Keystone Pipeline in Phillips County, Montana—one of the state signatories to Monday’s letter.
Getting Around States’ Rights, Undermining Voters
The attorneys general expressed concern that the bill will empower “certain states and companies favored” by the Biden administration and the current FERC majority to distort states’ energy policies, take state and private land, and force everyone to pay for it even if they didn’t vote for it.
So long as the Biden administration deems certain energy projects to be in the “national interest,” Paxton’s office said the FERC would likely have the ability to command private companies to “construct new and extremely expensive transmission facilities wherever and whenever FERC determines.”
Under the bill, a simple three-vote majority of the FERC commissioners is all that’s needed to commandeer companies, which the attorneys general said effectively “eviscerates” state sovereign authority.
They said this would undermine the “power of each citizen’s vote to decide policies” at the state level. Further, the citizens of their states would be forced to subsidize the costs of the “expensive and unreliable energy policy preferences of California and New York.”
Taxpayers would be forced to pay for the transmission facilities even if they don’t live in that state and have no access to the energy they may create, according to Paxton’s office, which noted that this would “advance the Biden administration’s radical climate agenda.”
“Even worse, these drastic and draconian changes are being rushed through without committee hearings, markups, and the full debate expected of the world’s greatest deliberative body,” the letter states.
“This utter lack of transparency is a manifestation of Congress’ ‘new normal,’ under which laws are passed before the several States and their citizens can find out what is in them.”
“Even Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson never sought to disrupt this federalist system. And worse, it is being proposed with little to no time for the American people to be informed about the costs that will be imposed upon them when these misguided policies are implemented,” the letter states.
The Epoch Times asked Schumer’s office for comment.
An 84-year-old volunteer canvasser in Michigan was shot following an argument while distributing pro-life pamphlets door-to-door in her community about a state abortion ballot proposal.
According to a Sept. 24 statement from Right to Life of Michigan, a “heated conversation” took place on Sept. 20 between one of its local volunteers and an occupant of a home in Odessa, a small community near Grand Rapids.
As the volunteer was leaving the residence, she was allegedly shot in the rear part of her shoulder by a man who hadn’t been a part of the discussion.
Grand Rapids TV 8 reported on Sept. 23 that the wounded woman drove herself to the Lake Odessa Police Department to report the shooting.
Abortion-rights activists chant while marching from City Hall to a Planned Parenthood clinic in Santa Monica, Calif., on July 16, 2022. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
She was taken to the hospital for treatment and later released. The woman is recovering from her wound and is in good spirits and will be going out campaigning again, Right to Life of Michigan communications and education director Anna Visser told The Epoch Times on Sept. 26.
“She is a strong, dedicated, longtime, pro-life volunteer who is not easily intimidated. We are happy she is OK.
“No one deserves to be shot for their beliefs, whatever they may be,” Visser said.
Visser said the shooting is being investigated by the Michigan State Police and that Right to Life is eagerly awaiting the police report.
“Whatever happens, we will continue to have volunteers go door-to-door. To our people, the cause of saving innocent lives is so important that it warrants the risk. We will not be intimidated.”
She told The Epoch Times, “Our volunteer that was shot went visiting all by herself.
“We strongly encourage all volunteers to be cautious and go out in pairs or in small groups. And they should watch for ‘No Soliciting’ signs.”
The victim, who wants to remain anonymous, doesn’t know the identity of the man who allegedly shot her or his motive, according to the Right to Life statement.
TV 8 reported that law enforcement sources described the prelude to the shooting as “an alleged verbal altercation while she [the volunteer] passed out pamphlets.”
The literature the volunteer was distributing explained why Proposal 3, a citizen-initiated ballot proposal that seeks to enshrine abortion access in the state’s constitution, is “so misleading and dangerous.”
Proposal 3, also known as the Right to Reproductive Freedom Initiative (RRFI), is supported by Reproductive Freedom for All, a coalition of groups including the Michigan chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Planned Parenthood.
An activist holds a sign supporting Planned Parenthood, in Los Angeles, on May 21, 2019. (Ronen Tivony/Getty Images)
“The majority of Michiganders know that abortion is health care,” Loren Khogali, executive director of the ACLU of Michigan, wrote on the organization’s website. “Michigan is on the right side of history as we lead the way with Reproductive Freedom for All.
“The Supreme Court’s overturn of Roe v. Wade will not take away the rights and freedoms of people in Michigan to determine if and when they become a parent.
“We will not allow forced pregnancy in our state, nor will we stand by as the devastating impacts of a post-Roe world disproportionately impact people of color [and] LGBT communities.”
The Great Lakes Justice Center (GLJC), an opponent of the RRFI, recently posted online an issues brief detailing what it calls “the perils of Proposal 3.”
The brief says in part: “If passed, the RRFI will enshrine in Michigan’s Constitution the most extreme abortion law in the country. It creates a new, unlimited, and unregulated right to abortion and an additional, undefined ‘right to reproductive freedom.’”
According to the GLJC analysis, the proposed amendment gives the new right of reproductive freedom to all “individuals,” including children.
It would allow a minor child to have an abortion without the knowledge or consent of the child’s parents and gives the child the right to procure a sex change without the parents’ knowledge or consent.
GLJC also contends that sex between an adult and a minor child will be protected by the amendment, as long as the child consents.
The GLJC analysis concludes by stating that new “reproductive freedom rights” would invalidate numerous existing laws protecting women, children, and parents.
Geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan has dismissed the possibility of electric vehicles (EVs) going mainstream in the next 10 years owing to limitations on materials and unresolved supply chain issues.
“The lithium comes from one place, and it’s all processed in China. So, just building the alternate processing infrastructure … and by the way, we have to invade Russia too … just to get the materials to do EVs at scale is just laughable for the next decade. We need a new technological series of breakthroughs in material sciences before that is possible,” Zeihan said on Sept. 8 at the 54th Annual ECC PerspECCtive Conference in San Antonio, Texas.
In a post on his personal website, Zeihan points out that electrifying “everything” will require more copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt, zinc, chromium, graphite, silicon, rare earths, and other materials. A single electric car needs 200 kilograms (441 pounds) of such materials, whereas a conventional car only demands less than 50 kilograms (110 pounds).
Moving away from oil involves walking away from complex, often violent, and always critical supply and transport systems, “only to replace it with at least 10 more,” he said.
The United States will not just have to deal with Russia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, but also with countries like Chile, Bolivia, South Africa, Peru, Mexico, Germany, Indonesia, and China, where such materials needed for electric vehicles are concentrated.
In May, Carlos Tavares, CEO of automotive manufacturing company Stellantis, warned that the world could experience a shortage of EV batteries by 2024–25, and then a shortage of materials for producing the EVs. This will slow down the adoption of electric vehicles by 2027–28, he stated, according to CNBC.
US Adoption
Zeihan’s observations about EVs come as some U.S. states are aggressively pushing forward the adoption of electric vehicles despite lacking the infrastructure to support them.
California is trying to ban the sale of diesel commercial trucks by 2040 and gas-powered cars by 2035. However, the state advised electric car owners not to charge vehicles in early September owing to a shortage of electricity.
The shift to renewable energy sources does not come cheap. The United States will have to spend trillions of dollars to upgrade power grids to accommodate renewable energy demands, according to research firm Wood Mackenzie.
“We estimate the cost of full decarbonization of the US power grid at US$4.5 trillion, given the current state of technology … From a budgetary perspective, the cost is staggering at US$35,000 per household—nearly US$2,000 per year if assuming a 20-year plan,” Wood Mackenzie said in a post.
Globally, the International Energy Agency has set a target of 47 million EV sales by 2030. Speaking to the Financial Times, Daniel Morgan, a mining analyst at investment bank Barrenjoey, cited 28 million as a realistic target. But even this would require lithium production to rise by six times by 2030.
EV production targets being made by governments or carmakers are impossible to meet, Morgan said. “There’s a great love of throwing out lofty targets, but where the rubber hits the road it’s not going to happen.”
Morgan Stanley’s Chief U.S. Equity Strategist Michael Wilson said that he’s convinced a corporate earnings recession is coming—and that it could be worse than a “normal” recession.
Wilson said in a Sept. 26 interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that his team at Morgan Stanley is looking closely at the U.S. business earnings story and the impact of corporate profits on equities, which have been on a wild ride in recent months.
“We think it’s unavoidable … to avoid an earnings recession and that’s what matters for stocks,” Wilson said, with his remarks coming on the same day that the so-called Wall Street fear gauge soared to its highest level since mid-June when U.S. equities last hit a bear market bottom.
The CBOE Volatility Index, known as the VIX, tracks the 30-day implied volatility of the benchmark S&P 500 and is seen a measure of stock market investor fear.
The volatility gauge surged to a reading of 32.88 on Sept. 26, its highest level since it closed above the psychological barrier of 30 in the middle of June amid a sharp stock selloff.
‘Fire and Ice Scenario’
Wilson told CNBC that a relatively strong run of economic data, in particular labor market indicators, give room for the Federal Reserve to continue with its aggressive rate hikes, complicating the outlook for risk assets.
“Economic surprise data has actually been to the upside lately,” Wilson said. He added that until more economic indicators roll over—for instance when we see U.S. factory PMIs in the 40s and other indicators like jobless claims jumping to a level “that would indicate we’re going to have a true unemployment recession” and until the dollar peaks and begins to ease—then the bottom will likely be in for stocks.
“It’s all inter-related,” he continued. “Whether it’s earnings or whether it’s the economy, we’re in a cyclical downturn for growth and that’s the fire and ice scenario to a tee,” he added, referring to the Fed hiking rates at the same time as growth slows.
Americans have seen their nominal wages go up but soaring prices have pushed real wages—which are adjusted for inflation—down, putting pressure on consumers, Wilson pointed out.
“It’s a difficult setup,” Wilson said. He added that what’s different about this downturn is that companies might be inclined to hold on to workers longer than normally due to labor shortages and the expected challenge in hiring staff once the economy picks up again.
Raindrops hang on a sign for Wall Street outside the New York Stock Exchange on Oct. 26, 2020. (Mike Segar/Reuters)
Businesses reluctant to cut staff in the face of deteriorating economic conditions and as demand falls would put more pressure on profit margins, he warned. This could lead to a situation where unemployment doesn’t move up meaningfully but corporate earnings plunge.
“That’s another risk to our earnings story,” Wilson said. “Whether there’s a recession or not, because you could have a situation where you don’t get an employment cycle, but the earnings recession is actually worse than if you had a normal recession.”
Separately, in an analytical note cited by Bloomberg, Wilson and his team of strategists said the soaring dollar was creating an “untenable situation” for stocks and this, combined with central banks tightening policy “at a historically hawkish pace,” means that odds are growing for “something to break.”
Wilson sees more downside for the S&P 500, predicting that the benchmark index will drop to the 3,000 to 3,400 point-level later this year or early in 2023.
Wall Street Ends Lower, Dow Confirms Bear Market
Wall Street slid deeper into bear market territory on Sept. 23, with the S&P 500 and Dow closing lower amid investor concern that a hawkish Fed would keep tightening monetary settings aggressively and tip the economy into a sharper downturn.
After two weeks of mostly steady losses on the U.S. stock market, the Dow Jones Industrial Average confirmed it has been in a bear market since early January. The Dow is now down 20.5 percent from its record high close on Jan. 4, meeting the rule-of-thumb definition for a bear market, namely ending the session down 20 percent or more from its record high close.
The S&P 500 confirmed in June it was in a bear market, and on Sept. 26 it closed below its mid-June low, extending this year’s selloff.
Last week, the Fed signaled that high interest rates could persist through 2023 owing to persistently high inflation, sending risk assets falling.
In its most recent summary of economic projections (pdf), the Fed expects to raise rates to 4.6 percent in 2023. The current Fed Funds rate is in the range of 3.00–3.25 percent.
The Fed also expects to see unemployment rise from the current 3.7 percent to 4.4 percent by next year.
The Western Journal’s mission is to equip readers with the truth, and we’re excited to bring that same passion to our podcast. You’ll hear from writers, editors and special guests on the most important topics of the day: the Biden administration, Big Tech censorship, liberal lies, gas prices, COVID and the latest leftist violence.
Once again, radical leftist polices and narratives have backfired on the communities they claimed to be protecting.
Minneapolis, the city which birthed the radical “Defund the Police” movement, is up in arms about the increasing levels of criminal violence.
The conviction of officer Derek Chauvin on charges of second- and third-degree murder understandably weakened Minneapolis’ police resolve.
Even a recent CNN article described the city’s “sinking morale in the wake of the unrest after Floyd’s killing” and went on to reference the dramatic loss of officers, stating, “[L]eaders at the Minneapolis Police Department say the officer head count has shrunk from 900 in early 2020 to about 560 in August — a loss of more than a third of the force.”
Naturally, the dramatic reduction in policing staff has had negative effects on the largely black Minneapolis communities.
The same CNN article stated that “…wait times have grown for people who call 911 to report serious ‘priority 1’ incidents, which can include shots fired, robberies, assaults and mental health crises. … The perception among many residents is that the police ignore the area.”
According to CNN, 93 people were murdered in Minneapolis last year, doubled from 2019 and “just a few shy of the total killings in 1995, when the city earned the nickname ‘Murderapolis.’”
Resident Paul Johnson described the area in the north side of the city as nothing short of lawless. “You pull up to get gas — they try to sell you drugs. And not just three or four, but it’s a bulk of people,” he explained.
And where there are drugs being sold, there are rival gangs willing to use violence to control who sells them. This violence is tragically affecting the most innocent among these neighborhoods.
Should cities face repercussions for leaving citizens unprotected by law enforcement?Yes No
Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
CNN interviewed a long-time resident of Minneapolis, KG Wilson, who tragically lost his six-year-old granddaughter to this rampant violence when she was struck by crossfire from rival gangs in North Minneapolis just this last year. Her murderer is still at large.
Wilson is not the first victim of such mindless violence, and some neighborhoods in these black majority areas are now trying to increase MPD presence in their neighborhoods in lieu of the soaring crime levels.
The Minneapolis Post reported on a new “buyback” program through the city. There is “new program created by the MPD whereby neighborhoods can schedule more police patrols if residents pay for the overtime costs that the city won’t fund.”
Despite the damage having already been done, Minnesota Democrats who vehemently pushed for “police reform” in the form of kangaroo court trials, slashing of budgets and media slander are quickly changing their tune with the November mid-terms looming.
Democratic Governor Tim Walz, according to the Star Tribune, is laughably “framing himself as a tough-on-crime supporter of law enforcement as he seeks re-election.”
This coming from the same governor who ordered the surrender of Minneapolis’ Third Police Precinct to a mob of rioters, a question he recently ignored answering, according to “Alpha News.”
This is also the same governor who let the city itself be burned and looted for three days before calling in the National Guard.
Even the staunchly left-leaning Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey turned on the governor’s handling of the rioting.
The Washington Examiner quoted Frey: “Walz was hesitating.” The mayor “called it a ‘hit in the gut’ to see Walz’s team call his response an ‘abject failure’ while slow-walking the call to the National Guard.”
Even President Biden, who has jumped at nearly every opportunity to support the radical “Defund the Police” movement, stated in February of this year, “The answer is not to abandon our streets. That’s not the answer,” Fox News reported.
Biden’s vague and meaningless statement came during a trip to New York City “after thousands of uniformed police officers from across the nation traveled to Manhattan to pay their respects to fallen NYPD Detectives Jason Rivera and Wilbert Mora, who were shot and killed while responding to a domestic violence call [the previous] month.”
Despite all the pandering and finger pointing that Democratic leadership loves to engage in, their progressive policies are not only ineffective but dangerous. And no amount of campaign slogans or empty promises will bring back the lives lost by these foolish ideals.
You remember the drill. Posters, TV announcements, social media posts, even electric highway traffic signs all bore the same message: Get vaccinated. Save yourself. Save your family. Save your community.
Get vaccinated.
Except the vaccines don’t always prevent COVID.
Case in point — Albert Bourla, CEO of big vaccine pusher Pfizer, got the shot four times.
And he’s the guy who last year said those making profits by spreading “misinformation” about the shots were “criminals.”
Yet, despite getting COVID, Bourla celebrates his shots. That’s because — and some say there’s evidence to support this ––the shots reduce the effect of symptoms.
In Bourla’s case, he reported testing positive for COVID but had no symptoms.
I have tested positive for COVID. I’m feeling well & symptom free. I’ve not had the new bivalent booster yet, as I was following CDC guidelines to wait 3 months since my previous COVID case which was back in mid-August. While we’ve made great progress, the virus is still with us.
But at what risk? Data are hard to come by (no doubt, intentionally).
Then there was the claim by Bourla that Pfizer’s shot was 100 percent effective in preventing COVID among a sample of 800 South Africans.
Excited to share that updated analysis from our Phase 3 study with BioNTech also showed that our COVID-19 vaccine was 100% effective in preventing #COVID19 cases in South Africa. 100%! https://t.co/E2ksTJSopU
Sounds too good to be true, right? Well, yes. Sort of.
The company revised its vaccine’s effectiveness to 91 percent, based on a larger sample size and a longer test period, Aljazeera reported.
But then came the omicron variant. Against it, Pfizer’s shot was determined to be 30 percent effective, according to an analysis of 78,000 people in South Africa, NPR said.
Another study of blood plasma from just 12 people in South African showed the Pfizer shot’s omicron effectiveness may have been as low as 23 percent, Time reported.
So effects surrounding COVID have not been as simplistic as the propaganda made them out to be.
After all, Joe Biden told everyone to get vaccinated so they wouldn’t get COVID.
But, despite vaccination, he got COVID.
America’s doctor-in-chief, Anthony Fauci, declared that by all that is sacred by science (as embodied in himself), everyone should be vaccinated. Fauci took Pfizer’s drug, but he got COVID.
In the face of it all, it was determined early in the pandemic that older people with multiple co-morbidities were most at risk of dying. The risk to children has been statistically near zero.
Yet Pfizer, which has made billions from COVID shots, was salivating over giving the shots to children and babies. In June, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave the company, along with Moderna, approval to give the shots to infants as young as 6 months.
So here we are. COVID is over, except perhaps in the minds of some public health officials, Democratic politicians and pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer.
The past two and a half years have been costly. But I’ll not dwell on the harm to human health, economies, education, social interactions and all the other things prompted by events separate from the COVID sickness itself.
Other than to say that many have come to the conclusion that two more institutions can be removed from the realm of needed public trust: Big Pharma and its close ally, Big Medicine.
Democrat Gabe Vasquez called to defund police in interview he gave under fake name, investigation shows
New Mexico Democrat Gabe Vasquez gave a fake name during an anti-police rant to a journalist at a Black Lives Matter protest in the summer of 2020, a Washington Free Beacon investigation found. Now, the congressional hopeful is burying the evidence.
During a June 2020 Black Lives Matter protest in Las Cruces, N.M., a local reporter interviewed one attendee who furiously expressed his desire to defund police. “We need serious police reform in this country,” the man said over chants of “no justice, no peace.” “It’s not just about defunding police, it’s about defunding a system that privileges white people over everyone else.” While the interviewee—who shielded much of his face in a hat, neck gaiter, and sunglasses—identified himself as “James Hall,” a “Las Cruces resident,” the facial features he did show bore a curious resemblance to then-city council member Gabe Vasquez.
That’s because the interviewee was, in fact, Vasquez, a former city official who monitored the protest told the Free Beacon. Contemporaneous evidence reviewed by the Free Beacon, meanwhile, supports the assertion. Vasquez tweeted live from the event on June 6, 2020, sharing first-person photos accompanied with the hashtags “BlackLivesMattters [sic]” and “Las Cruces.” Six months later, Vasquez shared a photo that showed him sporting the same distinct, teal-and-orange neck gaiter he wore in the interview. That gaiter, the Free Beacon found, is sold by a small New Mexico-based fly fishing business, Where the River Runs. Vasquez is a self-described “avid angler,” and in 2018, the Democrat interviewed Where the River Runs founder Gregg Flores on his “conservation podcast,” during which Vasquez described a “really cool adventure” he had with Flores through a “project” the pair collaborated on. Vasquez is also a frequent commenter on the company’s Facebook page.
Roughly two years after the ordeal, Vasquez has quietly deleted much of the evidence that ties him to the interview, a clear indication that the Democrat feels his impassioned plea to defund police will hurt his bid to unseat Rep. Yvette Herrell (R.) in New Mexico’s Second Congressional District. Gone from Vasquez’s Twitter are both his live post from the Las Cruces protest and the smiling selfie that shows him wearing the same mask from the protest. Those deletions are recent—both posts were active as of Tuesday.
Vasquez did not return a request for comment. After publication of this article, the campaign confirmed in a statement to Politico that it is Vasquez giving the anti-police interview but blamed the local news station for the fake name. “The name was attributed to him by the news station when he declined to give his name as he wanted the focus to be on the organizers,” a Vasquez spokesperson said.
The news station in question, KVIA, told the Free Beacon that the false identification of Vasquez was the result of a “technical error.” KVIA said the station could not provide extended raw footage of the 2020 interview with Vasquez.
The former city official who monitored the protest said he and other local officeholders identified Vasquez as soon as they saw the news clip featuring “Hall,” citing their interactions with Vasquez when the Democrat served on the city council. “I was disappointed when I saw that because … he was using words that could encourage riots,” the former official told the Free Beacon. “Exercise your First Amendment rights, but let’s not have harm.”
Vasquez may have deleted social media posts linking him to the 2020 protest and interview, but the Democrat’s Twitter account still features its fair share of anti-police rhetoric. In June 2020, Vasquez called to “deconstruct and rebuild the systems of oppression that keep black people in perpetual harm,” which he said included “law enforcement” and “the economy.” Just days earlier, Vasquez said, “As long as white folks … dominate this nation’s wealth and preside over our nation’s governing bodies & judicial systems, the racism, killing, & injustice will continue.”
Vasquez also expressed interest in cutting police budgets during his time on the Las Cruces City Council, though his statement was much more restrained when compared with his protest interview.
“If we do have to take budget away from specific department[s], whether it be police or otherwise—I don’t think we have to, because we have a budget that I think can support that currently,” Vasquez, who served on the city council from 2017 to 2021, said in a September 2020 interview. “But we also have to look at where the inefficiencies are, where the redundancies are, where we would not rather respond with force or with police. And, you know, if we don’t need those positions anymore … then we need to get rid of them, and that’s a decision I’m happy to try to champion at the city council.” Vasquez’s campaign site now says that “police reform, not police defunding, is the right way to move forward.”
Vasquez launched his congressional run in September 2021, touting his “proven record of fighting for New Mexicans.” He will face Herrell in November after defeating his Democratic primary opponent, Darshan Patel, by 56 points in June. Vasquez has raised $1.2 million to Herrell’s $2.7 million.
Update, 9:20 p.m.: This piece was updated with comment from the Vazquez campaign and KVIA.
WASHINGTON (Reuters)—The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Saturday launched a new office that will be focused on the needs of minority communities overburdened by pollution and oversee the delivery of $3 billion in environmental justice grants created by the recent passage of new climate legislation.
EPA Administrator Michael Regan announced the creation of the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, which will be staffed by 200 EPA employees and led by a not-yet-announced Senate-confirmed assistant administrator.
He launched the new office at an event in Warren County, North Carolina, which was the site of protests 40 years ago that is regarded as the birthplace of the environmental justice movement.
“With the launch of a new national program office, we are embedding environmental justice and civil rights into the DNA of EPA and ensuring that people who’ve struggled to have their concerns addressed see action to solve the problems they’ve been facing for generations,” Regan said in a statement.
It was the latest move by the Biden administration to prioritize environmental justice in its policymaking. The Justice Department in May announced the launch of a new office to help low-income areas and communities of color battle the disproportionate impact of air and water pollution.
President Joe Biden has often cited protecting poor and minority communities from industrial pollution as a top priority and has pledged that 40% of federal clean energy investments will be channeled to the cause.
The Inflation Reduction Act signed by Biden last month created a $3 billion climate and environmental justice block grant program that the new office will oversee. Overall, the legislation will unleash a $60 billion investment in environmental justice across the government.
The office will engage with and give technical assistance to communities to ensure they can access grants; enforce federal civil rights laws and provide help with environmental conflict resolution.
(Reporting by Valerie Volcovici; Editing by Alistair Bell)
(Reuters)—Wall Street’s main indexes extended declines on Monday as investors continued to fret about the Federal Reserve’s aggressive policy tightening and its impact on the U.S. economy.
The last two weeks have been rough for U.S. stocks, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average coming within spitting distance of a bear market in the previous session, after the Federal Reserve signaled that high interest rates could last through 2023 on Wednesday.
The S&P 500 index has shed almost all of its gains made in the summer and is hovering near its mid-June closing low of 3,666 hit on Friday.
The morning session kicked off with some hope of a rebound after the Nasdaq index rose as much as 1.4%, only to edge lower as a bounce in growth stocks proved short-lived.
Gains in sectors housing megacap growth companies, including technology, consumer discretionary, and communication services, petered out by early afternoon, with Apple Inc, Microsoft Corp, Amazon.com Inc, and Tesla Inc only up between 0.3% and 0.9%.
“Bargain hunters tend to step in when markets hit year-to-date lows and that will typically drive those sorts of bounces,” said Randy Frederick, managing director of trading and derivatives for Charles Schwab in Austin, Texas.
“Obviously, there are concerns about continued tightening of the Fed policy, the next rate hike doesn’t happen till early November, but it’s a virtual certainty that it will happen.”
Trading sentiment was also hurt by dramatic moves in the global forex market as the sterling hit an all-time low on worries that the new British government’s fiscal plan threatened to stretch the country’s finances to their limits. [MKTS/GLOB]
That also added an extra layer of volatility to markets worried about a global recession amid soaring prices. The CBOE Volatility index, hovered near three-month highs
At 12:41 p.m. ET the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 314.77 points, or 1.06%, at 29,275.64, the S&P 500 was down 36.67 points, or 0.99%, at 3,656.56 and the Nasdaq Composite was down 57.06 points, or 0.53%, at 10,810.87.
Shares of casino operators Wynn Resorts, Las Vegas Sands Corp and Melco Resorts & Entertainment jumped between 12.2% and 25.1% after Macau planned to open to mainland Chinese tour groups in November for the first time in almost three years.
Declining issues outnumbered advancers for a 4.43-to-1 ratio on the NYSE and for a 2.24-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq. The S&P index recorded no new 52-week high and 87 new lows, while the Nasdaq recorded 12 new highs and 424 new lows.
(Reporting by Shreyashi Sanyal and Ankika Biswas in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D’Silva and Shounak Dasgupta)
Democrat Emilia Sykes wants voters to think she’s a consensus builder who worked with Republicans in the Ohio state House to cut taxes. In reality, she voted against bipartisan tax cut bills at least three times and helped hike the state’s gas tax once.
In Sykes’s latest televised ad for her House campaign in Ohio’s 13th district, she touts her success working “with both parties to raise pay … and cut taxes.” Sykes then cites a singular vote on a 2019 budget that lowered the state income tax.
But since entering office in 2015, Sykes has mostly opposed bipartisan tax cuts. A Washington Free Beacon review of legislative records found that Sykes voted against lowering the state’s income tax at least three times, with her most recent “No” vote cast in 2021.
Sykes also voted to hike the state’s gas and diesel tax in 2019. That bill, which passed despite bipartisan opposition, hiked the gas tax by over 38 percent and the diesel tax by over 71 percent.
Sykes is not alone in fudging her record. Democrats across the country facing tough elections in November are desperately trying to shed their party label and convince voters they will be nonpartisan lawmakers, rather than a rubber stamp for party leadership.
But that pitch is a hard sell for Sykes and other Ohio Democrats such as Senate candidate Rep. Tim Ryan, who represents the 13th district, particularly in a state that overwhelmingly supported former president Donald Trump in 2020. Despite holding higher-office ambitions in purple states, both candidates have spent much of their political careers voting as rank-and-file Democrats.
Sykes is considered a top recruit by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Sykes comes from a wealthy political family that once filed a lawsuit after she lost a beauty pageant. The Free Beacon reported on the lawsuit, which included claims from the Sykes family that the ordeal resulted in at least $75,000 in damages due to psychological distress.
Sykes did not respond to a request for comment.
Every tax cut bill Sykes opposed received bipartisan support. In 2015, she voted against legislation to reduce Ohio’s income tax to its lowest rate in over three decades.
That bill passed, earning the votes of two Democrats in the state House and one Democrat in the state Senate. Two years later, Sykes voted against another tax bill that reduced personal income tax rates and brackets. One state Senate Democrat voted for its passage.
Sykes also did not join her 23 Democratic state House colleagues in supporting a nearly $2 billion tax cut for Ohio residents in 2021. The bill also included tax refunds for residents who worked remotely in 2021 but still paid municipal taxes in localities at which their offices were located.
The nonpartisan Tax Foundation applauded the bill as “rectifying the problematic taxation of nonresidents during the pandemic.” The group added that, prior to the bill’s passage, Ohio was “taxing people in places in which they no longer work.” Those provisions and others, including increased funding for child care and broadband internet, brought onboard every Democratic state senator but one.
Sykes will face off in November against conservative commentator and former Miss Ohio Madison Gesiotto Gilbert. While the Cook Political Report considers the race a tossup, a May survey of voters in the district found Gesiotto Gilbert leading by 9 points.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden’s executive actions canceling some student loan debt will cost about $400 billion, the Congressional Budget Office said on Monday.
Mike Franken is accused of having ‘1950s interactions’ with ‘several’ women
A Democratic Senate candidate who has raised millions in his bid to unseat Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) was accused last week of sexually assaulting his former campaign manager. MSNBC, CNN, and other national media have yet to give the story any attention.
Mike Franken has raised more than $4.6 million and won the support of prominent Democrats such as Sens. Mark Kelly (Ariz.) and Tim Kaine (Va.) in his Senate run. That effort was derailed on Sept. 19 when he was accused of forcibly kissing his former campaign manager Kim Strope-Boggus, according to a police report she filed in April.
But you might have missed that if you get your news from MSNBC and CNN, which haven’t dedicated a single second of coverage to the alleged sexual misconduct. Likewise, mainstream papers like the New York Times and Washington Post have also failed to report on the allegations.
Politico broke the mainstream media silence on Monday with an interview in which Franken claims the incident never happened and calls the report a “desperate move” from “a Republican paper funded by Chuck Grassley, funded by the Republicans.” The Des Moines Register, Gazette, and other Iowa-based outlets have also reported on the accusation.
Franken is the latest Democrat to benefit from selective media coverage amid a potential scandal. Many mainstream media outlets refused to report on Hunter Biden’s laptop in the runup to the 2020 presidential election. An adviser to disgraced former governor Andrew Cuomo (D., N.Y.) bragged last year that MSNBC host Katy Tur read her “spin” on air while discussing Cuomo’s sexual assault allegations.
Grassley campaign spokeswoman Michaela Sundermann told the Washington Free Beacon that “no Republican nominee would be afforded the same treatment” Franken has gotten from national media. Sundermann also denied Franken’s claim that Grassley “funds” the Iowa Field Report.
“The Grassley campaign runs ads on Iowa Field Report—the same practice as every other campaign across the country running ads on news networks and websites,” Sundermann said. “Does Mike Franken ‘fund’ every television network, print outlet, and website he runs ads on?”
Strope-Boggus told police the assault occurred during a night of drinking in Des Moines. She also said Franken has had “1950s interactions” with “several other women.” Franken is married with two children.
Franken’s legal team pressured Strope-Boggus not to speak about her termination from the campaign, the police report also shows. Members of the Iowa Republican Party have urged Franken to release Strope-Boggus from her nondisclosure agreement.
“Nondisclosure agreements are used to keep victims silent,” Iowa GOP chairman Jeff Kaufmann said. “While Franken is free to call the victim a liar, he’s forcing her into silence.”
Franken’s campaign has said there is nothing keeping Strope-Boggus from speaking out. The Des Moines Police Department chose not to pursue the case further after speaking with the county attorney, who determined no criminal action had occurred. Last week, Strope-Boggus told a Gazette columnist she will not comment further about the incident.
Franken’s campaign platform promises to “end sexual discrimination, as well as workplace sexual harassment.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) told Democrats this month he believes Franken won’t win, Punchbowl News reported. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee announced a $15 million spending spree in races, but no money went to Iowa.
Franken told Politico he believes Schumer is “happy with our performance, and secretly … proud of how we’re doing.” He is trailing 7 points behind Grassley, according to the latestFiveThirtyEight polling average.
Violent crime continues to rise across the United States, and Democratic politicians are struggling to defend their anti-law enforcement policies that have in some cases resulted in preventable deaths. This alarming crime wave has coincided with a marked increase in the number of Democratic donors, operatives, and elected officials (and other left-wing maniacs) arrested and charged with violent crimes.
Here are a few of the most notable Democratic Party officials and associates to be charged, prosecuted, or sentenced for violent crimes in 2022:
Sean Caddle, a longtime Democratic consultant in New Jersey, pleaded guilty in January to hiring two people to murder a former associate, Michael Galdieri, who was found stabbed to death in his apartment in May 2014. Caddle, a former aide to Democratic state senator Ray Lesniak, operated a network of shady super PACs that poured money into local races throughout New Jersey. He was also implicated in an ACORN-linked voter fraud scandal in Texas. Caddle was scheduled to be sentenced in June, but that hearing was postponed until December amid reports that the Democratic operative was cooperating with federal authorities.
Ed Buck received a 30-year sentence in April after the Democratic megadonor and prominent California activist was found guilty of luring two men to his home and injecting them with fatal doses of methamphetamine. Federal authorities alleged that Buck engaged in a “lethal and unchecked pattern of reckless disregard for human life” by soliciting victims for sex by promising to provide them with drugs. During the trial, Buck’s victims described being administered a variety of drugs until they lost consciousness, at which point Buck sexually assaulted them. U.S. Attorney Tracy L. Wilkison applauded the sentence, noting that the Democratic donor “preyed upon vulnerable victims—men who were drug-dependent and often without homes—to feed an obsession that led to death and misery.”
Ghislaine Maxwell, a longtime associate of Bill and Hillary Clinton who attended former first daughter Chelsea Clinton’s wedding in 2010, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for sex-trafficking underage girls. Authorities alleged that Maxwell played an “instrumental” role in helping another Clinton associate, the late multimillionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, to acquire and abuse young girls for at least a decade. Epstein’s former pilot testified at trial that former president Clinton made several trips on the pedophile’s private jet, often referred to as the “Lolita Express.”
Jerry Harris, the former Biden campaign surrogate and star of the Netflix documentary series Cheer, was sentenced in June to 12 years in federal prison for sex crimes involving minors. Several months after taking part in an Instagram Live discussion with Biden in June 2020, Harris was arrested for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy at a cheer competition and paying another underaged victim to send him sexually explicit photos and videos on Snapchat.
Alex Murdaugh was charged in July with killing his wife and son. The South Carolina attorney, who donated $2,800 to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign in 2020, was already facing an array of charges involving financial fraud, money laundering, and drug trafficking. He has already admitted to stealing more than $4 million of settlement funds owed to the family of Gloria Satterfield, who worked as Murdaugh’s housekeeper until her mysterious death in 2018. Murdaugh, who is being represented by fellow Biden supporter Dick Harpootlian, is also accused of hiring his cousin to kill him in a botched murder-for-hire scheme to ensure his surviving son Buster would collect on the family life insurance policy.
Nicholas Roske was charged in July for attempting to murder Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh after being arrested outside the justice’s home in Maryland with a knife, pepper spray, and burglary tools, as well as a handgun and 37 rounds of ammunition. Roske told authorities he was motivated in part by the leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion overturning the landmark abortion case Roe v. Wade. Additional evidence suggested Roske sought to murder two other conservative justices in a bid to alter the High Court “for decades.” The incident occurred several weeks after a New York Times opinion writer urged pro-abortion activists to escalate their efforts to intimidate Kavanaugh in public.
Robert Telles, a local Democratic official in Las Vegas, was charged earlier this month with the murder of investigative journalist Jeff German. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter was found stabbed to death outside his home on Sept. 3. German had written a series of stories about Telles’s conduct in office—including allegations of corruption, bullying, and an extramarital affair—that resulted in Telles losing the Democratic primary for Clark County public administrator in June. Prosecutors have described the crime as “willful, deliberate, and premeditated,” accusing Telles of “lying in wait” outside German’s home before stabbing the 69-year-old journalist at least seven times and leaving him to die.
Shannon Brandt, a deranged liberal from North Dakota, was released on bail last week after he admitted to killing an 18-year-old with his car following a “political argument.” Brandt told police he believed the victim, Cayler Ellingson, was “part of a Republican extremist group.” The incident occurred several weeks after President Joe Biden delivered a menacing speech, ostensibly about national unity, in which he accused the Republican Party and its supporters of “destroying American democracy.”
Monica Tranel owns up to $50,000 in Airbnb stock, financial disclosures show
A Democrat running for Montana’s newest congressional district may have profited off a company she says blocks Montana families from affording homes.
Monica Tranel has slammed Airbnb and other vacation rental services for depleting the supply of long-term rentals and homes in her state. But financial disclosures show Tranel owns up to $50,000 in stock in Airbnb, meaning she stands to gain from a company she said robs families of a “fair shot at owning and renting a home.”
Tranel’s investments could hurt her chances as she squares off against Trump administration interior secretary Ryan Zinke. The price of a typical home in Montana has increased by 46 percent since late 2020, according to Zillow, and polls show 77 percent of Montanans are concerned about housing affordability. Experts say Airbnb contributes to skyrocketing prices, as houses that would otherwise be available to Montanans are taken off the market and converted to short-term rentals for travelers.
It is unclear when Tranel purchased the Airbnb stock, which is currently valued at just over $100 a share, or whether she has seen gains on her investment. Airbnb valued its stock at $68 a share when the company went public in December 2020. Share prices rose to over $200 in its first months as a publicly traded company before plummeting at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
Tranel’s financial disclosures do not indicate when she purchased the stock. Tranel’s campaign told the Free Beacon she is “committed to putting her investments and retirement in a true blind trust” if elected, and remains focused on “addressing the housing affordability crisis facing Western Montana.”
Tranel has made the damaging impact of short-term rentals a focus of her campaign rhetoric on housing affordability. At a candidates’ forum last month in Missoula, Tranel said she would work to “make sure that the people who own homes in Missoula are actually living in them.” Her “4-Point Working Families Affordability Plan” also calls for Congress to “use legislation to address predatory entities who rent out second homes and push hard-working locals out of their own communities.”
In 2019, a researcher at the University of Montana’s Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research warned that Airbnb’s acquisition of property could hurt the state’s economy.
“Residents were telling us how short-term rentals were taking up all the housing,” said Norma Nickerson. “If you are a business person trying to hire people for the season, there’s no place for people to live because all the workforce housing is changing over from long-term rentals to short-term rentals.”
The Zinke campaign said Tranel was “lining her own limousine liberal pockets with money from Airbnb and short term rentals that are making the Montana housing crisis worse.”
“The issue isn’t that Monica is invested in a San Francisco company, it’s that she’s a hypocrite and a liar—telling Montanans one thing and secretly doing another,” campaign manager Heather Swift told the Free Beacon.
The Tranel campaign further defended her Airbnb investment to the Free Beacon by labeling her opponent Zinke as a “multi-millionaire” who owns “multiple homes.”
Tranel, a lawyer who competed in rowing in the 1996 and 2000 Summer Olympics, is challenging Zinke in Montana’s new western congressional district. The seat is rated “likely Republican” by election analysts.
Policies endanger company’s entire financing structure, shareholders say
That didn’t take long. Less than a week after Pfizer was hit with a lawsuit over a fellowship program that excludes whites and Asians, shareholders are demanding that the company scrap a spate of race-conscious policies that they say put it at risk of further litigation.
The lawsuit, filed Sept. 15, argues that Pfizer is violating federal law by excluding white and Asian applicants from its prestigious “Breakthrough Fellowship.” In an open letter to Pfizer executives last week, shareholders allege that the program is just one of several policies that invite a “pandora’s box” of civil rights complaints.
Beyond the fellowship, they point to an apparent requirement that a fourth of Pfizer directors “identify as ethnically diverse,” according to the company’s ESG reports and corporate governance principles. The pharmaceutical giant has also linked executive pay to the diversity of its employees, with hard targets set for the number of African Americans and Hispanics in management positions.
The letter, filed by the public interest law firm the American Civil Rights Project on behalf of shareholders, is the latest example of corporate investors taking action to challenge reverse discrimination. Over the past year, shareholders in Coca-Cola, JP Morgan, McDonalds, and Lowe’s have threatened to sue executives at each company who’ve implemented race-conscious policies, which they argue invite costly litigation that threatens their interests as stockholders.
The threats persuaded Lowe’s and Coca-Cola to drop a variety of racial quotas. When Starbucks executives ignored similar demands, one nonprofit, the National Center for Public Policy Research, used its stock in the company to file a lawsuit against the coffee giant’s top brass. The center also owns stock in Pfizer, and is one of the shareholders that signed on to the demand letter.
The letter offers a preview of how shareholder activism and traditional civil rights lawsuits can complement each other. It cites the Sept. 15 complaint as evidence that Pfizer’s policies have created a “standing invitation to federal litigation” that could prove “catastrophic” for shareholders, especially in light of the company’s financing structure.
Pfizer hasn’t just set diversity targets for its employees, but integrated those targets into its credit agreements with banks—a move the American Civil Rights Project says could “cut off the company from vital working funds” in the event of a lawsuit. If Pfizer cannot hit the targets without race-conscious programs, the letter argues—and if a judge orders Pfizer to stop considering race in its hiring process—the resulting loss of diversity could mean a loss of capital under the terms of the company’s credit facility.
“Even if some of the Policies were colorably legal,” the American Civil Rights Project says, “no reasonable person would have bet Pfizer’s ongoing access to working capital on every judge uniformly agreeing across every inevitable proceeding challenging the Policies.”
Pfizer did not respond to a request for comment.
At least one legal challenge to Pfizer’s race-conscious governance is all but certain to succeed: The Breakthrough Fellowship, five civil rights experts told the Washington Free Beacon, is an unambiguous violation of the 1866 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits race discrimination in contracting, and Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits race discrimination in employment. The program includes multiple internships, a fully funded masters degree, and several years of guaranteed employment with the pharmaceutical giant.
Pfizer also appears to be discriminating in its rank-and-file internship programs. A company ESG report issued in 2021 states that Pfizer set out to award 50 percent of summer internships to non-Asian minorities—a group that makes up only 36.2 percent of the U.S. population. Pfizer ultimately exceeded that goal by massive margins, with 72 percent of summer interns coming from an “underrepresented group or disadvantaged background.” By “doubling their ‘representation’ in the general population,” the shareholders say, Pfizer prioritized non-Asian minorities “to the detriment of all other applicants.”
Even if these policies don’t put the company’s bottom line at risk, Delaware, where Pfizer is incorporated, still holds corporate officers liable for “knowing violation[s] of the law.” With the delivery of their letter, the shareholders say, Pfizer has been “put on notice.”
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is funding a Clinton Health Access Initiative aimed at making developing countries reliant on China for healthcare and medical products, The National Pulse can reveal.
The Microsoft co-founder’s foundation authorized a $560,021 grant to the Clinton Health Access Initiative in September, which will run for 18 months.
The Clinton Health Access Initiative was originally a part of the controversial Clinton Foundation started by former President Bill Clinton but spun off into a separate organization in 2010 though Chelsea Clinton – the daughter of the former president and his wife Hillary – joined the initiative’s board in 2011.
The purpose of the grant is “to leverage manufacturing capabilities in China to increase supply security and enhance the supply of key health commodities in low- and middle-income countries.”
While the foundation omitted any further details on how the objective would be accomplished, the grant will likely boost China’s manufacturing capabilities and make countries reliant on the communist nation for “key” healthcare items.
The grant comes amidst China rolling out its controversial “Belt and Road” initiative, a key component of the regime’s efforts to expand its control globally through predatory infrastructure loans.
As the U.S. State Department has warned, Beijing “uses the Belt and Road Initiative and other undertakings to expand foreign markets for Chinese companies and as a means of drawing nations, particularly their political and economic elites, into Beijing’s geopolitical orbit.”
China has been accused of using similar tactics amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, engaging in “healthcare diplomacy” to broaden its influence over developing countries. Products manufactured in the country also often have poor efficacy and are tainted with toxic chemicals.
The Gates Foundation grant appears to aid the Chinese Communist Party’s ambitions to intertwine itself within the healthcare infrastructure of countries across the world.
GRANT DETAILS.
The unearthed grant follows Bill Gates’s long history of working with the Chinese Communist Party on business and philanthropic ventures. His foundation appears to demonstrate a similar affinity for the Communist regime, sending sizable grants to additional Chinese entities, including those with ties to the lab believed to be the birthplace of COVID-19.
A lawsuit filed by parents against Attorney General Merrick Garland for a memo he wrote, which characterized parents protesting against school district policies as a threat, has been dismissed by a federal judge.
In the memo (pdf) issued by Garland on Oct. 4, 2021, he stated that there had been a “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.” The Department of Justice (DOJ) would use its authority and resources to discourage such threats, identify them, and prosecute people, it said.
The memo was written in response to a letter sent by the National School Boards Association (NSBA) to the DOJ on Sept. 29, 2021, which described parental opposition to school policies like teaching critical race theory or imposing COVID-19 restrictions as being akin to “domestic terrorism” and warned that the country’s public schools and education leaders are under “immediate threat.”
On Oct. 19, 2021, Saline Parents, an association of parents in Saline, Michigan—along with six individual parents from either Saline, Michigan, or Loudon County, Virginia—filed a lawsuit against Merrick.
It claimed that the attorney general adopted an unlawful policy to use the resources of federal law enforcement to “silence parents and other private citizens” who object and oppose “policies of the ‘progressive’ Left” that are being implemented in public school districts.
The parents alleged that the attorney general’s policy labels them as “domestic terrorists” as well as criminalizes their speech. However, District Judge Dabney Friedrich, appointed by former President Donald Trump, dismissed the claims.
“The alleged AG Policy is not regulatory, proscriptive, or compulsory in nature because it does not impose any regulations, requirements, or enforcement actions on individuals,” the judge wrote in the Sept. 23 order (pdf).
“None of the documents that the plaintiffs allege establish the policy create an imminent threat of future legal actions against anyone, much less the plaintiffs,” she wrote.
Targeting Parents
In a House Judiciary Committee hearing in October 2021, Garland denied allegations that his agency would label protesting parents as domestic terrorists.
The Justice Department “supports and defends” the First Amendment rights of parents to complain “as vociferously as they wish” about their children’s education, he said. The attorney general also suggested that Republicans were mischaracterizing his memorandum.
In a letter to Garland in May 2022, Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Mike Johnson (R-La.) revealed that they received information from FBI whistleblowers that the agency was investigating parents (pdf).
“We have learned from brave whistleblowers that the FBI has opened investigations with the EDUOFFICIALS threat tag in almost every region of the country and relating to all types of educational settings,” the lawmakers wrote.
“The information we have received shows how, as a direct result of your directive, federal law enforcement is using counterterrorism resources to investigate protected First Amendment activity.”
This is contradictory to Garland’s testimony that the DOJ or its components were not using counterterrorism statutes or resources to target parents, the letter stated.
A doctor who promoted COVID-19 vaccines is now calling for health authorities around the world to pause the administration of two of the most-widely utilized COVID-19 vaccines, saying that the benefits from the vaccines may not outweigh the risks.
“There is more than enough evidence—I would say the evidence is overwhelming—to pause the rollout of the vaccine,” Dr. Aseem Malhotra, a British cardiologist and evidence-based medicine expert, told The Epoch Times.
A paper from Malhotra detailing the evidence was published on Sept. 26.
Among the citations is a recent reanalysis of the Pfizer and Moderna clinical trials that concluded that vaccinated trial participants were at higher risk of serious adverse events. He called the study a “smoking gun.”
Malhotra also pointed to the lack of reduction in mortality or severe disease in the trials, which were completed in 2020.
Taking into account death rates and other figures since then, the number of people who need to be vaccinated to prevent a single COVID-19 death ranges from 93,000 for people aged 18–29 to 230 for people aged 80 and older, according to an analysis of UK safety and effectiveness data by the Health Advisory & Recovery Team.
The author also noted that serious side effects have been detected after the trials, such as myocarditis, a form of heart inflammation.
Overall, looking at the absolute benefits and drawbacks of the vaccines, it’s time to halt their usage and allow authorities and other experts to closely examine the data to see if the vaccines should be used again down the road, according to Malhotra.
Pfizer and Moderna didn’t return requests for comment.
Reversal of Opinion
Malhotra received the Pfizer primary series in January 2021. He became a promoter of the vaccine, even appearing on “Good Morning Britain” to advise Indian film director Gurinder Chadha to get the vaccine. Chadha did so shortly after.
Malhotra said he began digging into vaccine data after his father, Dr. Kailash Chand, suffered a cardiac arrest at home approximately six months after receiving Pfizer’s vaccine.
The post-mortem showed two of Chand’s major arteries were severely blocked, even though Malhotra described his father as a fit person who didn’t have any significant heart problems.
Malhotra began reading about post-vaccination issues, including a study abstract in the journal Circulation that identified a higher risk of a heart attack following vaccination with the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines and a study from Nordic countries that identified a higher risk of myocarditis.
While authorities have claimed that myocarditis is more common after COVID-19 than vaccination, many studies have found otherwise, at least for certain age groups. Some papers have found no increased incidence of heart inflammation for COVID-19 patients.
Malhotra has come to believe that his father’s death was linked to the vaccine.
“I’ve always approached medicine and science with uncertainties because things constantly evolve. And the information I had at the time is completely different to the information I have now,” Malhotra told The Epoch Times. “And in fact, it is my duty and responsibility as the information has changed to act on that information. And that’s what I’m doing.”
A doctor prepares the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination center in Halifax, England, on July 31, 2021. (Ian Forsyth/Getty Images)
Response to Criticism
After the new paper was published, critics noted that Malhotra is a board member of the Journal of Insulin Resistance.
He acknowledged the position but said the article went through an independent peer review process and that he has no financial links to the journal.
The doctor encouraged people to view his publication history, which includes articles in the British Medical Journal and the Journal of the American Medical Association.
He said he chose to submit the paper to the insulin journal for several reasons, including it being “one of the few journals that doesn’t take money from the pharmaceutical industry.”
“I don’t think that there’s any validity to question the integrity of the piece,” he said. “People can argue I’ve got an intellectual bias. We all have intellectual biases, but there’s certainly no financial bias for me.”
Paper Gains Support
Leading scientists say the new paper is important.
“We fully believe that vaccines are one of the great discoveries in medicine that has improved life expectancy dramatically, however, mRNA genetic vaccines are different, as long-term safety evaluation is lacking but mandatory to ensure public safety,” Sherif Sultan, president of the International Society of Vascular Surgery, said in a statement.
Sultan also noted that the findings “raise concerns regarding vaccine-induced undetected severe cardiovascular side effects and underscore the established causal relationship between vaccines and myocarditis, a frequent cause of unexpected cardiac arrest in young individuals.”
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of Stanford, said that Malhotra “makes a good case that there is considerable heterogeneity across age groups and other comorbid conditions in the expected benefits and expected side effect profiles of the vaccine” and “finds that while there may be a case for older people to take the vaccine because the benefits may outweigh expected harm that may not be the case for younger people.”
Dr. Campbell Murdoch, who advises the Royal College of General Practitioners, said the study “describes multiple systemic failures in the provision of safe and effective evidence-based medicine” and the situation has made it “impossible for patients and the public to make an informed choice about what is best for their health and life.”
Some others criticized the paper, including Dr. Victoria Male, an immunologist at Imperial College London.
Male wrote on Twitter that the table in the paper outlining the number of people in each age group estimated to need a vaccination to prevent a COVID-19 death “is quite in favour of vaccination.”
Tech giant Bill Gates is now pushing crop seeds that he thinks could help put an end to famine, but while these genetically engineered seeds may be a great advancement, Gate’s past savior complex has to raise caution over his actions.
Our headline about “magic seeds” is not hyperbole. In fact, in a recent op-ed on the Gates Foundation website, Gates himself actually admitted that he has called these genetically manipulated corn seeds “magic seeds.”
“Fourteen years ago, our foundation began supporting a group of African crop researchers. Their goal was to develop a new type of maize — what I started calling ‘magic seeds,’” Gates wrote.
Gates, who worked secretly to force Biden’s disastrous inflation “reduction” act on us all, admitted that the seed corn really isn’t magical but insisted that the seeds, called “DroughtTEGO,” do have important qualities.
“Of course, the seeds weren’t actually magic, but by breeding select varieties of the crop, the researchers believed they could produce a hybrid maize that would be more resistant to hotter, drier climates. They succeeded wildly,” Gates wrote.
Gates added that his DroughtTEGO has a promising track record.
“When researchers in Kenya compared plots of this new maize, which they called ‘DroughtTEGO®,’ with the old one, they saw the DroughtTEGO farms were producing an average of 66 percent more grain per acre,” Gates wrote. “That harvest is enough to feed a family of six for an entire year, and the family would still have so much surplus maize that they could sell it for about $880, equivalent to five months of income for the average Kenyan. In fact, many farmers could finally afford to send their kids to school or build new homes once they switched to DroughtTEGO.”
But seeds like these are not being adopted quickly enough, Gates said, adding, “Investment in agricultural R&D is still much too small.”
“It’s critical if we want to get the latest seed technology to farmers as fast as we can,” he exclaimed.
Should these seeds be allowed into the United States?Yes No
Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Despite the success of these seeds, though, Gates added that science has to keep working with newer modifications “as the environment changes in unpredictable ways.”
He went on to suggest that new efforts need to be made to modify crops.
“We need to speed this plant breeding work up, and one solution is what researchers call ‘predictive modeling.’ It’s artificial intelligence software that processes the genome sequences of crops along with environmental data — everything from soil samples to satellite imagery — and then conjures up a data-based vision of what farms will need to look like in the future. From this computer model, researchers can identify the optimal plant variety for a particular place. Or they can do the reverse: pinpoint the optimal place to grow a specific crop,” Gates said.
This all sounds wonderful, granted. Who wouldn’t welcome ways to help eliminate famine and to improve crop yields? And, while a discussion of “frankenfoods” — or genetically modified foods — is a whole other world, it is a good idea to look at the science here.
Unfortunately, the messenger is the problem. Bill Gates’ savior complex is well known as a serious drawback for anything he proposes.
Only a few years ago, for instance, he was touting a wild idea of blocking the sun’s rays from getting to the Earth to stop global warming. According to reports, Gates was funding a project to spray particles in the atmosphere that could reflect sun rays back out into space.
Sound more like the plot of a B-level sci-fi movie.
Gates has also been a vocal proponent of synthetic meat to save the environment from cows. But he admitted that synth-meat tastes terrible.
“I do think all rich countries should move to 100 percent synthetic beef. You can get used to the taste difference, and the claim is they’re going to make it taste even better over time,” he said in March.
He clearly understands that it is a product no one wants, but as far as he is concerned, we should be forced into it for our own good. In fact, he even said that if the government made it mandatory, that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
Meanwhile, multi-billionaire Gates has become the single largest owner of farmland in the country after a campaign of land acquisitions has put as much as 270,000 acres under his control.
This growing portfolio of fertile farmland has many worried over Gates’ intentions for buying so much farmland and even sent the state of North Dakota into investigation mode to find out why he is making these purchases.
And don’t even get us started on his massive campaigns to push the various coronavirus vaccines and his activism for climate change.
Gates has proven to be a top-down guy, a person who thinks our lives should be ruled by so-called “experts,” and a man who thinks our freedoms need to be curtailed for our own good.
As a coalition of right-leaning parties stood poised to form a new government in Italy after Sunday’s elections, a group of Italian protestors reportedly torn down the European Union flag from the E.U.’s headquarters in Rome.
Giorgia Meloni, leading the conservative Brothers of Italy party, won the Italian national election on Sunday and is expected to form a coalition government with the right-leaning Forza Italia party led by Silvio Berlusconi and the League party led by Matteo Salvini, Sky News reported.
Meloni, a powerful orator, has previously called for a naval blockade to prevent illegal immigration from North Africa to Italy according to Sky News, and despite establishment media’s reports of her “far-right” political views told the outlet, “There is nobody all over the world who needs to be afraid of us.”
Sky News reported that speaking to her supporters in Rome, Meloni gave a rallying cry in 2019 which would later become the most famous of her career — so far.
She said that her party stood “against global leftist forces” who see familial and national identity “as enemies” and prefer people to be “just codes.”
“But we aren’t just codes. We are people. And we’ll defend our identity,” she told them.
“I’m Giorgia, I’m a woman, I’m a mother, I’m Italian, I’m Christian! You won’t take that away from me!” It was a line that would define her campaign.
Chi sogna un’Italia orgogliosa, chi vuole tornare ad essere fiero della sua Nazione, della sua gente e della sua bandiera, il 25 settembre sceglie @FratellidItalia. Noi siamo pronti: ora è il vostro momento. #VotaFDI#Melonipic.twitter.com/tf4Pq8k9w7
Is it in Italy’s best interest to leave the European Union?Yes No
Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Days before the election that saw Meloni take power, a video surfaced of a group of Italian protestors reportedly taking down the European Union flag at the E.U. headquarters in Rome. The Western Journal could not independently verify the video or when it was taken.
Some commenters on Twitter have suggested the action came in response to E.U. Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen’s comments on Thursday from Princeton University where she gave a “veiled warning” to the Italian right, according to Reuters.
Some time ago, a group of Italian patriots went to EU headquarters in Rome, removed EU flag and replaced it with the Italian one. The squalid threats of Ursula von der Leyen do not scare the Italians and cannot go unnoticed. Italy belongs to the Italian people. Get up Italy 🇮🇹! pic.twitter.com/y9uCueYDod
Von der Leyen threatens the Italians: “We will see the result of the vote in Italy. If things go in a difficult direction, we have tools, as in the case of Poland and Hungary.” A desperate attempt to influence the vote in Italy that runs towards the far right. Game over Ursula! pic.twitter.com/MhkaiQus9x
She explained, “We’ll see. If things go in a difficult direction, I’ve spoken about Hungary and Poland. We have tools. If things go in the right direction and people as a body that is always… where always governments have to be accountable to play an important role.”
Reuters reported that Salvini responded by denouncing the E.U. official’s comments as “shameful arrogance.”
He tweeted, “What is this, a threat?” he wrote. “Respect the free, democratic and sovereign vote of the Italian people!”
Cos’è, una minaccia? Vergognosa arroganza. Rispetti il voto, libero, democratico e sovrano del popolo italiano! Amici di tutti, servi di nessuno. pic.twitter.com/aSUShmqFvY
National Academy for State Health Policy says states should mandate anti-racism training, promote race-based hiring
An influential health care policy group that claims it is nonpartisan is pushing state governments to “advance health equity”—a controversial Democratic policy agenda that includes mandatory anti-racism training and race-based hiring initiatives.
The National Academy for State Health Policy (NASHP), which says it develops state “health policy innovations and solutions” on everything from health care coverage to prescription drug prices, promoted the left-wing agenda at its annual conference this month, which included panels on “investing in equity” by increasing the number of minority employees working in health care. The nonprofit hosted a speech from Democratic governor Jay Inslee (Wash.), who last year signed a bill into law that eliminated certain crimes from background checks for health workers because of their “inequitable impact” on minority applicants.
The conference comes just months after the group released a brief titled “State Strategies to Increase Diversity in the Behavioral Health Workforce,” which encouraged states to “target increasing engagement of [Black, Indigenous, and people of color] across the workforce” through policies such as required “structural racism” training.
This push for health equity—a catchphrase among left-wing policymakers that can include the rationing of medical resources based on race—has gained traction within the Biden administration and blue state health departments in recent years, raising questions about the group’s claim to be a nonpartisan arbiter of health care policy. Oregon’s health regulatory board, for example, requires “cultural competency” training for licensed health providers. Massachusetts, meanwhile, spent $250,000 last year to launch a program to recruit minorities to its behavioral health workforce.
The end goal of such “health equity” initiatives is to help health providers “confront the systems and policies that have resulted in the generational injustice that has given rise to health inequities,” according to the Biden administration’s Centers for Disease Control guidelines.
A spokeswoman for NASHP said its equity memo is accepted by policymakers from both political parties.
“Reducing health disparities—and addressing their social and economic causes—is at the heart of many of these efforts, with both blue and red states taking this on,” she told the Washington Free Beacon.
In light of NASHP’s health-equity push, however, Republican officials such as Virginia attorney general Jason Miyares say the group cannot be trusted by policymakers as a nonpartisan source of information and analysis.
“It’s disturbing to see the National Academy for State Health Policy, which claims to be nonpartisan, embrace a partisan liberal agenda,” Miyares told the Free Beacon. “States should closely examine NASHP’s rhetoric and activities and not embrace more division and divisiveness, particularly around public health.”
This is not the first time NASHP has boosted Democratic policies—the group played a crucial role in helping Democrats extend Obamacare subsidies through the Inflation Reduction Act that passed in August. The subsidies were previously set to expire this year, which would have led to a significant spike in premiums for Obamacare enrollees across the country.
The group met with several Democratic lawmakers in May who feared this spike could jeopardize their party’s midterm campaigns. A week later, a group of 26 Democrats sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) that cited NASHP’s research on the necessity of this extension, the Washington Examinerreported.
NASHP boasts deep ties to Democratic Party infrastructure, according to a Free Beaconinvestigation. Trish Riley, who led the group for much of the past four decades as president and a member of the board of directors, worked for former Democratic Maine governor John Baldacci and is now a chairwoman of a Maine Democratic Party committee. She donated more than $50,000 to Democratic campaigns since 1992, according to Federal Election Commission records.
Several other NASHP employees worked for Democratic campaigns, offices, and leftwing organizations, such as the Center for American Progress. The group is funded by Arnold Ventures, a billionaire-backed dark money group that pushes for climate change regulations and gun control.
As a mayoral candidate in 2005, Senate hopeful John Fetterman adopted a unique tactic to appeal to the youth of Braddock, Pa.: tout the borough’s connections to the notorious Crips street gang. After his election, he downplayed the gang’s prevalence in his town, and attributed some of their gang activity to the acts of “disenfranchised” and “disenchanted” youth.
During his first mayoral run in 2005, Fetterman adopted the slogan “Vote John Mayor of Braddocc,” a nod to the spelling that local Crips gang members used for the town. After he was elected, Fetterman created the website Braddocc.com as part of a revitalization project to appeal to young people in the dilapidated steel town. The now-defunct website, which Fetterman launched with his own money, explains that “Braddocc” was “unofficially renamed” by the “young and disenfranchised for its Crip allegiance.” The Justice Department considers the Crips, founded in southern California in the 1970s, to be one of the country’s most violent street gangs.
Fetterman, the Pennsylvania lieutenant governor, has come under fire during his Senate bid for his progressive views on criminal justice reform. Republicans have portrayed Fetterman as soft on crime for calling for the release of up to one-third of Pennsylvania’s prison inmates. As chairman of Pennsylvania’s Board of Pardons, Fetterman cast the lone vote to free several people convicted of first-degree murder. His appointee for secretary of the board has called to “disarm the police,” and has referred to cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal as her “friend” and “buddy,” the Washington Free Beaconreported.
Fetterman has denied that he glorifies the Crips or gang culture, though he has acknowledged that his embrace of the “Braddocc” nickname helped him in his 2005 campaign by attracting younger voters.
“Ultimately I carry their flag, because they’re the ones that made the difference that I won by one vote that first election,” he said in 2015. “It’s not a glorification of gang violence, or embracing gang violence,” he added of the “Braddocc” moniker, noting that he “caught some flak … because some people thought I was spelling it like a gangster.”
While Fetterman promoted Crips lingo, he downplayed the gang’s presence in Braddock after his election win. In 2006, he said gang graffiti that appeared on buildings in the borough were the act of “a disenfranchised young person who is disaffected and has few options.”
“You have ‘C’z Up’ and ‘Ghuttacide,’ but at the end of the day it’s not a movement; it’s not a reflection of what’s going on. One shouldn’t make the erroneous assumption that it’s some kind of movement, some kind of criminal element,” he told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 2006.
Fetterman said punishing the teens behind the graffiti was not an ideal remedy and that the graffiti “appears more fearsome than it is.”
But Crips were active in Braddock during Fetterman’s tenure as mayor.
Members of the gang appeared in a video from the late-2000s discussing their life in Braddock, promoting their music with the Braddock-based “Geto Bred Entertainment,” and warning rivals against “snitching” to police. The video, which also employs the “Braddocc” moniker, shows gang members rapping in front of graffiti that bears the “C’z Up” and “Ghuttacide” tags that Fetterman discussed with the Post-Gazette.
Fetterman’s campaign denies that Fetterman has any affinity for the Crips.
“The notion that John Fetterman has any affinity for the crips is complete and utter bullshit,” Fetterman’s communications director Joe Calvello told the Free Beacon. “Under John, crips in Braddock were taken off the street and put in jail.”
Fetterman’s nod to the Crips can still be found at his loft in Braddock, where a city sign emblazoned with the gang’s graffiti hangs above his refrigerator. The New York Times photographed Fetterman in front of the sign for a 2011 profile. Fetterman’s wife posted a photo to social media in 2020 with the sign in the background.
The United States Air Force Academy on Thursday held a seminar promoting “transgender visibility and awareness in our Air Force.”
The “discussion” session focused “on awareness for transgender communities in the military,” according to a copy of an invitation for the event obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
Events of this nature are part of a wholesale push by the U.S. military to foster a more culturally inclusive environment. Critics say this type of training is part of a woke cultural agenda that is being mainstreamed by the Democratic Party’s far-left flank. The Army, for instance, mandates gender identity training and instructs its officers on the best time to offer subordinates gender-transition surgery. The seminar was held on the same day the Free Beacon reported on an Air Force Academy course teaching cadets to “use inclusive language” that avoids gender pronouns.
The “transgender visibility” workshop featured two Air Force Academy faculty members, Dr. Joseph Currin and Dr. Karin De Angelis. The speakers were slated to “speak on their personal expertise and answer questions from the audience.”
The first 40 cadets to attend the seminar received a free lunch.
A cadet listed as a point of contact for the event, did not answer a Free Beacon request for comment.
Timothy Thibault, a former top FBI official who left the bureau last month, has been warned to not alter or destroy documents and communications in his possession, particularly those connected to his work on the Hunter Biden investigation.
The warning came from three Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee who sent a Sept. 23 letter to Thibault, asking the former FBI agent to “preserve all existing and future records and materials” in his possession.
“Whistleblowers have come to Congress alleging that you were part of a scheme to undermine and discredit allegations of criminal wrongdoing by members of the Biden family. Accordingly, we believe that you possess information relating to our investigation and we request your assistance with our inquiry,” the letter reads.
The letter was signed by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the committee’s ranking Republican member; Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.); and Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.).
Before leaving the FBI, Thibault was an assistant special agent in charge at the bureau’s Washington Field Office.
Thibault came under close scrutiny in late July after FBI whistleblowers told Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) that the former FBI official “ordered closed” information that the bureau had obtained about Hunter Biden’s “criminal financial and related activity” in 2020.
Hunter Biden walks to Marine One on the Ellipse outside the White House on May 22, 2021. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
Grassley has also noted (pdf) how Thibault had displayed a political bias against former President Donald Trump, citing his Twitter activities. For example, Thibault once shared a Twitter post that called Trump “a psychologically broken, embittered, and deeply unhappy man.”
However, Thibault’s lawyers with Morrison & Foerster told The Epoch Times in a statement in August that he didn’t show any political partisanship in his work and “did not supervise the investigation of Hunter Biden.”
“You should construe this preservation notice as an instruction to take all reasonable steps to prevent the destruction or alteration, whether intentionally or negligently, of all documents, communications, and other information, including electronic information and metadata, that are or may be responsive to this congressional inquiry,” the three lawmakers told Thibault in their letter.
House Republicans have said that they’ll launch an investigation into Hunter Biden if they regain a majority in the chamber in November. As a result, the letter suggests that Thibault would likely be a target of that investigation.
‘Domestic Violent Extremism’
Other documents and communications that Thibault needs to preserve are related to an allegation that he “pressured line agents to reclassify cases as ‘domestic violent extremism’ even though there was minimal, circumstantial evidence to support a reclassification,” the letter reads, citing a July report from Breitbart.
In a letter (pdf) to FBI Director Christopher Wray in July, Jordan said one of the FBI officials pressuring agents to reclassify cases was a “field office Counterterrorism Assistant Special Agent in Charge.” Jordan later told Breitbart that the unnamed agent in his letter was Thibault.
“Given the narrative pushed by the Biden Administration that domestic violent extremism is the ‘greatest threat’ facing our country, the revelation that the FBI may be artificially padding domestic terrorism data is scandalous,” Jordan’s letter to Wray reads.
It turns out that the FBI was inflating the number of these cases to make it seem as though the United States has a bigger “domestic violent extremism” than it actually does, Jordan said last week, basing the claim on another whistleblower. The new whistleblower also revealed that the FBI was redirecting resources away from child sexual abuse cases to Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach cases.
In their letter, the three Republican lawmakers are also requesting that Thibault take part in a transcribed interview. The former FBI official needs to schedule the interview by Oct. 7, according to the letter.
“We are investigating several allegations concerning the politicization of the Department [of Justice] and the FBI,” the letter reads, noting that Thibault’s testimony “is necessary to advance our oversight.”
The Biden administration is proposing changes to Title IX, part of the civil rights law established in 1972, to include sexual orientation and gender identity.
Administration officials claim the changes are necessary to “protect LGBTQI+ students from discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics.” They argue these would help promote “fundamental fairness for all parties, respect for freedom of speech and academic freedom, respect for complainants’ autonomy, and clear legal obligations that enable robust enforcement of Title IX.”
Despite what the administration claims, not everyone would be treated fairly or respectfully if these changes take effect. Women and girls would be negatively impacted. It would especially foment discrimination against people of faith.
First Liberty recently submitted a public comment opposing the Department of Education’s proposed revisions. Our legal experts show how these changes threaten the rights of women, free speech, parental rights and the religious liberty rights of millions of Americans. Attorney Christine Pratt explains:
“The Department’s proposed rule gives federal bureaucrats broad powers to bully and exclude students and teachers who don’t share the government’s beliefs about marriage and human sexuality. They threaten the remarkable advances made by women in academics and athletics since Title IX was adopted in 1972. We urge the Department to recognize that federal laws and the Constitution protect the civil rights of all students, including their religious liberty rights, and to correct the proposed rule changes to ensure that religious students and parents are not punished for their deeply held beliefs.”
Our public comment notes that the proposed changes redefine sexual harassment so broadly as to include religious exercise and speech. This, in effect, would encourage attacks on people of faith, particularly in public schools. Students, instructors or administrators could face increased discrimination or punishment because of their religious beliefs about human sexuality and life.
First Liberty is not the only one sounding the alarm about how harmful these changes could be to religious freedom. The administration was flooded with more than 200,000 public comments in the two months after the rule change publication in the Federal Register. One commenter wrote:
“While parents across the country are demanding the rejection of ‘woke’ policies, the Department of Education instead has chosen to hijack Title IX to force gender ideology on children without their parents’ knowledge or approval. This proposed rule is a lawless interpretation and is a complete overreach by the Department of Education.”
Many expressed concerns that the proposed rule could destroy women’s sports. “This proposed rule affects me greatly as a woman,” a commenter said. “It puts biological females at risk for losing out on sports scholarships and opportunities to play, due to the physical advantage that a biological male identifying as a woman has over a biological woman.”
The Biden administration has shown a particular disdain for beliefs of religious Americans, especially if they dare say things the administration doesn’t like. To that end, it has repeatedly used the alphabet soup of federal agencies to target and harass people of faith. For example:
The Department of Defense’s vaccine mandate continues to force thousands of service members to choose between their religious faith or serving their country. Their careers and their livelihoods have been threatened because they requested a legal, religious accommodation to the mandate.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration attempted to enforce a nationwide vaccine mandate on companies with 100 or more employees. This was a massive and unconstitutional power grab that would have forced religious employers and organizations to violate the rights and conscience of their employees.
The Department of Health and Human Services revoked several important religious liberty protections and pursued regulations that could harm faith-based foster care and adoption agencies, religious employers, charities, universities, schools, hospitals and healthcare professionals.
It’s unconscionable when the government tries to use regulations to coerce people of faith to celebrate and approve its orthodoxy on sexual identity and gender orientation. Whether religious or not, Americans should not be forced to violate their conscience.
People of faith need to remain vigilant. As its record shows, the Biden administration is constantly finding new ways to target anyone who wants to live in a manner consistent with their faith. It’s increasingly clear that many of its policy revisions have little to do with equality before the law or stopping discrimination. They have everything to do with making people of faith conform to a radical ideology.
First Liberty and our friends at the Massachusetts Family Institute recently sent a letter to Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey on behalf of a coalition of pregnancy resource centers (PRCs).
The letter follows a series of attacks on PRCs, which have been under constant threat since the U.S. Supreme Court issued its Dobbs decision and properly returned to the states the power to regulate abortion. More than 60 pro-life organizations in 26 states including Massachusetts have been horribly vandalized dating back to the leak of the Dobbs draft opinion in May.
In our letter, we ask why Attorney General Healey refuses to enforce the law to protect these centers from the wave of criminal actions taken against them and request that she withdraw both a public letter and “consumer advisory” she issued threatening sanctions and civil actions against these pro-life organizations.
These attacks are outrageous and harmful to our society. Many PRCs are motivated by their religious beliefs to care for vulnerable women. They provide essential services to people throughout the country, including medical and professional counseling services. Our attorneys explain:
“They distribute free diapers, wipes, formula, baby food, blankets, and clothing. Many offer parenting programs that help equip new parents facing the important job of raising their children. Others offer free screenings for STDs along with free pregnancy tests, medical consultations, and professional counseling. For those who respond negatively to their abortion experience, the PRCs provide supportive counseling and mentors.Some even recruit knitters throughout their community who knit sweaters, booties, and blankets that are given—free of charge—to women who request them for their babies.”
For example, the evening the Attorney General issued her advisory, a group that calls itself “Jane’s Revenge” maliciously attacked Clearway Clinic, busting out windows, dumping cans of blue and yellow paint on the windows and roof, and spray-painting “Jane’s Revenge” in red on the sidewalk.
The Attorney General’s animosity toward faith-based PRCs is deeply troubling. What’s more, threatening, intimidating and harassing organizations because of their beliefs is unlawful and a violation of their constitutional rights. First Liberty attorney Jeremy Dys says:
“It is outrageous that the Attorney General would target pregnancy centers that offer essential medical services, counseling, along with diapers and knitted baby blankets to women in crisis while allowing dangerous vandals to go free. Gen. Healey has a legal obligation to protect all reproductive health facilities, not just the ones she politically favors.”
Massachusetts Family Institute President Andrew Beckwith added:
“No one should suffer violence for simply providing counseling and desperately needed baby supplies to women and their babies. The Attorney General’s singling out of pregnancy resource centers exhibits a hostility toward faith-based pregnancy centers that should be repugnant to everyone.”
Vandalism and Attacks on Religious Organizations Should Be Condemned
No organization in America should be attacked because of its religious beliefs about life. Violence against faith-based groups that care for the most vulnerable among us is appalling. Everyone who cherishes freedom and civility should reject such attacks.
Terrorizing houses of worship and religious communities betrays our founding principles. As a nation established on the promise of religious freedom, America is a place where people of all faiths should be free to peacefully live out their beliefs without the fear of having their property burned down, defaced or vandalized.
In the face of increased hostility, one thing is clear: we need religious liberty more than ever. Protecting our First Freedom is the only way America can continue to shine as a beacon of hope and liberty.
The price to pay for religious intolerance is the loss of our constitutional system and the foundational liberties that we hold dear—like religious freedom. Will you donate to First Liberty today and help us keep leading the fight to protect our God-given rights?
An FBIwhistleblower recently came forward and issued warnings about alleged politicization at the FBI, saying that the bureau is spying on law-abiding Americans and that many of its domestic counterterrorism cases are tantamount to “entrapment.”
Kyle Seraphin, who has spent six years in the FBI, was suspended without pay and cannot seek another job without quitting or asking for permission.
“The number of guys who say, ‘I don’t agree with what’s going on here, but I’ve got three years to retire,’ it’s heartbreaking,” he told podcast host Dan Bongino in a Sept. 22 interview.
In one instance, Seraphin said he was forced to blow the whistle last year when Attorney General Merrick Garland told lawmakers that the Department of Justice was not targeting parents. He first provided a member of Congress with an email that was circulated within the FBI that stated Garland ordered the usage of the controversial PATRIOT Act to target parents with a tag, “EDUOFFICIALS.”
At the time, in May 2022, Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Mike Johnson (R-La.) alleged that the investigations involved parents who were “upset about mask mandates and state elected officials who publicly voiced opposition to vaccine mandates,” while accusing Garland of making false statements to Congress.
But of that investigation, Seraphin suggested the FBI is targeting individuals for political purposes.
“That’s when you become part of political hatchet jobs, and I didn’t sign up for that, and nobody I know signed up for that either,” Seraphin told Bongino. “That’s not what people want to get involved in.”
Later in the podcast interview, Seraphin suggested that more FBI employees will come forward in the future due to the bureau’s now-partisan nature.
At least 14 FBI whistleblowers have come forward in recent months to provide information about recent actions inside the bureau, said Jordan, on the FBI’s investigations into the Jan. 6 Capitol breach, parents at school board meetings, and Hunter Biden’s laptop.
‘Entrapment’
Also, in an interview with the Washington Times last week, Seraphin said the bureau’s investigations into domestic violent extremism, white nationalists, and right-wing extremists are mostly entrapment operations with questionable moral and ethical underpinnings.
“My team was deployed to 20 or 25 different high profile, national terrorism organization or terrorism investigations between 2018 and 2021. And what I saw, as the most obvious statement, is that there are three things about counterterrorism investigations,” he said.
Seraphin stated: “Number one, the demand for white supremacy vastly outstrips the supply of white supremacy.”
“Number two,” he added, “the FBI‘s playbook when it comes to counterterrorism investigations is always and unequivocally morally equivalent to entrapment, even if there’s a legal definition that allows them to skirt that.”
As for No. 3, Seraphin added to the Washington Times that the FBI doesn’t have an objective metric on how they prioritize cases.
“There’s an entirely ridiculous internal process for determining every single national priority,” the whistleblower said.
The Epoch Times has contacted the FBI for comment. A bureau spokesperson told the paper that his claims about entrapment lacked merit.
“This comment is inaccurate and represents a clear misunderstanding of the policy and practice in FBI investigations,” the FBI said in a statement to the outlet.
Attorney General Merrick Garland (L) and FBI Director Christopher Wray hold a press conference in Washington on Nov. 8, 2021. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Seraphin also touched on the Aug. 8 raid targeting former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago. Trump has often said that the search was political in nature and meant to harm his 2024 chances.
Recalling the search, Seraphin appeared to question the FBI agents who were involved and added that he wouldn’t participate if he were asked.
“You ask me to go raid President Obama’s house, you ask me to raid President Bush’s house, it’s not happening,” he continued. “It’s not happening. I’m sorry, it’s not happening. I’m not doing that. I’m going to be, probably pretty vocal. That’s probably going to be my last day.”
Former Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer said in a televised interview that he pushed his colleagues on the court to change their votes and not overturn Roe v. Wade, the seminal 1973 precedent that legalized abortion in the United States, a ruling that, in the end, they voted to reverse.
Breyer, 84, was referring to the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, in which the Supreme Court voted 6-3 on June 24 to uphold a Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The court also voted 5-4 to overturn Roe, returning the regulation of abortion to the states.
Days after the decision, the now-retired Breyer was replaced on the court by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was sworn in on June 30 after being confirmed by the Senate on April 7. Breyer, who was nominated by then-President Bill Clinton, was seated on the court on Aug. 3, 1994.
The comments came in an interview with Chris Wallace on “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace,” which debuted Sept. 23 on HBOMax and was to air Sept. 25 on CNN. The comments also came as the Supreme Court prepared to begin its new term with oral arguments on Oct. 3.
“You had a bad final year. Some of the most important cases on the court—abortion, guns, the power of the EPA to regulate the climate—you were on the losing side. Was that frustrating for you to lose important case after important case?” Wallace said.
“Yes,” Breyer replied.
“But how frustrating?” Wallace said.
“Very frustrating,” the former justice said.
“When the court undoes a right that people have lived with for half a century, doesn’t that very much shake the authority of the court?” Wallace said.
“Did I like this Dobbs decision?” Breyer said.
“Of course I didn’t. Of course I didn’t. Was I happy about it? Not for an instant. Did I do everything I could to persuade people? Of course, of course. But there we are. And now we go on. And we try to work together. I mean, it’s a little corny what I think, but I do think it.”
In Dobbs, the three liberal justices—Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan—felt strongly enough about the case that they took the unusual step of issuing a three-way joint dissent.
According to the liberal justices, the court majority’s opinion states that “from the very moment of fertilization, a woman has no rights to speak of. A state can force her to bring a pregnancy to term, even at the steepest personal and familial costs.”
In the CNN interview, Breyer also condemned the unprecedented leak of an early draft majority opinion in Dobbs. Politico published the draft document dated Feb. 10 on May 2 without disclosing its source.
While court staffers are investigating the leak, it’s unclear what they have discovered. Kagan called the leak “horrible” earlier this month; she also said an update on the probe is expected by month’s end, as The Epoch Times has reported.
Breyer previously called the breach of court protocol “very damaging.”
Wallace asked Breyer in the interview if the leak caused “an earthquake inside the court.”
“It was very damaging because that kind of thing just doesn’t happen,” Breyer said. “It just doesn’t happen. And there we are.”
Breyer said after the leak, there was a less collegial atmosphere on the court.
“Maybe a little less jolly, but not I mean—I have not heard people in that conference room scream at each other in anger.”
The FBI reportedly arrested Catholic pro-life activist and author Mark Houck in a raid on his rural home early Friday morning.
Houck, 48, of Kintnersville, Pennsylvania, is the latest target of a string of Department of Justice-sponsored SWAT raids and arrests, as at least two dozen federal agents swarmed his property in Bucks County with around 15 vehicles at 7:05 a.m. on Sept. 23, reported LifeSite News.
“The kids were all just screaming,” Houck’s wife, Ryan-Marie, told the online news portal. “It was all just very scary and traumatic.”
The father of seven is also co-founder and president of The King’s Men, a nonprofit group that promotes healing for victims of pornography addiction. Houck drives two hours south to Philadelphia every Wednesday to sidewalk council for six to eight hours at two different abortion centers, according to his wife.
The wife described an incident in which her husband “shoved” a pro-abortion activist away from his 12-year-old son after the man kept hurling “crude… inappropriate and disgusting” comments at the Houcks and entered the son’s “personal space.” The man, who was not hurt, tried to sue Houck. Ryan-Marie told LifeSite that the violation charge was thrown out of the District Court in Philadelphia this summer, but was somehow picked up by the Justice Department.
The Justice Department, meanwhile, accused Houck of having twice assaulted a reproductive health care clinic escort, identified in an indictment as “B.L.,” in violation of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which makes it a federal crime to use force with the intent to injure, intimidate, and interfere with anyone because that person is a provider of reproductive health care.
If convicted of the offenses, Houck faces up to a maximum of 11 years in prison, three years of supervised release, and fines of up to $350,000, according to a Sept. 23 press release.
Rifles
The 25 to 30 fully armed officers kept pounding at the door and yelling despite Houck’s peaceful attempts to placate them.
“Please, I’m going to open the door, but, please, my children are in the home. I have seven babies in the house,” Houck said, according to his wife. When he opened the door, “they had big, huge rifles pointed at Mark and pointed at me and kind of pointed throughout the house,” Ryan-Marie Houck told LifeSite.
“I don’t really know what’s going to come of it when you see guns pointed at your dad and your mom in your house when you first wake up in the morning,” she told the outlet.
With no little irony, we have another incident of gratuitous terrorism from the FBI, in the SWAT raid arrest of Mark Houck. https://t.co/OIOBSgftMO
After Ryan-Marie Houck accused the FBI of kidnapping her husband, the agents provided the first page of the search warrant and said they were taking her husband to “the federal building in downtown Philadelphia.”
“The FBI has turned into Biden’s secret police force,” Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) wrote on Twitter on Sept. 24. “Sending a small army of heavily armed agents to raid Mark Houck’s home should frighten EVERY American. The FBI using fear & intimidation tactics to go after conservatives needs to END!!”
The Department of Justice and FBI did not immediately return a request for comment.
A documentary by The Epoch Times, reveals the truth that has been hidden from the American people. Those who have seen it tell us that it is a life-changing experience. It’s one they want to share with all of America.
In addition, your recipients will get full digital access for 30 days to enjoy all of our content, including News, Opinion, Inspired, Health, Premium Magazines, EpochTV, Infographics, and more*. By inviting new readers to TheEpochTimes.com, you will get rewards points which can be redeemed for Epoch swag, your next subscription payment, and much more. Visit the Epoch Rewards Center to check your points status and redeem for rewards. Thank you for being our subscriber. Check back each week for a new gift.
Only by spreading the facts to everyone can we push away darkness and despair and improve our world.
Katy, TEXAS—Outside a drag bingo event hosted by a pro-LGBTchurch in Texas, a microcosm of America’s culture war played out with liberals and conservatives screaming at each other across a boulevard on Saturday.
About 300 Texas conservatives lined an entire block to protest the First Christian Church in Katy, which sponsored a sold-out family drag bingo event to raise money to benefit its “Transparent Closet.”
The clothing boutique was for “trans and exploring teens, youth and young adults,” according to the church’s website. Its parking lot was full of cars as the family drag bingo event started around 5 p.m. The adults-only portion of the drag show was scheduled for 8:30 p.m.
The conservative crowd dwarfed some 100 liberals who showed up to champion the church, which openly supports LGBT people. Protesters and counter-protesters alike were armed.
Extremist groups from both sides of the political spectrum showed up, including far-left Antifa members dressed in black from head to toe carrying umbrellas, few members of neo-Nazi groups, and the Proud Boys, a pro-Western fraternal organization who were wearing Buc-ee’s masks.
The Antifa and Proud Boys groups taunted each other as sheriff’s deputies donning helmets and riot gear straddled the boulevard to separate them.
At one point, the factions clashed with an Antifa member hitting a Proud Boy over the head with a flag pole. Other Proud Boys ran to confront the Antifa members, launching a pepper spray attack.
Proud Boys and Antifa face off at a drag bingo fundraiser at First Christian Church in Katy, Texas, on Sept. 24, 2022. (Bobby Sanchez/The Epoch Times)
Several Catholics praying the rosary downwind fled the area coughing.
Christian songs played over loudspeakers as cars and trucks with American flags cruised the boulevard honking their support. People knelt in the grass to pray.
On the liberal side of the road, the new Little Mermaid song blared in the background.
Fabiana Pimentel, an immigrant mother with children enrolled in the Katy Independent School District, said she left Brazil 14 years ago and can’t believe what is happening in America.
During the pandemic, she grew concerned about what her children were learning in the classroom and reading in school libraries.
“I realized things are worse than I thought,” she said. “I’m against the sexualization of kids.”
Richard Harmier of New Caney protested in hopes the Texas Legislature would take note and pass laws protecting minors from gender transitioning.
“My granddaughter is 13 years old, and she wants to be a boy now,” Harmier said, adding she cut off all her hair and avoids her father because he isn’t on board with her desire to transition.
“We’ve got to stop this,” he said. “You shouldn’t be free to indoctrinate children.”
A Texas Department of Public Safety trooper stands in the middle of a boulevard to keep drag bingo protestors separated A man holding a rifle stood guard over LGBT supporters on Sept. 24, 2022. (Bobby Sanchez/The Epoch Times)
Across the boulevard, liberals dressed in rainbow T-shirts were just as passionate, chanting, “Fascists, go home!”
A Katy woman on the liberal side said it was a shame people were protesting drag queens, so she came out to support the church.
“To make sure the people attending tonight are safe,” said the woman, who declined to give her name.
Another woman wearing a multicolored shirt watched the crowd from the liberal side. She was with a veteran group that was “for everybody’s rights,” including the LGTB community.
Further down, a man with graying hair dressed in black said he was an anti-fascist who came to counter Kelly Neidert, pointing a finger toward a group of conservatives across the boulevard.
Members of Antifa taunt protestors across the street Sept. 24, 2022. (Bobby Sanchez/The Epoch Times)
Neidert, wearing a red Trump hat, said Antifa follows her around Texas, harassing her because she hosted conservative events at the University of North Texas as a student.
She is the founder of Protect Texas Kids and wanted to attend the protest also to draw attention to the sexualization of children.
On Twitter, a post by the Screwston Anti-Fascist Committee labeled all the parent groups attending as “fascists” who intended to disrupt a drag bingo event. “Nazi groups such as the Aryan Freedom Network plan to attend,” the post said.
The post included a flier targeting Kelly Neidert, urging members to “mask up and bring a buddy.”
“Join us in the streets to defend the queer community against this threat!” the flier said.
The drag bingo event at First Christian Church, part of the Disciples of Christ denomination, drew more controversy after the church quietly dropped one drag performer, Jaysen Kettl, who was once involved in a school shooting plot.
Kettl goes by the stage name of Tisha Flowers and portrays himself as a Goth drag queen.
In 2004, Kettl, 17 at the time, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit capital murder for his role in plotting a school shooting at Vidor High School. The plot was foiled before anything occurred.
Both sides of the debate surrounding the controversial drug, ivermectin, agree it can kill SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. But some groups have characterized the drug as a COVID-19 “cure,” while others have classed it as “dangerous.”
While many published studies advise against using ivermectin for COVID-19, studies that showed statistically-significant benefits for the treatment have been taken down and retracted “without explanation.”
That’s according to Dr. Pierre Kory, a pulmonary and critical care medicine specialist who is the president and co-founder of the Front Line Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC).
Kory and a number of other physicians who support ivermectin use in treating COVID-19, especially in early treatment, were among those whose papers on ivermectin were retracted by journals that Kory alleges are “beholden to Big Pharma.”
“We saw peer reviewed articles—articles that passed peer review by experts in their field, including my own—retracted without explanation,” Kory said on Sept. 10 at a “Reclaiming Medicine” conference hosted by the Australian Medical Professionals’ Society (AMPS) in Melbourne, Australia.
“I have numerous colleagues whose papers that were supportive of ivermectin in reasonably high impact journals—they were retracted. And then the only thing you’ll ever see published in high impact journal are supposedly negative studies,” he said.
“What I have noticed after having identified ivermectin, [and] publishing the first comprehensive review paper, is that we’ve had unrelenting media attacks on us as researchers.”
Dr. Pierre Kory, a pulmonary and critical care medicine specialist and president and co-founder of the Front Line Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), speaks at at a conference hosted by the Australian Medical Professionals’ Society in Melbourne, Australia on Sept. 10, 2022. (Australian Medical Professionals’ Society/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)
Kory said he has first hand knowledge of 88 controlled trials, including all of the health ministry programs around the world, that successfully used ivermectin in early COVID-19 treatment.
“I know the drug works and I’ve been disseminating that knowledge. Unfortunately, the narrative is that it doesn’t work and that it’s a horse dewormer,” Kory previously told host Jan Jekielek on Epoch TV’s American Thought Leaders program.
“They base that on a couple of trials published in high impact journals, and then they try to dismiss the drug. All of the complaints are from physicians and pharmacists. Not one patient has ever submitted a complaint against the care that I’ve delivered, and that pertains to my entire career,” he said.
Retracted Papers
At the conference, Kory identified three examples of manuscripts on ivermectin that were retracted after they were submitted to medical journal publications and passed peer review.
(Australian Medical Professionals’ Society/Screenshot via The Epoch Times).
One example was a manuscript by Elgazzar et al., titled “Ivermectin for Prevention and Treatment of COVID-19 Infection: A Systematic Review, Meta-analysis,” which was retracted “without any opportunity of reply,” according to a letter to the editor by researchers Bryant et al.
Elgazzar’s manuscript was accused of data fabrication and plagiarism.
The second example was a review article by Zaidi and Dehgani-Mobaraki titled, “The mechanisms of action of ivermectin against SARS-CoV-2—an extensive review,” which was retracted by a journal’s editor-in-chief, who cited concerns with its methodology and conclusion.
“[T]he cited sources do not appear to show that there is clear clinical evidence of the effect of ivermectin for the treatment of SARS-CoV-2. The Editor-in-Chief therefore no longer has confidence in the reliability of this review article. None of the authors agree to this retraction,” the retraction notice states.
The third example was Kory’s own research article titled, “Review of the emerging evidence demonstrating the efficacy of Ivermectin in the prophylaxis and treatment of COVID-19,” which he said was also retracted after passing peer-review.
Kory’s article was later amended by removing its original reference to the study by Elgazzar et al.
Kory also mentioned other papers, including one co-authored by Nobel Prize winner Dr. Satoshi Omura, titled “Global trends in clinical studies of ivermectin in COVID-19.”
Omura shared one quarter of the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine in 2015 for his discoveries in ivermectin for river blindness and elephantiasis. One of the retracted study’s co-authors is Dr. Morimasa Yagisawa, the lead author of the study and Omura’s colleague.
“This [paper] was published by the Nobel Prize winner himself, he’s the world expert on ivermectin, and that was also ignored, and his pleas to use ivermectin were ignored,” Kory said.
In an interview with ABS-CBN news, Yagisawa said the World Health Organization (WHO) and other relevant state drug regulators “neglected all of such small trials” of ivermectin in COVID-19, stating supposed “heavy bias” and the need for three-phase studies, including placebo-controlled trials.
Kory told the conference: “You’re dealing with the vast amount of the nation’s, or the really the world’s, physicians who literally and very strongly believe that ivermectin is dangerous, it’s ineffective. [They’ve been led to think], ‘Only conspiracy theorists and unvaccinated people would ever want to use ivermectin.’ It’s absolutely atrocious what’s happened.”
He added: “This has never happened in our collective careers, ever. You have to understand something went really wrong in COVID.”
During a typical peer review process, an academic paper is scrutinized by other academics anonymously. The process is intended to see whether the paper passes muster, including to see whether findings from the study are valid, meaningful, or whether a given experiment performs its intended function. Peer-reviewed papers are generally considered to be more credible and valid compared to pre-prints—papers that have not been reviewed.
A retraction occurs when a published paper is deemed at a later time to be erroneous. This can be damaging to a researcher’s employment, funding, and reputation. Retractions are particularly damaging if initiated by the publisher or the editor, rather than the authors themselves.
Self-retractions initiated by the authors usually occur when authors later find mistakes in their study after publication. Such a move is generally associated with humility and integrity to further the accuracy of the sciences.
But when the editor or publisher retracts a paper, they usually say the decision was due to the alleged use of fraudulent data, plagiarism, untrue authorship claims, and other general misconduct related to professional code of ethics. All such reasons cited can impact the study authors’ reputation.
Evidence on Ivermectin Dismissed in Australia
Dr. Phillip Altman—a veteran and expert in the areas of clinical medical research and pharmaceutical drug regulatory affairs in Australia—said he made detailed submissions to Australia’s national COVID-19 Clinical Evidence Task Force where he provided successful national campaigns of early treatment of COVID-19 with ivermectin for hundreds of millions of people in India, Mexico, Peru, and Brazil.
“These so-called experts did not even bother to respond,” he said on Sept. 10 at the “Reclaiming Medicine” conference.
Dr. Phillip Altman, an expert in the areas of clinical medical research and pharmaceutical drug regulatory affairs in Australia, speaks at a “Reclaiming Medicine” conference hosted by the Australian Medical Professionals’ Society in Melbourne, Australia, on Sept. 10, 2022. (The Epoch Times)
The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), Australia’s medicine and therapeutics regulator, said in a statement to The Epoch Times that while it “welcomes and encourages discussions” with prospective sponsors on the regulation process for potential COVID-19 treatments, “as at 15 September 2022, no application has been submitted to the TGA to support the use of ivermectin, either alone or in combination, for the treatment or prevention of COVID-19.”
In Australia, doctors are permitted to prescribe ivermectin only for conditions approved by TGA. These conditions include scabies and certain parasitic infections. COVID-19 is not TGA-approved for ivermectin prescription.
The TGA told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement that “more evidence” is required before ivermectin can be considered “a safe and effective treatment option” for COVID-19.
“This is the consensus view of international regulators and several top-tier medical journals,” a TGA spokesperson said.
Additionally, the U.S. government’s National Institute of Health (NIH) recommends against the use of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19, except in clinical trials.
Currently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warns against the use of ivermectin for COVID-19, saying that taking large doses of ivermectin can be dangerous. Side effects of large doses of ivermectin include skin rashes, nausea, and vomiting, it says.
But at the same time, agency has long approved ivermectin to treat certain parasites, head lice, and skin conditions like rosacea. Ivermectin has also been featured on the WHO’s List of Essential Medicines for decades.
Treatment Benefit of Ivermectin
At the “Reclaiming Medicine” conference, Kory pointed to C19early.com, a website that compiles findings from hundreds of studies on various early treatment options for COVID-19.
The websites show the treatment benefit of each option through a forest plot.
A reading less than 1 indicates that the treatment option is better than doing nothing, and ivermectin has a number below 0.4 across 91 different studies, with an average improvement of 62 percent in overall improvement and 83 percent improvement as a prophylaxis—all significant results.
(Image on ivermectin studies with forest plot graph/c19ivermectin.com)
“If you look at the forest plot, these are all of the trials showing that it is large magnitude benefits [from ivermectin]. And when you average these and summarize all the patients, you find an astounding massive improvement in numbers of clinical outcomes,” Kory told the conference.
“If their efficacy was known to the world, it would blow up a marketplace in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
“I’ve never seen 88 controlled trials; usually after 5, 10, 15, it’s considered proven.”
The Epoch Times has reached out to the FDA for comment.
A recent literature review published in the Journal of Antibiotics in 2021, a Nature-affiliated journal, found that ivermectin could pose 20 different actions against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. These actions fell under umbrella functions that included preventing viral entry into host cells, and preventing viral propagation and inflammation.
The literature review cited an article published in Frontiers in Microbiology, in which authors compared ivermectin, chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, remdesivir, and favipiravir for their ability to bind to target SARS-CoV-2 target proteins and block their actions.
Ivermectin showed that it had the highest binding affinity to S subunits on the spike protein, a component involved in viral entry. Authors stated the results imply that ivermectin is the most effective at impeding spike protein actions.
The drug can also bind to multiple sites on TMPRSS2, a SARS-CoV-2 protein that is critical to viral fusion into the cell. In the open configuration, ivermectin can also bind with greater affinity to the virus than remdesivir.
Ivermectin also had effects against viral spread in host cells, authors noted. According to the paper, when cells are infected by a virus, the cells send out messages to other nearby cells to inform them of a viral infection, making the cells more resistant to the virus. This message is impaired in COVID-19 by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, but the ivermectin inhibits this viral action.
Ivermectin is also an anti-inflammatory, and can therefore prevent the over-activation of many inflammatory pathways, thereby preventing severe COVID-19 symptoms such as systemic inflammation, ongoing fever, pain, and so on, authors wrote.
A newly discovered email from 2013 discloses that the vice-director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Yuan Zhiming, is a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official who was formally in charge of international cooperation and biosafety at the Institute. The Institute is suspected to be the origin of the Coronavirus pandemic.
The email is part of a large number of documents unearthed by transparency group U.S. Right to Know through ongoing Freedom of Information Act litigation to uncover pandemic-related information held by U.S. institutions. Although the initial batch of documents was released in June, the email pertaining to Yuan, which was obtained from the Galveston National Laboratory, was only discovered now by former Senate investigator Paul D. Thacker.
While it is not a secret that every Chinese institution ultimately answers to the CCP, the discovery of Yuan’s true role as the CCP’s praetorian and biosafety minder at the Wuhan lab is highly significant.
The email obtained by U.S. Right to Know. (Screenshot/The Epoch Times)
Yuan’s academic biography does not mention his role as “Secretary of the Party Committee” at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Institute’s website does not provide information on the identity of the Secretary of the Party Committee. Publicly available information confirms that as of July 2021, Yuan was still a director at the Institute. Yuan claims to have previously worked at the Pasteur Institute in France, the Royal Danish University of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry, the Danish National Institute of Environmental Research, and the University of Illinois. It is not known whether those institutions were aware that Yuan is a CCP official.
Yuan is also associated with James Le Duc, the director of the Galveston National Laboratory in Texas. The Galveston lab was built by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and operates under the auspices of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institutes of Allergies and Health (NIAID).
The connections between the Wuhan lab and Le Duc go back to at least 1986 when Le Duc spent a year working at the Wuhan lab. Le Duc later trained Wuhan lab staff at his Galveston lab.
Le Duc also knew about Yuan’s true role at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, since the 2013 email that exposed it was in response to a request from Le Duc’s staff to the Institute. Le Duc wanted to set up a meeting with “the director of the biocontainment lab.” Notably, the reply, which was sent by a staff member at the Wuhan lab, explained that there were two directors, the nominal director and the “Secretary of the Party Committee.” Like almost all Chinese institutions, the lab had an ostensible director and a CCP praetorian. Le Duc likely knew that the real power was vested with Yuan, whom he subsequently befriended.
On Feb. 9, 2020, a month before the pandemic erupted in the United States, Le Duc emailed his “friend” Yuan to ask for an “Investigation into the possibility that the Covid outbreak was the result of a release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
That email was uncovered by a separate Freedom of Information Act request late last year. Le Duc attached a catalog of questions for Yuan, including asking when the Wuhan lab first started handling coronaviruses and where it had obtained its large collection of viruses.
Most significantly, Le Duc outright asked Yuan whether the Wuhan lab had conducted gain-of-function experiments that may have resulted in the creation of COVID-19.
Le Duc ended his email with an admonition to Yuan: “If there are weaknesses in your program, now is the time to admit them and get them corrected … I trust that you will take my suggestions in the spirit of one friend trying to help another during a very difficult time.”
Despite Le Duc’s decades-long affiliation with the Wuhan lab and his personal friendship with Yuan, he never heard back.
In April 2020, Le Duc contacted EcoHealth adviser David Franz to tell him about his outreach to Yuan, as well as the fact that Yuan had failed to respond.
EcoHealth is the organization through whom Fauci had funded gain-of-function experiments on coronaviruses at the Wuhan lab. It is unknown why Le Duc reached out to Franz, nor what Franz’s response was, if any. Franz was previously the commander of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick. The Chinese authorities have accused Fort Detrick of being the true origin of the COVID-19 virus.
At the same time, another former military official, Philip Russell, the former commander of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command—also located at Fort Detrick—sent Le Duc a link to an EpochTV documentary that concluded that the pandemic likely started at the Wuhan lab. Le Duc replied that he thought the virus came out of the Wuhan Seafood Market but acknowledged that he could not “argue with the comments against the Chinese Communist Party.”
Le Duc went on to state, “It’s too bad that the global pandemic is being conflated with the challenges the world faces from the Chinese Communist Party. They are both important issues, but I’m not convinced that they are linked.”
As we now know—and as Le Duc knew at the time—the link between the Wuhan lab and the CCP was Le Duc’s friend Yuan.
In an apparent effort to deflect Russell’s attention from the evidence of a lab leak, Le Duc praised the lab’s director, Shi Zhengli, claiming that she was a “very talented scientist and a charming person.”
Russell did not fall for the decoy, responding: “I have no doubt that Zheng Li Shi is a brilliant scientist and very charming. That does not rule out the possibility that one of the many bat coronaviruses isolated in the Wuhan lab infected a technician who walked out the door. No need for engineering the virus. The flimsiness of the epidemiology pointing to the wet market, the absence of bats in the market, the failure to identify an intermediate animal host, the extraordinary measures taken by the Chinese government, including persecution and probable killing of two brave physicians, to cover up the outbreak, the steps taken to silence the laboratory personnel, the change in leadership of the lab, all point to the lab as the source of the outbreak.”
At that point, Le Duc replied that it was “certainly possible that a lab accident was the source of the epidemic.” Le Duc also revealed that he had reached out to Yuan about a lab leak but never heard back from him. Le Duc closed by betraying what appears to have been his real objective: “We need to strike a balance such that we are not in an adversarial situation.”
In other words, it appears Le Duc was motivated by a desire not to create a conflict with the CCP. Analogously, NIH head Francis Collins privately told Fauci and his group of scientists to suppress evidence of a lab origin in order to preserve “international harmony.”
There is little doubt that if it had been publicly known in March 2020 that the virus originated at a CCP-affiliated lab, the worldwide pressure on the CCP would have been immense.
Jeff Younger wants to block any attempt to move his son to California
A Texas father embroiled in a high-profile custody battle fears a court ruling this week could allow his ex-wife to move to California and medically transition his 10-year-old son to a girl.
Jeff Younger, who lives in the Dallas area, told The Epoch Times on Sept. 23 that he will fight the Sept. 21 ruling by Dallas District Judge Mary Brown, and vows he’ll continue to fight for his son, James.
The parents have been engaged in a custody battle over James for most of his life. The mother, Anne Georgulas, started questioning James’s gender when he was a toddler. She argues that from a young age James chose to identify as a female, wanted to wear dresses, and eventually wanted to be known as Luna.
She eventually socially transitioned the boy, and presented him at school as a girl. The school supported that after the couple separated.
Younger accused his ex-spouse of leading their young child to socially transition before he could understand the concept or its implications. He said James rejected being female and did not wear dresses when visiting his home after the parents separated in 2015.
Demonstrators in downtown Los Angeles speak out about complications associated with “gender-reassignment” surgeries on March 12, 2022. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)
“I had a dress at my house, but he threw it in the trash can in the middle of the night when he thought I wasn’t looking,” Younger said.
Younger is concerned that his ex-wife now will transition James medically. He says documents he obtained during court proceedings show she took James to a therapist who recommended the family “explore” gender transitioning at the Dallas-based Genecis medical clinic.
Younger intends to file an emergency stay in response to the Sept. 21 court order. He’ll ask that a previous jury verdict, allowing 50-50 custody and no child support, be reaffirmed.
Brown, a liberal Democrat sitting on the bench for Texas 301st District Court, ruled that Younger’s ex-wife could move James and his twin brother, Jude, anywhere in the continental United States. The judge said her ruling was for the “safety and welfare” of the twins.
The order also said Younger would have to schedule supervised parental visits in the county and state where the children reside.
In her ruling, the judge “ordered” the mother not to reveal their future whereabouts to the boys’ father. And the judge allowed her to apply for new passports.
Georgulas, a Dallas-area pediatrician, indicated earlier this month that she intends to move to California, Younger said.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks onstage during Vox Media’s 2022 Code Conference in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sept. 7. (Jerod Harris/Getty Images)
The move is consequential because lawmakers there have passed a bill that, according to a California Senate Rules Committee explanation, would enact “various safeguards against the enforcement of other states’ laws” that would “penalize individuals from obtaining gender-affirming care that is legal in California.” The bill was delivered to the desk of Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sept. 9 and, if not vetoed, will become law.
The legislation would prohibit medical providers from releasing information in response to lawsuits originating in other states that oppose “gender-affirming” care for children. It also would bar California state and local police from arresting or extraditing someone for violating other states’ laws regarding treatment.
“As soon as she’s there for a year, my sons will become citizens of California,” Younger said. “And then it becomes legal for them to castrate James. So they’ll chemically castrate him.”
In 2021, Brown stripped Younger of most parental rights, giving full custody in a temporary order to Georgulas, after Younger was late making child support payments, medical support, and interest, as ordered. Then, he only paid his past-due support after the motion for enforcement was filed, according to the judge’s ruling.
Younger believes the new California law will allow his ex-wife to get around a previous Texas court order preventing either parent from treating the child with hormonal suppression therapy, puberty blockers, or transgender reassignment surgery without both parents’ consent or a court order.
In the Sept. 21 ruling, Brown said Younger ignored her instructions to attend therapy sessions. and failed to see his children in the past 13 months.
Younger said that he was not allowed to see his children individually, and had to see them together. The judge ordered him to pay hundreds of dollars for each supervised visit. The judge also ordered him not to change James out of a dress when he visited, which Younger refused to do.
“I’ve told the judge I’ll just go to jail over that,” Younger said. “I’m not harming my son.”
The court also issued a gag order against Younger, forbidding him to talk to the media. He defied it.
Younger believes the supervised visits ordered by the judge were “a setup,” so the observer could make adverse reports about his refusal to call the boy Luna.
“We have reached a point of absolute despotism in the Texas courts,” said Younger, who in the spring ran unsuccessfully for the office of state representative on the issue of making gender transition illegal for minors.
“This is directly the fault of the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature,” he said, noting that attempts to pass such legislation in 2021 failed.
When reached by The Epoch Times, Georgulas declined to comment on the ruling or her plans to move.
The executive director of a law firm trying to stop a California bill that he says will enable infanticide has criticized billboards paid for by the campaign of California Gov. Gavin Newsom which promote abortion with Bible quotes.
Newsom, a Democrat, announced on Sept. 16 that he had launched the billboards in Texas, Indiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and three more of what he called “the most restrictive anti-abortion states.”
The billboards encourage women to seek abortions in California, with some including a Bible verse from Mark 12:31, in which Jesus is quoted as saying: “Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no greater commandment than these.”
“To any woman seeking an abortion in these anti-freedom states: [California] will defend your right to make decisions about your own health,” Newsom wrote on Twitter alongside images of the designs of each billboard.
The move has been denounced by Jordan Sekulow, the executive director of the American Center for Law and Justice, a constitutional law firm urging Newsom not to sign an abortion bill, AB 2223, which has gone to his desk.
Pro-life activists demonstrate outside the Supreme Court of the United States in Washington, on June 13, 2022. (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)
“Governor Newsom has taken it upon himself to be the ambassador of abortion in America, inviting others to come to California to have abortions,” Sekulow wrote in a blog post.
“But while it’s obnoxious to post billboards in other states, he goes a step further into pure evil,” he added. “The most depraved part is that the very same billboards quote and twist the words of Jesus Christ in order to promote the killing of unborn children in abortion.”
Sekulow said he finds it “hard to imagine” that Newsom loves God when he “advocates for legally killing babies after they’re born.”
“And it certainly isn’t loving your neighbor. These babies are our neighbor. Yet Newsom is pushing hideous new extreme abortion bills,” Sekulow said, referring to an abortion bill awaiting the Democratic governor’s signature.
California Bill ‘Will Allow Certain Forms of Infanticide’
In an Aug. 31 letter (pdf) to Newsom, Sekulow said AB 2223 will, if signed, change California law “in a way that radically undermines protection for newborns,” and unless amended, “will allow certain forms of infanticide.”
Introduced by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, the bill would delete from the existing law the requirement for a county coroner to hold inquests to investigate perinatal deaths “related to or following known or suspected self-induced or criminal abortion.”
Under the legislation, if a person withholds or omits care from an infant—which a coroner might note as an “unattended fetal death”—whether that infant is full-term, premature, or born alive but subsequently dies due to lack of care, the person would be immune to civil or criminal liability or penalty, no matter what the coroner finds.
The bill further states that it would “delete the requirement” for a coroner to handle “an unattended fetal death” as a “death without medical attendance.”
Pro-life supporters celebrate outside the Supreme Court in Washington on June 24, 2022. (Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images)
Under the legislation, immunity from criminal or civil liability extends to any of the mother’s “actions or omissions with respect to their pregnancy or actual, potential, or alleged pregnancy outcome, including miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion, or perinatal death due to causes that occurred in utero.”
The phrasing in the clause is particularly egregious for Sekulow because the scope of “pregnancy outcome” would include if a newborn died for any reason during the “perinatal” period, which extends 28 days after birth, including if a newborn is left to die after a failed abortion.
“In other words, it could effectively legalize infanticide up to twenty-eight days after the baby is born (the perinatal period) ‘for any reason,’” Sekulow wrote.
Sekulow said the “abhorrent language” has remained unchanged in the bill throughout the amendment process. He added that there had been a “complete refusal” on the part of California lawmakers “to remove the term ‘perinatal’” from the bill.
“It is now abundantly clear that this refusal is intentional and not due to a misunderstanding of the term,” he said.
Ambiguous ‘Occurred in Utero’ Language
After American Center for Law and Justice conducted legal analysis of the bill, Sekulow noted another part of the phrasing in that clause of the bill for its ambiguity: “occurred in utero.”
Sekulow said ambiguity in the bill’s language left it open to interpretation which allows doctors to claim an infant’s death was “due to” something that happened in utero, or before birth, and that the law would “effectively bar” any investigation to verify those claims.
“People would be protected regardless of whether the death of the child was caused by their actions or their omission with regard to their pregnancy and their care of the infant born alive,” he said.
Abortion-rights activists chant while marching from City Hall to a Planned Parenthood clinic in Santa Monica, Calif., on July 16, 2022. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
The lawyer accused the California legislature of “attempting to shield women,” and those who help them in a “self-performed” abortion, from having to provide medical attention to “babies born alive after botched abortions.”
“California law provides, ‘[t]he rights to medical treatment of an infant prematurely born alive in the course of an abortion shall be the same as the rights of an infant of similar medical status prematurely born spontaneously,” he said.
“This law would, sub silento, overrule those protections, and would create a subclass of newborn human beings by taking away their right to not only medical care, but to life.”
Tragedies Overseas Under Similar Laws
Under the Californian bill, women wouldn’t need to visit a physician in person to access abortion pills nor get a pre-natal scan to determine the actual pregnancy stage.
In his letter to Newsom, Sekulow cited how, under similar laws in the UK, an East Yorkshire woman took an abortion pill known as mifepristone at 30 weeks pregnant believing she was 12 weeks pregnant. The child was born in a hospital toilet and despite medical attention died four days later. An inquest into the incident heard the woman had not received proper pre-natal scans, The Daily Mail reported.
New Zealand in 2020 passed an abortion law with similarities to California’s AB 2223. It was described as the country’s “most liberal” abortion law, allowing abortions up to 20 weeks without consulting a doctor.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern holds a press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron (out of frame) following talks on the sidelines of the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York on Sept. 20, 2022. (Ludovic Marin / AFP via Getty Images)
A right-leaning elected official attempted to insert an amendment into that legislation to make it a legal requirement to provide medical care to any infants born alive in a failed abortion. New Zealand’s left-leaning government voted 80–37 against it, including Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.
The following year, an infant was left gasping for breath for two hours before dying after an unsuccessful late-term abortion at 21 weeks, according to Voice for Life, the country’s oldest pro-life organization, who reported the eye-witness account of a health care student who was reportedly left traumatized after witnessing it.
The Epoch Times has asked Newsom’s office for comment.
Inflation has cut into the finances of the middle class more than that of low- and high-income households, according to a CBO report from Sept. 22.
Annual U.S. inflation rates have hovered in around the low- to mid-8 percent range since the summer began, with the highest rates in roughly 40 years.
There have been massive price increases for the three key household expenditures this year—food, housing, and energy—much of it due to supply chain problems.
The CBO report analyzed the average purchase of goods and services in each fifth of U.S. households according to income distribution in 2019, before the pandemic hit normal spending rates.
Households in the second, middle, and fourth income brackets, which together make up the American middle class, have witnessed the value of their overall income decline in value over the past year.
Meanwhile, the average share of income relative to expenditures for Americans in the lowest and highest quintiles has been less skewed in 2022.
The report reflected that prices for middle-income households grew faster than their earnings this year.
Lower- and upper-class families have seen their incomes grow faster than prices.
The CBO report also saw that spending habits among income levels between 2019 and 2022 reversed. Lower-income households saw their share of income needed to make purchases in 2019 go up, while other income brackets saw a decline.
The Fed and American Households
The Federal Reserve has been trying to lower inflation by aggressively raising interest rates in order to reach its inflation target of 2 percent.
The central bank hiked its benchmark rate by 75 basis points for the third time in a row to 3 to 3.25 percent at its policy meeting earlier this week to levels not seen since early 2008.
Most economists expect the Fed to raise rates to between 4 and 4.5 percent by the end of this year through sizable rate increases at its next policy meetings in November and December.
However, an increase in interest rates will likely slow economic growth, cause the housing market to tumble, and bring higher unemployment.
The average household was spending $460 more in August for the exact same items as last year, according Ryan Sweet, senior director of economic research at Moody’s Analytics to The Wall Street Journal.
“That’s a big burden, particularly on lower-income households. That’s one reason the Fed is laser-focused on getting inflation down,” said Sweet.
“They have a long way to go before they get it back down to where they want it to be, but we’ve seen small steps in the right direction.”
Fed Chairman Jerome Powell admitted in late August that while rate increases would bring down inflation, “they will also bring some pain to households and businesses.”
So far, unemployment apparently remains relatively low, according to government statistics, but there are signs of it weakening and many have dropped out of the workforce altogether.
Workers have seen some benefits from a tight labor market, as many employers are desperate to fill hundreds of thousands of existing open positions.
Lower-income workers have benefitted more, as many of the positions are in less skilled positions.
The U.S. economy has added an average of 380,000 jobs per month over the past six months, far above what the Fed chair had expected.
“We certainly haven’t given up the idea that we can have a relatively modest increase in unemployment. Nonetheless, we need to complete this task,” said Powell, who believes that the hot labor market is perpetuating inflation.
After the fast spread of the pandemic of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) from China to the Western world, several large pharmaceutical companies quickly invented and manufactured COVID-19 vaccines, which were then made available to the public through emergency use authorization (EUA). And in late 2020, people around the world started to receive these vaccines.
According to Our World in Data, to date, 67.9 percent of the world population has received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. While only 22.5 percent of people in low-income countries have received a dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, the vaccination rates of developed countries are generally high—typically around 80 percent. For instance, the COVID-19 vaccination rates of the G7 countries are: 79.19 percent in the United States, 86.96 percent in Canada, 80.92 percent in France, 77.66 percent in Germany, 85.82 percent in Italy, 83.60 percent in Japan, and 79.97 percent in the UK.
However, in all countries and regions around the world, there are people who elect not to receive the COVID-19 vaccines for various reasons. They are a naturally occurring control group, as opposed to the vaccinated population (i.e. the experimental group). Indeed, the whole COVID-19 vaccine campaigns can be regarded as the unprecedented largest human clinical trials on vaccine safety, by design or not, as the vaccines’ long term safety data was not available when they were provided to people under EUA. Then, the unvaccinated population in different parts of the world are very unique large control groups in such a global clinical trial.
Due to the highly valuable health data of this unvaccinated population, between October 2021 and February 2022, a UK-based organization called Control Group Cooperative (CGC) independently collected their self-reported data on their health status, reasons for declining to receive the COVID-19 vaccines, whether they have been infected by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the severity of their symptoms for the ones that did get infected, and whether they’ve been subject to discrimination or victimization.
These data have then been analyzed by a team of researchers, who are entirely independent of the CGC and have received no funding for interpreting the findings of the CGC survey. Their recent report on their findings has been published on the International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research, which is a peer-reviewed scholarly open access journal.
What Is the Control Group Cooperative?
The Control Group Cooperative was founded in July 2021 to defend people’s inalienable rights to freedom of choice and bodily integrity. Actually, one of the core principles in public health is the respect of autonomy. The group is particularly concerned with the marginalization and stigmatization of COVID-19 unvaccinated communities around the world. The stakeholders of the cooperative believe that they are making a positive contribution to society by collecting health data from both the SARS-CoV-2 vaccinated and the unvaccinated to facilitate a truly comparative analysis.
Their rationale is that there is no existing official control group designated by the governments or health authorities. However, since all the existing COVID-19 vaccines are experimental, and a true scientific experiment (i.e. a controlled experiment) requires at least one group (i.e. the control group) that doesn’t receive the experimental treatment, then the COVID-19 vaccine treatments must have a control group as well in order to properly evaluate their long-term efficacy and safety.
As of now, over 305,000 participants who have voluntarily elected to not be inoculated with COVID-19 vaccines, from over 175 countries have signed up to become part of the control group.
By joining the control group, the participants receive an ID card, which indicates that they “must not be vaccinated” due to their participation. The CGC stated on its website that this ID card is “not an official or legal exemption in any country.” Although these ID cards aren’t recognized by any authorities, many participants have reported that they had helped them avoid vaccination without informed consent, supported their position, and facilitated discussion with others.
Some governments and media personnel have tried to discredit the CGC by calling it a “potential scam.” For instance, upon discovering several ID cards issued by the CGC, the provincial government of Manitoba in Canada posted on its Twitter account that “data collected through the platform could not be used in an official trial to compare vaccinated and unvaccinated people,” as per a UK health body. However, the UK’s Medicines and Health Care products Regulatory Agency stated that the collection of health data from the public does not need its approval.
To be fair, it is very hard to evaluate the accuracy of the survey results from such a large scale global survey. It is also very challenging to evaluate whether the volunteers in this study are heavily biased or not. But, there is no clinical trial that could be designed at such a global scale, and the world needs the health data regarding this population. Therefore, even though the results from this study cannot be as well-designed as a regular clinical trial, the merit of this study cannot be simply denied for providing such valuable data from unique angles.
Findings of an Independent Analysis of the CGC Survey
When joining the CGC’s control group, the participants agree to fill out a monthly survey about their health status.
The aforementioned analysis was performed by a multinational team of independent researchers on the data collected from a cohort over a five month period from October 2021 to February 2022.
This cohort of 18,497 people is a sub-group of all participants (297,618 people as of late February 2022), and they had been carefully selected to be representative of the full dataset.
Geographic Distribution of the Unvaccinated Communities
In the cohort, the largest unvaccinated populations are from Europe (40 percent), Oceania (Australia and New Zealand; 27 percent), and North America (United States and Canada; 25 percent). The respondents are from a total of 68 countries and six continents.
Age Group and Gender
Among the 96.3 percent of the survey participants who disclosed their gender, 57 percent were female, and 43 percent were male. The largest numbers of respondents were found in the 50 to 69 age group, who are considered by the health authorities as at a higher risk of COVID-19 infection and severe illness/death after infection than the general public. The number of participants between the ages of 40 and 49 was also relatively large.
Top Reasons for Not Receiving COVID-19 Vaccines
According to the survey, the five leading reasons behind the cohort’s decision to not receive COVID-19 vaccines include preference for natural medicine interventions, distrust of pharmaceutical interventions, distrust of government information on the vaccines, poor or limited trial study data, and fear of long-term side effects. They were of nearly equal importance. Each respondent could select more than one reason that he/she considered equally important.
From the results, we can see that the participants were not refusing medical treatment, nor were they not caring of their own health, as sometimes portrayed by the media and/or authorities. To these unvaccinated people, they just did not think that there is only one way (the vaccine way) to help them medically, and they have been reasonably conservative in taking new vaccine products. No scientist in the world can claim that we understand every aspect of the new vaccine products.
Furthermore, since vaccine development in the past took 10 to 15 years on average to complete, many people are skeptical of the COVID-19 vaccines, which were invented so quickly by several major pharmaceutical companies (Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson) after receiving hefty funding from the U.S., German, and other governments. Moreover, the messenger RNA (mRNA) platform, based on which the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines were invented, is a new technology, which hadn’t been used to produce vaccines previously.
Even before the vaccines were implemented, people knew that RNA molecules were unstable in the human body. However, the mRNA generated in the new vaccines have been modified to keep them more stable. Therefore, we don’t know whether any side effects from these modified mRNA molecules would be immediate, delayed, transient, or long term. Therefore, it’s reasonable for some people to want to wait and see the long-term effects of these new mRNA vaccines and to not trust their limited trial data.
Physical and Mental Health Status of the Unvaccinated Cohort
1) COVID-19 infection before survey
Prior to taking the survey, less than 20 percent of the participants had been infected by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, with the majority of the people aging from 20 to 69 years old.
2) COVID-19 infection during five month period
During the five month period from October 2021 through February 2022, in most parts of the world, the highly transmissible Omicron variant became the most prevalent strain, replacing the previously dominant Delta variant. As a result, many people became infected.
Most respondents reporting suspected or confirmed COVID-19 infection on the survey questionnaire were between 20 to 69 years old, which is consistent with the infection situation prior to the survey. Specifically, the age group from 20 to 49 years old accounted for 10.7 percent of the respondents; and the age group from 50 to 69 years old accounted for 12.3 percent.
3) Severe illness situation of the infected respondents
Given that society had found no way to stop the spread of the Omicron variant, many were infected during this time period—this included many asymptomatic infections. Therefore, our main concern is with the respondents of the cohort who were seriously ill and/or hospitalized.
Fortunately, in the vast majority of the cases, the patients’ symptoms were mild and moderate. The rate of severe illness appeared to be very low (around 2 percent of all respondents). Only 74 individuals among the 5,196 (1.4 percent) confirmed or suspected infected respondents reported that they were hospitalized. This percentage might not be very accurate, as people who are very sick or hospitalized might not be healthy enough or willing to participate in this kind of survey. So, objectively, this kind of survey will have data skewing towards more healthy targets.
Nevertheless, the data here still indicates that this group of unvaccinated people were not more prone to the infection by Omicron, even though they were not protected by the vaccines. Otherwise, the percentage of infection and hospitalization rates among this group of people would be much higher. Therefore, this is a very important piece of data, as well as the core observation in this study.
However, in the above graph, there are no data on the number of deaths, as the deceased wouldn’t be able to self-report their cases. Since it’s simply impossible to know the number of deaths with the survey design, some may criticize the findings as not authoritative, because these cases were not confirmed by doctors. Nevertheless, judging from the small portion of patients with severe illness among the infected cohorts in this group, it is fair to estimate that disease progression upon Omicron infection does not correlate with the vaccination status.
Also, among the infected respondents, the leading symptoms include fatigue, cough, muscle or body aches, fever, and loss of taste, with most of them being reported by participants in the 50 to 69 years old age group. Most likely, age and underlying medical conditions would be the main factors leading to disease progression.
Self-administration of Vitamins and Medicines
Although the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and health authorities in some other countries haven’t approved the use of ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine, some respondents believed that there were significant volume of medical study data to suggest that these drugs were effective at treating COVID-19 disease, and some clinicians said that from their own experience that they had helped many of their patients with these drugs. As a result, some did use these drugs to combat their COVID-19 infection. Also, most people took vitamins, as they can be very helpful in boosting the immune system. So it is clear that they had been taking an active approach to prevention and treatment, not simply ignoring the threats of COVID.
Mask-wearing Situation of Infected Respondents
The fact that these participants were not vaccinated doesn’t imply that they were not concerned about their own health or others’ health. In reality, many of them were very conscious of their health and personal hygiene practices to stop the spread of COVID-19.
Many people stereotype the unvaccinated people as a group who doesn’t care about their lives or health, as they do not wear masks nor take any precautions to avoid infecting others. However, the data on the graph clearly showed that many of these unvaccinated people also wore masks for long periods in a day. And the data here do not imply any causal relationship between mask wearing and COVID-19 incidence.
Discrimination Faced by Unvaccinated Control Group
Some media personnel, authority figures, and government agencies have asserted that the unvaccinated pose a risk to the vaccinated individuals. In November 2021, Professor Gunter Kampf explained in his article published in The Lancet that even vaccinated individuals would continue to spread the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Therefore, the stigmatization of the unvaccinated people cannot be justified scientifically.
However, several countries had imposed a COVID-19 vaccine mandate on their adult populations. Many other countries, such as the U.S., Canada, and France, require federal workers, healthcare workers, and/or employees of certain professions to receive COVID-19 vaccines. The ones who still declined to get jabbed would lose their jobs.
The survey also asked the respondents to indicate whether or not they felt discriminated against by their authorities or other people. Between 20 and almost 50 percent of respondents reported being victimized. The regions with the highest rates of reported discrimination were Southern Europe, South America, Western Europe, Oceania, and Southern Africa. These participants have been discriminated against by policy or by other people in all aspects of life, including work, study, and travel.
Job Losses for Participants of Working Age
For the purpose of the survey, people aged 20 to 69 years old were considered of the working age. The highest rates of job losses were reported in Oceania (29 percent of working-age respondents), North America (13 percent), Southern Europe (13 percent), and Southeast Asia (12 percent). Although the report didn’t indicate whether the job losses could be entirely attributed to the vaccine mandates, it’s quite possible that some people would lose jobs due to their refusal to receive the COVID-19 vaccines.
Mental Health Status of the Unvaccinated Cohort
Also, although the majority of the unvaccinated respondents didn’t suffer from infection/severe illness, would the stress from vaccine mandates/requirements hurt them psychologically?
Their mental health status was self-assessed. Only 12 percent of the participants believed “life is great” during the 5-month period, while around 20 percent of respondents in all age groups were suffering from sustained discouragement and feeling that there’s no hope. Therefore, based on the statistics, a significant proportion of the participants were suffering from emotional distress.
This is also a very noteworthy issue, although the study did not show that mental stress was only caused by discrimination. Anyone who has been subjected to restrictions from all aspects of life, discrimination, and/or even hostility from others for a long period of time can suffer a great deal of mental stress.
In summary, this study provides the unique data about the unvaccinated “control group” under the global gigantic experiment to mass vaccinate the population with newly developed vaccines with new technologies.
It also provides an important reference for public health practitioners to evaluate the policy decision making process in terms of the impacts of certain policies to different communities. For instance, in public health emergencies, there are often dilemmas in terms of public health ethics considerations. But we still need to ask: Are we sticking to “do no harm” ethical standards?
One of the nation’s largest providers of abortion altered a webpage on pregnancy after the Democrat Georgia gubernatorial candidate claimed that a fetus does not have a heartbeat at six weeks.
“There is no such thing as a heartbeat at six weeks,” Stacey Abrams, the Democrat, said during a Sept. 21 event in Atlanta while speaking against abortion restrictions. “It is a manufactured sound designed to convince people that men have the right to take control of a woman’s body.”
A number of people responded online by pointing to the website of Planned Parenthood, which advocates for and performs abortions across the country.
“What happens during week 5–6?” the Planned Parenthood webpage on early pregnancy said. “A very basic beating heart and circulatory system develop.”
The page was altered after Abrams made her remarks, according to archived versions of the page.
It now says: “A part of the embryo starts to show cardiac activity. It sounds like a heartbeat on an ultrasound, but it’s not a fully-formed heart—it’s the earliest stage of the heart developing.”
Planned Parenthood did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican who is running for reelection, signed a six-week abortion ban, known as a fetal heartbeat law, in 2019. The law took effect after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade. The law says that “any natural person, including an unborn child with a detectable human heartbeat, shall be included in population based determinations” and that a detectable human heartbeat means “embryonic or fetal cardiac activity or the steady and repetitive rhythmic contraction of the heart within the gestational sac.”
Abrams’s campaign website says she would veto any legislation “that would further restrict abortion rights” and that she’d try to repeal the abortion ban if she is elected.
The U.S. National Library of Medicine says that week five of fetal development includes the heart starting to develop, and in the next two weeks, the “baby’s heart continues to grow and now beats at a regular rhythm.”
“This can be seen by vaginal ultrasound,” the library says.
Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kans.), an obstetrics and gynecology doctor, said that Abrams’s claim was wrong.
“Babies have a real heartbeat at six weeks. Why do radical Dems hate unborn babies?” he wrote on Twitter.
“Let me be clear: Babies DO have a heartbeat at 6 weeks,” added Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood worker. “Stop looking for ways to attempt to deny their humanity.”
Nearly 60 percent of flights across China were canceled Wednesday, according to state media.
Flight Master said 9,583 flights had been canceled nationwide as of 10:35 p.m. on Sept. 21, accounting for 59.66 percent of those total scheduled journeys of the day, reported China.com.
Based in Shenzhen, Flight Master provides information on flights and ticketing and travel services.
Some busy air transport hubs in China recorded over 50 percent cancelation rates, according to Flight Master:
Beijing Capital International Airport canceled 622 flights, with a cancellation rate of 60 percent
Shanghai Pudong International Airport had 652 cancelations of flights, with a cancellation rate of 54 percent
Shenzhen Baoan Airport’s 542 flights were canceled, accounting for 51 percent of its total flights
Airports with high cancellation rates include three airports in China’s western provinces:
Guiyang Longdongbao Airport (Guizhou Province): 539 flights canceled, with a cancellation rate of 99 percent
Lhasa Gongga Airport (Tibet): 157 flights canceled, with a cancellation rate of 98 percent
Chengdu Tianfu Airport (Sichuan Province): 752 flights canceled, with a cancellation rate of 87 percent
Other Chinese airports also saw various cancellations of flights on the same day. Some of the airports’ cancellations and cancellation rates are listed below:
Xi’an Xianyang International Airport (Shaanxi Province): 555 flights canceled; cancellation rate being 56 percent
Nanjing Lukou International Airport (Jiangsu Province): 378 flights canceled; cancellation rate being 54
Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport (Guangdong Province): 560 flights canceled, cancellation rate being 40%
The logo of China Eastern Airlines is pictured at Beijing Capital International Airport in Beijing on March 21, 2022. (Tingshu Wang/Reuters)
No Official Explanation
There is no official explanation on China’s top aviation body’s website.
But Netease, a major news portal in China, wrote yesterday that the cancellations were mainly due to recent COVID-19 flare-ups in multiple provinces in China.
Former Chinese investigative reporter Zhao Lanjian tweeted yesterday that he’d contacted an aviation professional in China.
He wrote in his tweet that “the reason [for the mass cancellations] is unclear, but [the mass cancellations] are true,” and that such a nationwide mass cancellation was “very rare.”
According to Zhao’s tweet: “This mass cancellation of flights must be a military directive. Air traffic control authority is decided by the Chinese military, which in turn gives instructions to civil aviation management. The airspace is set aside so that military aircraft can fly at will. This is military planning, or at least with military prep.”
Zhao is the reporter who investigated the chained woman, a victim of child trafficking and sexual persecution in Xuzhou, China’s eastern Jiangsu Province. Zhao was targeted by local police and national security agents after posting his investigation online. He fled China via Malaysia and arrived in the United States in July.
The Epoch Times is not able to verify Zhao’s tweet.
The reason for this mass cancellation is still unknown.
A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit to quash a subpoena issued by the House January 6 committee for the phone records of Arizona GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward.
U.S. District Court Judge Diane J. Humetewa, an Obama appointee, rejected Ward’s arguments that handing over the records would infringe her constitutional rights and violate medical privacy laws.
This comes after the committee earlier this year issued subpoenas to people with knowledge of efforts to send alternative Republican electors to Washington in support of then-President Donald Trump in the 2020 general elections.
In December 2020, Republican electors in seven states, including Arizona, cast alternative Electoral College votes for Trump. Ward has previously said that from their perspective, they represented the legitimately cast votes in those elections, which she said were marred by irregularities and allegations of fraud.
Ward and her husband were among 14 of 84 of these alternative electors who disputed the results of the general elections.
The committee investigating the events of Jan. 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol sought Ward’s and her husband’s phone records for the three months leading up to January 2021.
“That three-month period is plainly relevant to its investigation into the causes of the January 6th attack. The Court therefore has little doubt concluding these records may aid the Select Committee’s valid legislative purpose,” Humetewa said in her ruling (pdf).
Subpoena
T-Mobile contacted Ward’s medical practice on Jan. 25 to inform them that the House committee sent a subpoena for their phone records for the three-month period from Nov. 1, 2020, to Jan. 31, 2021.
The committee requested information about, among other things, the name, address, email, contact information, authorized users, length of the service, device serial, and ID numbers associated with the account.
Additionally, the committee sought all call, message, IP, and data-connected detail records associated with Ward’s phone number, including all the same information about the phone numbers that communicated with Ward’s phone.
Ward pushed back on this, arguing that would violate their rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, as well as patient confidentiality and other related laws, but the judge dismissed those claims.
She argued that the committee was acting beyond its power. Lawyers for the committee sought to have Ward’s motion dismissed.
Humetewa, in her ruling, noted that the court had limited power in reviewing Congress’s investigative power.
“Although Congress has no enumerated investigative power, the Supreme Court has recognized that each house of Congress has the power ‘to secure needed information’ to legislate,” she wrote.
“Congressional subpoenas, issued in furtherance of Congress’s investigative power, must have a ‘valid legislative purpose.’ … This means the subpoena must be ‘related to, and in furtherance of, a legitimate task of the Congress’ such as pursuing a ‘subject on which legislation could be had.’”
The judge said that because the committee’s subpoena was in furtherance of its legislated purpose to investigate and report back on the events surrounding Jan. 6, 2021, it was allowed to issue the subpoena.
Ward Says Subpoena Is ‘Overreach’
The committee has sued to obtain testimony from a number of reluctant witnesses, including former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, attorney John Eastman, and Trump himself.
Ward has argued that the committee lacks legislative authority to carry out its investigations and describes it as a witch hunt targeting supporters of Trump who exercised their First Amendments rights to question the results of the 2020 general elections.
In her lawsuit, Ward had argued that it was public knowledge that Republicans sent a competing slate of electors from Arizona to Washington, D.C., and that “no investigation is necessary to confirm this.” Therefore, according to Ward, the committee’s subpoena was issued to harass her for exercising her First Amendment rights.
But the judge dismissed these arguments, citing and agreeing with a D.C. Circuit Court which had already ruled in another case that the committee has a “valid legislative purpose.”
Humetewa said the committee accords with its purpose to use the findings of its investigation to propose legislative measures.
“Indeed, the Select Committee’s purpose is to ‘issue a final report to the House containing such findings, conclusions, and recommendations’ for such ‘changes in law, policy, procedures, rules, or regulations’ as the Committee ‘may deem necessary,’” she wrote.
The judge’s ruling stated that while Congress need only set a low bar to establish a valid purpose for the committee, that to impeach that committee Ward must overcome a “formidable bar,” which the ruling stated Ward did not.
Court documents reveal Ward’s attorneys filed a notice to appeal on Friday.
An Arizona judge has lifted a 1973 injunction placed on the state’s abortion statute, restoring a law that effectively bans the practice outright.
Pima County Superior Court Judge Kellie Johnson ruled on Sept. 23 that a judgment and injunction signed nearly 50 years ago against statute ARS 13-3603 “no longer has any prospective application” in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.
Under the restored statute, it’s now only legal to perform an abortion in Arizona if “it is necessary to save” the woman’s life. This statute goes back to about 1901 and was the law of the land until the Supreme Court legalized abortion nationwide in 1973.
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, who after the Supreme Court’s Roe ruling in June vowed to ask the court to vacate the injunction and restore the ban, hailed Johnson’s decision.
“We applaud the court for upholding the will of the legislature and providing clarity and uniformity on this important issue. I have and will continue to protect the most vulnerable Arizonans,” he wrote on Twitter.
In her ruling (pdf) on the case, Planned Parenthood v. Brnovich, Johnson said Planned Parenthood had agreed that significant change in the law had occurred since the Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in June that the U.S. Constitution doesn’t confer a right to abortion, and also overturned Roe in a separate vote. But she noted that the abortion provider didn’t agree on the scope of the relief that should be granted to the government as a result.
Johnson ultimately sided with Brnovich, finding that the 1973 judgment should be entirely vacated because it was based solely on Roe, which has since been overturned.
Court Rejects Request to Modify Injunction
Planned Parenthood argued that lifting the injunction entirely could conflict with other abortion laws that the Arizona legislature had enacted since 1973—including a law in May that banned abortions after 15 weeks gestation.
The abortion provider argued that the court needed to harmonize all of the statutes enacted since 1973 with the original 1901 law.
Planned Parenthood also asked Johnson to modify the injunction so that the outright ban doesn’t apply to doctors performing abortions up to 15 weeks gestation, as per the May law, but that it does apply to everyone else.
She wouldn’t modify the injunction to harmonize several laws, saying her role was only to decide on the matter of the injunction placed on the original law in 1973, not the laws enacted since.
The judge said it would be “procedurally improper” to attempt to “reconcile fifty years of legislative activity” in the context of the motion before the court.
Ultimately, Johnson sided with Brnovich’s arguments, finding “that because the legal basis for the judgment entered in 1973 has now been overruled, it must vacate the judgment in its entirety.”
“While there may be legal questions the parties seek to resolve regarding Arizona statutes on abortion, those questions are not for this Court to decide here,” she wrote.
A question remains about whether the restored ARS 13-3603 takes precedence over the 15-week abortion ban enacted by Republican Gov. Doug Ducey in May, which is due to take effect on Sept. 24. That question is expected to go to the state Supreme Court for guidance.
New York police officers have scored a big win in their fight against the city’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate that cost some their jobs, with a Manhattan Supreme Court judge ruling that the mandate—as it applies to members of the Police Benevolent Association (PBA)—is “invalid” and that fired cops must be given back their jobs.
Judge Lyle Frank said in the Sept. 23 ruling (pdf) that PBA members who lost their jobs for refusing the jab must be “reinstated to the status they were as of the date of the wrongful action.”
While it’s unclear how many PBA members lost their jobs due to the mandate, a City Hall spokesperson told CBS News that more than 1,750 city employees have been fired for refusing to get the shot.
Frank said in the ruling that a key reason why the mandate was illegal is because the city didn’t collectively bargain with the PBA, which represents some 24,000 members of the New York Police Department.
While there were “a multitude of cases” where courts have ruled against challenges to vaccines being a condition of employment, in those instances, the city and the respective union “collectively bargained to include the vaccination mandate as a new condition of employment,” the judge said, adding that that was “not the case here.”
‘Improper Infringement’
PBA President Patrick Lynch hailed the decision in a statement, calling the ruling a victory for the freedom of members to make their own medical decisions.
“This decision confirms what we have said from the start: the vaccine mandate was an improper infringement on our members’ right to make personal medical decisions in consultation with their own health care professionals,” Lynch said.
“We will continue to fight to protect those rights,” he added, saying that the PBA’s fight against the mandate isn’t finished, as city authorities filed an immediate notice of appeal, effectively putting the judge’s decision on ice.
“It is at odds with every other court decision upholding the mandate as a condition of employment,” a spokesperson for the New York City Law Department told CBS News.
The ruling was also praised by two New York City Fire Department (FDNY) union chiefs—Uniformed Firefighters Association President Andrew Ansbro and Uniformed Fire Officers Association President James McCarthy—who said in a statement on Sept. 23 that they would fight to win back firefighters’ jobs lost for refusing to get the vaccine.
“It was only a matter of time before a common sense Judge concluded that the COVID-19 vaccination mandate was never a condition of employment,” the two union heads wrote.
The union chiefs added that they will ask Acting Fire Commissioner Laura Kavanagh to reinstate FDNY members who were fired or placed on unpaid leave for refusing the jab and for the members to receive back pay.
It wasn’t immediately clear how soon the city’s appeal would be heard, with enforcement of the Manhattan Supreme Court’s decision remaining frozen for now.
In late July 2016, FBI Director James Comey notified certain members of the Obama White House, along with Director of National Intelligence James Clapper about the FBI’s opening of the “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation into the presidential campaign of Donald Trump.
CIA Director John Brennan was already aware, since he was the one who had been providing the FBI with information regarding the Trump campaign.
Brennan testified to Congress in May 2017, “I was aware of intelligence and information about contacts between Russian officials and U.S. persons that raised concerns in my mind about whether or not those individuals were cooperating with the Russians, either in a witting or unwitting fashion, and it served as the basis for the FBI investigation to determine whether such collusion—cooperation occurred.”
We also know that Brennan was in contact with UK Intelligence—at the very highest of levels. Robert Hannigan, the head of the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (also known as GCHQ), flew to the United States in the summer of 2016 to personally brief Brennan.
Former U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director John Brennan testifies before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in Washington on May 23, 2017. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
The matter was deemed so important that it was handled at the “director level,” face-to-face between the two agency chiefs. Clapper later confirmed during congressional testimony the “sensitive” stream of intelligence from Europe.
He told Congress it was accurate that “Over the spring of 2016, multiple European allies passed on additional information to the United States about contacts between the Trump campaign and Russians.”
But here’s the thing. The Intelligence Community (IC), the Obama administration, and the political establishment never expected Trump to win. And when he did win, the IC was suddenly faced with a very real problem. How do they properly cover up their actions?
Then-FBI Director James Comey, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan (L-R) testify before the Senate (Select) Intelligence Committee in Washington on Jan. 10, 2017. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
And how do they hobble the new Trump administration? As it turns out, the timeline of their actions in the first few months of 2017 tells a story; It’s one of an establishment response to the very real threat that the young Trump administration presented to the long-standing—and corrupt—political structure of our nation.
On Jan. 5, 2017, “following a briefing by IC leadership on alleged Russian hacking during the 2016 Presidential election, President Obama had a brief follow-on conversation with FBI Director Jim Comey and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates in the Oval Office.”
Then-Vice President Biden and senior foreign policy adviser Susan Rice also were present.
“That meeting reportedly included a discussion of the Steele dossier and the FBI’s investigation of its claims.”
According to an email written by Rice, Obama asked Comey “to inform him if anything changes in the next few weeks that should affect how we share classified information with the incoming team.”
Comey said he would.
Note Obama’s concern over the sharing of classified information with the incoming Trump team. That concern would shape the events of the next several months.
On Jan. 10, 2017, Comey testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) had refused access to its servers. Comey claimed that the FBI made “multiple requests,” but ultimately struck an agreement with the DNC that a private company, Crowdstrike, would get access and share what it found with investigators.
In other words, Comey told Congress that the information from the DNC servers was now walled off from oversight. During that same hearing, Comey was asked by Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) if the FBI had investigated relationships between associates of Trump and the Russian government. Comey told Congress that he couldn’t confirm or deny an active investigation, thereby triggering a media onslaught that triggered doubt among millions of Americans.
Comey said he couldn’t comment in public on a possible investigation into allegations of links between Russia and the Trump campaign.
“I would never comment on investigations—whether we have one or not—in an open forum like this, so I really can’t answer one way or another.”
FBI Director James Comey (R) and Deputy Attorney General Sally Q. Yates (L) attend a new Implicit Bias Training program at the Department of Justice in Washington on June 28, 2016. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
The Senate hearing had been organized to specifically look into the US intelligence agencies’ conclusion that Russia intervened in the election to benefit Trump. In a matter of no small coincidence, it was the same day that the Steele dossier was released by BuzzFeed and reported by CNN.
On Jan. 11, 2017, Trump, no doubt concerned by the flood of leaks from the intelligence community, conducted his first sting. In order to identify the people leaking classified information to the press, Trump very specifically didn’t tell his staff that the IC was about to brief him. After that briefing, the news was leaked to the press, leading Trump to conclude the leaks were coming from the IC.
“I have many meetings with intelligence,” Trump said. “And every time I meet, people are reading about it.”
Later that day, Clapper was forced to put out a formal statement decrying the leaks from the intelligence community.
“I expressed my profound dismay at the leaks that have been appearing in the press, and we both agreed that they are extremely corrosive and damaging to our national security.”
But in his statement, Clapper also referenced the Steele dossier, stating that he and President Trump also “discussed the private security company document, which was widely circulated in recent months among the media, members of Congress and Congressional staff even before the IC became aware of it.”
Clapper said that he “emphasized that this document is not a U.S. Intelligence Community product” and that he did not believe the leaks came from within the intelligence community.”
He stated that the IC “has not made any judgment that the information in this document is reliable, and we did not rely upon it in any way for our conclusions.”
Representative Devin Nunes, a Republican from California and ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, speaks during the House Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on Nov. 21, 2019. (Andrew Harrer/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
He also claimed that “part of our obligation is to ensure that policymakers are provided with the fullest possible picture of any matters that might affect national security.”
However, a House Intelligence report later found that when Clapper was initially asked about leaks related to the IC assessment in July 2017, Clapper flatly denied discussing the Steele dossier or any other intelligence related to alleged Russian hacking of the 2016 election with journalists.
But under subsequent questioning, Clapper suddenly acknowledged discussing the “dossier with CNN journalist Jake Tapper,” and acknowledged that he might have spoken with other journalists about the same topic.
The next day, on Jan. 12th, Department of Justice Inspector General (IG) Michael Horowitz announced his initiation of a review of actions taken by the FBI in the leadup to the 2016 presidential election.
This announcement wasn’t publicized and only became public knowledge almost a year later, in December 2017, when a New York Times article on the removal of then-FBI agent Peter Strzok from Robert Mueller’s inquiry disclosed Horowitz’s investigation.
The NY Times noted that Horowitz was leading a “broad examination of how the F.B.I. handled the Clinton email investigation.”
The article also noted that “Horowitz declined to characterize his findings but said that he hoped to have a copy of his report released by March or April” of 2018.
At the time, the news of Horowitz’s investigation was received with a large degree of optimism, but in hindsight, one can see that what that investigation did was effectively tie up any outside investigations into the FBI for two years.
Also of note is that the IG’s investigation was virtually all-encompassing, he was “looking” at everything. That also meant that almost everything the FBI and the IC had done fell under the umbrella of Horowitz’s supposed investigation. Horowitz’s report wouldn’t be released until December 2019.
Horowitz would later call Trump’s presidency “a challenging time … particularly in the last year” during a Feb. 10, 2021, online discussion hosted by Harvard Law School and moderated by Jack Goldsmith and Bob Woodward.
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz testifies at a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on Dec. 11, 2019. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
At one point during the discussion, Goldsmith noted that the Trump administration represented a “most extraordinary and unprecedented assault” on our norms and our institutions. Goldsmith then asked Horowitz, “what happens when a president is elected precisely to break norms.”
Horowitz responded, saying, “I agree with Bob and I agree with you. That was what happened here, it was norm-breaking.”
He continued, stating that “norms didn’t matter,” and telling Goldsmith that “it was certainly a challenging time” for the IG community.
But several other crucial events also transpired on Jan. 12, 2017, the most important being the first renewal of the Carter Page FISA. It also marked the date that the Clinton Global Initiative announced that it would close on April 15 of that year, as donations continued to dry up as the Clintons no longer held true political power. It was also on that day that Washington Post reporter David Ignatius cited government “sources” regarding Michael Flynn’s calls with Russia’s Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Although Flynn would later be found to have engaged in nothing improper during his calls, he would resign a day later, on Jan. 13. The same day that Flynn resigned, the Senate Intelligence Committee opened what would prove to be a fatally flawed and politically driven investigation into Russia and U.S. political campaign officials.
Then, on Jan/ 24-25, 2017, Christopher Steele’s supposed source for his dossier, Igor Danchenko, was interviewed by the FBI. Given Danchenko’s admissions, the FBI knew that the dossier’s major allegations were fabrications. Yet, instead of halting their investigation and withdrawing their FISA warrant on Trump 2016 campaign adviser Carter Page—a warrant that had been obtained on the basis of the dossier—the FBI forged on and even escalated the probe.
National Security Adviser Michael Flynn answers questions in the briefing room of the White House in Washington on Feb. 1, 2017. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Put simply, by Jan. 25, 2017, the FBI knew that the dossier’s major allegations were fabrications. Yet, instead of terminating the investigation and withdrawing their FISA warrant on Trump 2016 presidential campaign adviser Carter Page—a warrant that had been obtained on the basis of the dossier—the FBI not only moved forward, the bureau escalated its investigation.
Two days later, during a private dinner meeting, Trump asked Comey if he was under investigation. Comey told him privately that he was not, but refused to say so publicly. During this same dinner meeting, Trump also told Comey that he was considering ordering the FBI to investigate the dossier, which Comey successfully talked him out of doing. Sometime in March 2017, likely just a few days later, the FBI provided Danchenko with confidential human source (CHS) status, which would successfully keep Danchenko under full protective cover—concealing him from congressional and public scrutiny.
With the newfound CHS status, Danchenko’s name and the entirety of his connections to the FBI were fully redactable. Additionally, by paying Danchenko, the FBI may have found a way to ensure his silence.
On March 2, 2017, during an MSNBC interview, Obama’s deputy assistant secretary of defense, Evelyn Farkas, stated that if “The Trump folks, if they found out how we knew what we knew about the Trump staff dealing with Russians, that they would try to compromise those sources and methods, meaning we would no longer have access to that intelligence.”
Watch the full story on “Truth Over News” on Thursday, Sept. 22.
Judge will allow some radio feed at trial, but bars inflammatory statements by unknown audio-chat leader
A Twitter post by the U.S. House Jan. 6 Select Committee purporting to contain walkie-talkie traffic between Oath Keepers at the Capitol on Jan. 6 is actually “a recording of people watching TV,” a former Oath Keepers attorney contends.
Jonathon Moseley, who formerly represented Oath Keepers defendant Kelly Meggs, said the audio snippets released by the Jan. 6 Committee are part of a nearly 2.5-hour recording.
The committee’s Twitter post paired the audio clips with an unrelated video of the Oath Keepers to make it appear it was Oath Keepers speaking on radios at the Capitol, he said.
The Select Committee has obtained a recording of communications over a walkie-talkie app among Oath Keepers who were inside the Capitol and others who were sharing intelligence from elsewhere.
“I can speak from personal, direct, first-hand knowledge that this is a 2-hour, 20-minute recording of people watching TV,” Moseley told The Epoch Times in a statement on Sept. 18. “This is NOT Oath Keepers at the Capitol.”
Defense attorneys in several Oath Keepers criminal cases have complained to the courts for months that these kinds of utterances from the Jan. 6 Select Committee will poison the jury pool, making it impossible for defendants to get a fair trial in the heavily Democratic District of Columbia. Numerous Oath Keepers motions for trial delays or changes of venue have been denied.
The controversial Zello transmissions were under court seal when the Jan. 6 Committee published its Twitter post on Sept. 15.
The highest profile Oath Keepers case goes to trial on Sept. 27. Oath Keepers founder Elmer Stewart Rhodes III and four other defendants—Kelly Meggs, Jessica Watkins, Kenneth Harrelson, and Thomas Caldwell—are charged with seditious conspiracy to attack the Capitol and a range of other Jan. 6-related crimes.
“The J6 Committee is operating as a partisan campaign PAC,” Moseley said. “Its public relations releases are not legislative actions. It is a Democrat campaign PAC for the November 2022 elections.”
Oath Keepers defendant Jessica Watkins (front left) moves down the steps of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (The Real Story of Jan. 6/Epoch TV)
The Epoch Times reached out to a spokesman for the Jan. 6 Select Committee for comment, but did not receive a reply.
The disputed Zello communications used by the Jan. 6 Committee have been part of a month-long fight in U.S. District Court between federal prosecutors, who want to introduce them as evidence, and Oath Keepers defense attorneys, who argued they are inadmissible hearsay.
District Judge Amit Mehta on Sept. 19 ruled (pdf) that the statements made by the user—alleged to be defendant Watkins—are admissible as they are her first-hand impressions of conditions on the ground. Some of the statements made by other Zello users on the audio chat will be admitted as they provide context to what the user was saying, the judge said.
Most of the inflammatory statements made by the chat leader “1% Watchdog” will be barred from evidence as being highly prejudicial, Mehta ruled.
Tying Audio to One Oath Keeper
Although the recording from the smartphone app Zello was given to Moseley and other defense attorneys in October 2021, it was only in late August 2022 that the U.S. Department of Justice said it would seek to admit parts of the 69-page transcript as evidence against the Oath Keepers, according to court records.
Prosecutors allege Oath Keepers defendant Watkins spoke on Zello about what was happening in the Capitol, but defense attorneys say there is no evidence that she is the speaker.
Zello is a phone application that mimics the push-to-talk features of a walkie-talkie, except that it uses cellular networks and internet connectivity to link users. It allows smartphones to operate like the popular Nextel push-to-talk phones developed and popularized in the 1990s. Based in Austin, Texas, Zello Inc. offers a variety of service plans for a monthly fee.
Prosecutors allege that Watkins is heard on the recordings, although no Zello user account could be directly tied to her name or cell phone. The FBI found no Zello-related audio files on her phone, according to court records. Prosecutors contend Watkins was the user “OhioRegularsActual–Oathkeeper.”
A recording of the public Zello transmissions was discovered on the audio-sharing website Soundcloud by two journalists in 2021. Zello does not store recordings from chats or channels.
In a pretrial conference on Sept. 14, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Nestler told Mehta a law enforcement officer could testify at trial that the voice heard on parts of the recording belongs to Watkins.
A Zello channel named “Stop the Steal J6,” created by user “1% Watchdog,” was opened to the public at 1:48 p.m. on Jan. 6, court records state. Zello users had to subscribe to the channel to have access. All subscribers were able to comment on the public channel.
The conversations included unidentified individuals with account names including “1% Watchdog,” “Gen. Mark Davis CFA” and “iWatch Director Laureen.”
An Oath Keepers member gets in between a protester and a Capitol Police officer during a tense exchange in the Small House Rotunda on Jan. 6, 2021. (Stephen Horn/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)
Prosecutors told defense attorneys they “are not able” to provide the true names of those Zello users. User “Airborne America” was identified as an Illinois Oath Keepers member referred to in court records only as “Person 33.”
Prosecutors said they will not argue that “1% Watchdog” is any of the Oath Keepers defendants, although court records indicate they once incorrectly believed it was defendant Rhodes.
The most explosive statements on the recording came from “1% Watchdog,” who liberally sprinkled his commentary with profanity. He led discussions with other Zello users, some of whom were watching television news at the time.
“There’s no safe place in the United States for any of these mother[expletive] right now, let me tell you,” he said, referring to members of Congress.
After President Donald Trump posted to Twitter that those at the Capitol should support Capitol Police and do no harm, “1% Watchdog” said, “That’s saying a lot by what he didn’t say. He didn’t say not to do anything to the Congressmen.”
Earlier, a voice that prosecutors claim was Watkins commented as she walked toward the Capitol, “Trump’s been trying to drain the swamp with a straw. We brought a Shop-Vac.” Mehta ruled that comment will be admissible at trial.
During the Sept. 14 hearing, Mehta questioned whether the audio would be proof of Watkins’ state of mind. He said he would like to know more about “1% Watchdog” and whether he had any connection to Watkins.
“I’m not sure he’s anything more than a guy spouting off on a Zello chat,” Mehta said.
‘Sticking to the Plan’
Defense attorneys contend the government is trying to use the comments of unnamed outsiders who are not unindicted co-conspirators as evidence against the Oath Keepers.
“No defendant in this case, much less none of the indicted or unindicted co-conspirators sent a message or responded on this chain of communications that the government has highlighted—or anywhere in the 69-page transcript,” defense attorneys Juli Haller and Stanley Woodward wrote in a motion to suppress.
At 1:49 p.m. on Jan. 6, prosecutors contend that Watkins said: “We’re boots on the ground here. We’re moving on the Capitol now. I’ll give you a boots-on-the-ground update here in a few. We have a good group. We have about 30, 40 of us. We’re sticking together and sticking to the plan.” Mehta ruled this comment will be admitted.
The user alleged to be Watkins went silent for nearly 30 minutes, during which the other users continued to comment on news updates from the Capitol. Most of those comments will not be allowed into evidence, Mehta ruled.
At 2:31 p.m., the user alleged to be Watkins reported on window vandalism on the east side that she blamed on Antifa.
“It was not actual patriots. The police confronted them when they were smashing out the windows. They said, ‘[expletive] Trump; we don’t care about this.’ And they’re just out there smashing windows. So, I feel like it’s kind of a setup, really. They have the riot cops out now.”
A user called “FreedomD0z3r91” responded: “Get it, Jess. Do your [expletive]. This is what we [expletive] lived up for. Everything we [expletive] trained for.” Mehta ruled that comment will be allowed as a statement of a co-conspirator.
Pharmaceutical giants including Pfizer and Moderna are refusing to share data and technology from their COVID-19 vaccines with researchers studying alternative treatments for the virus.
The conflict for researchers who are not affiliated with major pharmaceutical companies that manufactured a COVID-19 vaccine is a result of Pfizer and Moderna owning the patents for the current vaccines. Researchers, therefore, have to receive the companies’ permissions to use the vaccines for research into products like nasal or pan-coronavirus vaccines.
Pfizer and Moderna are refusing to share the data, however. Though the decision to withhold COVID-19 vaccine data and information from researchers is legal, it complicates the ability for progress to be made.
Yale University virologist and immunologist Akiko Iwasaki designed a study of nasal vaccines against COVID-19, which she believes would confer better protection against infection and transmission than shots alone. The most accurate version of the study would have been conducted on subjects that have already received ay initial vaccine series, as this would reflect real-world scenarios.
Despite asking Pfizer about the possibility of obtaining some vaccine to use in her study of nasal treatments, she has not received any from the company.
“In order for us to develop a better vaccine, we need a comparator. For that reason, everyone who’s doing research in this area is in the same boat, we don’t have access to do a comparison,” Iwasaki said.Iwasaki addressed the issue at the White House’s summit on the future of COVID-19 vaccines, and former National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins said at the time that he “would not have thought of that” posing a problem with her research.Separately, California Institute of Technology professor Pamela Bjorkman said her lab has had difficulties obtaining COVID-19 vaccines in order to research ae treatment candidate that could provide protection against a variety of Covid-19 variants.
“Whatever policy prevents using such vials does a great disservice to global efforts to develop new and improved vaccines,” Bjorkman said.
When asked if Pfizer has provided any vaccines for research purposes, spokesperson Sharon Castillo said, “We are not accepting or reviewing applications for possible clinical research that studies the Covid-19 vaccine.” Another Pfizer spokesperson said the company has its own “extensive studies” of the vaccine underway, and will continue to share information from those studies as it becomes available.
More than 150 scientists who worked in a top U.S. national security laboratory were hired by the Chinese regime to do research, according to a new report. Much of that research has directly advanced Chinese military technology, which now threatens U.S. national security.
The report (pdf), published by strategic intelligence firm Strider Technologies, claims that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) conducted a systemic effort to recruit leading scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) to work on its military programs.
Located in New Mexico, LANL is a key part of U.S. defense and security research and is where nuclear weapons were first developed. It is one of the largest scientific and technological institutions in the world, and its scientists conduct research in the fields of national security, space exploration, nuclear fusion, nanotechnology, and supercomputing.
At least 162 LANL researchers have been hired by the CCP over the last 35 years, according to the report. Of those, many went on to conduct military research for China, at least one of which previously held Top Secret security clearance at the U.S. Department of Energy.
“Former Los Alamos scientists have made, and continue to make, considerable contributions to [China’s] hypersonic, missile, and submarine programs that present an array of security risks for the United States and the entire free world,” the report said.
“Better protection is needed for the institutions, research programs, and scientists advancing innovation in this era of strategic competition without harming open scientific collaboration.”
A ‘Talent Superpower Strategy’
According to the report, the CCP leveraged a “Talent Superpower Strategy” wherein it incentivized academics, researchers, and scientists to go abroad, deepen their expertise, and return to China to advance the nation’s strategic interests.
Many of the researchers who came to the United States to be trained and work in areas critical to national security were involved in the CCP’s talent programs. At least 59 of those who worked at the LANL and subsequently returned to China to do research were part of the regime’s Thousand Talents Program or its youth branch.
The report said that the program and others like it were essentially designed to operate as an “exploitation” of the West’s commitment to global scientific collaboration.
Moreover, it said, such programs often required participants to host and train other Chinese researchers, frequently without notifying their host institution of the requirement. In this way, talent programs allowed Chinese researchers who earned jobs in the United States to serve as a bridgehead through which more could receive training.
“In effect, [Chinese] talent programs are ever-expanding recruitment networks,” the report said.
“Once inducted, participants are incentivized and obligated to identify top talent for placement in desirable research positions at their host institution and for eventual recruitment back to [China].”
China’s Military Paid for by US Tax Dollars
Of 113 LANL postdoctoral researchers and permanent staff members who returned to China, more than 79 percent were selected to participate in the CCP’s government talent programs, the report said. These researchers went on to contribute to the development of the CCP’s hypersonics program, jet engines, warheads, unmanned vehicles, and stealth submarines.
The report highlighted key examples of how this process worked through an exploration of the careers of a number of associated researchers who worked at LANL and later were hired by China.
One such figure is Chen Shiyi.
Chen is an expert in fluid dynamics and turbulence who spent a number of years in the 1990s at the LANL as an Oppenheimer Fellow. After returning to China in 2005, Chen served as vice president for research at Peking University and later president of the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, where he began recruiting scientists with deep links to LANL.
Among those Chen recruited was Zhao Yusheng, a scientist who worked at LANL for more than 18 years.
During that time Zhao’s projects received more than $19.8 million in grant funding from the U.S. government. Among the research those grants funded was work on deep-earth penetrating warheads, the report revealed.
Zhao, in turn, on his own supervised and sponsored at least 25 postdoctoral researchers, at least eight of whom were from China and later returned to do work there.
Further, one of the postdoctoral researchers whom Zhao trained and who returned to China soon after filed a national defense patent for a similar technology based on his own work on deep-earth penetrating warheads.
That researcher is now affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics, which is the CCP’s primary organization for conducting the research, development, and testing of nuclear weapons, according to the report.
It is through this network approach of sprawling and intertwined research relationships that the CCP has garnered for itself a cadre of highly respected military researchers, all of whom received training and employment in the United States at U.S. taxpayer expense.
Indeed, so widespread were connections from LANL in China’s own military research scene, that a 2017 story in the South China Morning Post found that many of the scientists who had returned to China to work on military research referred to themselves as the “Los Alamos Club.”
The Strider report raises the question of whether this threat to national security might be more widespread, and notes that the LANL is just one institution out of hundreds employing participants in China’s talent programs.
“General Secretary Xi Jinping and other top CCP leaders, suggest that similar recruitment efforts may be widespread among U.S. government–funded laboratories, academic research institutions, and major centers of innovation,” the report said.
“These programs are leveraging taxpayer-funded research to advance [China’s] economic development and military modernization.”
Republicans will immediately move to reverse the Biden administration’s hiring of 87,000 IRS agents if they flip the House of Representatives in the upcoming midterm elections, the top Republican in the lower chamber said on Sept. 23.
“On that first day that we are sworn in, you will see that it all changes,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told a crowd in Pennsylvania. “Because in our very first bill, we are going to repeal 87,000 IRS agents.”
“Our job is to work for you, and not go after you,” he added.
“In all of my years in Congress, I have not had a phone call from anyone saying ‘Steve, please add more people to the IRS,’” House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) said at the Pennsylvania event, dubbed the “Commitment to America.”
“If there are 87,000 people needed in America, it’s at the border to secure America’s border. Not at the IRS to go after small businesses and hard-working families,” he added.
Senate Republicans introduced a bill earlier this month that would block the IRS from using the new funding to audit Americans making less than $400,000 annually.
Without support from the Senate, any House bill wouldn’t advance to Biden. Additionally, Republicans in both chambers would need to summon a veto-proof majority, which would likely mean getting Democrat support.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) speaks at a press event at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, on Aug. 24, 2021. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
In a competing event, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said in Pennsylvania that Democrats were proud of passing the Inflation Reduction Act. He described the legislation as bringing down the costs of healthcare and energy, funding new jobs, and dealing with climate issues.
The new House Republican plan also includes proposals for ramping up immigration enforcement, reducing inflation, and funding law enforcement.
McCarthy noted that costs for everyday goods have spiked under Biden, as has crime in many Democrat-run cities.
“The Democrats have no plan. If you trust us, hold us accountable. We will help the entire country. We will do this country,” he said.
“What I see and hear from my constituents is people are struggling. Families are struggling to make ends meet. Whether you go to a grocery store, whether you are budgeting in preparation for those heating bills that are skyrocketing this winter, or whether you struggled this past year to fill up your tank of gas. People feel they are working harder than they ever had to before, but they are falling further behind. And the American people are smart. They know that it’s a direct result of the failed policies of one party Democrat rule in Washington,” House Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) said. “And there is a better way. We are here to help, and this is our commitment to America. These ideas came from the American people.”
Hoyer said the plan is “long on slogans and short on details,” adding, “That’s because the true details of Republicans’ agenda are too frightening for most American voters.”
House candidate Kirsten Engel (D., Ariz.) will campaign Friday with a group that promoted a “Fuck the 4th” rally on Independence Day to protest the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Engel, a University of Arizona law professor, will hold a meet-and-greet with the Pima County Democratic Party’s Young Voter Engagement Committee in Tucson on Friday night. The group came under fire in July for promoting a “Fuck the 4th” event held by the Tucson Women’s March chapter to “mourn” the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling. Both Republicans and Democrats condemned the event. “How does this help us WIN? … Take this trash down!” said Democratic secretary of state candidate Adrian Fontes. Arizona state senate president Karen Fann said the post showed the Pima County Democrats “don’t care about our country or those who fought and died for our freedoms.”
Engel’s links to left-wing groups could undercut her run for the open seat in Arizona’s sixth district, which Democrats consider a “must-win” in order to maintain control of the House. Engel’s campaign conducted an internal poll which had her leading Republican Juan Ciscomani 49-47, though election analysts have given Republicans a slight advantage in the district.
It is not the first time Engel has worked with groups behind controversial causes. She solicited donations in 2020 for the Minnesota Freedom Fund, a left-wing organization that has bailed murderers out of jail, the Washington Free Beaconreported. She signed a pledge during the primary to support legislation for reparations promoted by a group that supports the movement to defund police. She met with activists for a voter registration event from Living United for Change in Arizona, a pro-immigration group that came under fire for harassing Sen. Kyrsten Sinema in a bathroom last year.
Engel’s campaign and the campaign for Sen. Mark Kelly (D., Ariz.) sponsored a gala for the Pima County Democratic Party earlier this month. Engel contributed $3,000 to the event, while Kelly gave $500. Engel’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
MONONGAHELA, Pa.—House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) outlined on Friday a governing agenda of what voters can expect in 2023 and beyond should Republicans retake Congress this November.
McCarthy’s remarks were part of the House Republicans’ newly revealed “Commitment to America,” a comprehensive policy pitch for voters in the lead up to the November midterms. That pitch contains bold policy goals related to border security, cutting spending, tackling inflation, and reversing several of President Joe Biden’s legislative victories.
“It’s a one-party rule that we’ve had for two years that have led to the disaster that we’re in right now.” McCarthy said. “It’s going to take the values of southwestern Pennsylvania in ‘Real America’ to get us back on track. That’s why we’re here.”
The policies McCarthy announced include ending the practice of “catch-and-release” for illegal immigrants, loosening regulations on domestic oil and gas production, repealing large portions of the Inflation Reduction Act, and slashing taxes.
“As we went across this country listening, we heard the same thing, at the kitchen table, the dining room table, and inside the factory. ‘Can I afford it? Can I afford to fill up my tank? Can I afford the food, the milk, the baby formula?’” McCarthy said at a warehouse outside of Pittsburgh on Friday morning. “We asked everybody across this country, ‘Could you afford to give up one month of your wages? One month?’ The sad part is the Democratic Party has already taken one month of your wages.”
McCarthy’s announcement of a future House Republican majority policy agenda was reminiscent of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s 1994 “Contract With America.” That proposal, meant to show voters that Republicans were committed to governing in a way that was responsive to voter concerns, was revealed six weeks before Republicans retook the House for the first time in 40 years.
The event also revealed the party’s strategy of returning to kitchen-table issues such as the economy, illegal immigration fueling the fentanyl crisis, and left-wing overreach in public schools. Polling shows voters trust Republicans on issues related to the border and inflation, and Republican members told the Free Beacon they were confident it will increase the likelihood of a red wave in November.
“You don’t have to walk down the sidewalk to trip over one of Joe Biden’s crises,” said Rep. Kat Cammack (R., Fla.) at the Friday event. “You don’t have to be highly political and involved to realize how bad things are in everyday America. Everything in this country has turned for the worse.”
“I talked to Republicans, Democrats, independents, they don’t care who broke it,” Cammack said. “They want to fix it and Republicans are the only ones that have a plan to actually fix it.”
Although situated thousands of miles away from the southern border, voters in Monongahela expressed concern about the border, which has seen more illegal crossings a day than at any other point in U.S. history. With all those illegal crossings comes a flood of fentanyl, which has been deadly for communities across the country. A local police officer who spoke with the Free Beacon said his county has seen 69 fentanyl overdoses in 2022, a near record with still three months left in the year.
“Every city in America is a border city, whether you’re in Texas, Pennsylvania, like we are now or anywhere across the country,” Rep. Tony Gonzales (R., Texas) told the Free Beacon. “We’re all a border city. Fentanyl is killing everybody, regardless of the color of your skin or live in rural America or live in urban America. We’re at the forefront of these dangers in Texas, but your city is next.”
Republicans emphasized that their agenda resulted in participation from nearly every member, rather than party leadership. A wide range of members attended the event, from Steve Scalise (R., La.) to Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.), signifying a unified party on the cusp of retaking Congress.
“At the end of the day, we have to provide some tangibles on what our plan is,” Rep. Lisa McClain (R., Mich.) told the Free Beacon. “When I’m in my district, voters will say what the problems are but also ask me, ‘Lisa, what are you going to do about it?’ And that’s what today is about.”
Hilliard City School District guide also encourages students to transition gender without parental consent
Teachers in an Ohio school district are wearing name badges that students can scan with their phones to access an “LGBTQ+ resource guide,” which includes instructions on how to get abortions and “organize like a sex worker.”
Hilliard City School District participates in the National Education Association’s “I’m Here” program, which encourages teachers to wear the badge. The group says the program is supposed to educate teachers on how to respond to LGBT students. But a Washington Free Beacon review found that the QR code takes students to resources that describe abortion as the removal of “pregnancy tissue,” encourage gender transitioning without parental consent, and promote sex work.
Public schools around the country are coming under fire for teaching age-inappropriate lessons to students. Parents in Idaho, for example, caught the state government this month offering “porn literacy” to students. A parent sued a Maine school district for offering books with “sexually graphic material, including descriptions of queer sex,” the Free Beacon reported in July.
The teachers’ badges have sparked outrage among parents in Hilliard City, ABC 6 reported earlier this month.
“The badge has a QR code that once scanned takes you to a website that has extremely inappropriate information, and as a parent that crosses the line,” Hilliard City parent Lisa Chaffee said.
Hilliard City superintendent Dave Stewart said the badges only concern “adult learning,” though the website from the QR code provides resources aimed at K-12 students. After backlash from parents, the district advised teachers to cover the QR code on the back of the badge, according to a statement from Stewart.
One link from the online guide encourages children to seek LGBT resources without their parents’ approval.
Another link in the guide takes students to a post called “Organize Like a Sex Worker: Learning from Worker and Organizer Kate Adamo.” The post says recognizing that “sex work is work” is “critical to ensuring the reproductive and sexual liberation of everyone.” Kate Adamo, the “sex worker” interviewed in the post, compared “transphobia or homophobia, being anti-abortion, or anti-sex work” to eugenics.
Sex workers “face stigma, judgment, and pushback from both the Christian right, and sex work exclusionary feminists (SWERFs) on the left,” Adamo said.
The National Education Association, which created the resource guide, offers a book list including elementary school recommendations such as A Tale of Two Daddies, My Princess Boy, and Jacob’s New Dress, as well as a number of other recommendations about sex and gender identity like Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress, which is about a male child who wears a dress.
The resource guide also provides a handbook to help minors understand their gender identities, which says “sex assignment does not take into account one’s true gender identity.”
“Your true gender may be different than the gender that a doctor assigned you, which is perfectly normal, valid, and wonderful,” the handbook reads.
The Hilliard City School District did not respond to a request for comment.
Casten’s flights emitted more than 313,000 pounds of carbon
Illinois Democratic congressman Sean Casten, who has called the climate “crisis” a “code red emergency,” flew roughly 6,000 miles and stayed in a luxury European hotel to fight global warming, House disclosures show.
Casten in late August and early September accompanied the Aspen Institute on the think tank’s congressional trip to Reykjavík, Iceland, which aimed to provide members with guidance “on public policy issues as it relates to addressing energy and climate challenges,” according to the Democrat’s travel disclosures. The trip saw Casten fly business class from Chicago to Reykjavík, Iceland, and back—a trek that totals 5,888 miles and more than 313,000 pounds of carbon, given that planes on average produce 53.3 pounds of carbon dioxide per mile traveled. The Aspen Institute also provided Casten with lodging at the Grand Hotel Reykjavík—a four-star luxury hotel that includes a “beautiful spa” and “lovely candle lit lounge”—and private meals at a total cost of nearly $5,000.
Casten, who is known as Congress’s “fiercest climate hawk,” has said members of Congress “have a duty to do everything we can” to provide “our children and grandchildren” with a “livable planet.” In the case of his Iceland trip, however, Casten almost certainly did not need to travel thousands of miles on a gas-guzzling flight to meet with many of the climate “leaders” the Aspen Institute assembled. According to the trip’s schedule, a majority of the “scholars” Casten met with are based in America. A pair of “roundtable discussions” on day one of the trip, for example, slated to feature Polar Institute senior fellow Sherri Goodman, Harvard University’s Meghan O’Sullivan, and Rockefeller Foundation president Rajiv Shah, all of whom are based in the United States.
Casten is far from the only prominent liberal climate activist on the Hill who has an admiration for overseas trips in the name of combating global warming. John Kerry has flown more than 180,000 miles in his role as President Joe Biden’s climate czar—those flights emitted more than 9.5 million pounds of carbon, the Washington Free Beaconreported in September. Kerry, who has called climate change an “existential … crisis,” also owns a private jet that is estimated to be worth $4.5 million and has made at least 48 trips since Biden took office. The Biden administration official has defended his private plane travel, saying “it’s the only choice for somebody like me, who is traveling the world to win this battle.”
Casten did not return a request for comment. Beyond his Icelandic excursion, the Democrat has successfullypushed for hundreds of billions of dollars in green energy spending while holding up to $500,000 in a green energy company that will likely benefit from the spending.
Casten, his most recent financial disclosure shows, earned up to $50,000 in “partnership income” in 2021 through his sizable stake in Greenleaf Power, a Sacramento-based green energy company that sells “carbon-neutral electricity” to utility companies. Democrats’ so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which funnels nearly $400 billion toward green energy initiatives and is not expected to have “any measurable impact on inflation,” allocates roughly $30 billion toward “grant and loan programs for state and electric utilities” that obtain “clean electricity” from companies such as Greenleaf. Casten called the bill a “historic win for families” in a statement that did not disclose his investment in Greenleaf.
Casten, who was born in Dublin, joined Congress in 2019 and has since voted with Biden 99 percent of the time. The Democrat will face Republican combat veteran and Orland Park mayor Keith Pekau in November after both candidates emerged from their June primaries by double digits. Casten has raised $3.4 million to Pekau’s $437,000 as of June 30.
