‘Our country may never recover from Secretary Mayorkas’s dereliction of duty,’ said House Republican leader
By Gram Slattery and Ted Hesson
WASHINGTON (Reuters)—The top Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, on Tuesday called on Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to step down, warning that the House may try to impeach him when Republicans take the majority next year.
McCarthy, who hopes to be elected as House Speaker when the new Congress is sworn in in January, added that his colleagues will hold congressional hearings at the U.S.-Mexico border after taking control of the chamber, in what he described as an effort to force Democrats to see conditions there first-hand.
Republicans have criticized President Joe Biden for record numbers of migrants caught crossing the U.S.-Mexico border during his presidency, saying Biden’s more lenient policies have encouraged more crossers.
“Our country may never recover from Secretary Mayorkas’ dereliction of duty,” McCarthy told reporters in El Paso, Texas, on Tuesday after speaking with border officials. “This is why today, I am calling on the secretary to resign.”
“If Secretary Mayorkas does not resign, House Republicans will investigate every order, every action and every failure (to) determine whether we can begin (an) impeachment inquiry,” he said.
“Secretary Mayorkas is proud to advance the noble mission of this Department, support its extraordinary workforce, and serve the American people,” Espinosa said. “He has no plans to resign.”
Since winning a narrow House majority in this month’s midterm elections, Republicans have held a series of news conferences to lay out their priorities for the next two years. Last week they warned that Biden, a Democrat, and his son, Hunter, will also be top targets.
Democrats will continue to hold a majority in the Senate for the next two years. While the House has the power to launch impeachment inquiries, only the Senate can convict an impeachment target, and it is unlikely that senators from Biden’s party would join in ousting a member of his administration from office.
Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee sent Mayorkas a letter last week, notifying him that the panel expects to call for testimony from 11 employees of the Department of Homeland Security including Mayorkas himself.
As Biden’s top border official, Mayorkas, 62, has been a frequent target of Republican lawmakers, including some who have previously called for his resignation and impeachment.
He became the first Latino and foreign-born Homeland Security chief when he was confirmed to the role in February 2021. He previously served as deputy secretary of the department during the administration of former President Barack Obama.
Biden officials say increased migration is a hemispheric phenomenon that stretches beyond the U.S.-Mexico border and that they are trying to create a more orderly immigration system.
A U.S. federal judge ruled last week that a pandemic-era order blocking migrants at the border was unlawful while delaying its termination until Dec. 21. However, a group of states with Republican attorneys general moved late on Monday to intervene in the case and overturn the ruling.
Chris Magnus, former commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, resigned earlier this month after saying he was pressured by Mayorkas to resign or be fired.
(Reporting by Gram Slattery and Ted Hesson in Washington; Additional reporting by David Morgan in Washington; Editing by Scott Malone and Matthew Lewis)
WASHINGTON (Reuters)—Republican members of Congress, who will set the agenda for the House next year, pressed short video app TikTok on Tuesday over concerns the company may have misled Congress about how much user data it shares with China, where owner ByteDance is headquartered.
Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the top Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Representative James Comer, top Republican on the Oversight Committee, wrote to TikTok to say information provided in a staff briefing appeared to be inaccurate.
“Some of the information TikTok provided during the staff briefing appears to be untrue or misleading, including that TikTok does not track U.S. user locations,” the Republican lawmakers said in a letter to TikTok Chief Executive Shou Zi Chew and dated Tuesday.
TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Following election wins earlier this month, Republicans will take control of the House in January. The letter could be a sign of tough scrutiny they plan to apply to Chinese companies including TikTok, a target of the Republican administration of former President Donald Trump.
But the Democratic Biden administration has also expressed concern about TikTok. FBI Director Christopher Wray said earlier this month the Chinese government could harness the video-sharing app to influence users or control their devices.
Among other questions, the lawmakers asked TikTok to provide drafts of any agreement being negotiated with the Biden administration to allow TikTok to remain active in the United States.
The U.S. government’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which reviews U.S. acquisitions by foreign companies for potential national security risks, in 2020 ordered ByteDance to divest TikTok because of fears U.S. user data could be passed on to China’s communist government.
CFIUS and TikTok have been in talks for months aiming to reach a national security agreement to protect the data of TikTok’s more than 100 million users.
President Joe Biden in June 2021 withdrew a series of Trump executive orders that sought to ban new downloads of TikTok and ordered the Commerce Department to conduct a review of security concerns posed by the apps.
(Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Alexandra Alper and Lincoln Feast)
WASHINGTON (Reuters)—U.S. business activity contracted for a fifth straight month in November, with a measure of new orders dropping to its lowest level in 2-1/2 years as higher interest rates slowed demand.
S&P Global said on Wednesday its flash U.S. Composite PMI Output Index, which tracks the manufacturing and services sectors, fell to 46.3 this month from a final reading of 48.2 in October. A reading below 50 indicates contraction in the private sector. Activity is slumping under the weight of the Federal Reserve’s most aggressive interest rate-hiking cycle since the 1980s aimed at curbing inflation by dampening economic demand.
The flash composite new orders index dropped to 46.4, the lowest level since May 2020, from a final reading of 49.2 in October. Outside the initial wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, this was the worst reading since 2009.
“Companies are reporting increasing headwinds from the rising cost of living, tightening financial conditions – notably higher borrowing costs – and weakened demand across both home and export markets,” said Chris Williamson, chief business economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence.
But there were some glimmers of hope in the fight against inflation. The survey’s measure of prices paid by businesses for inputs slipped to 65.7, the lowest level since December 2020, from a final reading 67.0 in October. That reflected an easing in supply bottlenecks.
Businesses were also raising prices for their products at the slowest pace in just over two years, in part because of ebbing demand, with some firms reporting concessions and discounts to entice customers to place orders.
The moderation in the price measures fits in with data this month showing a significant slowdown in consumer and producer inflation in October.
The survey’s flash manufacturing PMI dropped to 47.6 this month, the lowest reading since May 2020, from 50.4 in October. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the index at 50.
New orders remained subdued, but price pressures continued to abate as manufacturers signaled the first improvement in supplier performance since October 2019. But the faster lead times were often because of reduced demand for inputs.
Average input prices increased at the softest rate in two years, but factories still faced challenges finding skilled labor. This suggests the slowdown in inflation will be gradual as wages remain sticky.
The survey’s flash services sector PMI decreased to 46.1 from 47.8 in October. Services businesses also reported weak demand and a moderation in input prices.
(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
DUBAI (Reuters)—A British-Iranian citizen was arrested in Iran’s Isfahan province on Wednesday for allegedly sharing information with foreign-based news channels, Iranian state media reported.
“The Revolutionary Guards’ Intelligence Organisation arrested a British-Iranian citizen who communicated with the BBC and Iran International,” the Islamic Republic of Iran’s News Network said, before adding the person was born in Britain.
Tehran accuses foreign-based Persian language channels of supporting a nationwide protest movement that has been ongoing for more than two months and was sparked by the death of 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini in police custody.
(Reporting by Dubai Newsroom; Editing by Alex Richardson)
Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei mocked President Joe Biden as a “poor, demented” man and led a crowd in chants of “death to America” during a speech on state television on Saturday.
Biden turned 80 on Sunday, and his age and declining mental sharpness have been a matter of public speculation since his election in 2020.
Khamenei’s comments come as the Biden administration said this week it is still interested in reaching a nuclear deal with Iran, despite a reported stalemate in the negotiations and the Iranian government’s ongoing violent crackdown on nationwide anti-government protests.
In Khamenei’s speech, which was translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute, the Iranian leader claimed that the Islamic Republic’s “advancement” was “intolerable and unbearable for the West.” He criticized U.S. presidents since the 1979 Iranian revolution, singling out Donald Trump as a “dope” and Biden as “demented.”
“America is at the forefront of this campaign by the enemy,” said Khamenei. “All the American presidents, in the decades that have passed since the revolution, have fought the Islamic Republic on that front.”
“Some of them have dropped dead, and some have been cast in the garbage bin of history, even if still alive,” said Khamenei. “This includes the previous dope [Trump] and this poor, demented incumbent guy [Biden].”
At one point in the speech, the crowd launched into a chant of “death to America.”
The Biden administration still has hope that it can reach a nuclear deal with Iran, despite concerns from members of Biden’s own party that the agreement wouldn’t hinder Iran’s nuclear ambitions and would end up sending more funding to the terrorist-financing regime.
U.S. ambassador to Israel Tom Nides this week said a nuclear deal with Iran is “not off the table,” although the Biden administration is “nowhere close” to reaching an agreement with the regime.
“Nothing’s ever off the table,” said Nides. He added that Iran has been an unwilling partner and he was “not holding my breath for any negotiation with the Iranians in this current form.”
The Iranian regime has been rocked by nationwide anti-government protests, which were sparked when Mahsa Amini, a young Iranian woman, was killed by morality police after refusing to wear a hijab.
(Reuters)—A federal judge has blocked New York from restricting the carrying of guns on private property under a Democratic-backed law adopted following the U.S. Supreme Court’s June ruling that struck down the state’s strict gun permitting regime.
Tuesday’s ruling by U.S. District Judge John Sinatra in Buffalo struck down a provision in the law that made it a felony for a licensed gun owner to possess a firearm on any private property unless the property owner allowed it with a sign or by giving express consent.
Sinatra, appointed by Republican former President Donald Trump, found that the provision violated the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment right to “keep and bear arms.”
The ruling marked the latest courtroom victory for gun owners challenging New York’s law, called the Concealed Carry Improvement Act, that as of Sept. 1 made obtaining a firearms license more difficult and barred firearms from a long list of “sensitive” public and private places. A federal appeals court has put on hold rulings by another judge that blocked major parts of the law including bars on people from carrying concealed guns in certain “sensitive locations.”
Sinatra ruled in a lawsuit by two firearms owners and two gun rights groups. The Firearms Policy Coalition, one of those groups, called the ruling a “monumental step” toward restoring the gun rights of New Yorkers.
Sinatra said the provision at issue was unconstitutional under the Supreme Court’s precedents including June’s ruling.
“Property owners indeed have the right to exclude,” Sinatra wrote. “But the state may not unilaterally exercise that right and, thereby, interfere with the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens who seek to carry for self-defense outside of their own homes.”
In a court filing, the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, said it would appeal.
Reuters)—U.S. crude oil stocks in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve fell by 1.6 million barrels in the latest week to 390.5 million barrels, the lowest level since March 1984, the Energy Information Administration said Wednesday.
U.S. East Coast gasoline stocks fell in the period to 47.1 million barrels, the lowest level since November 2012, while refinery utilization in the region rose to 102.9%, the highest on record.
The left-wing apple doesn’t fall far from the tree
“I’m a big advocate for Sam because he has two parents that are compliance lawyers,” FTX spokesman and investor Kevin O’Leary, better known as Shark Tank‘s Mr. Wonderful, said earlier this month of his relationship with crypto scam-artist Sam Bankman-Fried. “If there’s ever a place I could be that I’m not going to get in trouble, it’s going to be at FTX.”
We’re hardly sophisticated investors, but: LOL.
It’s true, Sam Bankman-Fried’s parents are lawyers: professors at Stanford Law School, fanatical left-wingers, and as greedy as they come. The apple, apparently, did not fall far from the tree.
Bankman-Fried’s mother, Barbara Fried, is a tax expert whose scholarship focuses on moral philosophy and “questions of distributive justice.” She has three degrees from Harvard and led a left-wing super PAC that funneled millions of dollars to Democrats. Bankman-Fried’s father, Joseph Bankman, earned an undergraduate degree at Berkeley and a law degree from Yale. According toFortune, he has helped Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) write tax legislation. He’s also a clinical psychologist who specializes in the “treatment of anxiety, depression, and adjustment in both teens and adults.”
Mom and Pops didn’t teach Sam how to drag a brush through his hair or tie his shoes, but they did school him in the argot of the high-society bullshit artist: “utilitarianism,” “effective altruism,” “commitment to the well-being of all people,” yadda, yadda, yadda.
The do-gooder schtick was just that. “Man all the dumb shit I said,” Bankman-Fried texted a reporter, “it’s not true, not really.” The reporter followed up: “So the ethics stuff—mostly a front?” You know the answer.
So we weren’t exactly shocked to read Tuesday’s Reuters report indicating that Bankman and Fried appear to have been in on the FTX scam. The two purchased a Bahamian beachfront home in a gated community “that was once home to a British colonial fort built in the 1700s to protect against pirates.” These warriors for distributive justice now tell the press—through an unnamed spokesman paid for with God knows whose money—that they’ve been desperately trying to return the deed for their estate, they just can’t figure whom to give it to. Noted house-flipper Elizabeth Warren is smiling somewhere.
We may not know investment, but we do know politics. So Mr. Wonderful, the next time you meet a billion-dollar founder with left-wing platitudes coming out his ears, understand that you’re probably getting played. Especially if his parents are high-flying academics who moonlight as shrinks. Not six months ago, Bankman was making overtures to an advocacy group for the so-called recently incarcerated, floating a $600,000 donation from FTX. He has since told them he is “heartbroken” he won’t be able to deliver. Not to worry: The money just went to a different set of crooks.
Two of the federal judges boycotting Yale Law School over its poor record on free speech will speak at the university next week about their decision not to hire clerks from the Ivy League law school, according to promotional materials for the event reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.
The event, hosted by the William F. Buckley program and set for Nov. 30, will feature Fifth Circuit judge James Ho and Eleventh Circuit judge Elizabeth Branch, who over the past two months announced that they would no longer hire clerks from the school. The Buckley program is independent of the university, and the law school is not sponsoring the event.
Yale Law School dean Heather Gerken has also invited Ho and Branch to speak at the law school in January, a move widely seen as damage control. That event still appears to be in the works, though the law school did not respond to a request for comment.
Next week’s panel comes after a dozen federal judges in addition to Ho and Branch told the Free Beacon they would no longer hire clerks from Yale Law, citing the law school administration’s response to several campus uproars, including its now-infamous intimidation of Trent Colbert, a second-year law student who used the term “traphouse” in an email. They also pointed to administrators’ failure to discipline students who disrupted a bipartisan panel on civil liberties and caused so much chaos the police were called.
The boycott prompted Gerken to outline a series of steps she says the law school is taking to protect free speech, including the hire of a new dean of students who will encourage students to “resolve disagreements among themselves.” In a letter to Gerken on October 13, Ho and Branch said that those measures were insufficient—and that some of them, such as a ban on surreptitious recordings, were counterproductive.
“The only reason we even know about” the trap house incident, the judges said, “is because that student recorded his interactions with school officials. Does this new policy somehow improve free speech conditions on campus? Or does it simply ensure that the school will not be caught in the future for infringing on speech?”
NEW YORK (Reuters)—Retailers ranging from Walmart to Barnes & Noble are installing cameras or locking away items to deter shoplifters and thieves as they brace for a post-pandemic rush of holiday shoppers this year.
Some, including Walmart, J.C. Penney and Walgreens, put in place new surveillance systems or more security guards. Others, like Target and Barnes & Noble, sealed merchandise behind plexiglass or tethered it with steel cables to store shelves.
The retail industry has decried theft this holiday season as it struggles with excess inventories and a pullback in consumer spending at a time of high inflation.
“Sales are suppressed. Profits are being punished at the time of the highest inflation in 42 years. And now with the cost of preventing crime going up, that’s going to be passed along in higher prices,” said Burt Flickinger, managing director at retail consulting firm Strategic Resource Group.
The effect on holiday sales and profits “will be horrific,” he added. “Nowadays you can see shampoos are locked up, along with acetaminophen and Tylenol and multipacks of toothpaste locked up…. people planning to shop in stores will not want to go in to these locked and over-secured stores. So overall retailers lose both the planned purchase and the impulse purchases.”
Crime has been in the spotlight since a spate of brazen, violent store thefts – including a “smash and grab” incident during the holiday season last year where 80 people rushed into a Nordstrom near San Francisco and ran out with armfuls of merchandise, injuring five employees. One survey by the National Retail Federation (NRF) cited a 26.5% jump last year in “organized retail crime” carried out by groups of people.
But it is unclear whether overall U.S. retail crime is on the rise, with little data available on the problem. Total losses from shoplifting, theft, fraud and errors for U.S. retailers in 2021 remained steady at an average rate of 1.4% of total sales, as it had been over the previous five years.
Still, retailers are diverting more resources towards security this quarter, which could add pressure on margins already squeezed by higher gas, transportation, labor and raw material costs.
Part of the problem is that prosecuting petty crime is a hassle, and some states raised their thresholds for the value of merchandise stolen to around $1,000 to trigger a felony charge.
That puts the onus on preventing crime in the first place, especially during the Thanksgiving weekend that is expected to see a record shopper turnout. The busy holiday season represents nearly 20% of total U.S. retail sales for the year.
SURVEILLANCE AND STROBE LIGHTS
A sign of the times can be seen in the small communities of Paducah, Kentucky, and Opelika, Alabama, where Walmart, J.C. Penney, Walgreens and other major retailers have brought in large, mobile surveillance units that record all activity in their parking lots.
Walmart, for example, said it has nine surveillance units outside three massive Supercenter stores in both cities.
The units, provided by LiveView Technologies as part of a pilot, offer 24-hour live video footage to retailers so they can alert authorities of any suspicious activity, said Brian Laird, Paducah’s chief of police. They also have flashing strobe lights and loud speakers to warn potential thieves that their actions are being observed.
Others retailers have focused their anti-theft efforts inside their stores. A Target in White Plains, New York, for example, placed all Ulta Beauty cosmetics behind locked plexiglass.
At a Barnes & Noble in the Galleria Mall in White Plains, American Girl ‘Wellie Wisher’ dolls are shackled to the shelves with electronic ties. At another Barnes & Noble store in Manhattan, customers have to carry empty Lego set boxes to cashiers and receive the pieces after their purchase.
‘PET PEEVE’
Major consumer products companies such as Procter & Gamble are annoyed—and so are shoppers.
P&G last week said it is investing in in-store displays to avoid having its razor blades stuck in glass casing, while shoppers complain the locked displays and cables slow them down and force them to find staff who can set the merchandise free.
“Target has a new feature!” TikTok user @manifest_makeup wrote in the caption of a video shared in September with her 20,000 followers. “Everything is now behind glass just like Walmart!”
Rex Freiberger, a 40-year-old Los Angeles resident, says he has noticed “more and more items” placed behind plexiglass at the Walmart where he shops for holiday gifts.
“My biggest pet peeve about having so many items behind locked doors is when stores don’t have enough workers on the floor to help unlock those doors,” he said.
Retailers rarely openly acknowledge the threat of theft or crime because they generally don’t want to spook shoppers.
But Target last week said it saw a “precipitous decline” in discretionary spending and disclosed that theft could wipe out more than $600 million in gross profit this year. That represents nearly 2% of the $31 billion in gross profits it earned last year.
“Along with other retailers, we’ve seen a significant increase in theft and organized retail crime across our business,” Target CEO Brian Cornell told investors on a November 16 conference call.
“As a result, we’re making significant investments in training and technology that can deter theft and keep our guests and store team members safe.”
(Additional reporting by Doyinsola Oladipo, editing by Deepa Babington)
Hunter Biden’s legitimate daughter Naomi got married last week at the White House, which also happens to be her primary residence.
Why it matters:
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters the “private” “family event” was “closed to the media.” That was a blatant lie.
Three days after the wedding, Vogue magazine published an exclusive feature on the White House wedding along with a number of exclusive behind-the-scenes photographs of the bride.
Vogue, which is edited by Democratic megadonor Anna Wintour, typically pays for exclusive rights to photograph celebrity weddings.
What they’re saying:
• The White House claimsVogue wasn’t there on the actual wedding day. The magazine was simply invited to do a “wedding” photo shoot at the White House sometime beforehand.
• “The bride and groom could have chosen a private space to hold a private wedding,” wrote NBC News correspondent Kelly O’Donnell. “Using the White House, which belongs to the American people, gives this event a public component and thus the WH press should have been approved to cover a portion of the event for historical record.”
The bottom line:
Demanding privacy for a “family event” while inviting a Democratic donor’s magazine to take photographs is a bold move indeed. But the Bidens clearly have no shame when it comes to cashing in on public office.
Naomi’s father is under federal investigation for using the family name to get rich off shady international business deals and has been selling awful paintings to “anonymous” buyers for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
As always, it’s not really a scandal if a Democrat does it.
The crime committed against Dr. Paul Marik and his patients
Part II in a series on Dr. Paul Marik—a magnificent doctor who was fired from his job and professorship because he successfully treated his COVID-19 patients with FDA-approved drugs and high-dose Vitamin C.
At the same time that Dr. McCullough was stripped of his job and professorships, his colleague and kindred spirit, Dr. Paul Marik, experienced a similar fate. On October 15, 2021, his hospital’s administration circulated a memo to the entire healthcare system stating that its doctors were authorized to administer remdesivir to COVID-19 patients, but not ivermectin or a host of other repurposed drugs. As Dr. Marik read the memo, he marveled at the sheer perfidy of it. Especially grotesque was the inclusion of “Ascorbic acid” (vitamin C) on the list of banned substances.
The administration issued this directive at a time when seven COVID-19 patients were in the ICU, desperately in need of Dr. Marik’s care. He, in turn, desperately wanted to treat them with the drug regimen that he knew would give them a good chance of recovery. Three months later, at the January 24, 2022 panel discussion (COVID-19: A Second Opinion), hosted by Senator Ron Johnson, Dr. Marik recounted his helplessness. His heart-wrenching testimony (starting at 4:19:30) was probably the most dramatic moment in the extraordinary conference.
This system was effectively preventing me from treating my patients according to my best clinical judgement. … As a clinician for the first time in my entire career, I could not be a doctor. I could not treat patients. I had seven Covid patients [he holds up his hands showing seven digits] including a 31-year-old woman. I was not allowed to treat these people. I had to stand by idly [he clenches and raises his fists with anguish and begins to weep]. I had to stand by idly, watching these people die.
I then tried to sue the system, so then they did something called peer sham review. It is a disgusting and evil concept. They then accused me of seven most outrageous crimes … and [claimed] that I was such a severe threat to the safety of patients, they immediately suspended my hospital privileges because I posed such a threat to these patients—ignoring the fact that under my care, mortality was 50% less than it was under my colleagues. I then went on to this sham peer review. I went to a Kangaroo Court, where they continued this, and the end result was that I lost my hospital privilege and was reported to the National Practitioner Databank. “So here I was standing up for my patients’ rights, and this hospital, this evil hospital, ended my medical career.
Authorities in Cobb County, Georgia, provided an update on a city council race after it was flipped following the discovery of an overlooked memory card with uncounted ballots.
Cobb County Communications Director Ross Cavitt confirmed to the Cobb Courier on Tuesday that after a recount, candidate Lynette Burnette won the special election for Kennesaw City Council Post 1.
Days before that, officials certified her opponent, Madelyn Orochena, the winner. However, it was discovered that employees did not upload a memory card from a precinct that had nearly 800 ballots, which ultimately gave Burnette the lead.
“The recertification was necessary after workers discovered a memory card had not been included in the previous results. The additional ballots resulted in a change in the Kennesaw City Council Post 1 Special Election,” a Cobb County news release said.
A recount of the race was conducted starting Nov. 20, a release said.
“I have been tracking city elections since 1972. Fifty years. I have never, never seen anything like this,” Councilman Pat Ferris told the Cobb County Courier about the final result.
Another official, Cobb County Director of Elections Janine Eveler, told the paper that the memory card never went missing and was returned on the night of Nov. 8. An employee did not follow rules, she said.
“We have a checklist in the receiving group that opens the pouch, checks the seal, opens the pouch and counts that the memory cards have been returned. So, in this case, they have a checklist that says there is either one scanner or two scanners at that polling location,” Eveler remarked. “The receiver in this case checked the checklist: there were two memory cards.”
She added: “They marked two on their checklist and handed it to the person that was uploading it to the tabulation machine … she didn’t check her checklist that said there [were] two and reached into the bag, pulled one memory card out, and uploaded it, put that card back into the pouch, and handed it off to another worker.”
Last week, Orochena wrote in a Facebook post she would file a complaint with the Georgia’s Secretary of State office over the incident. Before that, she announced her win but later wrote that she learned of the memory card issue that flipped her race.
“I planned to celebrate with family and friends and supporters afterwards,” she told WSB-TV. “We had no reason to expect otherwise.” Adding to the outlet, Orochena said she’s now “just doing all that I can do that’s within my rights to regain some confidence that this was a fair election.”
Cobb election officials said the memory card was located in Kennesaw when workers were preparing for an election audit, according to local news outlets. Details weren’t provided about why the card was overlooked or where it was located.
Three FTX executives gave over $70 million to both political parties in 2022, ranking third in donations
Former FTX executives contributed significantly to this year’s midterm elections in an effort to gain influence in Washington. After the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange, the big beneficiaries of FTX’s donations have attracted attention.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried and two other executives poured more than $70 million into the political parties and groups, making FTX the third largest donor in the 2022 election cycle.
While Bankman-Fried gave nearly $40 million mainly to Democratic candidates and liberal organizations, his co-CEO Ryan Salame donated about $23 million to Republicans and conservative groups in 2022, according to a list compiled by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, a group led by economist Stephen Moore, using OpenSecrets.org data.
The remaining donations came from FTX engineering director Nishad Singh, who gave nearly $13 million to Democrats and liberal causes, the data showed.
A former FTX employee who is familiar with the lobbying effort in Washington and wished to remain anonymous told the Epoch Times that a significant portion of the executives’ political contributions was used to push for “pro-crypto legislation” on Capitol Hill.
Bankman-Fried was a vocal supporter of the bipartisan bill, the Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act of 2022, proposed by Sens. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), John Boozman (R-Ark.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), and John Thune (R-S.D.) to fix regulatory gaps in digital commodity trading. According to the data, he donated roughly $5,800 to each senator’s campaign.
Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) talks during a press conference following the Democrats Policy Luncheon at the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, DC on Oct. 26, 2021. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
“I’m optimistic that the Stabenow-Boozman’s bill will provide customer protection on centralized crypto exchanges,” Bankman-Fried wrote on Twitter on Oct. 18, expressing his full support.
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), who is expected to succeed Nancy Pelosi as the next House Democratic leader, also received $5,800 from the crypto entrepreneur. Other notable beneficiaries include Sens. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.), Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.).
About $235,000 of Bankman-Fried’s political contributions went to Republicans. Sens. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), Mitt Romney (R-Utah), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), Susan Collins (R-Maine), and Bill Cassidy (R-La.) were among the Republicans who received donations from the crypto entrepreneur.
Protect Our Future PAC
With nearly $40 million in donations, Bankman-Fried became the Democratic Party’s second-largest donor this year, trailing only George Soros, who gave $128 million.
The majority of Bankman-Fried’s donations, about $27 million, went to the Protect Our Future PAC, a new group that supported candidates committed to preventing future pandemics. And most of that money was spent in primaries. In the recent election cycle, the group invested about $23.3 million into Democratic Party primaries, which were mostly unsuccessful.
Nearly $10.5 million of the super PAC’s primary funding, according to OpenSecrets, went to support a family friend, Carrick Flynn, who lost by a wide margin to state Rep. Andrea Salinas (D) in Oregon’s 6th Congressional District’s Democratic primary.
According to a Slate article in May, it was an “insane amount of money” for a political newcomer.
Bankman-Fried also provided $6 million to House Majority PAC, affiliated with outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, becoming the fourth largest individual contributor to the hybrid PAC, according to OpenSecrets. In addition, he gave $500,000 to Senate Majority PAC, aligned with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke speaks to supporters during a campaign rally in Humble, Texas, on Aug. 24, 2022. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
The crypto entrepreneur also gave $1 million to Beto O’Rourke’s campaign for Texas governor’s race, which was the single greatest donation the Democrat received between July 1 and Sept. 29, according to a Bloomberg Tax article.
Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas who just won a third term, reacted to the FTX’s collapse on Twitter.
“This guy gave a million dollars to Beto. This Madoff-Style evaporation of customer’s money should be a crime,” Abbott wrote, referring to Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme that defrauded investors of billions of dollars in 2008. “Candidates who received this tainted money should return it so that innocent customers of FTX can get some of their money back.”
In an interview in May, Bankman-Fried suggested that he would invest “north of $100 million” in the next presidential election and had a “soft ceiling” of $1 billion, although he later backtracked on this statement calling it a “dumb quote.”
The Conservative Donor
While most of the focus has been on Bankman Fried’s donations to Democrats, data also shows that Salame, co-CEO of Bahamas-based FTX Digital Markets, donated roughly $23 million to Republican politicians and campaign groups in 2022.
“When you examine FTX efforts to influence Washington, you have to look at both CEOs, not just the eccentric guy wearing the shorts,” Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) who’s the chairman of the Subcommittee on Investor Protection and Capital Markets, said in a statement, criticizing the too much attention given on Democrats who received funds from Bankman-Fried.
Salame put $15 million into his super PAC, American Dream Federal Action, which backed crypto-friendly Republicans in elections.
Bankman-Fried and Salame were also the biggest donors to GMI PAC, a nonpartisan super PAC that supports cryptocurrency. Together, they gave $3.5 million to GMI PAC.
Salame was also a familiar face on the Long Island campaign trail with girlfriend Michelle Bond, who ran for election to the U.S. House to represent New York’s 1st Congressional District but lost in the Republican primary. Her opponent Republican Nicholas J. LaLota won in the general election in November.
Team Bond here: Today is Michelle’s birthday. We won’t say how old. But wish her a happy birthday by donating $43 to her campaign today!👀
Other names who received donations from Salame included Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), Reps. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), and Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.). Salame also donated to both Lee Zeldin for the New York Governor’s race and Blake Masters for the U.S. Senate election in Arizona.
Some politicians on both sides of the aisle who have accepted donations from FTX executives have already promised to give the money somewhere else to distance themselves from the company.
Learn more about the shedding of mRNA and spike protein
One of the most common questions I am asked from the unvaccinated stems from concerns over “shedding.”
Because the mRNA vaccines have been in development by the US Department of Defense DARPA since 2011, one would have expected that all of the necessary preclinical testing would have been completed before Operation Warp Speed was announced. The 2015 FDA guidance on Gene Product Shedding Studies with gene therapies, which are defined as “all products that exert their effects by transcription and/or translation of transferred genetic material and/or by integration into the host genome and that are administered in the form of nucleic acids, viruses or genetically modified microorganisms”.[i]
By this statement mRNA vaccines are indeed gene therapy products and should have been submitted to these excretion studies by DARPA funded researchers long ago.[ii] Sadly, these careful development steps were skipped from the beginning in our military-style vaccine development program, and now the public is grappling with the issue of nucleic acid and Spike protein shedding as a potential concern among those who have worked so hard to remain healthy and free of COVID-19 vaccination.
In the most comprehensive paper on shedding thus far, former Inserm researcher Dr. Helene Banoun has published the basis for which there is great likelihood that mRNA either on lipid nanoparticles or within exosomes is circulatory in blood and is secreted in every body secretion that would naturally expect to contain particles of this size.[iii]
Fertig et al, have shown mRNA is circulatory in blood for at least two weeks with no reduction in concentration out to that time point.[iv] Likewise, Hanna et al, have found mRNA within breast milk.[v] Less data exist on Spike protein shedding but it is not a far stretch to understand this is well within the realm of reality.
1) for how long is a recently vaccinated person at risk to shed on to others?
2) can shed mRNA be taken up by the recipient and begin to produce Spike protein just like vaccination?
3) can shed Spike protein cause disease as it does in the vaccinated (e.g. myocarditis, blood clots, etc.)?
It’s time for the lapses by DOD BARDA and NIH BARDA, to immediately be corrected by those agencies funding the necessary independent shedding studies to ensure the public safety of those who wisely deferred on COVID-19 vaccination. This research should preferably be conducted while the current products are paused and taken off to market to protect others at risk. Until then, we simply cannot answer these questions for those who sacrificed so much to remain “pure-blood.”
In one meeting, Deon Jackson went from South Carolina’s Berkeley County school superintendent to unemployed.
His firing came at the hand of a newly-elected school board, which appears to have declared a judgment day for woke practices in its district.
In its first meeting after the Nov. 8 election, the board fired superintendent Jackson and school counsel Tiffany Richardson. Then it hired Anthony Dixon as superintendent and retained Brandon Gaskins as counsel. And before the day was over, the board banned teaching critical race theory and created a board to review library books for pornographic content.
Moms for Liberty, an activist group that supports parental rights in education, endorsed six of the board’s nine members. Many Moms for Liberty candidates won school board elections this November, as reported previously. The group’s leaders say more aggressive school management decisions may soon be in order.
In Berkeley, the candidates’ aggressive approach was a response to student discipline policies and slow learning post-COVID-19, said Christi Dixon, the Moms for Liberty chapter chair for Berkeley.
“Parents were seeing that their children weren’t achieving at the levels that they had been previously. And there were a lot of changes,” Dixon said.
Newly-elected Berkeley County, South Carolina school board members run their first meeting in Berkeley County, North Carolina on Nov. 15, 2022. (Photo courtesy of Christy Dixon)
Fire and Firings
When Jackson left the board meeting at which he was fired, it appeared that not everyone supported the board’s decision.
Christy Dixon, the Moms for Liberty chapter chair for Berkeley County. (Photo courtesy of Christy Dixon)
Some parents watching walked out with him in protest, video from local network Live 5 WCSC News shows. Others cheered.
Former school board chair David Barrow called the firings a “travesty” and a “political witch hunt,” according to NBC.
So far, the board has yet to explain its rationale for firing Jackson and Richardson.
Board members Yvonne Bradley and Crystal Wigfall walked out of the room in protest after Jackson departed.
Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice said the board might be newly-elected but that it knows exactly what it’s doing.
“These are people that have watched the former board. They interacted and watched the former superintendent. They have watched and interacted with the staff attorney,” she said. “The newly elected school board members have been keeping a list and checking it twice.”
According to Dixon, Jackson changed school discipline policies in ways that caused problems and usurped parental authority.
Schools under his authority told parents that school staff should be able to discipline students for behavior outside the school, she said.
“The example that they gave was that if a child and another student in their neighborhood got into some type of disagreement and it was going to spill over into the school environment, then they should be able to insert themselves into that situation,” Dixon said.
Jackson also supported “restorative practices,” she said.
According to the University of Florida, a “restorative” school justice system replaces suspensions and detentions with “restorative meeting circles” where offenders and victims practice “Restitution Planning.”
The previous school board wanted to spend $1 million to hire five district-level administrators, said Dixon.
“We don’t have teachers’ aides. Could that money not be better served to get down into the schools and into the classrooms to help the teacher than to hire more top-heavy district-level administrators?” she asked.
Finally, the school district’s library included the book “Looking for Alaska,” which has sexually graphic language, Dixon said.
Dixon added that she didn’t know exactly why the board moved so fast to fire Jackson and Richardson but that she trusted they had good reason.
Parents concerned about Critical Race Theory took home these buttons from a school board activist training Jan. 19, 2022 in Sarasota, Florida. (Courtesy if Alexis Spiegelman)
“I’m not a board member, and they have protected information that they can’t share,” she said. “I just have to trust that they made the best decision with the information that only they had.”
National Implications
Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice said Moms for Liberty and its candidates want to reclaim parental control of education. For many school employees, “Judgment Day” has arrived, she said.
“You’re going to see continued changes being made to the system. Parents are reclaiming public education in America,” she said.
Superintendents across America should expect more changes, Justice added.
“It’s time for school districts and superintendents to remember and understand that they work for the school board, who reports to the constituents of the community,” she said. “Not the other way around.”
Justice said that although she doesn’t know of any other school boards that have fired their superintendents, she expects that boards nationwide will follow Berkeley’s lead.
“Our children don’t have any time to waste. They don’t get time back. Two years of their lives have already been stolen from them by teachers’ unions and bureaucrats and the Biden administration,” she said.
The Epoch Times contacted Dixon, Jackson, Richardson, the National Education Association, the Department of Education, and the American Federation of Teachers, but received no comment.
A Republican candidate for Arizona’s attorney general position on Nov. 22 sued his opponent and a slew of election officials, including officials in Maricopa County, alleging that widespread “errors and inaccuracies” caused voter disenfranchisement.
Officials in at least 15 counties have “caused the unlawful denial of the franchise to certain qualified electors, erroneously tallied certain ballots, and included for tabulation in the canvass certain illegal votes in connection with the election for the office of Arizona Attorney General,” Abe Hamadeh, the candidate, said in the complaint.
That includes Maricopa County officials improperly disqualifying ballots cast by people who, as a direct result of poll worker errors, were incorrectly listed as voting previously in the midterm election, Hamadeh added.
“Immediate judicial intervention is necessary to secure the accuracy of the results of the November 8, 2022 general election, and to ensure that candidate who received the highest number of lawful votes is declared the next Arizona Attorney General,” the complaint states.
The filing was lodged in Maricopa County court.
The Arizona attorney general race is headed to a recount, according to Katie Hobbs, the state’s secretary of state, due to the slim margin separating Hamadeh from Democrat candidate Kris Mayes.
Mayes is leading by just 510 votes out of more than 2.5 million cast, according to an unofficial tally from Hobbs’s office.
Mayes and Hobbs, who were named as defendants in the new suit, did not respond to requests for comment. A Maricopa County spokesperson did not immediately return an inquiry.
Problems
Maricopa County officials have acknowledged problems with tabulation equipment, saying the problem affected 30 percent of all voting centers in the county and an estimated 17,000 ballots.
On election day the officials said that voters could place their ballots in a secure box to be counted later. Other options included “checking out” of the poll site and casting a ballot at another location, or utilizing an early ballot if one was possessed.
Both of the latter options required poll workers to properly list the voter as checking out, or leaving the site without casting a ballot, but some workers “were unaware of the process,” the new complaint alleges.
“This pervasive and systematic error directly and proximately resulted in three recurring scenarios in which qualified electors were unlawfully and unconstitutionally disenfranchised,” it added.
Hamadeh and the Republican National Committee, which joined in the legal action, say that at least 146 voters who should have been checked out and who later went to another location were required to vote using provisional ballots, which they say will not be counted because the voter was erroneously listed as having already voted.
An election worker gathers tabulated ballots to be boxed inside the Maricopa County Recorders Office in Phoenix. Arizona, on Nov. 10, 2022. (Matt York/AP Photo)
At least 273 other voters who should have been checked out utilized early ballots but those ballots will not count because of the same issue, the Republicans said.
Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates, a Republican, failed to outline the steps voters had to take if they left the sites at which there were problems in a widely-viewed Election Day video that featured officials acknowledging for the first time the issues with tabulators, the complaint noted. He did not mention checking out but merely said people could “go to a nearby voting center.”
“Chairman Gates’s instructions foreseeably resulted in the disenfranchisement of a significant number of qualified electors who followed his instructions,” it says. “By inducing voters to leave polling locations and then denying-through a consistent and erroneous practice of failing to properly implement ‘check-out’ procedures-these qualified electors their right to duly cast a ballot for tabulation, the Maricopa County Defendants engaged (through their election boards) in cognizable ‘misconduct,’ and wrongfully excluded valid and legally sufficient votes from the canvass line the race for Arizona Attorney General.”
Other Issues
Other issues include officials allegedly violating the law when they sought to verify early ballot signatures.
Officials must, when receiving a mail-in ballot, compare the signature on the envelope containing the ballot with the signature of the voter on record. If the signatures don’t match, the ballot is invalid unless the voter “cures” the problem within three to five days, depending on the type of election.
A number of the ballot envelopes had mismatched signatures but were still counted because county officials determined the signature matched the signature on a different document other than the registration record, which violates state law, the complaint alleges.
The issue happened across multiple counties, the Republicans say.
They also alleged that in the duplication process—triggered when a ballot is too defective to be read by a tabulator—officials incorrectly transcribed some of the selections in the attorney general race, which led to an inaccurate vote count.
“Arizonans demand answers and deserve transparency about the gross incompetence and mismanagement of the General Election by certain election officials. I will not stop fighting until ALL voters receive justice. See you in court,” Hamadeh said in a statement.
Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, said that the committee was “proud to join in this legal action.”
“Maricopa County’s election failures disenfranchised Arizonans,” she said. “We’re going to court to get the answers voters deserve.”
Thanks to the outcome of the 2022 midterm elections, Florida is now a fire-engine-red state. As a matter of fact, it soon will be completely red.
That’s because as of Jan. 3, Florida Commissioner of Agriculture and Consumer Services Nikki Fried’s term will end, according to Ballotpedia.
Fried is the last statewide-elected Democrat in Florida.
The realization of her party’s standing in the Sunshine State was on display Tuesday during the Florida Senate’s organization session at the state Capitol in Tallahassee.
As Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis received a lengthy standing ovation on the Senate floor, Fried’s face said it all.
“NOW: Governor Ron DeSantis is greeted with a standing ovation in the Senate Chamber- but @NikkiFried is clearly seething with a mope on her face as her days as an elected official dwindle,” Brendon Leslie, editor-in-chief of Florida’s Voice, wrote on Twitter.
NOW: Governor Ron DeSantis is greeted with a standing ovation in the Senate Chamber- but @NikkiFried is clearly seething with a mope on her face as her days as an elected official dwindle pic.twitter.com/zNvA1SR80C
A video of the session on the state’s website showed Fried initially clapped for the governor before she apparently had enough of that. (It starts around the 45:25 mark.)
The comment section of Leslie’s Twitter post was not kind to her. The PG version of the common sentiment echoed in the comments was “good riddance.”
One Twitter user wrote, “Poor Nikki couldn’t even beat flip flop Chuckles. Someone’s 15 minutes is almost up.”
Fried had her chance to hold a position for the Democratic Party in the Sunshine State, but she lost the Democratic gubernatorial primary to a former Republican, Charlie Crist.
Of course, we know that Crist was nothing short of trounced by DeSantis in the midterm election to the tune of roughly 20 points, leaving no doubt that Florida is one of the strongest Republican states in the nation.
In her last weeks as the state’s agricultural commissioner, instead of doing good work for Florida’s farmers, Fried has found herself involved in catfights on Twitter — and by “catfights,” I mean she went back and forth with a popular conservative Twitter account known as “Catturd.”
After she tweeted that Republicans shouldn’t consider DeSantis in 2024 unless they are “looking to lose again,” Catturd said she was “an expert on losing.”
“I lost one primary and won one statewide,” Fried snapped. “I know you don’t do math well but that is 1-1 ratio with the win being statewide. You are pathetic.”
I’m sure Florida’s farmers can appreciate that she spends so much energy on social media instead of leaving a legacy of being helpful and doing meaningful work until the end of her term.
So, just how red is Florida? Like in most states, the ultimate test would be whether a Republican can turn the political tides in a major city or county. DeSantis managed to do that to Miami-Dade County, which left the jaws of pundits on the ground.
As a matter of fact, according to Axios, DeSantis was the first Republican governor to flip Miami-Dade County in two decades. That’s how red Florida is, which will come in handy in the 2024 election, as it’s no longer a swing state for which Republicans have to fight.
Chaos broke out in the White House press briefing room as White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci finally heads for the door after misleading Americans about Covid-19 for years.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre invited Dr. Fauci up to the podium to deliver a “final message” to Americans after delivering a rambling welcome reminiscent of a eulogy.
“My message — and my final message, maybe the final message I give you from this podium — is that please, for your own safety, for that of your family, get your updated COVID-19 shot as soon as you’re eligible to protect yourself, your family, and your community,” he urged.
As Dr. Fauci soaked in his last moments of power he refused to acknowledge his part in what many consider a botched response to the pandemic over the years or the impact his authoritarian advice had on Americans- often to their detriment.
For those keeping score at home, Dr. Fauci advocated for school closures early in the pandemic, initially advised against buying masks, intentionally withheld information from Americans, and often demonized Americans who chose not to get vaccinated.
Following Fauci’s monologue, Jean-Pierre snapped at reporters who raised questions about the origins of COVID-19 after the White House coronavirus response team updated reporters on the administration’s vaccine efforts.
Daily Caller White House correspondent Diana Glebova attempted to ask a question regarding what Fauci has done to investigate the origins of COVID-19.
“We have a process here. I’m not calling out on people who yell. And you’re being … disrespectful to your colleagues, and you’re being disrespectful to our guest,” Jean-Pierre said. “I will not call on you if you yell, and also you’re taking time off the clock because Dr. Fauci has to leave in a couple of minutes.”
When Glebova objected, Jean-Pierre said she was “done” and was “not getting into a back-and-forth with you.”
Then Today News Africa journalist Simon Ateba also intervened and defended her, saying the question was “valid and should be asked.” Once again, Jean-Pierre lost her temper.
“You need to call people across the room. She has a valid question, she’s asked about the origin of COVID,” Ateba said.
“It is not your turn,” Jean-Pierre shot back. “I hear your question, but we’re not doing this the way you want it. This is disrespectful … Simon, I’m done. Simon, I’m done. I’m done with you right now. You’re taking time away from your colleagues.”
Fauci will step down as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in December.
San Francisco prosecutors are refusing a public interest law firm’s request for the body camera footage of the police response to the Oct. 28 assault of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband or the tape of the 911 call that brought police to the home.
“There is significant public interest in the terrible attack on Paul Pelosi and it is odd that the local authorities are withholding basic information about the incident,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.
Paul Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi’s husband, was brutally assaulted in the couple’s San Francisco home by a man armed with a hammer, who planned to kidnap and harm Nancy Pelosi. Nancy Pelosi was in Washington, D.C. at the time.
The home was under protective surveillance by Capitol Police, but officers were not monitoring the cameras at the time of the attack.
“Among the items District Attorney Brooke Jenkins refused to release are a recording of Paul Pelosi’s 911 call and police officers’ body camera footage,” Judicial Watch reports.
“In its November 2022 request to the district attorney, Judicial Watch noted a news report stating that news organizations had been rebuffed on similar requests,” the group reports.
In addition to the recording and camera footage, Judicial Watch, under the California Public Records Act, asked for “All records of communications, including emails and text messages, between the SFDAO [San Francisco District Attorney’s Office] and the San Francisco Police Department concerning the incident. It also asked for communications with several federal agencies, including the Justice Department, the Capitol Police, and the FBI.”
“Judicial Watch also asked for the identities of the persons at the Pelosi home at the time of the incident,” the group notes.
That appears to be the only information prosecutors released.
“The two persons present at the Pelosi home when the SFPD arrived where [sic] Mr. Pelosi and Mr. DePape,” said District Attorney Brooke Jenkins in her office’s response.
Judicial Watch previously secured footage of Paul Pelosi’s arrest on a charge of alleged drunk driving. In the footage, Pelosi appears to invoke his wife’s name and position, and his contributions to police charities, in an attempt to evade citation.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
Politicians who passionately run their campaigns on issues like border security often change their tune once elected, and the realities of said issues begin to dispel partisan illusions.
Democratic Arizona Governor-elect Katie Hobbs appears to be experiencing this very phenomenon as her rhetoric regarding border security seems to have changed dramatically since her controversial win over Republican candidate Kari Lake.
According to CNN, Hobbs told “CNN This Morning” on Tuesday that she “doesn’t think the Biden administration is ‘doing enough’ to address the situation at the southern border.”
“We need real action on immigration reform. We need real border security,” Hobbs continued in her likely realization that a record-breaking surge in illegal crossings from Mexico and South American countries is occurring.
This is an interesting shift from before her election when she vowed to take down the shipping container walls that her predecessor had assembled along parts of the border.
According to KYMA-DT, Hobbs called the walls, “political stunts that are really not solving issues at the border,” but failed to provide any kind of alternative other than promising to tear them down.
How Hobbs plans to achieve “real border security” while tearing down makeshift walls and backing pro-open border sheriffs like Chris Nanos remains to be seen.
Back in August, she sponsored an ad which involved her and endorsed Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos walking along the southern border.
We need less talk and more action when it comes to securing the border. My highest priority is keeping Arizona communities safe which is why law enforcement like Sheriff Hathaway and Sheriff Nanos are backing my campaign. Watch here👇 pic.twitter.com/4IpFuUJgND
Nanos is well documented for his open border sympathies.
In the ad, Nanos stated, “Hobbs will deliver whatever resources are needed to keep you safe, my team safe, our state safe. She’s not here to politicize our border.”
Despite Nanos’ claim that Hobbs will deliver needed resources for border security, his record would reflect that he might not accept those resources even if offered.
According to various sources, including Arizona Daily Independent, Nanos promised during his 2020 run for sheriff to reject federal border security funds through Operation Stonegarden.
According to the article, “Operation Stonegarden, a federal grant program used for immigration enforcement, currently provides funding for public safety efforts in both Cochise and Pinal counties which, like Santa Cruz and Pima, are key avenues for the cartel’s drug mules.”
Nanos was also documented as vowing to work with various open border groups during his campaign.
Hobbs told “CNN This Morning” that discussing her supposed border plan with President Joe Biden is a top priority for her.
“I’ve said this, I don’t think they are doing enough. I would love to have them visit and see firsthand the kind of support and relief that folks in these communities need from the federal government,” Hobbs said.
Ironically, Biden has not once been to the southern border in any capacity other than a “drive-by,” as described by The Washington Post last year in an article responding to Biden’s CNN townhall.
“I’ve been there before, and I haven’t — I mean, I know it well. I guess I should go down. But the whole point of it is I haven’t had a whole hell of a lot of time to get down,” Biden said.
Hobbs appears to have her work cut out for herself as she faces a president who hasn’t visited the border, sheriff’s that want an open border, and hundreds of thousands of angry, conservative Arizona residents who demand she close the border.
I’d write “Happy Thanksgiving,” but for many of us, it’ll be anything but that. A recent survey by Personal Capital revealed that too many Americans doubt they’ll have enough money for Thanksgiving this year, while others said they’ll be forced to skip it altogether.
The survey indicated that Thanksgiving dinner will be skipped this year for a staggering one in four Americans, according to Personal Capital.
That’s because Joe Biden’s inflation crisis, which is still cranking at a near record-high, has all but zapped the available funds that American families would usually have to put toward a nice Thanksgiving meal.
While Americans struggle to fill the table with food, Biden and his family will spend the Thanksgiving holiday at the $20 million Nantucket, Massachusetts estate of billionaire David Rubenstein, a private equity tycoon. According to the New York Post, it’s the second year in a row for the Bidens to celebrate Thanksgiving like only America’s wealthiest can these days.
Biden screws up the American people thanksgiving then goes to Nantucket to smooch a thanksgiving dinner off one of his rich donors!!!!#TheFive
Why does it feel like elitist Democrats are the only people enjoying the things we used to enjoy, like Thanksgiving dinners, while working-class Americans are forced to choose between name-brand and store-brand ketchup to save a few cents?
“1 in 5 Americans are concerned about affording Thanksgiving dinner this year, according to a recent Personal Capital survey. #Bidenflation is crushing Americans’ budgets this holiday season & Democrats still have NO plan to end the reckless government spending that created it,” House Republicans tweeted last month.
1 in 5 Americans are concerned about affording Thanksgiving dinner this year, according to a recent Personal Capital survey. #Bidenflation is crushing Americans’ budgets this holiday season & Democrats still have NO plan to end the reckless government spending that created it.
Back to the Personal Capital survey… it gets worse. One in four Americans doubted they even have the funds to whip up a Thanksgiving spread this year.
Additionally, only seven in 10 Americans said they’ll even celebrate the holiday this year, down from nine out of 10 last year. To say that’s genuinely sad is an understatement.
Finally, for the lucky Americans who have a little left in the bank to cook a Thanksgiving meal, they indicated they’d spend 33 percent less than what would usually be allocated for such a meal.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the Consumer Price Index (CPI) indicated that the price of food at home increased 12.4 percent year-over-year in October.
Anyone who’s been to a grocery store in the past six months would agree that it would be a dream if it were only a 12.4 percent raise. The coffee creamer I bought last year at Walmart for $1.99 now costs almost $5.00. That’s insane, and it’s no wonder household debt is rising.
Speaking of household debt, under Biden, the Household Debt and Credit report by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York indicated that household debt rose an astonishing $351 billion in the third quarter of 2022 alone, making for a current total household debt of $16.51 trillion, according to Fox Business.
After the Bidens fill their bellies on Thanksgiving with luxury foods that most of us probably haven’t even heard of, let alone afford, the first family has also seemingly tied up all the local resources in Nantucket for a tree-lighting ceremony to take place on Main Street on Friday.
“With President Biden once again planning to attend Friday’s Christmas tree lighting ceremony on Main Street, @NantucketPoliceDept. has issued the following security advisory for those planning to attend. Barricades, parking restrictions, street closures, and security screening,” the Nantucket Current tweeted.
With President Biden once again planning to attend Friday’s Christmas tree lighting ceremony on Main Street, @NantucketPolice Dept. has issued the following security advisory for those planning to attend.
It might not be quite as bad if Biden acknowledged that many of us are going through some pretty tough times under his reign. But it’s become painfully clear that he can’t read a room. His last message to the American public regarding the looming home heating crisis, for instance, was that families will be eligible to save a little money on solar panels.
Biden wants families struggling to afford gas and groceries to spend their paychecks on solar panels.
The same people who can’t afford Thanksgiving dinner this year can save on their electric and heating bills if they install $16,000 solar panels? Got it. It’s the same familiar narrative pushed by Democrats for other issues.
Can’t afford gasoline? Buy a $56,000 electric vehicle. Homeless? Buy a house, silly! Problem solved.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials are approving the entry of thousands of likely illegal aliens while they’re still in Mexico, according to a new report.
For months now, CBP officials have shepherded in thousands of aliens who have submitted an application for temporary parole status, using a new online platform called CBP-ONE, according to a report by Todd Bensman, senior national security fellow with the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).
Bensman visited three immigration shelters in Mexico that help select migrants for the program and help them obtain the requisite paperwork—often assisted by teams of U.S. legal students, psychologists, activists, and the U.N. International Organization for Migration.
To be accepted, the migrants require “just the right documented story of woe, a psychologist attesting to suffered traumas and fear of returning home, proof of citizenship and identity, a clear criminal background, need for urgent free American medical treatment, and a sponsor in the U.S. willing to financially support the applicant,” according to the report.
The authority under which these aliens are gaining entry is through a humanitarian parole exemption that The Epoch Times exclusively wrote about in May. Under the parole authority, tens of thousands of illegal aliens are being quickly released each month by Border Patrol after crossing the border illegally.
Under parole, the aliens are given work authorization for one year and often a cell phone to check in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Two Nicaraguan nationals hold up the cell phones they received from Border Patrol before being released into the United States, in Kinney County, Texas, on April 29, 2022. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
A spokesperson for CBP previously told The Epoch Times that parole has been used to speed up the processing of illegal aliens at overwhelmed Border Patrol stations.
“One thing you can do is you can parole somebody who is coming into the United States as an arriving alien, and you can parole them for a year, so that they can take care of whatever humanitarian issue or whatever issue that they have to deal with,” the spokesperson said.
Now, the same process is being undertaken south of the border.
Bensman called it “a highly unconventional idea far outside mainstream border management.”
What Is Parole?
Through the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), Congress mandated that all inadmissible and illegal aliens be detained until their status is determined, after which they’re either deported or granted entry with a legal status.
Parole is an exception and, although it’s not a legal status, it permits entry on “a case-by-case basis” for “urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit,” according to the INA.
The status allows foreign nationals “who may not otherwise be admissible to the country under the immigration laws” to live and work in the United States temporarily “without being formally admitted to the country and without having a set pathway to a permanent immigration status,” according to a 2020 Congressional Research Service report.
Andrew Arthur, CIS resident fellow in law and policy and a retired immigration judge, said in a previous interview that parole should be a “very, very boutique thing.”
It should be used, for example, when a family member needs entry into the United States to donate a kidney to his brother or if a witness to a criminal case is needed to testify, Arthur said. As associate general counsel in the former federal immigration agency, he said he would see a handful of parole cases each year.
The Department of Homeland Security granted parole to 24,000 Venezuelans in October.
One man who Bensman encountered in Mexicali had a doctor at the shelter attest to his need for medical treatment for lung cancer. The man was approved to travel into the United States under parole authority for free cancer treatment the next day, Bensman said in his report.
“If applicants claim they’re fleeing danger, university law professors and students help them file police reports over the phone to home countries after the fact, then get the police reports sent back as ‘evidence,’ three shelter managers confirmed,” he said.
Under this new parole program south of the border, he said it’s impossible to estimate how many aliens had been processed in Mexico and brought to the United States because the process is almost “invisible,” but all the shelters he knows of are “swamped and expanding.”
The parole being used on the U.S. side of the border also has been ramping up.
During fiscal year 2022, which ended on Sept. 30, Border Patrol processed and released more than 378,000 illegal aliens under the Biden administration’s new “Parole+ATD” category, according to CBP data. ATD is an Alternatives to Detention program, which is acting as a workaround of the legal requirement to detain illegal aliens.
In October, another 68,837 were released under parole and an additional 20,500 were released with an immigration court date.
By adding the parole system, Bensman said the United States is enticing more people to come.
“And I think that’s the policy question. How many are you going to let in? There’s 700 million people in the world living in extreme poverty. Will we stop when all of them are in?” he told The Epoch Times.
In Mexico
Bensman relayed a conversation he had with a Mexicali city official, Aaron Gomez, who said he was tapped to run the Mexican side of the operation partnered with Calexico, California.
“They needed to open a new entrance right here, and they needed someone to run it,” Gomez told Bensman. “It was a favor the Americans asked for with this program.”
Gomez said U.S. officials told them, “They’re going to cross either way. This will keep them from getting hurt.”
Between Sept. 9 and Nov. 3, Gomez said he’s sent more than 1,150 parolees into Calexico, and the program is ramping up. Many are Mexican nationals, as well as those from El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and other nations.
The Mexicali city shelter system—currently holding 3,000 migrants—is full, and the city is building an expansion to triple its capacity.
Bensman said the program is operating south of San Diego and Calexico in California, Douglas in Arizona, and El Paso, Laredo, McAllen, and Brownsville in Texas.
“Mexico also appears to have set up operations well south of the American border, in Cancun on Mexico’s southern Caribbean coast and in Monterrey farther north, where pre-approved immigrants are flown into American airports,” he said.
Aaron Gomez, a city official in Mexicali, Mexico, checks the U.N. website at the shelter he operates, which helps migrants obtain parole authority from the U.S. immigration system to enter the United States via a port of entry in Mexicali in November 2022. (Courtesy of Todd Bensman/Center for Immigration Studies)
That allows the Biden administration to avoid having to add these aliens to the illegal border crossing statistics.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has maintained his intent to create more legal pathways for hopeful migrants in a more “safe, orderly, and humane” system into the United States—which reflects the U.N.’s goals.
“This has to be what they’re talking about,” Bensman said. “It does two things that are just utterly irresistible—it provides very fast work authorization and enables beneficiaries to avoid having to pay cartel fees to cross.”
However, there are already corruption issues.
Bensman said migrants have told a Tijuana-based pastor at a shelter that local officials are demanding bribes of 5,000 to 10,000 pesos ($250 to $500) for migrants to get on the government shelter lists for more guaranteed, faster border crossings.
CBP didn’t respond to a request from The Epoch Times for the number and nationalities of aliens who have been paroled in and through which ports of entry under this program with Mexico.
As far as reining in the use of parole, Bensman said he thinks a current Florida lawsuit might have the best chance.
The state of Florida filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security in February, in part, against the agency’s alleged “abuse of the parole authority.”
“I think that’s the only hope—that they get an injunction, and this thing gets to the Supreme Court, fast,” he said.
“The Covid mRNA vaccine has likely played a significant role or been a primary cause of unexpected cardiac arrests, heart attacks, strokes, cardiac arrhythmias, and heart failure since 2021…”
Until the British cardiologist, Dr. Aseem Malhotra, expressed grave concern about the safety of Covid mRNA vaccines, he was one of the most celebrated doctors in Britain. In 2016 he was named in the Sunday Times Debrett’s list as one of the most influential people in science and medicine in the UK in a list that included Professor Stephen Hawking. His total Altmetric score (measure of impact and reach) of his medical journal publications since 2013 is over 10,000 making it one of the highest in the World for a clinical doctor during this period.
In the early days of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout in Britain, he advocated the injections for the general public. However, in July of 2021, he experienced a terrible personal loss that caused him to reevaluate the shots—namely, the sudden and unexpected death of his 73-year-old father. His father’s death made no sense to him because he knew from his own examination that his father’s general and cardiac health were excellent. As he put it in a recent interview:
His postmortem findings really shocked me. There were two severe blockages in his coronary arteries, which didn’t really make any sense with everything I know, both as a cardiologist—someone who has expertise in this particular area—but also intimately knowing my dad’s lifestyle and his health. Not long after that, data started to emerge that suggested a possible link between the mRNA vaccine and increased risk of heart attacks from a mechanism of increasing inflammation around the coronary arteries. But on top of that, I was contacted by a whistleblower at a very prestigious university in the UK, a cardiologist himself, who explained to me that there was a similar research finding in his department, and that those researchers had decided to essentially cover that up because they were worried about losing funding from the pharmaceutical industry. But it doesn’t stop there. I then started looking at data in the UK to see if there had been any increase in cardiac arrest. My dad suffered a cardiac arrest and sudden cardiac death at home. Had there been any change in the UK since the vaccine rollout? And again those findings were very clear. There’s been an extra 14,000 out of hospital cardiac arrests in 2021 vs 2020.
The more Dr. Malhotra looked into it, the more he felt the same concern about the safety of the mRNA vaccines that Dr. Peter McCullough had felt since the spring of 2021. The alarming incidence of sudden, unexpected deaths during the latter half of 2021 and the first eight months of 2022—especially among the young and fit—strengthened his grave concern and suspicion.
In September of 2022,—after a thorough investigation of the growing volume of data—he came to his conclusion:
The Covid mRNA vaccine has likely played a significant role or been a primary cause of unexpected cardiac arrests, heart attacks, strokes, cardiac arrhythmias, and heart failure since 2021 until proven otherwise.
His conclusion, including his precise verbal formulation of it, was identical to the conclusion drawn by Dr. Peter McCullough. Though the two doctors ultimately established contact to compare notes, they reached their conclusions based on their own, independent inquiries, before they spoke with each other.
Recently the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation produced Until Proven Otherwise— a short video documentary about the corroborating findings of these two leading cardiologists. I believe it is no exaggeration to say that the gripping, four-minute video is aMUST SEE for everyone. Please share it with your family and friends.
It’s my duty and responsibility as a consultant cardiologist and public health campaigner to urgently inform doctors, patients, and members of the public, that the COVID mRNA vaccine has likely played a significant role of being a primary cause of unexpected cardiac arrests, or heart attacks, strokes, cardiac arrhythmias, and heart failure since 2021—until proven otherwise.
— Dr. Aseem Malhotra
200 papers showing that the myocarditis causes heart damage and a scar, and then the scar becomes the basis for cardiac arrhythmia, and the arrhythmia is responsible for the sudden death that we’re seeing—and we’re seeing sudden death on a massive scale.
— Dr. Peter McCullough
If you live in Dallas—or happen to find yourself in Dallas—on the evening of November 29, 2022, please be sure to attend the dinner for Drs. Malhotra and McCullough, hosted by the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation. It is sure to be a fascinating evening of discovery and conversation—not to mention a great party. We hope to see you there. Please click HERE to register for the event.
A memo detailing the findings of nearly a dozen attorneys who visited voting sites in Maricopa County, Arizona, on election day describes widespread problems with tabulation equipment, long lines, and voters leaving in frustration.
According to the memo—written by attorney Mark Sonnenklar who summarized the findings of 11 roving attorneys working with the Republican National Committee’s Election Integrity program in Maricopa County—72 of the 115 vote centers the attorneys visited, 62.61 percent, experienced “material problems.”
“It seems very clear that the printer/tabulator failures on election day at 62.61 percent of the vote centers observed by 11 roving attorneys, and the resulting long lines at a majority of vote centers, led to substantial voter suppression,” Sonnenklar wrote.
“Moreover, because Republican voters significantly outnumbered Democrat voters in the county on election day, such voter suppression would necessarily impact the vote tallies for Republican candidates much more than the vote tallies for Democrat candidates,” he wrote.
Nathan Brand, the spokesman for the Republican National Committee (RNC), confirmed that Sonnenklar was a roving attorney working with the committee.
Maricopa County officials confirmed the problems with tabulation equipment on election day, later attributing the problem to printers and stating on Nov. 9 that the issue had affected 30 percent of all voting centers in the county and an estimated 17,000 ballots.
“We are still investigating. The printer settings were the same as the ones we used in the August primary & the paper was the same thickness,” county officials said in the statement.
Before the general election, the county “test-printed and test-tabulated hundreds of ballots without issue.”
Sonnenklar said that the ballot and printer problems caused voters to deposit their ballots either into “box 3,” spoil them for a re-vote, or “get frustrated and leave the vote center without voting.”
In his memo, Sonnenklar disputes claims by county officials that the county had resolved issues by 3 p.m. on election day and that the total impact was “insignificant.”
“Collectively, I and the other 10 roving attorneys also reported that voters had to wait in significant lines at 59 of the 115 vote centers we visited (51.3 percent). In many cases, voters had to wait 1-2 hours before they received a ballot for voting.”
“It is certainly safe to assume that many voters refused to wait in such lines, left the vote center, and did not return to vote later,” he said.
Sonnenklar and several of the attorneys cited in the report directed questions from The Epoch Times to Colton Duncan, spokesman for the Kari Lake for Arizona governor campaign.
The Epoch Times could not reach Duncan for comment.
In a Nov. 21 statement, Bill Gates, chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, said that the county had finished counting “all legal ballots” during the election and would hold a public meeting to canvas the election on Nov. 28.
“The canvas required by law is the full accounting of ballots cast,” Gates said. “It’s meant to provide a record of the votes counted and those not legally cast.”
He assured there would be “no delays or games,” and the board would act “according to state law.”
Gates said that at the meeting, the board members would respond to a letter from Arizona Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Wright on behalf of the state’s Election Integrity Unit that requested a full accounting of the election problems.
“Board members received this letter on a Saturday night and had a team working on a response all day Sunday, even as staff continued counting votes,” Gates said.
“We look forward to answering the AG’s questions with transparency as we have done throughout this election.”
At least two Arizona counties—Republican-leaning Cochise County and Mohave County—have delayed certification of the election results until Nov. 28.
As of Nov. 21, Republican Gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake had not conceded the election to Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs and is exploring her legal options. Hobbs’s office did not return a call from The Epoch Times seeking comment on the memo.
On Nov. 21, a Twitter post from “Gov-Elect Katie Hobbs” announced the appointment of Assistant Secretary of State Allie Bones as her chief of staff.
“Over the last 20 years, I’ve worked alongside Allie Bones on everything from ensuring secure elections to providing support for local businesses—and I’m thrilled to announce that Allie will serve as my Chief of Staff,” Hobbs wrote.
“Together, I am confident we will get the job done in Arizona.”
NEW PROVIDENCE, Bahamas (Reuters)—Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX, his parents, and senior executives of the failed cryptocurrency exchange bought at least 19 properties worth nearly $121 million in the Bahamas over the past two years, official property records show.
Most of FTX’s purchases were luxury beachfront homes, including seven condominiums in an expensive resort community called Albany, costing almost $72 million. The deeds show these properties, bought by a unit of FTX, were to be used as “residence for key personnel” of the company. Reuters could not determine who lived in the apartments.
The documents for another home with beach access in Old Fort Bay—a gated community that was once home to a British colonial fort built in the 1700s to protect against pirates—show Bankman-Fried’s parents, Stanford University law professors Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, as signatories. The property, one of the documents dated June 15 said, is for use as a “vacation home.”
When asked by Reuters why the couple decided to buy a vacation home in the Bahamas and how it was paid for—whether in cash, with a mortgage or by a third party such as FTX—a spokesman for the professors said only that Bankman and Fried had been trying to return the property to FTX.
“Since before the bankruptcy proceedings, Mr. Bankman and Ms. Fried have been seeking to return the deed to the company and are awaiting further instructions,” the spokesperson said, declining to elaborate.
While it is known that FTX and its employees bought real estate in the Bahamas, where it established its headquarters in September last year, the property records seen by Reuters show for the first time the scale of their buying spree and the intended use of some of the real estate.
FTX, which filed for bankruptcy earlier this month after a rush of customer withdrawals, did not respond to a request for comment. Bankman-Fried did not respond to requests for comment.
Bankman-Fried has told Reuters he lived in a house with nine other colleagues. For his employees, he said FTX provided free meals and an “in-house Uber-like” service around the island.
The collapse of FTX, one of the world’s largest crypto currency exchanges, has left an estimated 1 million creditors facing losses totalling billions of dollars. Reuters has reported Bankman-Fried secretly used $10 billion in customer funds to prop up his trading business, and that at least $1 billion of those deposits had vanished.
In a U.S. court filing with the District of Delaware bankruptcy court earlier this month, John Ray, FTX’s new chief executive, said he understood that corporate funds of the FTX Group were used to “purchase homes and other personal items for employees and advisors.”
Reuters could not determine the source of funds that FTX and its executives used to buy these properties.
PROPERTY PURCHASES
Reuters searched property records at the Bahamas Registrar General’s Department for FTX, Bankman-Fried, his parents and some of the company’s key executives.
FTX Property Holdings Ltd, an FTX unit, bought 15 properties worth nearly $100 million in 2021 and 2022.
Its most expensive purchase was a $30 million penthouse at the Albany, a resort where Tiger Woods hosts a golf tournament every year. The property records for the penthouse, dated March 17, were signed by Ryan Salame, the president of FTX Property, and showed it was intended as “residence for key personnel.”
Salame did not respond to a request for comment.
Other high-end real estate purchases include three condominiums at One Cable Beach, a beachfront residence in New Providence. Records showed the condominiums cost between $950,000 and $2 million and were bought by Nishad Singh, the former head of engineering at FTX, Gary Wang, an FTX co-founder, and Bankman-Fried for residential use.
Singh and Wang did not respond to requests for comment.
Two of FTX Property’s real estate holdings were marked for commercial use—an $8.55 million cluster of houses that served as FTX’s headquarters, and a 4.95-acre plot of land on the coastline overlooking cyan waters that was also meant to be developed into office space for the crypto exchange.
The FTX headquarters is now unoccupied, with furniture pushed against some windows. Its signage has been removed. The plot of land, which cost $4.5 million, also lies empty.
A security guard said employees did not return to the headquarters after leaving earlier this month.
(Reporting by Koh Gui Qing; editing by Paritosh Bansal and Claudia Parsons)
Leaked company documents detail how wood, plastic, metal, and string made their way into products
A Beyond Meat processing plant outside Philadelphia was contaminated with mold, deadly bacteria, and other concerning substances, according to leaked company documents.
The internal reports found that the harmful bacteria Listeria was present in products at the facility, which produces plant-based meat substitutes, at least 11 times since mid-2021. The documents further detail how wood, plastic, metal, and string made their way into products.
Photos from inside the facility showed mold in different areas, Bloomberg reported:
Photos taken by a former employee from inside the plant in January and April show what appear to be spills, unsafe use of equipment, and mold on walls and ingredient containers, while spreadsheets, photos and internally prepared reports reveal that foreign materials such as string, metal, wood and plastic have been found in food from the plant at least as recently as last December.
“Mold growth takes a while—that underscores a lack of cleanliness,” said Bill Marler, a food-safety attorney, after viewing some of the photos. “If neat and tidy is 1 and filthy is 10, I’d put this at an 8.”
The news comes a week after the company said it will lay off 200 employees, saving it around $39 million.
Paper warns readers about ‘tripledemic’ of COVID-19, flu, and RSV
The New York Times in a Tuesday podcast renewed its COVID-19 fear-mongering, warning readers about a “tripledemic” of COVID, the flu, and the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).
For background, the Times pointed to its Oct. 23 story also warning of a “tripledemic.” Because of “few to no restrictions in place and travel and socializing back in full swing,” the paper wrote at the time, an expected winter COVID surge will “collide with a resurgent influenza season.” The flu season, in turn, could coincide with an uptick in RSV cases.
A few paragraphs into the story, however, the Times noted that “most cases of COVID, flu, and RSV are likely to be mild.” COVID cases have dropped both over the past year and just over the past 90 days, according to the Times‘s own coronavirus tracker. Hospitalization and death rates have also decreased.
In addition, COVID-19 variants that experts expect to cause a winter surge “don’t appear to cause more severe symptoms,” the Times noted.
Young children, however, risk “becoming severely ill” from the flu and RSV because “they were not exposed to these viruses before the pandemic,” the Times wrote. The liberal paper did not mention that COVID-19 lockdowns might have led to lower immunity among children.
The Times is not the only mainstream media source to fear-monger in recent days about COVID-19 and RSV. NBC News last week told parents that they should “avoid physical interaction with unvaccinated individuals” to ward off RSV, even though there is no RSV vaccine.
Campaign Legal Center calls for an investigation into federal agencies’ stock-trading conflicts
The Biden administration is not enforcing conflict-of-interest rules in several of its federal agencies, a nonpartisan ethics watchdog group alleged in a series of legal complaints.
After the Wall Street Journal reported that thousands of government officials traded stocks in companies regulated by their agencies, the Campaign Legal Center called on the government’s ethics agency to investigate four federal agencies.
The agencies “have repeatedly allowed senior officials to own and trade stock in companies that appear to create conflicts of interest with their official duties,” the complaint said. “An investigation can determine whether the scope and severity of deficiencies in the ethics programs’ guidance on financial conflicts of interest is greater than currently publicly known.”
A Republican majority in the House could mean more sweeping ethics-reform legislation, including overhauling the government’s rules for officials owning stock. Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) is considering banning or restricting members of Congress and senior officials from owning stock, an aide told the Journal.
“The public has a right to know that the officials tasked with protecting the security of our country are always acting in the public’s interest, not in their own private financial interest,” said the complaint.
The group filed complaints to the inspectors general for the Environmental Protection Agency, Defense Department, Federal Trade Commission, and Health and Human Services Department, as well as the Office of Government Ethics, the Journal reported:
Among the examples the group cited from the Journal’s reporting was an EPA official who reported owning oil and gas stocks with his husband; a defense official who traded stock in a Chinese company while the agency deliberated over whether to add the company to a blacklist; and an FTC official who traded stock in Facebook, now Meta Platforms Inc., while his office coordinated an investigation involving the company.
The FTC, EPA, and Defense Department defended their ethics programs, saying their inspectors general investigated possible violations and the Office of Government Ethics conducts yearly reviews. The HHS did not respond to the Journal‘s questions about their ethics program.
Eric Adams says he had nothing to do with former roommate getting $188k raise
The New York Police Department rehired a longtime friend of New York City mayor Eric Adams (D.) for one of the city’s highest-paying jobs, more than quadrupling her previous salary with a $188,000 increase, The Cityreported.
Lisa White, who as recently as 2017 rented a room in her apartment to Adams, in May became deputy commissioner for employee relations, which earns a salary of more than $241,000. White formerly worked as a 911 operator and police communications technician, from which she retired in 2019 with a base salary of around $53,000.
White, who is now responsible for overseeing the health and morale of the police force, has known Adams going back decades, The City reported:
White’s ties to the mayor run back for years—part of a pattern of appointments by Adams that demonstrates a determination to hire friends, family, and former colleagues for top administration posts.
City Hall spokesperson Fabien Levy said Adams played no role in White’s appointment.
He said Adams and White both had a professional relationship, and also were friends, going back to their time with the group 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care. Adams cofounded the group while he served in the NYPD.
White donated to Adams’s 2012 campaign for Brooklyn borough president. The campaign also paid her $1,000 in 2013 for consulting work. White has also donated her time to Adams over the years, serving from 2014 to 2021 as a volunteer board member and treasurer for an Adams-linked nonprofit, the One Brooklyn Fund.
After courts halted the Biden administration’s hundred-billion-dollar student loan cancellation scheme, the White House on Tuesday announced that it will yet again freeze payments on the loans, an ostensibly temporary measure that began in March 2020.
The Department of Education will extend the freeze, which the department continues to call “temporary relief,” until 60 days after June 30, 2023, or until the Supreme Court rules on the cancellation scheme, CNN reported.
The White House falsely claimed in August that the most recent extension would be the last, CNN noted.
The administration’s decision comes as judges blast the president’s scheme as a usurpation of authority.
Having taxpayers take on billions of dollars of student loan debt is an “unconstitutional exercise of Congress’s legislative power and must be vacated,” U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman ruled on Nov. 10. “We are not ruled by an all-powerful executive with a pen and a phone.”
The administration has asked the Supreme Court to approve the plan, which the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates will cost $400 billion and which has already hiked the national deficit. Even Biden’s fellow Democrats have blasted the plan, with former Obama administration economist Jason Furman calling it “gasoline on the inflationary fire.”
Super PAC funded by disgraced crypto kingpin spent over $200K on pro-Fetterman ads
Senator-elect John Fetterman (D., Pa.) disavowed “dirty money” from corporate interests in his Senate campaign. Crypto scam artist Sam Bankman-Fried was an apparent exception, according to campaign finance records.
Web3 Forward, a pro-crypto super PAC funded heavily by Bankman-Fried, spent more than $210,000 on ads portraying Fetterman as a blue-collar hero who would not “get schmoozed by lobbyists,” the New York Timesreported. Bankman-Fried, his crypto firm FTX, and one of his cofounders gave nearly $4.1 million to GMI PAC, another tech-oriented group that is the sole funder of Web3 Forward.
Bankman-Fried’s support for Fetterman undercuts the Democrat’s campaign trail pledge to shun corporate campaign donations. “No dirty money. No corporate PACs,” Fetterman tweeted on May 12, days after the Web3 ads ran supporting him.
According to the Times, Web3 Forward launched the pro-Fetterman ads two months after he expressed support for cryptocurrencies in response to Web3’s candidate questionnaire.
“Need nothing further from Team Fetterman. Thrilled he is pro crypto,” a consultant for Web3 Forward wrote to a Fetterman ally, according to the Times.
Fetterman was far from the only Democrat to benefit from Bankman-Fried’s support. In 2020, Bankman-Fried contributed $5 million to Future Forward, a committee that supported President Joe Biden. He gave around $40 million to Democratic committees and congressional candidates during this election cycle. The entrepreneur and his associates also gave more than $300,000 in support for nine members of the House Financial Services Committee, which is poised to investigate FTX’s collapse, the Washington Free Beaconreported. The Securities and Exchange Commission and Justice Department are reportedly investigating whether FTX mishandled customer funds.
Fetterman’s spokesman sought to distance the senator-elect from Bankman-Fried, according to the Times.
“Sam Bankman-Fried must be held fully accountable,” Fetterman spokesman Joe Calvello told the newspaper.
Tens of thousands of railway workers prepare to strike as Biden-backed agreement falls apart
Joe Biden in September called a tentative deal to avoid a nationwide rail strike a “big win for America.” But the deal fell apart this week after receiving a split vote among the largest rail unions, raising concerns of a nationwide rail shutdown next month.
Railroad management and the four largest unions are now back at the negotiating table to try to find an agreement on issues including paid sick leave. The latest rejection of the September deal, which Labor Secretary Marty Walsh and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg helped negotiate, came from the largest union, SMART-TD, which represents 28,000 railway workers. Fifty-one percent of the members voted no.
Biden touted the failed September agreement before the midterms, saying it would avoid a nationwide economic disaster.
“This is a win for tens of thousands of rail workers, and for their dignity and the dignity of their work,” Biden said.
All the rail unions have to agree on a deal or they all will agree to a strike, which could come as early as Dec. 5. Around one-third of U.S. exports move by rail. SMART-TD president Jeremy Ferguson said Tuesday that a “strike could be averted.”
“The ball is back in the carriers’ hands at this point,” Ferguson said. “It will be a difficult process. We will do our best. We want to keep America moving.”
“A settlement would be in the best interests of the workers, the railroads, shippers, and the American people,” he added.
The San Francisco Elections Commission is considering terminating its contract with its elections director John Arntz—one of the city’s most highly esteemed civil servants—citing concerns about “racial equity.” Arntz, who is white, will need to reapply next year if he wants to keep his job.
The commission voted 4-2 last week to “open a competitive search” for Arntz’s position, which he has held for two decades, rather than to renew his contract automatically, Cynthia Dai, a member of the commission, told the Washington Free Beacon. That decision, Dai said, was “driven in large part by the city’s plan for racial equity,” which requires all departments and commissions to address internal racial disparities.
“It’s hard to achieve diversity targets if senior roles never open up,” said Dai, who voted in favor of the search process. “This has nothing to do with his performance.”
The vote by the commission, whose members are appointed rather than elected, sparked pushback from elected officials, who credit Arntz with cleaning up a broken system. Before Arntz took the helm, San Francisco’s chief attorney David Chiu (D.) told Mission Local, a San Francisco-based newspaper, the city “had five directors in as many years, ballot boxes floating in the bay, and an intense lack of confidence in city elections.”
San Francisco mayor London Breed (D.) went so far as to imply that the commission was putting free and fair elections at risk. “John Arntz has served San Francisco with integrity [and] professionalism and has stayed completely independent,” Breed told Mission Local. “He’s remained impartial and has avoided getting caught up in the web of city politics, which is what we are seeing now as a result of this unnecessary vote.”
Aaron Peskin (D.), a member of the city’s board of supervisors, called the commission’s decision “malfeasance.”
The divide between elected officials and the elections commission is a variation on a familiar theme: From discriminatory hiring programs in corporate America to the race-based rationing of COVID drugs, progressive identity politics have advanced faster through unelected bureaucracies than through democratic channels, where the public typically vetoes overt racialism.
That’s true even in liberal bastions like California, where voters have overwhelmingly rejected affirmative action. And in February, more than 70 percent of San Francisco voters supported the recall of school board members who dismantled merit-based admissions to Lowell High School, the city’s most academically rigorous public school, in an effort to diversify its student body. In June, the board reinstated the old admissions system.
Though Californians have consistently rejected identitarian policies, they have also created cover for them: San Francisco’s racial equity plan, which motivated the commission’s vote, was created by the very same elected officials who say Arntz’s ouster would be a disaster for the city.
Breed signed a law in 2019 mandating the development of a citywide “racial equity framework,” which all departments, including the Election Commission, are required to follow. The law was cosponsored by Peskin, the member of the board of supervisors who called the commission decision “malfeasance”—and who in 2020 said the new framework would “make our city more just.”
Before becoming San Francisco’s chief attorney, Chiu introduced a similar law while serving as a representative in the California State Assembly. The bill, which is working its way through the legislature, would create an “Office of Racial Equity” tasked with closing racial disparities throughout the state government.
California has prohibited affirmative action in government hiring since 1996. If Arntz is still the most qualified candidate after a competitive search, Dai said, he will have his contract renewed.
Organization alleges structural racism on Capitol Hill and demands Senate create a ‘Diversity, Equity, Inclusion’ office
A non-profit bankrolled by some of the nation’s largest corporations and left-wing billionaire George Soros is conducting a racial census of House and Senate staff as part of its effort to establish a “Bipartisan Diversity and Inclusion Office,” according to internal emails obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
Senate and House staff received emails from a researcher at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies starting in July asking them to confirm their “racial and ethnic identity” as part of an alleged data collection effort. In at least two cases, senior congressional staffers who declined to provide their races were told by the researcher that the organization’s current data indicated they “may identify as white” and asked the staffers to update if the information was incorrect.
Information collected by the group will be used in its annual report that lobbies for “structural changes on Capitol Hill that would allow for more people of color to be hired in senior positions,” a previous report from the group states. That report is made possible in part by millions of dollars in donations to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies from Apple, Google, Meta, Pfizer, the Soros-backed Open Society Foundation, among dozens of other large corporations and nonprofits.
The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies’ survey is part of a broader trend by left-wing organizations to pressure workplaces and governments to increase affirmative action policies. Often couched in promoting “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” those policies have received criticism for coming at the expense of competence and offering advantages based on race instead of merit. The Free Beacon previously reported on DEI initiatives gaining prominence in medical schools, the Department of Homeland Security, and tech companies such as Google and IBM.
One of the congressional staffers contacted said she was offended by the inquiry. The racial identification of her office’s team, she said, has no relation to its quality of work.
“I don’t even read the emails they send,” the senior House staffer said. “They go straight into my trash folder.”
The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies bills itself as the nation’s premier “Black think tank.” According to its mission statement, the organization works on “compelling and actionable policy solutions to eradicate persistent and evolving barriers to the full freedom of Black people in America.”
Its largest corporate donors include Amazon, Apple, Comcast NBC Universal, Google, and Meta. Those four corporations donated at least $100,000 and up to $499,999 in 2020 alone.
Amazon faces a racial discrimination lawsuit for offering a $10,000 stipend to “Black, Latinx, and Native American entrepreneurs.” The plaintiff in that case alleges that whites are excluded from the program, a violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1866.
The Free Beacon previously reported on a potentially unlawful Google fellowship which caps the number of whites universities can nominate. Google also offers employees DEI training seminars that claim “colorblindness” is “covert white supremacy.”
The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, which did not respond to a request for comment, seeks to establish a “Bipartisan Diversity and Inclusion Office” on Capitol Hill. That office, according to previous reports released by the group, would “be staffed by professionals in expertise in diversity who support … identifying, recruiting, hiring, retaining, and promoting diverse talent.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) created the House Office of Diversity & Inclusion in 2021. The office is currently led by Dr. Sesha Joi Moon, who, according to her bio, lives by the “coined philosophical stance [that] ‘diversity is delegating differences and inclusivity is celebrating differences—but equity is elevating differences.’”
In 2021, the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, along with more than 35 other left-wing groups, called on Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer to form an identical office. A letter to Schumer from the groups said “Diversity must be a priority” on Capitol Hill.
Some Democrats, such as Sen. Brian Schatz (Hawaii), endorsed the proposal. Schatz said in July that such an office “would be tremendously helpful.”
A FEW OF THE CONSIDERATIONS CONSERVATIVE VOTERS WILL BE WEIGHING UP.
Sports has off-seasons. Politics does not. For most, it is exhausting. But I love it.
President Trump’s presidential campaign announcement drew groans from a small but loud faction of “Republicans” who consistently demand an off-season while the left stays on the field.
“Ugh! Not again! We can’t handle it!”
Then don’t handle it. Maybe politics isn’t for you. Go have a cup of chamomile tea and hide under a fuzzy blanket.
“Ron DeSantis is now the leader of the Republican Party… it’s time to move on from Trump… he’s dragging down the party.”
Those making these flawed claims – alongside the GOP’s McLeadership – tried over several weeks to inculcate in the minds of the voting public that somehow Trump’s endorsements were the problem. They failed. Just like they failed in the mid terms. Meanwhile, 93 percent of Trump-endorsed candidates won.
The messaging emanating from Republican establishment figures is not reactive, either. It was planned, and it comes from the top. Incoming House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel. This is the “McLeadership.” And the McLeadership has decided it is done with Trump. And so you too must be done with Trump.
But they were never not done with Trump. He’s not in their club. He hasn’t been a politician for decades. His multifarious achievements mean nothing to them. Not the sweeping tax cuts to Americans; not the conservative majority on the Supreme Court; not the Middle East peace progress; not the end of the forever wars; not the border wall and immigration actions; not the First and Second Step Acts; not the Right to Try; and certainly not the betterment of America’s trade relationships.
Nor, as they suggest, are you “anti-DeSantis” for standing with Trump. DeSantis has evidently been an excellent leader for the state of Florida. But there are known knowns about him that might make for uncomfortable debate stage fodder. Many pretend DeSantis didn’t shut down Florida during COVID. He did, albeit for a shorter time than other states. His inaction against the Mar-a-Lago FBI raid – under his jurisdiction and during his tenure. The Florida governor flexed staunch neoconservative credentials while in Congress. And perhaps most concerning is the Florida legislation titled SB2006 that Governor DeSantis signed into law. SB2006 mandates that the state health officer can use any means necessary to vaccinate an individual with or without their consent.
Another refrain is that Governor DeSantis deserves to be the “new leader” of the right because of his margin of victory over flip-flopper Charlie Crist: 19 points. DeSantis’s victory is explained by his reaping of the benefits of Republican refugees fleeing their blue states over the past several years. But he didn’t particularly excel on the debate stage. Watch for yourself.
Governor DeSantis’s military service is a great credit to him. But on foreign policy especially, his track record is deeply concerning. Republican voters are rightly wary of anyone with any relation or legislative resemblance to the McCains, the Bushes, the Cheneys, et. al. For over half my life, America has been at war. DeSantis today must repudiate his record in Congress, and should be more open about relationships with hawkish advisors like John Bolton.
Loyalty – despite the GOP zeitgeist – still matters. In 2018, DeSantis was running against the former mayor of Tallahassee, Democrat Andrew Gillum, who ultimately became more famous for his Miami hotel room dalliances than his campaign. Many forget that Gillum was actually leading DeSantis until Trump got involved, holding rallies for the now governor in both July and October. DeSantis’s victory was due, in large part, to the support Trump. Now, as DeSantis supporters echo McLeadership talking points, one might sympathize with the 45th President feeling stabbed in the back.
And while Ron DeSantis has not yet declared any candidacy for the highest office in America, it’s still a one-man game. But until others declare, Republicans would be wise to remember we have a national champion with proven success on the field. And he just came out of retirement. Game on.
A second Arizona county on Monday delayed certifying its midterm election results until the Nov. 28 deadline in a show of solidarity with Maricopa County, where voting problems were reported on Election Day.
The Mohave County board of supervisors explicitly promised during a meeting they would certify the results by Nov. 28, saying their decision to push certification back until the deadline was a political statement.
The delay comes after Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake said Monday that “whistleblowers are coming forward” about reports of voting issues on Election Day in Maricopa County and after the state Attorney General’s Elections Integrity Unit wrote to county officials demanding a formal response about those reported problems.
Arizona GOP Chair Kelli Ward, a Mohave County resident, praised the decision to delay, saying rural voters were being disenfranchised by what happened in Maricopa.
“Voters in all rural counties in Arizona are being disenfranchised by Maricopa County’s incompetence/malfeasance. I’m happy to see that my county (Mohave) voted to delay certification,” she said on Twitter.
Second County to Delay Certifying Election Results
Mohave was the second Arizona county to delay certifying the election results, following Cochise County, which made its decision on Friday. However, unlike Mohave, the board of supervisors there did not promise to certify the result by the deadline.
The two Republican board of supervisors members for Cochise demanded the secretary of state prove their vote-counting machines were legally certified.
Cochise was sued by the Democrat-aligned Elias Law Group, which has been involved in a number of election-related lawsuits in Arizona.
Marc Elias, a former Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer whose former law firm, Perkins Coie, hired Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele to produce and promote Steele’s disproven dossier, threatened to sue any Arizona county that doesn’t certify the results.
“Let me be clear, if any Arizona County fails to follow the law and to timely certify the election results, they will be sued. The Board members in Mohave should go ask their buddies in Cochise about how that worked out for them,” Elias wrote on Twitter.
Both Mojave and Cochise counties have Republican-majority boards. Other GOP-majority boards certified their results.
Election Integrity Unit Demands Answers From Maricopa
Election officials have said at least 60 of 223 voting locations in Maricopa County experienced technical problems related to ballot-on-demand printers having “non-uniform” printer configuration settings.
These non-uniform settings resulted in some ballots being “unable to be read by on-site ballot tabulators.” County officials estimate the technical problems may have affected more than 17,000 ballots on Election Day.
In her Monday update, Lake said Maricopa authorities are “still counting ballots” after “printer problems, tabulation errors, three-hour-long lines” and instructions given by election officials, which “made this election day the most chaotic in Arizona’s history.”
Lake has been sharing videos of voters complaining about the problems they faced at polling places on Election Day.
Maricopa County is home to 60 percent of the state’s voters. Only 16 percent of the 1.56 million votes cast in the county were made in person on Election Day.
In a letter to Maricopa County officials, Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Wright demanded answers by Nov. 28, the deadline for certifying the election results.
“Arizonans deserve a full report and accounting of the myriad problems that occurred in relation to Maricopa County’s administration of the 2022 general election,” Wright said.
Wright said the issues are related to “Maricopa County’s ability to lawfully certify election results” and requested a response from the county by Nov. 28.
Last week, Democrat gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs declared victory. Lake has not conceded yet, and it appears that she will not do so anytime soon, according to her video.
The Associated Press and Allen Stein contributed to this report.
Last week, Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) claimed at a press conference last week that the country needs new immigrants to combat declining reproduction rates and a low population growth rate.
Schumer said his “ultimate goal” was to help not only the so-called “dreamers,” but to “get a path to citizenship for all 11 million, or however many,” illegal immigrants are living in the United States. This raises the question: Just how many illegal immigrants are there in the United States?
In reality, the number of illegal immigrants in this country is actually a multiple of the 11 million number that is frequently quoted by politicians.
In fact, Democrats have been using this now-fictitious 11 million number for nearly 20 years. And during the intervening time period, illegal immigration has gotten worse, not better. Weak enforcement, porous borders, and ongoing effects from the passage of NAFTA have only exacerbated the issue. As has ongoing talk of future amnesty from Democrats in Congress, which serves as a magnet for migrants. And chain migration, which was enabled by the Immigration and Nationality Act in 1965, allows former illegal immigrants to sponsor their family members, causing massive demographic and cultural shifts.
Schumer has been pushing some sort of Amnesty program for illegal immigrants over the span of his entire 30-year career and his efforts go all the way back to 1984, when President Reagan was in office. At the time, Reagan stated during a presidential debate that “I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and who have lived here even though some time back they may have entered illegally.”
President Joe Biden (L) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) (R) listen as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) speaks at an event at the White House in Washington, on Aug. 9, 2022. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
Reagan’s comments paved the way for the disastrous Immigration and Control Act of 1986 which made any illegal immigrant who entered the United States before 1982 eligible for amnesty.
It was Reagan’s greatest failure as a president. To be very clear, Reagan was well-intentioned—but he misjudged the trickery of the DNC. As author Daniel Horowitz noted in 2018, “Every bad outcome on immigration has emanated either from the unelected branches of government or legislation that was sold to the American people as doing the opposite of its actual intent.”
The 1986 bill—which would become to be known as The Reagan Amnesty—was a sweeping immigration reform bill that was sold to the American public as a crackdown, a solution to what was even back then perceived as a border crisis.
Under the bill, there was supposed to be tighter security at the Mexican border, and employers would face strict penalties for hiring undocumented workers.
As the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) noted in 2021: “the path to citizenship was not automatic and supposedly contained several conditions: immigrants had to pay application fees, learn to speak English, understand American civics, pass a medical exam, and register for Military Selective Service. Illegal aliens with felony convictions or three or more misdemeanors were ineligible for amnesty.” Unfortunately, there was little enforcement of these requirements.
The single biggest flaw in Reagan’s Amnesty lay with those in Congress who had promoted the Act in the first place. While Reagan saw the 1986 deal as a compassionate solution to a pre-existing problem, members of Congress—particularly Democrats, along with some Republicans—saw it as an opportunity to gain voters. Once amnesty was enacted, members of Congress simply refused to implement the restrictions contained within the Act, preventing any real action to combat illegal immigration or the unauthorized hiring of illegal aliens by employers.
Political advocacy groups also worked to undermine the enforcement of immigration laws. Leading these efforts in Congress were former Senator John McCain and Schumer. Reagan had been tricked and betrayed.
Indeed, illegal immigration quickly climbed to record levels after Reagan’s Amnesty, with the number of illegal immigrants more than doubling in the ten years following the passage of the 1986 Act.
Former U.S. President Ronald Reagan speaks at a rally for Senator Durenberger on Feb. 8, 1982. (Michael Evans/The White House/Getty Images)
By 1996, illegal immigrants were estimated to be over 8 million—far exceeding the roughly 3 million illegal immigrants who were granted amnesty status in 1986. In early 2005, the left-leaning Pew Research Center came out with a new study whose stated intention was to estimate the numbers of “foreign-born persons living in the United States without proper authorization.”
Pew’s study found that “the number of undocumented residents reached an estimated 10.3 million in March 2004 with undocumented Mexicans numbering 5.9 million or 57 percent of the total,” effectively validating official government numbers.
Here’s where things get a bit interesting. Rather than using a percentage increase, Pew settled on a static influx of immigrants of 485,000 per year. They did so by establishing a baseline number of 8.4 million immigrants based on an analysis of 2000 Census data—which was derived from a rather loose methodology.
Pew then simply divided the difference between the 2000 estimate and their 2004 estimate, coming up with an estimated 485,000 illegal immigrants arriving per year. Despite their own historical data showing exponential growth in illegal immigrants, there was no accounting for any percentage increase. According to Pew, there was a simple, static number of illegals coming each year.
Using this rather simplified method, Pew determined that as of March 2005, the undocumented population had reached approximately 11 million including more than 6 million people from Mexico. The study found that most of these people had come to the country after 1990. The study also determined that about 80 to 85 percent of the migration from Mexico in recent years has been undocumented.
Finally, the study found that more than two-thirds (68 percent) of the undocumented population lived in just eight states: California, Texas, Florida, New York, Arizona, Illinois, New Jersey, and North Carolina.
It is this extrapolated figure of 11 million illegal immigrants from Pew’s 2005 study that continues to be used by Democrats to this day—more than 17 years later.
A vehicle containing six illegal immigrants is stopped by Galveston Lt. Constable Paul Edinburgh as they were being smuggled from the U.S.–Mexico border by a couple from Oklahoma, in Kinney County, Texas, on Aug. 28, 2022. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
But interestingly enough, there was another detailed study (pdf) that was also done in 2005 by Bear Stearns Asset management. Right at the start, the study by Bear Stearns acknowledged what was widely accepted as fact: The accuracy of the official immigration statistics were widely regarded as incomplete.
Instead, The Bear Stearns study looked at things like school enrollments, demand for public services, foreign remittances, border crossings, and housing permits, noting that these other statistics “point to a far greater rate of change in the immigrant population than the census numbers.”
Bear Stearns found that in 2005, “the number of illegal immigrants in the United States may be as high as 20 million people,” more than double the official Census Bureau figure. The study found that “the total number of legalized immigrants entering the United States since 1990 has averaged 962,000 per year.” By way of contrast, Bear Stearns noted that “several credible studies indicate that the number of illegal entries has recently crept up to 3 million per year, triple the authorized figure.”
The study rightly observed that “Illegal immigrants work very hard to conceal their identities and successfully avoid being counted” noting that “Census officials and academics underestimate the ingenuity and the efficiency of the communications network among immigrants.”
The Bear Stearns methodology—done for the benefit of its investors rather than political groups—seems to be based on more trustworthy, quantifiable data. We have another data point as well, a Yale Study from 2018. This study, which relied “on a range of demographic and immigration operations data,” found that there were as many as 29 million illegal immigrants, with an estimated mean of 22.1 million in the United States in 2018.
As the study itself notes, they used an “extremely conservative model” to do “a sanity check on the existing number.” Like the Bear Stearns study, the Yale researchers note that “the survey method doesn’t effectively reach a group with incentives to stay undetected.” As one of the authors of the study noted, “What we’re saying is the number has been higher all along.”
Not to be outdone, the Pew Research Study decided to once again provide their own estimates of illegal immigrants—this time for the year 2017. Recall that Pew said there were roughly 11 million illegal immigrants in 2005—using a methodology I would politely describe as questionable. Bear Stearns said the number for 2005 was close to 20 million. Although it would require an extremely small growth rate, the 2018 Yale study effectively validated the Bear Stearns Study. In 2017, Pew found that the number of illegal immigrants in the United States had fallen from 2005 by half a million, to 10.5 million illegal immigrants. The study claimed that illegal immigrants had peaked at 12 million in 2007 and fallen steadily from there.
How did Pew arrive at such a low, counterintuitive number that contrasts dramatically with other studies?
The U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington on Oct. 3, 2022. (Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)
That question is hard to answer as the methodology used is somewhat indecipherable—something which Pew referred to as residual estimation methodology. The number of illegal immigrants was derived by taking the number of foreign-born U.S. residents and then subtracting the “estimated lawful Immigrant population.” In other words, they simply created the numbers.
Extrapolating between the 2005 Bear Stearns Study and the 2018 Yale Study—which found that the illegal immigrant population was as high as 29 million in 2018 using a model which its authors admit was based on an “extremely conservative” model, it would seem reasonable to say that the illegal immigration population was at least 30 million by 2020—probably higher.
And while that number is admittedly nothing more than a rough guess, it’s a guess based on these underlying studies that validate each other, even if conservatively so. Moving forward, for the years 2020–2022, we actually have some data that it seems can be conservatively relied on. We know this because the numbers were based on data quietly released by the Biden administration late at night on Oct. 25.
According to FAIR’s analysis of the data, since President Joe Biden took office, around 5.5 million illegal aliens have crossed our borders, as FAIR notes, “a crisis of epic proportions.” To reach this number “FAIR’s figure contains the 4.4 million nationwide total reported by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection as well as approximately 1.1 million ‘gotaways’ who have entered the country undetected per agency sources.”
Illegal immigrants from Venezuela, who boarded a bus in Texas, wait to be transported to a local church by volunteers after being dropped off outside the residence of Vice President Kamala Harris, at the Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 15, 2022. (Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)
As Fair’s president Dan Stein noted: “We cannot even begin to reverse this disaster so long as our nation’s immigration policies are in the hands of someone who is bent on compounding it. No matter how late at night this administration releases data, the numbers still speak for themselves.”
We have the studies from Bear Stearns and Yale that validate each other and conform to what we have been seeing transpire at our borders. We also know that the methodology used in Pew’s 2017 study is highly questionable, so much so that it should be discarded from serious consideration.
Does anyone actually believe the number of illegal immigrants in our country is now lower than in 2005? Pick whatever number you like, I think the number of illegal immigrants is probably in the 35–40 million range—but we can all agree that the 11 million figure touted by Democrats is utter nonsense. The thing is, they know that it’s nonsense. They also know that passage of a new amnesty would provide them with a huge influx to their voting base.
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Tyson Foods Inc., one of the largest U.S. food companies, confirmed that last week that it removed its requirement that employees receive COVID-19 vaccines in order to work.
Tyson, considered the largest American meat company by sales, lifted the mandate several weeks ago, one year after imposing it, according to a report Tyson filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission last week. The requirement “generally improved our ability to operate our business effectively in fiscal 2022,” the report said.
A company spokesman, Derek Burleson, confirmed to Reuters that the mandate was scrapped. The company decided to implement its mandate in August 2021.
“The risk of severe infection has decreased significantly, with many resources readily available including vaccines and boosters, testing, and improved treatment options,” Burleson said.
Tyson had “worked to get the unions’ support to end the requirement, which was achieved,” Burleson told the outlet. He added that Tyson kept other safety protocols like requiring workers to self-screen for COVID-19 symptoms.
Tyson runs slaughterhouses in rural areas where some residents refused to get vaccinated. The company said last year it paid employees $200 to get vaccinated and also compensated workers if they were vaccinated outside normal work hours or away from a Tyson location.
Meanwhile, COVID-19 mandates imposed by companies and governments around the world drew condemnation from some civil liberties groups and conservatives, who said that such rules violated individual liberty and human rights.
Government Mandates
The Biden administration last year attempted to impose a mandate on all companies that have 100 or more workers, which was ultimately blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court in January 2022.
However, the federal government is still maintaining a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for hospitals and health care facilities that receive Medicaid or Medicare funding, and the U.S. military is still requiring the vaccine for service members across all branches. The Supreme Court in January said that U.S. health officials had the authority to impose the mandate on health care workers.
Since the Supreme Court’s ruling, the White House has kept the health care worker mandate intact. The Biden administration has not elaborated on when it would rescind its vaccine mandates.
Workers leave the Tyson Foods pork processing plant in Logansport, Ind., on May 7, 2020. (Michael Conroy/AP Photo)
On Tuesday, the Biden administration said that it will step up enforcement of nursing homes’ vaccine mandates. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will issue guidance to remind health care providers, according to a White House news release.
“In its guidance, CMS will make clear that nursing homes with low vaccination rates will be referred to state survey agencies for close scrutiny, and that facilities that do not comply with the requirement to offer and educate on the benefit of lifesaving COVID-19 vaccinations will face enforcement actions, including the need to submit corrective action plans to achieve compliance,” said the news release.
But there are cracks appearing in government vaccine mandates. In October, a New York Supreme Court judge struck down a requirement that all New York City government employees get the shot or be terminated from their jobs.
In November, about two dozen attorneys general in Republican-controlled states urged the White House to repeal its COVID-19 mandate for health care workers, arguing that the shots provide little-to-no protection and may cause undesired, long-term side effects.
There is now evidence that “demonstrates that full vaccination doesn’t prevent infection or transmission,” the 22 attorneys general, led by Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, wrote to Health Secretary Xavier Becerra in a Nov. 17 letter.
“The mandate has limited many patients’ access to needed medical care and imposed substantial costs on patients and health care workers without any corresponding benefits. The Biden administration should have never imposed this mandate, and CMS should now throw it in the trash bin where it belongs,” Knudsen, a Republican, said in a statement.
The White House on Nov. 22 announced “new enforcement guidance” on COVID-19 vaccine mandates for nursing home residents and staff.
It announced “new enforcement guidance to ensure nursing homes are offering updated COVID-19 vaccines and timely treatment to their residents and staff,” according to a White House fact sheet released on Nov. 22. It stated that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) still requires “nursing homes to educate their residents” on COVID-19 vaccines and offer vaccines to residents.
“CMS will issue guidance today reminding health care providers of this requirement,” the fact sheet reads. “In its guidance, CMS will make clear that nursing homes with low vaccination rates will be referred to state survey agencies for close scrutiny, and that facilities that do not comply with the requirement to offer and educate on the benefit of lifesaving COVID-19 vaccinations will face enforcement actions, including the need to submit corrective action plans to achieve compliance.”
The White House didn’t elaborate on what “enforcement actions” it would implement. However, in the fall of 2021, President Joe Biden’s administration announced vaccine mandates for facilities that receive Medicaid or Medicare funding—along with a now-scrapped rule that would force workers at companies with 100 or more employees to get the vaccine.
CMS officials didn’t respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment by press time regarding what penalties health care providers may encounter.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will ask “governors for their assistance and partnership in increasing COVID vaccination rates for long-term care residents and highlight for them how their states are performing against their peers,” according to the White House.
Corporate and government COVID-19 vaccine mandates have largely fallen out of favor in recent months amid falling COVID-19 numbers. Tyson Foods, the largest meat company by sales in the United States, confirmed last week that it dropped its mandate, while a New York judge tossed New York’s mandate for city employees in October.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stated in 2021 that the requirement covers 10.4 million health care workers at 76,000 facilities.
Mandate
The vaccine requirement for Medicare and Medicaid providers was one of several mandates Biden’s administration imposed upon private-sector employers to try to drive up vaccination rates. The rule impacted doctors, nurses, aides, technicians, and even volunteers at hospitals, nursing homes, outpatient surgery centers, home-health providers, and other medical facilities that get Medicaid or Medicare funding.
The Supreme Court blocked a rule requiring employers with more than 100 workers to be vaccinated or tested weekly for COVID-19. A lower court also blocked a requirement for employees of federal contractors to be vaccinated.
A hospital corpsman administers a COVID-19 vaccine to a fellow corpsman at Naval Health Clinic Hawaii on Dec. 16, 2020. (Naval Health Clinic Hawaii)
Over the months, Biden’s various vaccine orders were challenged in court by Republican-led states, conservative groups, and some businesses. The lawsuits argued in part that the mandates exceeded federal executive powers and infringed on states’ rights to regulate public health matters.
About two dozen states recently asked (pdf) HHS and CMS to end its COVID-19 vaccine mandate for health care workers. Led by Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, 22 state attorneys general argued that the current policy is outdated and noted that vaccines don’t protect against COVID-19 infections.
“The mandate has limited many patients’ access to needed medical care and imposed substantial costs on patients and health care workers without any corresponding benefits. The Biden administration should have never imposed this mandate, and CMS should now throw it in the trash bin where it belongs,” Knudsen, a Republican, said in a statement.
Further, the states asserted that the CMS mandate led to widespread staffing shortages at health care facilities and limited patients’ access to medical care. CMS and HHS officials didn’t respond to a request for comment on the letter.
Earlier this year, CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure said vaccine mandates hadn’t led to significant shortages, although she didn’t provide evidence.
“We have seen that healthcare systems that implement vaccine requirements are not experiencing dramatic staff losses,” Brooks-LaSure said in a letter (pdf) in February to health care facilities. “Vaccinated staff are instead more available to work since they are less likely to get sick.”
On Nov. 11, a spokesperson for HHS said the Biden administration will keep its COVID-19 emergency intact when the current emergency expires in January 2023 after a 60-day deadline passed. The spokesperson said the emergency “remains in effect and as HHS committed to earlier, we will provide a 60-day notice to states before any possible termination or expiration.”
A number of individual states, including ones run by Democrats, have dropped their respective states of emergency and some mandates in recent days. For example, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, announced that his state’s public health emergency ended on Oct. 31.
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the “most dangerous person in the world” isn’t someone like the leader of nuclear-armed North Korea but American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten because teachers’ unions push “filth” on children and undercut the principle of American exceptionalism.
Pompeo made the remarks in a wide-ranging Nov. 21 interview with Semafor, in which he also discussed the threat to the United States posed by communist China and his regret that, when he served in the Trump administration, “we ran out of time” and didn’t manage to ban TikTok.
The former CIA chief told the outlet that besides being wholly in favor of banning TikTok, which a number of lawmakers have recently called for, “we should ban every element of Chinese technology that sits inside our ecosystem.”
‘Single Biggest Spy Operation’
Pompeo also insisted that no Chinese research money should be allowed to flow into America’s senior institutions or national laboratories.
“We closed the consulate in Houston, Texas,” Pomeo said, which he called “the single biggest spy operation ever conducted in America.” He was referring to the decision in July 2020 to close the Houston facility, which Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said at the time was “the central node of the Communist Party’s vast network of spies and influence operations in the United States.”
Asked about rumors of his possible run for president in 2024, Pompeo said he hasn’t decided yet and if he ultimately concludes someone else would be better suited for the top job, he’s “going to go work really hard for her or him.”
Former President Donald Trump, widely seen as a favorite to win the Republican nomination, recently announced his 2024 bid for the White House.
Asked about the central themes that a Republican presidential candidate should be running on, Pompeo said it’s the “timeless” ideals of limited government, more freedom, and “protecting the capacity of people to practice their faith.”
‘The Most Dangerous Person in the World’
Pompeo then said he’s often asked: “Who’s the most dangerous person in the world? Is it Chairman Kim, is it Xi Jinping?” referring to the leaders of China and North Korea.
“The most dangerous person in the world is Randi Weingarten,” Pompeo said, adding that, “It’s not a close call.”
“If you ask, ‘Who’s the most likely to take this republic down?’ It would be the teachers’ unions, and the filth that they’re teaching our kids, and the fact that they don’t know math and reading or writing,” he continued.
American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten addresses a ‘Let’s Finish the Job for the People’ rally near the U.S. Capitol in Washington, on Sept. 14, 2021. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Asked if his remarks about Weingarten being the most dangerous person in the world or pointing to “something crazy in a textbook or classroom” is about “owning the libs” rather than substantive criticism, Pompeo said it’s about more than just scoring political points.
“If there’s something in the textbook that shouldn’t be there, it’s OK to identify that and call it out. But that’s just openers. That’s identification of a risk,” he said.
One contentious issue that has caused uproar among some parents is the teaching of critical race theory (CRT) concepts in U.S. schools.
A core idea behind CRT is interpreting society through a Marxist dichotomy of “oppressor” and “oppressed,” but replacing class categories with racial groups. Proponents of CRT typically claim that “systemic racism” and “white supremacy” persist in all aspects of American life while demanding the implementation of “anti-racist” policies, such as race-based redistribution of wealth and power along perceived lines of “racial inequity.”
Opponents tend to argue that CRT and its concepts are needlessly divisive and, ironically, racist.
Some schools have denied that they’re teaching CRT-related concepts, and multiple left-leaning individuals, groups, and media outlets have also pushed back on claims that it’s being taught at schools. But a recent study has determined that CRT concepts are being taught in America’s schools, despite denials from some individuals or groups.
‘We’re Done’
Besides touching on the presence of objectionable content in some educational textbooks, Pompeo said that if children aren’t educated in a way that makes them appreciate the principle of American exceptionalism, “we’re done.”
“If they think it’s an oppressor class and an oppressed class, if they think the 1619 Project, and we were founded on a racist idea—if those are the things people entered the seventh grade deeply embedded in their understanding of America, it’s difficult to understand how [Chinese leader] Xi Jinping’s claim that America is in decline won’t prove true,” Pompeo said.
The 1619 Project is essentially the claim that the United States wasn’t founded in 1776 on the principle of freedom but in 1619 on the back of slavery and oppression, and that these notions remain deeply embedded in today’s America. It has been challenged by numerous historians, with some denouncing the 1619 Project as a falsification of history.
‘Ridiculous or Dangerous’
Weingarten reacted to Pompeo’s remarks in a series of posts on Twitter, saying that she was unsure whether to describe his characterization of her “as ridiculous or dangerous.”
“So Mike, let me make it easy for you. We fight for freedom, democracy, and an economy that works for all. We fight for what kids & communities need. Strong public schools that are safe and welcoming, where kids learn how to think & work with others. That’s the American Dream!” Weingarten said in one of the posts.
“And we fight against this kind of rhetoric and hate. Maybe spend a minute in one of the classrooms with my members and their students and you will get a real lesson in the promise and potential of America,” she continued.
Pompeo, who also served as secretary of state and a congressional representative, told Semafor that, over the course of his many years of public service, he has fought for conservative principles, which he said make “America better” and create circumstances in which families thrive.
A new study revealed that most Americans should wait until they’re age 70 or older before they start claiming Social Security benefits or they might miss out on thousands of dollars.
A study (pdf) from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that when Social Security beneficiaries claim their benefits too early, they miss out on receiving more than $180,000 overall. People are eligible to receive their Social Security benefits starting at age 62, although the study’s authors say that many should wait until they’re 65 or even 70.
“We find that virtually all American workers age 45 to 62 should wait beyond age 65 to collect,” it said. “More than 90 percent should wait till age 70. Only 10.2 percent appear to do so. The median loss for this age group in the present value of household lifetime discretionary spending is $182,370.”
Using an analytical tool, several economists and researchers found that “Social Security lifetime benefit optimization represents a clear means of improving the welfare of retirees” and that “high-income retirees have the most in absolute terms to gain from maximizing their lifetime benefits.”
“But low-income retirees can raise their living standards by a far higher percentage,” the report said. “Whether rich, middle-class, or poor, what’s required is simply patience—waiting to apply for the right benefits at the right time.”
They also estimated that under “Social Security macroeconomic assumptions,” if all Americans were “to optimize” their benefits, it would translate to a “$3.4 trillion increase in Social Security’s current colossal $61.8 trillion unfunded liability.”
“But if we assume future generations would also optimize, another $3 trillion or so could easily be added to this figure,” they wrote. “This reflects the fact that the system’s reductions for early retirement and Delayed Retirement Credits are more than actuarial fair based on current demographic and economic conditions.”
If a Social Security recipient optimized their benefits by waiting to claim them, there would be an overall 10.4 percent increase in a typical workers’ lifetime spending, according to the researchers.
“For one in four, the lifetime spending gain exceeds 17 percent. For one in ten, the gain exceeds 26 percent. Among the poorest fifth of 45 to 62 year-olds, the median lifetime spending increase is 15.9 percent, with one in four gaining more than 27.4 percent,” it said.
COLA Increase
Several months ago, the Social Security Administration announced a 8.7 percent cost-of-living adjustment increase, the highest in about 40 years. That’s because of decades-high inflation, which reached as high as 9.1 percent year-over-year in June.
A woman looks at the U.S. Social Security Administration building in Burbank, Calif., on Nov. 5, 2020. (Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty Images)
The cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) means that the average recipient will get more than $140 extra per month starting in January, according to the Social Security Administration last month.
“This is not a benefit increase, it’s an adjustment to keep pace with inflation, and of course prices are rising to very high levels right now,” Nancy Altman, the co-director of the nonprofit organization Social Security Works, told The Hill in an interview. “But the COLA is an extremely important feature, because without it benefits would erode over time.”
The announcement for a large increase in 2023 isn’t a surprise, according to Ken Thomas, national president of the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association, due to rising consumer prices and surging inflation. “However, rising health care costs … could reduce the value of this adjustment,” Thomas said. “Seniors spend more on health care than any other segment of the population.”
“The COLA doesn’t take into account where you live or your actual spending patterns,” said William Arnone, CEO of the National Academy of Social Insurance. “For some people, it’s an overstatement of cost of living for, say, small towns in the Midwest versus urban areas like New York, D.C. or Chicago. With many older people choosing to live in suburban areas or rural areas, some will benefit more” than others from the same-sized increase.
But the expected increase means the Social Security system will pay out more money sooner, which can add more strain on its trust fund. The annual Social Security and Medicare trustees report released in June says the program’s trust fund will be unable to pay full benefits beginning in 2035.
Some analysts estimate there will be Social Security insolvency as early as 2034 unless action is taken by members of Congress before then.
“The Covid mRNA vaccine has likely played a significant role or been a primary cause of unexpected cardiac arrests, heart attacks, strokes, cardiac arrhythmias, and heart failure since 2021…”
Until the British cardiologist, Dr. Aseem Malhotra, expressed grave concern about the safety of Covid mRNA vaccines, he was one of the most celebrated doctors in Britain. In 2016 he was named in the Sunday Times Debrett’s list as one of the most influential people in science and medicine in the UK in a list that included Professor Stephen Hawking. His total Altmetric score (measure of impact and reach) of his medical journal publications since 2013 is over 10,000 making it one of the highest in the World for a clinical doctor during this period.
In the early days of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout in Britain, he advocated the injections for the general public. However, in July of 2021, he experienced a terrible personal loss that caused him to reevaluate the shots—namely, the sudden and unexpected death of his 73-year-old father. His father’s death made no sense to him because he knew from his own examination that his father’s general and cardiac health were excellent. As he put it in a recent interview:
His postmortem findings really shocked me. There were two severe blockages in his coronary arteries, which didn’t really make any sense with everything I know, both as a cardiologist—someone who has expertise in this particular area—but also intimately knowing my dad’s lifestyle and his health. Not long after that, data started to emerge that suggested a possible link between the mRNA vaccine and increased risk of heart attacks from a mechanism of increasing inflammation around the coronary arteries. But on top of that, I was contacted by a whistleblower at a very prestigious university in the UK, a cardiologist himself, who explained to me that there was a similar research finding in his department, and that those researchers had decided to essentially cover that up because they were worried about losing funding from the pharmaceutical industry. But it doesn’t stop there. I then started looking at data in the UK to see if there had been any increase in cardiac arrest. My dad suffered a cardiac arrest and sudden cardiac death at home. Had there been any change in the UK since the vaccine rollout? And again those findings were very clear. There’s been an extra 14,000 out of hospital cardiac arrests in 2021 vs 2020.
The more Dr. Malhotra looked into it, the more he felt the same concern about the safety of the mRNA vaccines that Dr. Peter McCullough had felt since the spring of 2021. The alarming incidence of sudden, unexpected deaths during the latter half of 2021 and the first eight months of 2022—especially among the young and fit—strengthened his grave concern and suspicion.
In September of 2022,—after a thorough investigation of the growing volume of data—he came to his conclusion:
The Covid mRNA vaccine has likely played a significant role or been a primary cause of unexpected cardiac arrests, heart attacks, strokes, cardiac arrhythmias, and heart failure since 2021 until proven otherwise.
His conclusion, including his precise verbal formulation of it, was identical to the conclusion drawn by Dr. Peter McCullough. Though the two doctors ultimately established contact to compare notes, they reached their conclusions based on their own, independent inquiries, before they spoke with each other.
Recently the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation produced Until Proven Otherwise— a short video documentary about the corroborating findings of these two leading cardiologists. I believe it is no exaggeration to say that the gripping, four-minute video is aMUST SEE for everyone. Please share it with your family and friends.
If you live in Dallas—or happen to find yourself in Dallas—on the evening of November 29, 2022, please be sure to attend the dinner for Drs. Malhotra and McCullough, hosted by the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation. It is sure to be a fascinating evening of discovery and conversation—not to mention a great party. We hope to see you there. Please click HERE to register for the event.
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. Epoch Health welcomes professional discussion and friendly debate. To submit an opinion piece, please follow these guidelines and submit through our form here.
John Paul Mac Isaac, the laptop repairman who allegedly obtained Hunter Biden’s laptop, revealed Monday that he is working with Republican lawmakers as they prepare to investigate the younger Biden after taking the House majority during this month’s midterms.
Mac Isaac alleged in a Monday interview with Fox News that an FBI agent gave him a “chilling” warning when he first interacted with the bureau after finding the laptop. The Delaware-based laptop repairman said he recalled telling one agent that he would change their names when he published his book.
“That’s when Agent Mike turned around and told me that, in their experience, nothing ever happens to people that don’t talk about these things,” Mac Isaac said, claiming that it was a veiled threat to keep silent.
“I have been dealing with retaliation from multiple fronts for the past two years when what I did was leaked to the country. I’m expecting it, and I’m going to expect it to continue,” he added to Fox News while promoting his book.
Republicans, he said, should hold “the FBI accountable for colluding with our mainstream and social media to block a story, a real story with real consequence,” and they should “get to the bottom of what the Biden family was up to when Joe Biden was vice president.”
On Monday, a lawyer for Hunter Biden, Chris Clark, told CBS News that Mac Isaac did not have Hunter’s “consent to access his computer data or share it with others.” Some analysts said that it may have been the first time one of Hunter Biden’s lawyers confirmed that he left the laptop at the Delaware computer repair shop.
Earlier this year, Mac Isaac recalled to the New York Post about how Hunter Biden arrived at his shop in Wilmington, Delaware, in April 2019.
“I’m glad you’re still open,” Hunter Biden allegedly told him. “I just came from the cigar bar, and they told me about your shop, but I had to hurry because you close at seven.”
“I need the data recovered off these, but they all have liquid damage and won’t turn on,” Mac Isaac recalled him saying.
Other Details
It came as CBS cited an independent expert as saying that the data sourced from Hunter Biden’s laptop is genuine, coming about two years after the NY Post and other news outlets, including The Epoch Times, reported on it. It’s not clear why CBS decided to publish its report Monday.
U.S. President Joe Biden (L) waves alongside his son Hunter Biden after attending mass at Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Johns Island, South Carolina on Aug. 13, 2022. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images)
The Epoch Times has contacted the FBI’s press office for comment.
After Republicans recaptured the majority in the House, top GOP lawmakers indicated that they will investigate bank records and claims by whistleblowers that show connections between Hunter Biden and President Joe Biden.
With weeks to go before the 2020 General Election, the New York Post published information sourced from the laptop, showing what Republicans and other critics say are shady business deals between the Biden family and individuals linked to the Chinese Communist Party and Ukrainian energy firms. The younger Biden, in a 2019 interview, has denied that he did anything wrong but acknowledged that such deals created a negative outward impression.
Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), who is expected to chair the House Oversight and Reform Committee, told reporters last week that the committee will investigate not just Hunter Biden but also President Biden.
“I want to be clear. This is an investigation of Joe Biden. That’s where the committee will focus in this next Congress,” Comer told reporters.
“This committee will evaluate the status of Joe Biden’s relationship with his family’s foreign partners and whether he is a president who is compromised or swayed by foreign dollars and influence,” Comer said, adding that his committee has acquired suspicious activity reports filed by major banks.
In response, the White House said in a statement last week House Republicans are engaging in partisan attacks against Biden’s family members. The administration accused the GOP of trafficking in “long-debunked conspiracy theories,” without elaborating.
“President Biden is not going to let these political attacks distract him from focusing on Americans’ priorities,” Ian Sams, a spokesman for the White House Counsel’s office, told news outlets.
Weeks after the 2020 election, the younger Biden said that Delaware prosecutors were investigating his tax affairs, although he hasn’t been charged with a crime. Since then, few details have been publicly disclosed about that investigation.
As Republicans conduct their investigation, it’s not clear how many Americans will consider it a top priority.
Fewer than 30 percent of voters said in a recent poll that Hunter Biden should be a top priority for the next Congress, with about 52 percent of Republicans expressing an interest in investigating him. For months, other polls showed that President Biden’s approval rating has remained largely underwater amid high inflation, fears of a recession, and a surge of violent crime nationwide.
Jack Smith, who on Nov. 18 was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to be special counsel in two probes involving former president Donald Trump, is a veteran prosecutor with the Department of Justice (DOJ).
Most recently, Smith was the chief prosecutor for the special court in The Hague responsible for investigating and adjudicating war crimes in Kosovo. Prior to the Hague, he was the vice president of litigation at HCA Healthcare, one of the largest health providers in the United States.
In a statement following Garland’s announcement, Smith said he intends to conduct the investigations and any prosecutions that may arise from them “independently and in the best traditions of the Department of Justice.”
“The pace of the investigations will not pause or flag under my watch. I will exercise independent judgement and will move the investigations forward expeditiously and thoroughly to whatever outcome the facts and the law dictate,” Smith said.
Smith graduated from Harvard law school in 1994, and from there started his prosecutorial career as an assistant district attorney at the New York County District Attorney’s Office. From 1999, he served as assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of New York for nine years, a position which included leading the criminal litigation unit prosecuting cases involving public corruption, violent crime and gangs, and white collar and complex financial fraud, according to the DOJ.
From 2008 to 2010, he worked at the Office of the Prosecutor with the International Criminal Court, where he conducted investigations of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
In 2010, he returned to the DOJ to serve for five years as the chief of the Public Integrity Section in Washington overseeing prosecutions of public corrections cases across the United States, according to the department. During this time his unit secured bribery and extortion convictions of former Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell and Arizona U.S. Representative Rick Renzi.
Smith in 2015 was appointed first assistant U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee before becoming the acting U.S. attorney in 2017.
In a speech announcing the special counsel appointment, Garland described Smith as the “right choice to complete these matters in an even-handed and urgent manner.”
“Throughout his career, Jack Smith has built a reputation as an impartial and determined prosecutor, who leads teams with energy and focus to follow the facts wherever they lead,” Garland said.
Garland said that Smith will begin his work as special counsel immediately and return from The Hague to the United States.
As special counsel, Smith is charged with overseeing the ongoing investigation into Trump’s handling of classified and presidential records at Mar-a-Lago, as well as the Washington-based probe into whether there was unlawful interference with the transfer of power after the 2020 election or the certification of the electoral college vote on Jan. 6, 2021.
Arizona Republican governor’s candidate Kari Lake issued a Monday update, saying her attorneys are working to obtain more information and “whistleblowers are coming forward” after reports of poll issues on Election Day in Maricopa County.
“Attorneys are working diligently to gather information,” said Lake, a former local news anchor who was backed by former President Donald Trump. “Whistleblowers are coming forward and the curtain is being lifted. Whether done accidentally or intentionally it is clear that this election was a debacle that destroyed any trust in our elections.”
Authorities Maricopa County are, according to Lake, “still counting ballots” after “printer problems, tabulation errors, three-hour-long lines and even longer and confusing instructions given by election officials made this election day the most chaotic in Arizona’s history.”
For the past several days, Lake has been posting videos of voters complaining about their experiences during Election Day to her Twitter page. She’s said that Republican voters were disenfranchised when they tried to cast ballots in Maricopa County, the state’s most populous county.
Officials in Maricopa County said on Nov. 8 there were problems with vote-tabulation machines and asked voters to drop their ballots inside dropboxes. Later that day, Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates and county Recorder Stephen Richer blamed an issue with printers for the problem and later said that the glitch would not stop anyone from voting.
Letter
Over the weekend, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s office sent a letter asking Maricopa County for answers about the apparent voting problems. The memo said that it has fielded hundreds of complaints about how authorities conducted the election during the in-person voting phase.
“These complaints go beyond pure speculation, but include first-hand witness accounts that raise concerns regarding Maricopa’s lawful compliance with Arizona election law,” the letter said, asking for a response before Nov. 28. Gates, in an interview with local media, said his office would comply.
“We’re reviewing this with our attorneys right now and I don’t have anything further to say at this point, but we will certainly before we hold the canvass,” he told KTAR on Monday.
Gates stated that around 70 of the county’s 223 vote centers suffered problems on Nov. 8. Technicians were able to solve the problem by the same afternoon, he remarked.
A woman replaces a poster critical of Democratic candidate for Arizona governor Katie Hobbs during a prayer rally outside the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center in Phoenix on Nov. 14, 2022. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)
The letter said that Maricopa needs to provide a “full report” for the “myriad problems that occurred in relation to Maricopa County’s administration of the 2022 General Election.”
Hobbs Declares Victory
Last week, Democrat gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs, the Arizona secretary of state and chief election official, declared victory. Lake has not conceded yet and it appears that she will not do so anytime soon, according to her video.
“Arizonans who choose to make their voice heard on election day should not be disenfranchised or punished for choosing to vote in person,” Lake said Monday. “Yet they were I want you to know Arizona. I will continue fighting until we restore confidence and faith in our elections.”
And Lake, in reacting to the attorney general’s recent letter to Maricopa County, told the Daily Mail on Sunday she still believes “I will become governor, and we are going to restore honesty to our elections.”
A spokesperson for Hobbs’s office told local media last week that she’s preparing a transition team. Hobbs has issued few public responses to Lake’s recent claims.
“Our job is to find the people who are, whether they’re Democrat, independent, Republican … that reflect Arizona, reflect the diversity of Arizona, and can help deal with some of the challenges that the administration will face,” Hobbs spokesman Mike Haener told local media.
When she declared victory, Hobbs noted that Lake has not conceded the election—at least for now.
“Last night our race was officially called (by media organizations), and I am honored to stand before you as governor-elect,” Hobbs told a crowd last week during an event Phoenix. “It has been a long year and a half. But in this election, Arizonans chose solving our problems over conspiracy theories.”
The Epoch Times has contacted Maricopa County in response to Lake’s statement Monday.
Georgia Democratic senator Raphael Warnock steered $16.4 million in federal earmarks to a project that benefited the co-owner of his controversial low-income apartment complex.
The funding was intended to construct a trail connecting a residential and commercial complex known as “Pittsburgh Yards” with other portions of Atlanta’s BeltLine. The developer of Pittsburgh Yards is Columbia Ventures, part of the Columbia group of companies that co-owns and operates a low-income housing complex with Warnock’s church.
The funding raises questions about whether Warnock’s business relationship with Columbia had any bearing on his funding decision. Warnock did not respond to a request for comment.
Warnock’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he serves as senior pastor and CEO, in 2005 “formed a partnership with Columbia Residential to rehabilitate [a] dilapidated high-rise” and turned the building into low-income apartments. Ebenezer and Columbia are co-owners of the business through a joint venture, with Ebenezer owning 99 percent and Columbia owning the remaining 1 percent, according to a state grant application filed by the entities in August.
Last November, Warnock and Sen. Jon Ossoff (D., Ga.) announced that they had helped secure the funding for the trail project, which would “construct approximately two miles of the Southside Trail component of the Atlanta BeltLine from Pittsburgh Yards to Boulevard Crossing Park.”
“When we connect our communities with pedestrian and bike trails, we provide a pathway for residents to enjoy local green spaces and invest in small businesses,” said Warnock in a press release. “We bolster social and economic mobility for hardworking Georgians when we make strong federal investments in projects like the Atlanta BeltLine, and I look forward to securing more infrastructure investments like this one for other vital transportation projects in Atlanta and across our state.”
Atlanta’s BeltLine, which has been under construction since 2010, has been a lucrative project for property developers and led to a spike in property values. Columbia Residential and its sister company Columbia Ventures have worked on multiple developments along the trail, which when completed is supposed to loop around the city and connect neighborhoods through a light rail. The $16.4 million earmarked by Warnock, from the U.S. Department of Transportation, funded a “critical” segment of the trail that connected the “Eastside and Westside of the BeltLine” starting at Pittsburgh Yards, according to the Atlanta Business Chronicle.
One of the more ambitious projects is Pittsburgh Yards, a 31-acre mixed-use development that includes commercial and residential buildings. The property is owned by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and was developed in partnership with Columbia Ventures.
Columbia Ventures directed comment requests to the Casey Foundation, which directed comment requests to Pittsburgh Yards. Pittsburgh Yards said it couldn’t comment for Columbia Ventures but said it didn’t believe the funding was politically motivated.
“Pittsburgh Yards and the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the primary funder of Pittsburgh Yards, are nonpartisan entities and did not, nor would not, have conversations that are political in nature,” said Betsy Helgager Hughes, a spokeswoman for Pittsburgh Yards. “We also do not provide comments or commentary regarding the position of other businesses.”
Warnock’s church apartment complex has become an issue in his race against Republican challenger Herschel Walker ahead of Georgia’s Dec. 6 Senate runoff. Walker launched an ad campaign last week raising concerns about evictions and living conditions at the building.
Columbia Residential, which manages the apartments, has filed eviction proceedings since the start of the pandemic against over a dozen residents, including one tenant who owed just $28.55 in late rent, the Free Beacon first reported. The apartment building has also been hit with multiple city code violations over rodent and bug infestations, overflowing trash rooms, and mold issues, according to records obtained by the Free Beacon.
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said the company’s COVID-19 vaccine will be “free for all Americans” because insurance companies and other groups will pay the cost, although critics have said his claims aren’t true.
“Americans will see no difference,” Bourla told STAT Summit last week. STAT is a health care publication. The vaccine, he added, will “be free for them to get, regardless of the insurance they have.”
However, Bourla did not mention whether uninsured Americans would have to pay for the vaccine. Currently, the federal government is paying Pfizer $30 per dose of the mRNA vaccine and has been distributing it to the public.
The drug giant announced in October that it would raise the price of its vaccine to $130 per dose after the federal government uses up the vials it has purchased and the vaccine goes on the open market in 2023 when the U.S. public health emergency expires.
David Mitchell, co-founder of advocacy group Patients for Affordable Drugs, said in a recent interview that Bourla’s comments were not truthful. Speaking to the Daily Mail, he said that taxpayers, patients, consumers, and others would eventually foot the bill for the vaccine.
Bourla “knows it’s not true,” he said, referring to claims of the vaccine being free. “The vaccine is not going to be free. He is going to charge $120 list price for the vaccine and it will be paid. The questions is who will pay it.”
Bourla’s recent comment at the STAT Summit is “more … pharma double talk,” Mitchell wrote on Twitter. He previously stated that the higher cost of the Pfizer vaccine absorbed by insurance companies will be passed on in the form of higher insurance premiums.
Price Hike
In announcing the price hike, Pfizer executive Angela Lukin said that the firm will expect to quadruple the cost of the COVID-19 vaccine to about $110 to $130 per dose.
“We are confident that the U.S. price point of the COVID-19 vaccine reflects its overall cost effectiveness and ensures the price will not be a barrier for access for patients,” Lukin said in mid-October. Meanwhile, it is currently unclear what kind of access people without health insurance will have to the vaccine.
A syringe is used to get a dose of the COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination clinic in Montreal, Canada, on March 15, 2021. (The Canadian Press/Paul Chiasson)
Lukin said she does not expect purchasing of the vaccines to transfer to the private sector until the first quarter of 2023 “at the earliest.” The move is dependent on the government-contracted supply being depleted.
Pfizer said it expects the COVID-19 market to be about the size of the flu shot market on an annual basis for adults, but that the pediatric market would take longer to build based on shots given so far.
On Nov. 1, Pfizer raised its forecast on 2022 sales of its COVID-19 vaccine by $2 billion to $34 billion, and stated new deals and drugs in development should help replace future declining vaccine sales and lost revenue from patent expirations. Sales of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID vaccine are down from pandemic highs as many countries have neared the end of their primary vaccination campaigns.
Emergency
Earlier this month, the federal government signaled that it would extend its public health emergency in January after a 60-day deadline to provide notice expired. Last week, a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) official confirmed in a statement that the emergency will remain, which will lead to insurance firms absorbing the cost of the Pfizer vaccine.
Sarah Lovenheim, assistant secretary for public affairs at HHS, said the U.S. public health emergency “remains in effect and as HHS committed to earlier, we will provide a 60-day notice to states before any possible termination or expiration.”
Lovenheim and other officials did not signal when the emergency would be dropped. It was implemented in early 2020 following the reports of COVID-19 occurring in the United States.
For months, Republican lawmakers have pushed the White House to end the federal emergency and said there is no justification for keeping it intact. They cited President Joe Biden’s public comments regarding the COVID-19 pandemic being “over” earlier in the fall.
New Research
Bourla’s remarks come about two weeks after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other groups published a study that found children as young as 12 have an elevated risk of experiencing heart inflammation after receiving Pfizer’s shot.
The researchers found that myocarditis and pericarditis, two forms of heart inflammation, met the threshold for a safety signal for children between the ages of 12 and 17 after they received the second and third doses of the mRNA vaccine.
“The signal detected for myocarditis/pericarditis is consistent with published peer-reviewed publications demonstrating an elevated risk of myocarditis/pericarditis following mRNA vaccines, especially among younger males aged 12-29 years,” the researchers said.
THE D.C. NARRATIVE AGAINST TRUMP ISN’T RESONATING IN THE COUNTRY.
A new Rasmussen poll sponsored by The National Pulse has revealed that self-identifying conservatives and Republicans blame the party’s institutional leadership – Kevin McCarthy, Mitch McConnell, and Ronna McDaniel – far more than they blame presidential front runner President Donald J. Trump for the party’s underperformance in America’s recent mid term elections.
But ordinary, likely voters appear to be rejecting what the GOP and their bankrollers are selling. According to the latest data by Rasmussen, just 16 percent of conservative voters blamed individual candidates, and 20 percent blamed Donald Trump. More than double those who blamed Trump – 43 percent of conservative voters – blamed Republican leadership.
They were asked: “Republicans did not do as well in this vear’s elections as many had expected. Who is most to blame for this, the individual candidates, the Republican Party leadership, Donald Trump? Or is it nobody’s fault?”
Seventeen percent of those asked said it was “nobody’s fault,” while five percent were unsure.
The numbers flip drastically when asking self-identified liberals, raising questions as to who anti-Trump Republicans are now throwing their analysis in with. The ostensibly conservative National Review, for example, appears to sympathize far closer with left wing analysis than right.
Liberals blamed Trump for the GOP underperformance to the tune of 46 percent, versus 29 percent for the McLeadership, and 15 percent for individual candidates.
The same poll also asked likely voters if Republican control of the House of Representatives was a good thing or a bad thing for the country, with 48 percent say it is good for America, while 34 percent said it was bad. Fourteen percent said it would make no difference, and three percent were unsure.
The news comes as Republicans jockey for top positions in the House, while also attempting to place blame on anyone but their own leadership for their failure to take the Senate and more gubernatorial seats around the country.
Millions of Gen Zers are struggling with mental health problems, according to a new survey, which reveals many of these problems were first identified during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is further evidence of the serious health consequences caused by the social-distancing measures taken in response to the virus.
Generation Z is the third-largest population in America, after millennials and baby boomers. While Zoomers are often singled out for praise by the corporate media for racial and sexual diversity, it’s also becoming clear many of them are suffering mental health issues to a far greater degree than earlier generations.
The survey was carried out by Harmony Healthcare IT, an Indiana-based data-management company. Just over 1000 individuals aged 18 to 24, with a roughly equal gender balance, were asked a range of detailed questions about their mental health.
Forty-two percent of those surveyed said they were suffering from a diagnosed mental-health problem, with 25 percent saying their diagnosis took place during the pandemic. Anxiety, depression, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and bulimia were just some of the conditions the respondents reported. By comparison with millennials or Gen X-ers, Zoomers are twice as likely to report struggling with emotional distress on a daily basis.
Near 70 percent said that they felt the pandemic had a negative effect on their mental health. Zoomers appear to be deeply anxious, with 85 percent saying they were worried about the future. Nine out of ten Zoomers diagnosed with a mental-health issue have anxiety and eight out of ten suffer from depression.
Particular concerns for Zoomers include personal finances, the economy, their health, the environment, politics, and the workplace. Three-quarters of Zoomers say they feel disadvantaged by comparison with older generations, and 90 percent have a hard time picturing a stable future for themselves.
Twenty percent of the study participants said they have a regular therapist, while 57 percent take regular medication and 39 percent attend therapy for mental health issues at least once a week.
Pandemic Damage.
The study is further evidence that the pandemic – in particular the social-distancing measures adopted by most governments around the world – had serious adverse consequences for the young that far outstrip any damage they might have suffered from contracting the virus.
Other studies have already substantiated the mental effects of isolation and exposure to fear and uncertainty about the virus’s effects. A meta-analysis from the University of Calgary suggested that as many as one in four children worldwide are now suffering from depression and anxiety as a result of the pandemic.
These unintended effects have not just been psychological. A recent study showed children are exercising less and spending more time sitting down than ever before as a result of the pandemic. Researchers at the University of Bristol revealed that fewer than four out of 10 children were doing sufficient daily exercise at the end of 2021. Obesity rates have risen at a “staggering” pace, according to the American CDC.
The restrictions are even believed to have affected babies in the womb. A study based on a review of 250 babies born in New York between March and December 2020 suggested that the pandemic had serious adverse developmental effects on newborns, even if the mother had not had COVID-19 during the pregnancy. The researchers believe that increased maternal stress during pregnancy may be to blame, as well as reduced interactions with other infants and more stressful interactions with parents and caregivers.
It looks like the effects of the pandemic and the overzealous responses of government “experts” will continue to ramify through the increasingly unhappy lives of our younger generations, long after COVID-19 itself becomes a distant memory.
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Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki must sit for a deposition, a U.S. judge ruled on Nov. 21.
Psaki, who now works for MSNBC, isn’t facing an “undue burden,” U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump appointee, wrote in a seven-page ruling.
In October, Doughty ordered Psaki and other former and current Biden administration officials to answer questions under oath because evidence has been put forth indicating they colluded with big tech firms to censor users.
Plaintiffs in the case said that Psaki’s public statements about the administration pressuring Facebook and other companies to crack down on supposed disinformation and misinformation and to ban users showed she had personal knowledge about communications between officials and big tech executives. Doughty agreed, finding the plaintiffs “have proven that Jennifer Psaki has personal knowledge about the issue concerning censorship across social media as it related to COVID-19 and ancillary issues of COVID-19.”
He also said that “any burden on Psaki is outweighed by the need to determine whether free speech has been suppressed.”
Psaki sought to quash the subpoena, saying it would unduly burden her because she would need to spend several days preparing for and participating in the deposition.
Psaki filed the motion in federal court in Virginia, where she lives. Doughty is based in Louisiana.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Ivan Davis of Virginia turned down Psaki’s request during a Nov. 18 hearing and transferred the motion to Doughty.
Government lawyers then asked Doughty to quickly rule on the motion and, if he ruled against it, to stay the ruling while they appealed the ruling.
In the new order, Doughty rejected the motion and the attempt to stay it.
Doughty noted that he already acknowledged sitting for depositions would burden officials but pointed to federal rules that say people fighting subpoenas must prove an “undue burden,” not just a burden.
“Having to prepare for the deposition and to give the deposition are examples of ‘burdens,’ not ‘undue burdens.’ Were the Court to find Psaki has an undue burden here, every person subject to a deposition subpoena would have grounds to quash,” Doughty said.
“Preparing for and giving a deposition is part of the normal process for every person subpoenaed for a deposition. It is not an undue burden,” he added.
Psaki had said in a declaration: “Sitting for a deposition in this matter would be extremely burdensome for me. Among other things, I understand that I would need to devote several days to preparing for the deposition, as well as attending the deposition itself, and that would be highly disruptive to both my work and my family.”
Plaintiffs, including Republican Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Republican Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, had said that Psaki’s motion should be rejected because her statements “only express the strongly-held desire by all deponents that they would rather be somewhere else.” Plaintiffs said they had already moved the deposition twice in an attempt to accommodate Psaki, minimizing any “logistical burden.”
Motion for Stay
The motion for a stay, meanwhile, stated that if Doughty rejected Psaki’s efforts, he should stay the order until an appeals court hands down its ruling on the matter.
“Subjecting a high-ranking official to a deposition, which cannot later be reversed at a later stage of the litigation, establishes irreparable harm,” government lawyers said in a motion that was supported by Psaki.
A stay pending appeal has four factors, including whether an applicant will be irreparably harmed without a stay.
Doughty said that neither Psaki nor the government has shown they will likely succeed in their fight against the subpoena. He also said that because there isn’t an undue burden for Psaki, there is also no irreparable harm. The third factor doesn’t apply because there are no other parties at issue.
“Fourth, the public interest lies in determining whether First Amendment free speech rights have been suppressed. Therefore, Psaki and Federal Defendants’ Motion to Stay Deposition is DENIED,” Doughty said.
The ruling is the latest loss for the government, which has been trying to shield various former and current officials from answering questions under oath.
Doughty recently denied a motion to quash the subpoena for Elvin Chan, an FBI agent based in California who has been described as being involved in communications that led to Facebook suppressing the original Hunter Biden laptop story.
Doughty also turned down a request for a stay pending appeal of depositions of Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, a Biden appointee; Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Jen Easterly, a Biden appointee; and Rob Flaherty, a deputy assistant to the president.
The government had said all three are high-ranking officials and that an appeals court will likely side with the defendants. Doughty said he assumed all three are high ranking but reiterated his original finding, which was that the burdens of sitting for depositions were outweighed “by the need to determine whether First Amendment free speech rights are being suppressed.”
A top Democrat senator conceded that former President Donald Trump was right about banning TikTok and warned parents about the Chinese-owned social media app.
“I think Donald Trump was right. I mean, TikTok is an enormous threat,” Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told Fox News. “So, if you’re a parent, and you’ve got a kid on TikTok, I would be very, very concerned. All of that data that your child is inputting and receiving is being stored somewhere in Beijing.”
Warner joins a list of U.S. officials who have issued warnings about TikTok, owned by ByteDance. Federal Communications Commission Commissioner Brendan Carr recently urged regulators to ban the app in the United States amid concerns that ByteDance has worked with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to censor content and gather data on the app’s users.
“It’s not just the content you upload to TikTok but all the data on your phone, other apps, all your personal information, even facial imagery, even where your eyes are looking on your phone,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) told Fox News on Sunday. The app is “one of the most massive surveillance programs ever, especially on America’s young people,” he added.
Meanwhile, FBI Director Christopher Wray said that TikTok is part of the CCP’s strategy to gather data on individuals worldwide.
“We do have national security concerns, obviously from the FBI’s end, about TikTok,” Wray said during a testimony to Congress last week. “They include the possibility that the [CCP] could use it to control data collection on millions of users, or control the recommendation algorithm which could be used for influence operations if they so choose, or to control software on millions of devices.”
Under the Trump administration, the former president signed an executive order to impose broad sanctions on TikTok and ByteDance. It had attempted to bar any transactions between ByteDance and Americans over national security concerns.
But about a year later, President Joe Biden rescinded Trump’s executive order, although he acknowledged that TikTok and Chinese app WeChat can “access and capture vast swathes of information from users.” TikTok is heavily used by younger people and even teenagers.
“This data collection threatens to provide foreign adversaries with access to that information,” Biden said at the time, drawing criticism from some members of Congress.
A spokesperson for TikTok, in response to Carr’s statement, told ABC News earlier this month that he “has no role in the confidential discussions with the U.S. government related to TikTok and appears to be expressing views independent of his role as an FCC commissioner.”
“We are confident that we are on a path to reaching an agreement with the U.S. Government that will satisfy all reasonable national security concerns,” the spokesperson continued.
The owner of a popular Area 51 website issued a statement after he claimed federal agents raided his homes at gunpoint several weeks ago.
“I discussed the case with an attorney specialized in Federal cases,” Joerg Arnu, proprietor of Dreamlandresort.com, told Fox News over the weekend. “What I learned is truly incredible and in my opinion a much bigger story than the raid of my homes. What was done to me and my girlfriend, two unarmed, innocent, cooperating senior citizens, is apparently totally within the law. Truly incredible!”
Arnu added that he does not know why he was targeted and does not know what the agents were investigating. The Las Vegas Review-Journal first reported on the FBI and U.S. Air Force raid of his Nevada home, while Arnu published a statement to his website late last week.
An FBI search warrant was executed and his “laptops, phones, backup drives, camera gear and my drone were seized” on Nov. 3, he said via his website.
The Epoch Times has contacted U.S. Air Force for comment. The FBI declined to comment.
“Nellis Air Force Base is aware of the joint-AFOSI (Department of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations), FBI investigation involving Mr. Arnu,” Lt. Col. Bryon McGarry, with the U.S. Air Force, told Business Insider in reference to the apparent raid.
Arnu told the news outlet that he had “not been charged with a crime,” adding that since the Nov. 3 search, he has “not heard from the FBI agent in charge at all, despite numerous attempts to reach him to discuss the damages and return of my items.”
A car moves along the Extraterrestrial Highway near Rachel, Nevada, the closest town to Area 51. (Laura Rauch/AP photo)
‘Everyone Should Know’
Dreamlandresort.com was founded in 1999 and has long hosted information about the top-secret military base. For decades, there has been speculation about Area 51—officially called Homey Airport or Groom Lake—and is a central component of theories about unidentified flying objects, or UFOs. The website includes directions to the area, photos, and links to radio frequencies.
Elaborating to news outlets, Arnu said that some 15 to 20 federal agents arrived at his home in “full riot gear.” He said the search pertained to photos that were posted on his website.
“The doors were broken open and I in [sic] Rachel and my girlfriend in our Las Vegas home were detained and treated in the most disrespectful way,” he told Insider. “My girlfriend was led out into the street barefoot and only in her underwear in full view of our neighbors; I was led outside, handcuffed and only in t-shirt and sweats in sub-freezing temperatures.”
Arnu added: “I am not sharing anything on my web site that cannot be found on dozens of other web sites and news outlet publications. Considering how this went down I have no intention of removing any more material unless ordered to do so by a federal judge.”
In his interview with Insider and Fox News, Arnu said he will now pursue legal action against the federal government.
“The federal government has the right to harass and traumatize random citizens that are not accused of any crime,” Arnu told Fox on Saturday. “Kick in their doors, manhandle them and take whatever they want from them. Said citizens have no rights whatsoever to reimbursement of their damages, return of their property or compensation for the trauma they were subjected to.”
Arnu added to Fox that “this is America … land of the free.” But now, it’s “not so much from where I am standing right now. Everyone should know about this injustice. It could be your door that is kicked in next!”
Mystery
For decades, theories surrounding the secret military base—located in the middle of the barren Nevada desert—suggest it’s used for the testing of extraterrestrial technology that was recovered from alleged UFO crash sites. The base has been a top-secret location for years and is not accessible to the public even to this day.
The Air Force officially acknowledged the base’s existence in 2013 as the CIA previously published documents that say it was used as a test base.
“The base itself is fairly small, but the restricted area around it is over 90,000 acres— partly to prevent prying eyes and partly because they need to test classified aircraft,” Benjamin Radford, a writer on the subject, told Space.com earlier this year. “It’s mostly conspiracy theorists and media who call it Area 51. To the U.S. government, it’s simply the Nevada Test and Training Range, part of Edwards Air Force Base.”
Meanwhile, signs around the military installation declare that photography in the area is prohibited and that drones cannot be flown in its vicinity.
“The military classifies Area 51 as a ‘Military Operating Area.’ On the ground, you’ll encounter stern signs and armed guards patrolling the fenced perimeters guarded by buried motion sensors, cameras, guards and so on — plus signs warning that deadly force is authorized,” Radford said. “The borders of Area 51 are not fenced but are marked with orange poles and warning signs.”
In appointing a special counsel to investigate former President Donald Trump, the Justice Department (DOJ) has turned its law enforcement apparatus into a “tool to attack a political enemy,” according to FBI veteran Marc Ruskin.
During a Nov. 18 announcement in Washington, Attorney General Merrick Garland, a Biden appointee, tasked former DOJ prosecutor Jack Smith with overseeing investigations related to Trump’s handling of classified records and parts of the probe into the events surrounding Jan. 6, 2021.
Trump has denied wrongdoing and characterized Garland’s move as a “horrendous abuse of power” and the “latest in the long series of witch hunts.”
The timing of the appointment is significant, Ruskin said, noting how it dovetailed with pledges by House Republicans to investigate President Joe Biden and his administration once the GOP takes control of the House in January.
“Using the legal system in baseless investigations and prosecutions has been a hallmark of the anti-Trump campaign since before 2016,” Ruskin, who served 27 years with the FBI and is a contributor for The Epoch Times, said in an interview.
Prosecutor Jack Smith of the U.S. in a courtroom at The Hague on Nov. 10, 2020. (Peter Dejong/ANP/AFP via Getty Images)
‘Bait-and-Switch’
Ruskin believes that the special counsel investigation serves a particular purpose.
“It’s an old trick,” he said. “They’ll be hoping to divert attention from the congressional investigations and focus instead on a baseless special counsel investigation, because there’s no question that the legacy media is going to jump on board and give this front page attention, while the investigations being conducted by Congress will either be ignored or relegated to the back of the newspaper.”
U.S. Code 28 CFR Section 600.1 prescribes that the DOJ should appoint a special counsel in an investigation in which there is a conflict of interest or other extraordinary circumstances, under which it would be in the public interest for an outside special counsel to step in.
During the Nov. 18 press conference, Garland described the appointment of Smith—a registered independent—as a matter of public interest, citing Trump’s presidential candidacy and Biden’s interest in entering the race. Ruskin, however, didn’t feel convinced that there were sufficient grounds to warrant such a move.
“They really haven’t articulated facts which justified the appointment of any kind of counsel,” he said.
Former President Donald Trump leaves the stage after speaking during an event at his Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Fla., on Nov. 15, 2022. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Some Trump critics have argued that the special counsel appointment suggests that the DOJ is intent on bringing the case to indictment. Ruskin dismissed this claim as “a fabrication in order to justify a difficult-to-justify investigation.”
“The argument is the old ‘where there’s smoke there must be fire’ reasoning, which is fallacious reasoning,” he said. “It’s a fallacy which has been propagated in order to justify what is arguably a politically motivated investigation seeking to create an advantage for the Democratic Party in the upcoming elections.”
As Jan. 6, 2021, probes have dragged on for nearly two years, Ruskin said that he doesn’t expect anything tangible coming out of the continuing investigations.
“They’ve come up with basically nothing. It really defies credibility to even suggest that this is a bonafide, legitimate investigation.”
Ruskin said that the news from Nov. 18 confirmed his belief that the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago raid was a “fishing expedition to obtain anything related to January 6.”
Such a tactic, which Ruskin called a “bait-and-switch,” is no different from using “tainted evidence” in his view.
“It’s like the fruit of the poisonous tree,” he said. “You shouldn’t be able to use facts obtained via subterfuge in order to accomplish [something] unrelated to the goals.”
U.S. President Joe Biden (L) waves alongside his son Hunter Biden after attending mass at Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Johns Island, South Carolina on Aug. 13, 2022. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images)
Hunter Biden Probe
Having won back the House with a slim majority, Republicans have wasted no time raising a number of probes they plan to unleash in the new year, with a top focus being Biden’s alleged involvement in his son Hunter’s foreign business deals.
“This is an investigation of Joe Biden, the president of the United States, and why he lied to the American people about his knowledge and participation in his family’s international business schemes,” Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the incoming chairman of the House Oversight Committee, told reporters on Nov. 17. The announcement prompted a retort from the White House, which called it politically motivated rehashing of “long-debunked conspiracy theories.”
Republicans on the committee on the same day released a report claiming to have uncovered evidence of federal crimes tied to the Biden family, which include conspiracy to defraud the United States, wire fraud, violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Action, tax evasion, money laundering, and violations of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act.
But Republicans looking into the possible abuses by the DOJ and FBI could face strong resistance from the agencies, according to Ruskin. This is especially so if the House GOP wants to look into ongoing matters like the FBI Trump raid, in which case, the bureau could cite the ongoing investigation to refuse to disclose information.
But Ruskin sees the FBI’s handling of Hunter Biden’s laptop as a potential starting point.
An “obvious avenue of inquiry,” he said, is “why the Justice [Department] and the bureau have sat on for two years without making any progress.”
Earlier this year, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) revealed claims from FBI whistleblowers, alleging that the bureau leadership at the local level purposely delayed an examination of the Hunter Biden laptop until after the 2020 election, around a year after the FBI obtained the laptop in December 2019.
Rudy Giuliani arrives at the Fulton County Courthouse in Atlanta, Ga., on Aug. 17, 2022. (John Bazemore/AP Photo)
Treatment of Giuliani
Ruskin also noted that one day ahead of Trump’s anticipated 2024 campaign launch, prosecutors announced that they weren’t pursuing criminal charges against Rudy Giuliani—Trump’s former personal lawyer—over alleged Ukraine lobbying. The move ended a two-year probe that included a high-profile FBI raid in April 2021 that resulted in the seizure of 18 electronic devices.
“The case probably showed that they had no case and probably should have dismissed it a long time ago,” Ruskin said.
If the new Congress decides to look into the Giuliani case, one issue that could come up is whether there was sufficient probable cause for the FBI search and seizure warrant, or if the move was driven by political malice, Ruksin said. Considering Giuliani’s work for Trump and the DOJ’s “questionable behavior” regarding the former president, he said “it’s reasonable to speculate” the investigation was politically motivated.
The DOJ didn’t return The Epoch Times’ request for comment. The FBI told The Epoch Times it has “no comment.”
While the planned congressional investigations may not result in criminal prosecutions, Ruskin still thinks they’re a necessary step.
“Sunlight is the best disinfectant,” he said, quoting Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. “Bringing into the sunlight hidden acts is the best way to deal with them—initially, at least.”
This article has been updated with a response from the FBI.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said on Nov. 19 that when he becomes speaker of the House next year, he will remove Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) from the House Foreign Affairs Committee because of her remarks that many deemed anti-Semitic.
“We watch anti-Semitism grow, not just on our campuses, but we watched it grow in the halls of Congress,” McCarthy said at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual leadership meeting in Las Vegas on Nov. 19.
“I promised you last year that as speaker, she [Omar] will no longer be on Foreign Affairs, and I’m keeping that promise,” he told a cheering audience.
Omar, a Muslim immigrant of Somali descent, has been condemned for her remarks on the U.S.–Israel relationship several times in recent years, including by the leadership of her own party.
In 2019, the first-term congresswoman wrote on Twitter that the U.S. support of Israel is “all about the Benjamins.” That prompted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other Democrats to issue a joint statement, saying that the comment invoked a long-standing anti-Semitic trope and was “deeply offensive.”
President Donald Trump also weighed in at that time to call for Omar’s expulsion.
“Anti-Semitism has no place in the United States Congress,” Trump told reporters during a Cabinet meeting at the White House. “And I think she should either resign from Congress or she should certainly resign from the House Foreign Affairs Committee.”
Plan to Expel Democrats From Committees
This isn’t the first time McCarthy has said he wants to expel Omar from her committee assignment. In an interview with Breitbart in January, he said he was planning to oust Reps. Omar, Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), and Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) from their respective committees if Republicans secure a majority in the House after the midterms.
“Ilhan Omar should not be serving on Foreign Affairs,” McCarthy said at that time. “You had Ilhan Omar, who earlier referred to my support for Israel in an earlier Congress was ‘all about the Benjamins’ and never apologized.”
McCarthy argued that the two California Democrats shouldn’t stay on the House Intelligence Committee, either. He pointed to Swalwell’s affair with an alleged Chinese Communist Party spy and Schiff’s role in promoting the false assertion that the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia during the 2016 election.
“You look at Adam Schiff—he should not be serving on Intel when he has openly, knowingly now used a fake dossier, lied to the American public in the process and doesn’t have any ill will, [and] says he wants to continue to do it.”
Medical miracle or notorious lynchpin of misinformation?
Ivermectin has been hailed as a “wonder drug” and, according to the UNESCO World Science Report, a critical component of “one of the most triumphant public health campaigns ever waged in the developing world.”
However, since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and affiliated health authorities have vociferously recommended against ivermectin as a potential treatment for the virus.
In a social media message that has gone viral, the FDA labeled it as a drug for horses and not fit for human consumption: “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.”
The post made headlines and was one of the FDA’s most successful social media campaigns. Yet, research findings seem to contradict the public health organization’s recommendations.
A growing body of research shows that ivermectin is an essential treatment for COVID-19. Many doctors have praised the drug for its broad yet effective antiparasitic, antiviral, antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer, and autophagic properties.
Ivermectin: Antiparasitic Beginnings
Ivermectin made its name through its significant benefits in treating parasitic infections.
In 1973, Satoshi Omura and William C. Campbell, working with the Kitasato Institute in Tokyo, found an unusual type of Streptomyces bacteria in Japanese soil near a golf course.
In laboratory studies, Omura and Campbell discovered that this Streptomyces bacteria could cure mice infected with the roundworm Heligmosomoides polygyrus. Campbell isolated the bacteria’s active compounds, naming them avermectins, and the bacteria was thus called S. avermitilis.
Despite decades of searching worldwide, researchers have yet to find another microorganism that can produce avermectin.
It was changing one of the bonds of avermectin through a chemical process that produced ivermectin, which was proven successful in treating onchocerciasis and lymphatic filariasis, both of which are debilitating diseases common in the developing world.
A portrait of William Campbell and an illustration describing his work displayed on a screen during a press conference of the 2015 Nobel Medicine Prize. William Campbell and Satoshi Omura won the Nobel Medicine Prize for their discoveries of treatments against parasites—Avermectin, which was modified to Ivermectin. (JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/AFP via Getty Images)
Though its broad antiparasitic functions are not well understood, it is known that ivermectin penetrates parasites’ nervous systems, turning off their neurons’ actions, possibly deactivating and killing them.
As part of a donation campaign launched in 1988 by Merck & Co., Inc., the manufacturer of ivermectin, the drug was used in Africa to treat river blindness. Also called onchocerciasis, river blindness is a tropical disease caused by Onchocerca volvulus worms. It is the second-most common cause worldwide of infectious blindness.
The Onchocerca worms mature in the skin of an infected individual (“the host”). After mating, female worms can release into the host’s skin up to 1,000 microfilariae a day; the female worms live for 10 to 14 years. The presence of these worms can lead to scarring in the tissues and, when microfilariae invade the eye, can cause visual impairment or complete loss of vision.
When Merck distributed ivermectin in areas hardest hit by the disease, treatment benefited the residents’ overall health and led to economic recovery. Ivermectin replaced previous drugs that had devastating side effects.
Ivermectin has also proven effective against lymphatic filariasis, known as elephantiasis. Parasitic worms transmitted through the bite of an infected mosquito can grow and develop in lymphatic vessels, which regulate the body’s water balance. When certain vessels are blocked, the areas—typically the legs and genitals—can swell, with the legs enlarging to elephant-like stumps.
The World Health Organization listed ivermectin as an essential drug and has advised many countries to run annual campaigns to rid people of these parasites. Such recommendations are a solid testament to ivermectin’s safety.
For their work, including the discovery of avermectin, in 2015, Omura and Campbell were among three recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
It is an indispensable drug for the underdeveloped world, with about 3.7 billion doses administered as part of global campaigns during the past 30 years. To this day, ivermectin remains a staple drug of tropical areas and an essential drug in treating onchocerciasis, lymphatic filariasis, strongyloidiasis, and scabies.
Ivermectin and COVID-19
Analyses of studies on ivermectin have found it effective as a prevention, a treatment for acute COVID-19, and in advanced stages of infection by the virus.
1. Ivermectin as a Prophylaxis
Prophylaxis intervenes in the first phases of COVID-19 infection, which is mainly asymptomatic, when the virus replicates to increase its viral load—symptom onset occurs after the viral load peaks.
Ivermectin can be effective in the early stages of infection. Outside the cells, ivermectin can attach to parts of the virus, immobilizing it and preventing it from entering and infecting human cells.
Ivermectin can also enter the cell to prevent the virus from replicating. SARS-CoV-2 needs cell replication machinery to make more of the virus; ivermectin attaches and blocks a protein critical to this process, preventing viral production.
Additionally, ivermectin can be absorbed from the skin and stored in fat cells for a long time.
“Because it’s lipid soluble, it is stored and slowly released, [so] once you’ve taken a prophylactic dose, and I think it’s like the cumulative dose of about 400mg, that your risk of getting COVID is close to zero and you can actually stop it for a while,” said Dr. Paul Marik, a widely published critical care specialist with 500 peer-reviewed papers to his name, in an interview with The Epoch Times.
Dr. Paul Marik in Kissimmee, Fla. on Oct. 14, 2022. (The Epoch Times)
Marik co-founded the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), a group of physicians formed in the early days of the pandemic and dedicated to treating COVID-19. According to interviews, many of the group’s doctors have successfully treated COVID-19 with ivermectin. The organization’s other co-founder, Dr. Pierre Kory, has written a book about ivermectin’s use and controversy during the pandemic.
Dr. Sabine Hazan, a gastroenterologist with 22 years of experience in clinical research, told The Epoch Times that she would advise ivermectin use for only a short time in critical patients rather than recommending the use of it as a prophylaxis.
Continuous use of ivermectin—as with all drugs—can make the body dependent on the drug rather than working to fix itself.
2. Ivermectin for Early and Acute COVID
Many peer-reviewed studies have found that ivermectin, when used by itself or in conjunction with other therapies in symptomatic patients, reduces ventilation time, time for recovery, and the risk of progressing to severe disease. (pdf 1, pdf 2, pdf 3)
This is likely due to ivermectin’s anti-inflammatory role in multiple pathways, achieved by clearing out the viral particles by immobilizing them, reducing inflammation, and improving mitochondrial action.
Suppose the early viral replication is not controlled and cleared out soon enough by the body’s immune system. In that case, the infection can become severe or even hyperinflammatory, possibly leading to systemic organ failures.
Ivermectin can also directly interact with immune pathways, suppressing inflammation and reducing the chances of developing a cytokine storm. A cytokine storm occurs when the immune system is hyperactive and hyperinflammatory. Though ivermectin can help to clear out the virus and its particles, the inflammatory state of the tissues and the organs can often cause more damage than the virus itself.
Ivermectin also likely improves gut health, which plays an essential role in immunity by preventing bacteria and viruses from infecting people via the gut.
In a published study, Hazan hypothesized that ivermectin helps COVID-19 patients by increasing the levels of Bifidobacteria—a beneficial bacteria—in the gut.
As the CEO and founder of her own genetic sequencing research laboratory, ProgenaBiome, Hazan noticed that the Bifidobacteria levels in her stools would increase after she took ivermectin. Critical COVID patients would have “zero Bifidobacteria,” which can often be a sign of poor health.
In her peer-reviewed study on hypoxic patients, she observed that COVID patients with low oxygen levels from the cytokine storms in their lungs would improve within hours of administering ivermectin.
“When people die of COVID, they die from the cytokines—they couldn’t breathe anymore. It’s almost like an anaphylactic reaction. So when you give them ivermectin at the moment they’re about to crash, you’re boosting the Bifidobacteria [and increasing their oxygen],” Hazan said.
She explained that ivermectin is a fermented product of Streptomyces bacteria. Streptomyces are within the same group Bifidobacteria are from, which may explain why ivermectin temporarily boosts Bifidobacteria.
Ivermectin also helps with mitochondrial function. During severe COVID-19, patients often experience pulmonary dysfunctions due to lung inflammation, reducing oxygen flow. This can cause stress to the mitochondria, leading to fatigue, and, when severe, may cause cell and tissue death. Ivermectin has been shown to increase energy production, indicating that it is beneficial to the mitochondria.
Furthermore, ivermectin can bind to the spike protein—a distinctive structural feature of the COVID virus which has a crucial role in its pathogenesis. In systemic disease, the spike protein can enter the bloodstream and bind to red blood cells to form blood clots. Ivermectin can prevent blood clots from forming in the body.
3. Ivermectin for Long COVID and Post-Vaccine Symptoms
The number of studies supporting ivermectin to treat long COVID and post-COVID-19 vaccine symptoms is limited. However, doctors treating these conditions have observed successful results with ivermectin.
Researchers found that in patients reporting long COVID symptoms—including coughing, brain fog, headaches, and fatigue—ivermectin alleviated their symptoms.
Mechanistically, ivermectin can improve autophagy. This process is usually switched off during COVID-19 infections. By switching autophagy back on, ivermectin can help cells clear remnant viral proteins out, returning stability to the cell.
Like acute and severe COVID-19, chronic spike protein triggers inflammation, and ivermectin can reduce such responses by suppressing inflammatory pathways and lessening the damage to tissues and blood vessels.
The Changing Public Health Messaging on Ivermectin
The NIH’s stance on ivermectin has changed several times.
Early in the pandemic, there was little information on ivermectin as a potential treatment for the virus.
The first study that mentioned ivermectin as a potential COVID-19 treatment came from Australia in April 2020. Researchers administered ivermectin to SARS-CoV-2-infected monkey kidney cells in the laboratory and found the drug beneficial in very high doses. However, the researchers concluded that further study was needed. Many health agencies, including the NIH, the CDC, and other global health regulators concluded that ivermectin could kill the virus only at toxic levels.
Even now, NIH’s statement on ivermectin for COVID-19 reads: “Ivermectin has been shown to inhibit replication of SARS-CoV-2 in cell cultures. However, pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic studies suggest that achieving the plasma concentrations necessary for the antiviral efficacy detected in vitro would require administration of doses up to 100-fold higher than those approved for use in humans.”
The study’s lead author, Dr. Jean-Jacques Rajter, is a critical care doctor specializing in pulmonary medicine.
Rajter gave a testimony (pdf) of his findings to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs in December 2020.
The day after he saw the Australian study, one of his COVID patients dramatically deteriorated from breathing normally at room oxygen levels to requiring intubation. The patient’s son pleaded with Rajter to save his mother using whatever options available. Rajter recognized that hydroxychloroquine would be ineffective in the advanced stages of COVID. After much deliberation, he tried ivermectin.
“The patient deteriorated as expected for about 12 more hours but stabilized by 24 hours and improved by 48 hours. After this, two more patients had similar issues and were treated with the ivermectin-based protocol. Based on experience, these patients should have done poorly, yet they all survived,” the testimony read.
More clinical studies were published, showing the benefits of ivermectin as a prophylactic treatment. (pdf 1, pdf 2).
The findings encouraged the use of ivermectin among doctors desperate to find a cure.
Meanwhile, by October 2020, research into COVID-19 vaccines and the use of remdesivir to treat the virus was already in full swing.
According to the FDA, specific criteria should be met for the EUA (Emergency Use Authorization) to be granted for vaccines and medications, including that there are “no adequate, approved, and available alternatives.”
Some doctors say that if ivermectin’s use for COVID had been approved, it would have made the EUAs for vaccines and remdesivir null and void.
Following the Australian study, the FDA published a statement, “FAQ: COVID-19 and Ivermectin Intended for Animals,” highlighting the use of ivermectin in animals and advising against the use of ivermectin for COVID-19.
The NIH also discouraged the use of ivermectin, albeit briefly. On Jan. 14, 2021, the NIH changed its statement, writing that there was no evidence to recommend or disapprove the use of ivermectin. However, in April 2022, the statement changed to strongly disapproving of using ivermectin.
“We [Marik, Kory, and Dr. Andrew Hill, a virologist and consultant to the WHO] had a conference with NIH in January of 2021. We presented our data, and Andrew Hill presented the data he had done…there were a number of studies at that point, which were very positive,” said Marik.
Health Authority Overreach
Despite the NIH’s neutral statement on ivermectin for most of 2021, the FDA actively campaigned against using ivermectin in COVID-19 patients. On Aug. 26, 2021, the CDC sent an emergency warning against using ivermectin; a few weeks later, the American Medical Association and affiliated associations called for an end to ivermectin use.
Yet using the FDA’s statement against ivermectin to ban its use in COVID-19 cases would be considered an overreach. Since the FDA approved ivermectin in 1996, this made the drug acceptable for off-label use.
“The fact that it’s not FDA approved for COVID is irrelevant because the FDA endorses the use of off-label drugs at the clinician’s discretion,” said Marik.
As an ironic side effect of the messaging on ivermectin, people suddenly found themselves unable to access ivermectin, and some turned to veterinary-grade ivermectin.
Though veterinary ivermectin is the same product as medicinal ivermectin, the manufacturing standard is not the same as it is for human-grade pharmaceuticals.
Contradictory Research and Campaigns
Though the initial research in 2020 showed promising results for ivermectin, published studies reported conflicting findings by the following year.
The NIH has funded many studies on the effectiveness of ivermectin, the most recent being ACTIV-6.
Individuals can participate in the study once they develop COVID by selecting ivermectin from four other drugs. The drug was sent to them via mail. This method means that some people in the study could have recovered by the time they received the ivermectin.
There are some controversies regarding this study.
The first is that the authors changed the primary endpoints during the study, which is heavily frowned upon as it can affect the validity and reliability of the outcome.
Initially, the primary endpoint was the number of deaths, hospitalizations, and symptoms reported at day 14.
This was changed to the number of deaths, hospitalizations, and symptoms by day 28. In the actual published study, there was another change, with the endpoint being duration of COVID-19 symptoms.
A rapid review published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) implied that the endpoints were changed because, by the time the study commenced, there were far fewer events of death and hospitalizations; as a result, there would not be enough data for a reliable comparison.
Indeed, the data at the ACTIV-6 livestream showed that the ivermectin group reported only one death; this death would not be considered relevant to the research because the patient was hospitalized and died before he took ivermectin.
There were also further implementations in the study that could impact the observed effectiveness of the drug.
On average, this study’s participants received treatment six days after first reporting symptoms. Patients needed to report eligible symptoms and test positive for COVID-19 before receiving drugs. Due to this added time, about seven percent of the participants had no symptoms by the time ivermectin arrived.
Despite these negative findings for ivermectin, there is still some evidence that may demonstrate that ivermectin can be useful in treating COVID-19.
In the abstract, the authors concluded that taking ivermectin had “a posterior probability of benefit of .91,” this is another way of writing that ivermectin had a 91 percent probability of being more beneficial than placebo.
The percent of probability is below 95 percent, making the benefit of ivermectin insignificant.
Slides from the ACTIV-6 presentation on a statistically significant secondary endpoint findings.
Another secondary endpoint showed that by day 14, ivermectin already had a statistically significant 27 percent benefit with 98 percent probability of efficacy.
The FDA and NIH did not respond for comments by press time.
You’ve got to hand it to President Biden—it’s hard to know whether he’s telling the truth at any given moment. Problem is, Joe often doesn’t know himself.
The man has done everything from accuse Mitt Romney of wanting to put African Americans back in chains to claiming recently that he went to a Historically Black College or University (no, he did not). And he actually said that inflation leveled off when it continued at an historically high rate.
But one of Joe’s biggest lies was just exposed. When the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was accused of murdering a Washington Post journalist named Jamal Khashoggi, Biden promised to make the Crown Prince a “pariah” across the world. Except he just did the exact opposite. From AP News:
The administration spoke out in support of a claim of legal immunity from Prince Mohammed — Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, who also recently took the title of prime minister — against a suit brought by the fiancée of slain Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi and by the rights group Khashoggi founded, Democracy for the Arab World Now.
“Jamal died again today,” Khashoggi’s fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, tweeted after the U.S. filing late Thursday in her lawsuit.
How heartbreaking the news must have been to anyone who knew Khashoggi. Joe Biden actually stood up for Prince Mohammed, claiming that his role as ruler and now prime minister (sounds like the man is gobbling up power in Saudi Arabia) should protect him from charges of murder.
Sadly, this seems to line up with how Biden has acted concerning the power of the President. He attempts to use emergency powers to force medical mandates on American citizens. He bypasses Congress to forgive over $500 billion in student debt loan.
Not only that, Biden labels anyone who politically disagrees with him an enemy of democracy. And to put icing on the cake, he has laughed off recently announced investigations into Hunter Biden and the President’s role as “the big guy” with his overseas business dealings.
The man simply acts like he is immune to the rules and responsibilities of the President. Like Prince Mohammed, he acts like he can do anything he wants. So, no wonder he supports the Saudi Arabia leader, who Joe went groveling to just weeks before an election to get them to pump more oil and lower gas prices.
We agree with Robert Gates, who said: “I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” Biden botched Afghanistan, he bungled keeping Russia from going to war in Ukraine, and the situation with China and Taiwan is quickly getting out of hand.
But this is publicly humiliating for Biden, who is clearly all bark and no bite to world leaders. He may talk big, but now he is folding to a Middle Eastern ruler who is clearly abusing his power, and is showing that he has power of America’s top leader.
Key Takeaways:
DeSantis beat Trump by 45 points in a recent Florida Republicans 2024 poll.
DeSantis beat Trump, 43% to 28%, among all voters in a national 2024 poll.
Many Republicans believe DeSantis is a stronger candidate than Trump at this point.
Most common-sense Americans don’t tune into The View to tell them what to think. But it’s now a bad idea to pay attention to their political commentary, or at least let the professionals do it for you. Why?
Because some of the craziest lies about Republicans get spun on this show. And these lies often come from politicians or are turned into rumors the opposition actually believes.
So get ready… this one’s a doozy. From Twitter:
Citing ZERO EVIDENCE, Sunny claims the GOP’s official position is to raise the voting age to 28. Literally, no one in a position of influence in the GOP is arguing for that. There was no correction by ABC News. pic.twitter.com/najKP6wb3j
Citing ZERO EVIDENCE, Sunny claims the GOP’s official position is to raise the voting age to 28. Literally, no one in a position of influence in the GOP is arguing for that. There was no correction by ABC News.
It’s unbelievable that in today’s America, where you can be quickly banned from social media for questioning the mainstream status quo, comments like these go unquestioned.
Top commentator Ben Domenech had this to say:
Claiming falsely that Republicans want to elevate the voting age to 28 as @sunny just did is damaging to our democracy, the fairness of elections, the trust in our institutions, and more. She should be fired. It is heinous to allow her back on air after such an egregious lie.
First, the main issue: there are two distinct standards in American society. Liberals seem to get away with everything, including election disinformation, while Republicans are accused left and right, whether or not they have done anything wrong. Their motives are questioned while liberals get the benefit of the doubt.
Sunny Hostin continues spouting lies and slander (calling conservatives “roaches voting for Raid) and the mainstream media keeps giving her a pass. To be clear, no Republican leader has suggested raising the voting age to 28. Maybe a random activist has, but the party does not stand for limiting the right to vote.
And Sunny shouldn’t be able to keep her job as she continues to spout this flat-out misinformation. But of course, ABC will keep her on; in fact, it looks like she read that comment right from a script. They seem to be encouraging these types of lies.
Second, the bigger issue: Sunny is right about one thing… Republicans do believe voters should be well-informed if they are to participate in our democracy. Unfortunately, Democrats don’t act like they believe this.
They are constantly pushing for lower and lower voting ages. Some blue areas are pushing for a voting age of 16, while others have approved voting for non-citizens.
There is no universal right to vote. One must be capable of understanding political issues and have an actual interest in the body politic they live in. That’s why people in other countries don’t vote in the U.S. That’s why my young children don’t vote.
But Democrats think that as long as they can convince young, uneducated people or migrants to vote for them, they’re for it. Ends justify the means.
The voting requirements have not always been age 18. It used to be only people who owned land or had a particular interest in government could vote. Today’s culture does not require such limitations anymore, but for a democracy to survive, citizens need to generally agree on the foundations of a government.
And it seems just commonsense that voters should be invested in the system they are voting for. Otherwise, they can be told to fill out their ballot however a party prefers, and they can be bribed by more government spending.
So, Sunny, we get where you’re coming from. We don’t want you sending off your son’s absentee ballot like you admitted to. We want an informed electorate that makes wise decisions for their country, not manipulated by power-hungry politicians.
Key Takeaways:
Sunny Hostin on The View falsely claimed Republicans want to raise the voting age to 28.
People who deliver election misinformation like this on mainstream news should be held accountable.
Voters should be well-informed and invested in their community and government.
America is suffering from a national identity crisis, where most people feel like victims
Vivek Ramaswamy, author of the 2021 bestselling book, “Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam,” and its sequel, “Nation of Victims,” said the country is suffering from a national identity crisis that has left a void for victimhood to fill and that national policies that have tried to address grievances are the true cause of systemic racism.
Affirmative action “is the single greatest form of institutionalized racism in the United States today, anti-white, anti-Asian racism, but which then creates a backlash wave of new anti-black racism that we otherwise would not have had, but for the grievance that affirmative action creates amongst the people who were penalized by it,” Ramaswamy said during a recent interview with Epoch TV American Thought Leaders program. “The affirmative action is the systemic racism that is still here in America today, and I’m sorry to say it, will then create the new kind of racist, anti-black racism that we had spent so many decades moving on from.”
Ramaswamy thinks the Supreme Court should rule to strike down affirmative action in the college admission case they heard in late October because the policy does not work, and worse it creates distrust in the system.
“It’s also a disservice to even the qualified members of those minority groups who do get those positions because of merit, because no one can tell the difference,” said Ramaswamy. This policy also perpetuates racism toward non-black, Hispanic, and native people, particularly during the admission process at elite schools said, Ramaswamy.
Ramaswamy said the current admission process is not based on merit and discriminates against whites and Asians.
A view of the campus of Harvard Business School in Boston, Mass., on July 8, 2020. (Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)
The Harvard Crimson reported that in the period from 1995 to 2013, Asian-American students admitted to Harvard had higher SAT scores, with an average SAT score of 767 across all sections (every section of the SAT has a maximum score of 800), while African-Americans were admitted with an average of 704.
Meanwhile, a recent Pew Research survey showed that 61 percent of all surveyed, believe 61 percent who say high school test scores should be a major factor, in being admitted to college.
“Nobody talks about affirmative action for the NBA or the NFL, but if you were to apply this to the NBA or NFL it would be the equivalent of asking someone who’s black to make a half-court shot, but someone who’s Asian gets a stair step right up to the hoop to go do a slam dunk,” said Ramaswamy. “We shouldn’t think it’s anything different in science or engineering classrooms either. It’s an assault on merit, it’s an assault on excellence.”
President Joe Biden prepares to sign executive orders related to his racial equity agenda in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 26, 2021. (Doug Mills-Pool/Getty Images)
However, in a position paper for affirmative action, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) says that this policy is imperative, now more than ever, because over 70 percent of top-tier management positions throughout the United States are held by white men. In the same paper, they state, “Affirmative action programs neither grant preferences based on race nor create quotas.” With regards to college admissions, they state in an October press statement that this rule fosters diversity and inclusion, benefiting all students.
Identifying With Victimhood
“Victimhood has become our new national identity,” said Ramaswamy. Americans need to get from victimhood to empowered, patriotic Americans pursuing excellence, but the path to empowerment “is a complicated one that runs through some uncomfortable terrain,” said Ramaswamy.
“We are so hungry for purpose and meaning and identity, at a point in our national history where the kinds of things that used to fill that void for purpose; things like patriotism and hard work and family, faith … they slowly receded, if not disappeared in modern life, and that leaves a black hole of identity in its wake,” said Ramaswamy.
This void runs deep and “allows wokeism to find its home at the heart of that American soul,” said Ramaswamy, and secular religions like “scientism.” Instead, we need to fill that hole with something rich and meaningful “that dilutes the poison [victimhood] to irrelevance said, Ramaswamy.
Antifa and Black Lives Matter demonstrators protest on election night near the White House in Washington, on Nov. 3, 2020. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images)
The Solution Is Striving for Excellence
This massive gap must be filled with purpose, and affirmative American values including “unapologetic pursuit of excellence, individual self-actualization,” said Ramaswamy, otherwise people will be left in the perpetual state of victimhood.
“The truth that people don’t like to hear is that “a culture committed to excellence demands inequality of results, demands inequity of results,” said Ramaswamy. In the pursuit of excellence, not everyone will get to the same finish line, whether a basketball player, a teacher, or a student, he added.
The system is suffering from a lack of excellence, which in turn has at least weakened if not destroyed the merit-based system and for this reason, most people don’t trust institutions said, Ramaswamy.
Those in charge of the “institutions are behaving not only in ways that dilute the purpose of those institutions, but are also put in those positions in ways that betray the principles of merit.”
He thinks that people would have less resentment toward wealthy capitalists if they could trust they achieved their success through merit and hard work instead of being born into wealth and would trust the system if merit was used instead of policies like affirmative action.
(Deemerwha studio/Shutterstock)
ESG Capitalism Preys on Victimhood
“Does the diversity, equity, inclusion-cancer in this country play a role in creating that unearned status? Of course, it does. I think many people are put in those positions for reasons that have little to do with their job qualifications,” said Ramaswamy.
The problem with this new trend of so-called stakeholder “woke” capitalism, or ESG-informed capitalism, is it may seem to promote justice and equity but it takes away democratic power from the people, he continued.
These environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policies have come out of the World Economic Forum’s climate and economic goals. The environmental component includes things such as transitioning to solar energy and divesting from fossil fuels and shifting to electric vehicles from gasoline-powered cars.
The social component includes racial and gender equity, diversity training for employees, economic justice, and gun control. The governance component focus on how companies are run and include racial and gender quotas for corporate boards, management, and staff, and in many cases hiring activists to these positions.
In this current corporate model, board members’ power to affect politics is greater than the average citizens’ said Ramaswamy.
“Because your [board members’] say on how we fight climate change if you have a seat in a corporate boardroom, is more impactful than my seat at the ballot box.” This allows the corporations to impose their political agenda on the average citizen said, Ramaswamy.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the Phoenix Convention Center in PhoenixI on Aug. 31, 2016. (Ross D. Franklin/AP photo)
Conservative Victimhood
Prioritizing entitlement over merit has created resentment and mistrust in the system from whites and Asians, who feel victimized by policies including affirmative action and student loan forgiveness.
“Both sides [liberals and conservatives] are infected with same cancer, yet still continuing to fight each other not knowing that they’re actually members of the same victimhood tribe.”
Many economic conditions and policies have disenfranchised the U.S. working class and created the conditions for those people to then elect former President Donald Trump said, Ramaswamy.
“Trumpian victimhood justified reasons for victimhood that resulted in the election of Trump and in 2016, as the expression of that frustration,” said Ramaswamy.
“The black victimhood epidemic is now creating a new epidemic of white victimhood culture in our country. Second-generation Asian kids are now growing up in this country trying to describe themselves as persons of color, inventing hardships for themselves that they didn’t actually go through, but their parents or their grandparents actually did in coming to this country,” said Ramaswamy.
“We have this victimhood metastasis where everyone wants to think of themselves as a victim. We have to recognize there is no winner in America’s oppression Olympics, there is no gold medalist. If there’s a gold medalist, maybe it’s China.
“Everyone might have real valid reasons for their claims on victimhood, but start to forget about your claim on victimhood and reclaim your claim on excellence,” said Ramaswamy. “We’re going to have to return to reviving that national spirit if we’re to have a chance of passing the torch on to that next generation.”
A woman waves an American flag to greet motorists as they head to vote in the U.S. midterm election at The Cesar Chavez Cultural Center in San Luis, Arizona, on Nov. 8, 2022. (Sandy Huffaker/AFP via Getty Images)
Forgiveness With Accountability
One of the first steps toward reviving national identity is for each group to forgive the other, “But that doesn’t mean if you commit a crime, you don’t do your time. That doesn’t mean that if you fail as a leader that you aren’t put out of a job so that somebody else is put in that spot in return,” said Ramaswamy.
“I think the path of victimhood [to] excellence runs through forgiveness [and] I think it runs through hardship,” said Ramaswamy.
“If we can take the hardship that I think we’re going to encounter in the next couple of years, but remind ourselves that hardship is not the same thing as victimhood, then hardship can be what reminds us of who we are both as individuals and as a people. Then we will be stronger for it as individuals and as a nation on the other side of it.”
The Arizona Attorney General’s Elections Integrity Unit sent a letter to Maricopa County officials demanding a formal response about problems that took place with voting on Nov. 8.
In a letter to Civil Division Chief Thomas Liddy of the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Wright said the AG’s office had “received hundreds of complaints since Election Day,” and the complaints “go beyond pure speculation [and] include first-hand witness accounts that raise concerns regarding Maricopa County’s lawful compliance with Arizona election law.”
According to Maricopa County election officials, at least 60 of 223 voting locations experienced technical problems related to ballot-on-demand (BOD) printers having “non-uniform” printer configuration settings.
These non-uniform settings resulted in some ballots being “unable to be read by on-site ballot tabulators.”
County officials estimate the technical problems may have affected more than 17,000 ballots on Election Day.
“Based on sworn complaints submitted by election workers employed by Maricopa County, the BOD printers were tested on Monday, Nov. 7, without any apparent problems,” Wright said in the letter (pdf).
“Many of those election workers report that despite the successful testing the night before, the tabulators began experiencing problems reading ballots printed by the BOD printers within the first thirty minutes of voting on Tuesday, November 8, 2022.”
The letter said that based on a “plethora of reports from election workers, poll watchers, and voters, including the county’s admission of widespread printer problems,” the Elections Integrity Unit requested: the voting locations that had problems with either BOD printers or tabulation; the specific problems at each voting location; any other issues related to BOD printers and/or tabulators that may have contributed to the problems at voting locations; a comprehensive log of all changes to the BOD printer configuration settings (to include the identity of individuals making changes); Maricopa County’s standards for the BOD printer configuration settings; the precise time the non-uniform printer configuration settings were found to be the root cause of the problem; and the method used to update or reconfigure the printer configuration settings at each voting location.
The Elections Integrity Unit will also look into Election Day “check-out” procedures by which affected voters received provisional ballots or instructions to go to another polling location.
Wright said the unit also requests a detailed report on poll worker training regarding check-out procedures and the “legal basis” for these procedures.
The unit also wants to know “why Maricopa continued to publicly encourage voters to leave a voting location after having been notified … that poll workers appeared to be improperly trained on ‘check-out’ procedures.”
“Due to the widespread problems in non-uniform printer configuration settings, many voters were unable to tabulate their ballots on Election Day using on-site tabulators,” Wright said in the letter.
“Instead, voters were instructed to deposit their ballot in ‘Door 3.’”
Maricopa officials have said that the ballots would be taken at the end of the day to the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center to be counted.
Wright said in the letter that the county “appears to have failed to adhere to the statutory guidelines in segregating, counting, tabulating, tallying, and transporting Door 3 ballots.
“In fact, Maricopa County has admitted that, in some voting locations, Door 3 non-tabulated ballots were commingled with tabulated ballots at the voting location.”
In sworn testimony, one poll watcher indicated that more than 1,700 Door 3 non-tabulated ballots from one voting location were “placed in black duffle bags” meant for tabulated votes.
“Arizonans deserve a full report and accounting of the myriad problems that occurred in relation to Maricopa County’s administration of the 2022 general election,” Wright said.
Wright said the issues are related to “Maricopa County’s ability to lawfully certify election results” and requested a response from the county by Nov. 28.
An overlooked memory card in Cobb County, Georgia, with uncounted ballots changed the final results of a special election, officials have said.
The county’s Board of Elections and Registration voted to recertify the results of the Nov. 8 Kennesaw City Council special election during a Nov. 18 meeting, according to a statement.
“The recertification was necessary after workers discovered a memory card had not been included in the previous results. The additional ballots resulted in a change in the Kennesaw City Council Post 1 Special Election,” the release said.
Madelyn Orochena was originally declared the winner of the special election. However, when additional ballots were located on the memory card, Lynette Burnette was shown as the winner of the race by 31 votes, officials told local media.
“Unfortunately, once found we did upload it, and it changed the outcome of the Kennesaw City Council race,” Janine Eveler, Cobb County’s director of elections, told local media outlets.
Cobb election officials said that the memory card was located in Kennesaw when workers were preparing for an audit of the election, according to 11Alive. Further details weren’t provided about why the card was overlooked or where it was located.
Orochena wrote in a Facebook post that she would file a complaint with the Georgia Secretary of State’s office.
“I planned to celebrate with family and friends and supporters afterwards. We had no reason to expect otherwise,” Orochena told WSB-TV, adding that she’s “just doing all that I can do that’s within my rights to regain some confidence that this was a fair election.”
Meanwhile, Burnette released a statement to Fox5 that said she’s “humbled to have the opportunity to serve the people of Kennesaw, it may have been an unconventional election … I look forward to keeping Kennesaw the best community.”
Following the Dec. 6 runoff election between Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) and Republican candidate Herschel Walker, Cobb County officials will investigate how the memory card was overlooked, officials told local media.
Forty-four percent of medical schools have tenure and promotion policies that reward scholarship on “diversity, inclusion, and equity.” Seventy percent make students take a course on “diversity, inclusion, or cultural competence.” And 79 percent require that all hiring committees receive “unconscious bias” training or include “equity advisors”—people whose job it is to ensure diversity among the faculty.
Those are just some of the findings from a new report by the Association of American Medical Colleges, which together with the American Medical Association accredits every medical school in the United States. The report, “The Power of Collective Action: Assessing and Advancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Efforts at AAMC Medical Schools,” is based on a survey of 101 medical school deans—representing nearly two thirds of American medical schools—who were given a list of diversity policies and asked to indicate which ones they had implemented.
The results paint a striking portrait of ideological capture: At many medical schools, concerns about social justice have saturated every layer of institutional decision-making, particularly the hiring and admissions process, a trend some doctors say will undermine meritocracy and endanger patients.
The report indicates that more than a third of medical schools offer extra funding to departments that hit diversity targets, half require job applicants to submit diversity statements, and over two thirds “require departments/units to assemble a diverse pool of candidates for faculty positions.”
In addition, every school reported using a “holistic admissions” process—a euphemism for affirmative action—that assessed applicants’ grades and test scores in light of their race, lowering the academic bar for groups “underrepresented in medicine.”
“We’re dealing with life and death here,” said Jeff Singer, a general surgeon from Arizona. “I want to know that my doctor got their degree because they are smart and know what they’re doing.”
Released November 10, the report comes in the wake of a yearlong campaign by the Association of American Medical Colleges to inject “diversity, equity, and inclusion” into the accreditation process. A year ago, the group put out guidelines calling meritocracy a “malignant narrative,” a view critics said at the time would lower admissions standards and endanger lives. And in July, it required all medical schools to incorporate “diversity, equity, and inclusion” lessons into their curricula, stating that they should impart a “critical understanding of unjust systems of oppressions.”
The survey appears to have been part of that campaign. All schools that completed it received a score grading their DEI efforts, which marked any policies not implemented as “areas for improvements.” One of the best uses of the survey, the report said, is for schools to show that they are meeting the “accreditation requirements for DEI.”
Feeling the heat of those requirements, medical schools have lowered standards for all students, even the top-performers, to avert a scenario in which dropout rates explode. “Once you take in a cohort of students who struggle, you have to ratchet down the entire curriculum,” said Stanley Goldfarb, a professor at University of Pennsylvania Medical School, a Washington Free Beacon enthusiast, and the father of Free Beacon chairman Michael Goldfarb. “So everyone gets through with much less rigorous courses.”
Several doctors also voiced concern about mandating DEI coursework, which they said would leave less time for other, more essential subjects.
“If you’re bleeding out from a gunshot wound, you need the doctor who knows how to save your life, not the one who can tell you about implicit bias,” said Laura Morgan, a nurse in Dallas, Texas, who lost her job at a teaching hospital, Baylor Scott & White Health, after she refused, in a recent diversity training, to affirm that all white people were racist.
The Association of American Medical Colleges told the Free Beacon that it supports all of the policies listed in the report, arguing that they “contribute to a diverse, equitable, and inclusive culture and climate for students, faculty, staff, and administrators.”
“Our member medical schools and teaching hospitals have an obligation to address the factors that drive racism and bias in health care,” said David Acosta, the group’s chief diversity officer.
Not all of these policies are entirely new. “Culturally responsive care,” the idea that doctors should have some fluency in their patients’ values and upbringing, has been a staple of medical education since the 1970s, Goldfarb and Singer said, and—in moderation—is an appropriate thing to teach.
But, Goldfarb added, that is a far cry from requiring entire courses on “cultural competence.”
“All this can be done in two lectures,” Goldfarb said. “The problem is that it inevitably expands.”
The report suggests that medical schools are sinking significant time and energy into their diversity initiatives. Beyond changing the curriculum and hiring process, 75 percent of surveyed medical schools have advocated for legislation related to “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” and 81 percent have modified “communications, branding, icons, or displays that may be perceived as noninclusive.”
Schools are also collecting detailed demographic data on their faculty members and students—an ostensibly neutral practice that has been leveraged for ideological ends. Hiring committees often keep track of faculty promotions by race and gender, the report notes, then use that information to ensure “equity is maintained in advancement decisions.”
All told, 85 percent of schools said they’d used “demographic data to promote change within the institution.”
Eventually, the report implies, that number should be 100 percent. Medical schools are “creating a holistic strategy where DEI is integrated into all operations and mission areas,” the report says. “The findings in this report prompt further exploration of how effective DEI practices can be embedded into the entire infrastructure of medical schools.”
Sen. Raphael Warnock (D., Ga.) claims his church’s building does not evict residents
ATLANTA—A Vietnam veteran says he still faces eviction from the low-income apartment building owned by Sen. Raphael Warnock’s (D., Ga.) church, even though he paid his past-due rent.
Columbia Residential, which manages Ebenezer Baptist Church’s low-income apartment building in Atlanta, served a dispossessory notice to Phillip White on Sept. 20 for $192 in unpaid rent. White, an African-American Marine veteran who served two combat tours in Vietnam, provided money order receipts to the Free Beacon on Thursday showing he made a $542 rent payment on Nov. 2. But Columbia Residential hasn’t filed a motion to dismiss its case, indicating it still intends to evict White.
It’s not clear why Columbia’s dispossessory notice against White remains open following his Nov. 2 rent payment. Warnock said in October that no one had been evicted from his church’s property, a claim undermined by court records showing that authorities have carriedout two court-ordered writs of possession against residents since the start of the pandemic.
White said he expects the building to resume evictions after Warnock is clear of his Dec. 6 runoff election against Republican Herschel Walker.
“He said there would be no evictions,” White, 69, said. “He knew that was a lie. What he was really saying is there would be no evictions until after the election.”
Warnock has repeatedly dodged questions about evictions from his church’s apartment building since the Free Beacon broke the story in October. On Thursday, Warnock refused to tell reporters if he thought the eviction notices were wrongly sent, or if he had even looked into the issue. Earlier, on Sunday, the Democrat railed against the “vicious and venomous” critics of his church, saying they “attack the church of Jesus Christ.”
Ebenezer Baptist Church, which pays Warnock a $7,417 monthly housing allowance, owns 99 percent of the dilapidated Columbia Tower at MLK Village. The church tapped Columbia Residential, one of the nation’s leading eviction filers, to manage the property on its behalf.
Walker launched an attack ad on Friday accusing Warnock of preying on the poor while lavishing himself with lucrative benefits from his church. The Republican has also offered to pay the past-due rents of the more than a dozen residents of Columbia Tower who have faced eviction since the start of the pandemic. But White said Thursday he didn’t want the help.
“I help me. I got to tighten my belt and do the things I need to do,” the veteran said. “If I do that, I’ll feel good. I’ll sleep better at night, sleep real good.”
Warnock called his opponent’s offer to pay the back rents a cynical ploy to “exploit” the residents facing eviction from his church’s apartment building. He also accused Walker of sullying the name of civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. for “short-term political gain.”
Thursday was the second time White spoke with the Free Beacon. White, who doesn’t own a phone, told the Free Beacon in early October the building managers at Columbia Tower treat him “like a piece of shit.”
The Free Beacon had unfettered access to Columbia Tower and spoke with residents inside the building when this reporter first visited the property in early October. On Thursday, however, a security guard who identified himself as Jones was on site to keep reporters out.
“They don’t want no media in the building,” he said.
Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake proclaimed on Nov. 19 that she will become governor, after the state attorney general’s office demanded explanations about alleged Election Day problems in the state’s largest county.
“The way they run elections in Maricopa County is worse than in banana republics around this world,” Lake, a Republican rising star, told the Daily Mail.
Lake was responding to Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s office opening an inquiry (pdf) into polling issues in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix and other cities, following ballot-tabulation issues that were confirmed by Maricopa County officials on Nov. 8. Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Wright demanded that evidence be turned over “on or before Maricopa County submits its official canvass to the Secretary of State.”
As of the morning of Nov. 20, Lake was trailing Democrat Secretary of State Katie Hobbs by about 18,000 votes. Last week, Hobbs declared victory in the race.
Lake, a former anchor for FOX10 in Phoenix, told the Mail that she believes “at the end of the day, this will be turned around.”
“I don’t know what the solution will be but I still believe I will become governor, and we are going to restore honesty to our elections,” she said.
On Nov. 17, Lake said she would continue her fight in the state’s governor’s race after Hobbs declared victory.
“Now I’m busy here collecting evidence and data. Rest assured I have assembled the best and brightest legal team. And we are exploring every avenue to correct the many wrongs that have been done this past week,” she said. “I’m doing everything in my power to right these wrongs. My resolve to fight for you is higher than ever.”
Since then, Lake has posted videos from voters who say they experienced issues during Election Day.
Arizona AG Investigation
On Nov. 19, Wright wrote to Maricopa County about printer problems on Election Day, which reportedly sparked confusion among voters. Maricopa County official Bill Gates and Recorder Stephen Richer on Nov. 8 told reporters that a printer issue was to blame and instructed affected voters to place their ballots in drop boxes.
Arizona Secretary of State and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs speaks at a press conference calling for abortion rights outside the Evo A. DeConcini Courthouse in Tucson, Ariz., on Oct. 7, 2022. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
“These complaints go beyond pure speculation, but include first-hand witness accounts that raise concerns regarding Maricopa’s lawful compliance with Arizona election law,” Wright wrote. “Furthermore, statements made by both Chairman Gates and Recorder Richer, along with information Maricopa County released through official modes of communication appear to confirm potential statutory violations of title 16.”
Hobbs declared victory earlier in the week after The Associated Press and other news outlets called the race for her.
A spokesperson for her office told local media last week that she’s preparing a transition team.
“Our job is to find the people who are, whether they’re Democrat, independent, Republican … that reflect Arizona, reflect the diversity of Arizona, and can help deal with some of the challenges that the administration will face,” spokesman Mike Haener said.
In the leadup to the election, Hobbs faced criticism from Lake and other Republicans for not recusing herself from handling the state’s election duties. Two former Arizona secretaries of state had told Time magazine that she should have stepped away from those duties.
But Hobbs, in several interviews, said that her decision wasn’t out of the ordinary.
“Elected secretaries of state in Arizona have overseen elections where they’re on the ballot since statehood. This has never been an issue until now,” Hobbs told CNN several weeks ago.
The U.S. Army is belittling and putting pressure on soldiers who are seeking religious accommodation to the vaccine mandate, according to service members who have refused to take the jab. Prohibiting off-base travel and promotions are only a small part of the greater push to compel service members like them to get out of the Army, they said.
Such actions come as the Army, like other branches of the military is struggling with recruitment woes; the Army has only met 52 percent of its fiscal year 2022 recruiting goal.
As a member of one of the Army’s most elite military units trained to conduct special operations worldwide, Staff Sergeant Drew Miller (a pseudonym) told The Epoch Times, “Soldiers who continue to object to the COVID-19 vaccine are being punished, not physically, but in a way that’s forcing them out of the Army.”
“Several years of training and funding put into these individuals to become some the Army’s best is currently being wasted,” he said, having served over 10 years in the service. Miller spoke to The Epoch Times using a pseudonym due to fear of reprisals.
“I and many others are simply stuck at [a military installation] doing nothing associated with what we’ve been trained to do,” he added, lamenting that “our job has been basically taken from us.”
On top of that, Miller said, some of the Army’s most elite teams are being broken apart. “And in the process, we’re being hit with every kind of fearmongering, coercion, and bully tactic that you can think of to get us out of the Army,” he added.
The belittlement, according to Miller, began immediately following Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s August 2021 announcement of a military vaccine mandate. “Shortly after, they brought us all together in an auditorium in front of the peanut gallery to tell us that the reason America was in decline was because of [unvaccinated] people like us,” he said. Essentially, various members of command said, “people like us included all those not willing to give into the unlawful order,” he added.
Miller described the treatment he and others received on a regular basis as “mind-blowing.” “Each of us has the ability to critically think and has the ability to differentiate between a lawful and unlawful order,” he said. Miller, like others who oppose the mandate, believes that the mandate is unlawful.
He said that even though there are legitimate reasons to refuse the COVID-19 vaccine, “we’re being told that the military has no use for us, and they don’t need people like us who are questioning things.”
Careers are being threatened and soldiers are being coerced, he said. “We’re being told that if we don’t get the shot, we’re going to get kicked out and not able to find a job.” And while he and several others are holding strong against the threats, Miller said, “We’re sitting at desks and typing on a computer rather than learning, training, and doing our jobs.”
Soldiers are “being brushed under the rug and basically sent to a dark office or dark corner somewhere.” That, he said, is “wasteful.” Miller is extremely concerned that “many [American] people don’t understand how significant this is and how it is tearing apart our nation’s military.”
While the Air Force, Navy, and Marines have been temporarily barred by court orders from punishing service members who have sought religious exemptions to the vaccine mandate, the Army does not face such restrictions.
‘Degraded, Demeaned, and Belittled’
After four years of service, Army Specialist John Sisler (a pseudonym) said his immediate command in September 2021 initially supported his request for religious accommodation to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate. As of today, he still awaits a final determination.
While other unvaccinated soldiers were denied, Sisler slipped through the cracks earlier this year and was allowed to attend the National Training Center in Fort Irwin, California. After completing about two of four weeks of valuable training, command changed their decision. “They pulled me out of the box,” he said. “I begged to stay, because I didn’t want to miss the training or leave the people I was training with.”
Sisler then returned to a rear detachment and was told that his religious accommodation packet was lost. “I was given about six hours to resubmit everything by the end of the day,” he said. “Thankfully, I had the wherewithal to keep all the documents from before and I used that to resubmit and get new signatures from an entirely new command.”
A few months ago, the new packet was not denied, but “rejected and kicked back,” he said. “All my paperwork came back because it was supposedly incomplete.” According to him, it was not complete because a senior officer failed to document and file one of the documents properly. After that, he said, “everyone but the religious head, the chaplain, recommended a denial.”
And rather than being allowed to restart the packet, Sisler said, “the package was pushed back to the top without my approval in the months to follow; it was pushed back up without my acknowledgment and signature.” As a result, when it comes back again, Sisler said he is “taking everything to the inspector general and filing complaints about all the broken rules and unlawful actions.”
As he awaits this next step, Sisler said he’s been “degraded, demeaned, and belittled” in his new unit. When there is a face-to-face formation of soldiers, he is told to “go away.” Strangely, he is also not included in “any group chats” or “social messaging” that would typically help keep him informed. The intent here, he believes, is to “say I failed to report, so they could start demoting me or punishing me.”
“I’ve been told that I’m not a real solider and would be chaptered out of the military,” said Sisler. “I’m being unfairly treated because of my religious objection to the vaccine.” He also said that some commanders are “simply waiting for religious objectors to get removed.” As he awaits a final determination on his religious accommodation request, he said, “I’m just keeping my head down and trying to get out when I can.”
Miller and Sisler emphasized that their views don’t reflect those of the Department of Defense or the Department of the Army. Neither the Department of Defense nor the Department of the Army returned requests for comment from The Epoch Times.
Multiple provisions of the Respect for Marriage Act the Senate is expected to approve after Thanksgiving threaten thousands of Christian churches, as well as faith-based social service agencies and businesses, with the loss of their federal tax exemption, according to legal experts interviewed by The Epoch Times.
The threat isn’t directly stated in the proposal but rather is a result of the proposal’s addition of a new limitation on religious practice and expression. The proposal repeals the 1993 Defense of Marriage Act—which defines marriage as between one man and one woman—and instead recognizes unions of any two individuals, consistent with the Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision.
The Senate voted 62–37 on Nov. 16 in favor of cloture, which ended debate on the proposal and cleared the way for a vote on final passage that’s expected to take place the week after Thanksgiving. A dozen Republican senators voted with all 50 Democrats to end debate. The House of Representatives approved the measure in July.
“If a nonprofit is engaged in behavior that is ‘contrary to public policy,’ then the IRS has the discretion to strip that organization of its tax-exempt status,” Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) senior counsel Greg Baylor told The Epoch Times.
“Our concern is the IRS is going to point to the Respect for Marriage Act and say, ‘These organizations that aren’t recognizing same-sex marriage are acting inconsistently with public policy articulated in the Respect for Marriage Act,’” Baylor said.
Heritage Foundation Vice President for Domestic Policy Roger Severino was even more blunt in his assessment of the proposal, telling The Epoch Times: “This legislation is nothing more than a way to weaponize the federal government against people of faith, and it offers no additional benefits or protections that same-sex couples don’t already have.
“Instead, this bill encourages radical activists to sue religious schools, colleges, and adoption agencies and will empower Biden’s 87,000 new IRS agents to revoke the tax-exempt status of faith-based nonprofits. Congress should be protecting our First Amendment rights instead of pushing divisive legislation that nobody needs.”
Proponents of the proposal agreed to an amendment before the cloture vote that they claimed would eliminate the act’s threats to religious freedom. But opponents, led by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), rejected the amendment and offered an alternative.
No vote on the Lee amendment was allowed by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), but it may yet be considered prior to the post-Thanksgiving proceedings. Lee described the amendment that was incorporated in the proposal as “severely anemic and largely illusory.”
The Utah Republican warned colleagues: “Religious Americans will be subject to potentially ruinous litigation, while the tax-exempt status of certain charitable organizations, educational institutions, and nonprofits will be threatened. My amendment would have shored up these vulnerabilities. It is a shame it wasn’t included.”
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said in a statement following the cloture vote that he would’ve supported the Respect for Marriage Act if senators had agreed to include the Lee amendment.
“The substitute amendment did not provide sufficient protection for those with strongly held religious beliefs and leaves a lane open for discrimination by activist groups, state governments, and the IRS. Senator Lee proposed an amendment that would have prohibited the government from taking such action, and even offered to vote for the bill if they accepted it. I would have also supported the bill with his language,” Johnson said.
“The fact that the bill’s sponsors rejected his offer speaks volumes. Religious liberty should be upheld for all and those with sincerely held religious beliefs should not be discriminated against for their views on marriage.”
Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) denounced Senate colleagues in a floor speech for not allowing any amendments to the proposal other than the one offered by the bill’s proponents that Lee condemned as too weak.
“Today, my colleagues moved forward on a bill to open up debate—without amendment, may I add—on a bill that would certainly affect the religious liberty of countless people across the country,” Lankford said, adding that dozens of religious liberty groups oppose the bill.
“That’s not just my opinion. Religious liberty groups from all across the nation and from all backgrounds have already been speaking out on this issue. Just in the last 24 hours, the Alliance Defending Freedom, the American Association of Christian Schools, Catholic Vote, the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, the Centennial Institute, the Christian Employers Alliance, Concerned Women for America, Eagle Forum, Ethics and Religion Commission, the Faith and Freedom Coalition, the Family Research Council, the Family Policy Alliance, the Heritage Foundation, Lifeline Children’s Services, the Religious Broadcasters Association, Religious Freedom Institute, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and the Ethics and Public Policy Center have all spoken out and said this bill that is currently on the floor of the Senate will damage religious liberty.”
The Oklahoma Republican further noted that the bill provides a private right of action for an individual to sue another individual unless the alleged violation involved concerns religious liberty.
“If there is discrimination against someone’s religious liberty or their personal beliefs or their entities’ beliefs, they get this same private right of action, so the private right of action only goes against people that have religious objections. Those religious individuals, if they are discriminated against, they are on their own,” Lankford said.
“Religious institutions are rising up, reading the text of the bill rather than just listening to the debate on this bill and saying, ‘There is a problem here.’
“This bill puts faith-based child welfare organizations who are operating in accordance with their sincerely held religious beliefs, aiming to place children in loving families, it puts them in jeopardy.”
Lankford reminded his colleagues that Catholic-based services “have already been shut out of the child welfare systems in Illinois, in the District of Columbia, California, and in Massachusetts. And then this bill is coming.”
The Department of Justice on Nov. 17 announced a new process that it says will make it easier for individuals struggling with their student loan debt to discharge it in bankruptcy.
“The new process will help ensure consistent treatment of the discharge of federal student loans, reduce the burden on borrowers of pursuing such proceedings and make it easier to identify cases where discharge is appropriate,” the DOJ said in a press release.
Currently, individuals who wish to discharge their student loan debt face a tough process in which they must demonstrate that they will suffer “undue hardship” unless the debt is discharged. As part of the undue hardship analysis, courts will evaluate the borrower’s past, present, and future financial circumstances to see if they qualify for relief.
The process is much more complicated and costly when compared to other types of consumer debt like credit card and medical bills, which are automatically wiped away in normal bankruptcy proceedings.
Under the new process, Department of Education data and a new “borrower-completed attestation form” will be used to help assist the government in assessing the borrower’s request to discharge their debt.
The DOJ noted that while the bankruptcy judge ultimately makes the final decision as to whether or not to grant a discharge, the new process provides clear standards to DOJ attorneys for recommending student debt discharges without the need for “unnecessarily burdensome and time-consuming investigations.”
It added that the new process will also help borrowers who are unsure if they are entitled to relief through bankruptcy to more easily identify if they meet the criteria for a discharge.
Activists rally outside the White House to call on President Joe Biden to cancel student loan debt, in Washington, on July 27, 2022. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
‘Better, Fairer, More Transparent Process’
“Today’s guidance outlines a better, fairer, more transparent process for student loan borrowers in bankruptcy,” said Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta. “It will allow Justice Department attorneys to more easily identify cases in which we can recommend the discharge of a borrower’s student loans. We are grateful to the Department of Education for its partnership in developing this guidance.”
According to the American Bankruptcy Law Journal, just 0.1 percent of student-loan borrowers attempt to discharge their debt through bankruptcy.
The new guidance comes as the Biden administration is facing a string of legal challenges to its costly student loan forgiveness plan.
Biden announced in August that he plans to cancel up to $10,000 in student loan debt for individuals making less than $125,000 a year, or as much as $20,000 for eligible borrowers who were also Pell Grant recipients.
The administration began accepting applications for the program in October, with Biden stating that the application will take “less than five minutes” to complete and will be a “game changer for millions of Americans.”
However, the administration has since stopped accepting applications for the program after Judge Mark Pittman of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas on Nov. 8 struck down the program and ruled it “an unconstitutional exercise of Congress’s legislative power” that “must be vacated.”
Several other courts have also ruled the program is unconstitutional.
In a court filing on Thursday, cited by The Associated Press, the Biden administration said that it plans to ask the Supreme Court to reinstate the debt cancellation program and maintains that it has the legal authority to roll out the program.
Former President Donald Trump’s account on Twitter will be reactivated following a poll of the social media platform’s users on the matter, Twitter’s owner Elon Musk announced on Nov. 19.
“The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated. Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” Musk said in a post linking to the polling decision, using a Latin phrase meaning “the voice of the people, the voice of God.”
The poll was open for 24 hours.
With more than 15 million votes tallied, the poll indicated that 51.8 percent of users wanted Trump to be allowed to post on Twitter, while a minority 48.2 percent wanted the former president to remain banned.
It isn’t clear if Trump will return to Twitter. While past public statements indicate that the former president has no plans to return to Twitter, preferring his own social media platform Truth Social, some actions have implied a potential return.
Lawyers for the former president on Nov. 14 asked the appeals court to revive a lawsuit against Twitter challenging Trump’s permanent suspension.
In the lawsuit (pdf), the lawyers allege that government officials have used social media platforms as “cat’s paws” to suppress opinions “that turn out to be correct or at least debatable,” citing Hunter Biden’s laptop, the COVID-19 pandemic, and 2020 election integrity.
The action will no longer be needed.
Trump encouraged users on Truth Social to engage with the Twitter poll regarding his reinstatement, teasing a potential return on the platform. But he offered reassurances to users of his platform that a Twitter reinstatement wouldn’t mean an end of Truth Social.
“Vote now with positivity, but don’t worry, we aren’t going anywhere. Truth Social is special!”
Within an hour of Musk’s announcement, Trump’s Twitter account appeared to be reactivated on the platform. Trump’s last post before his ban is dated Jan. 8, 2021.
“To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th,” the post reads.
This and another post reading, “The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!” were cited by Twitter on Jan. 8, 2021, as justification for the ban.
Twitter stated that Trump was removed from the platform for an alleged “violation of the Glorification of Violence Policy.”
“After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them—specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter—we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence,” the platform said in a statement at the time.
In recent days, Twitter has also reactivated the accounts of Jordan Peterson, comedian Kathy Griffin, and the satirical Christian website The Babylon Bee.
Peterson has previously expressed personal differences with Trump. However, he has expressed support for Trump’s freedom of speech and letting the people decide what to think of the former president over Twitter’s content moderators.
“Probably best to reinstate Trump too. Let him do what he needs to do, and let the people decide. Right out in the open. Where such things should be decided,” Peterson wrote.
Mimi Nguyen Ly and Rita Li contributed to this report.
A former U.S. Border Patrol agent, his wife, and a male accomplice have been charged with unlawfully hiring illegal aliens as drivers for their trucking company and fraudulently obtaining immigration permits, prosecutors said.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas said in a statement that former Border Patrol agent Ricardo Gonzalez, his wife Natalia Gonzalez, and Alex Lopez were arrested on Nov. 17 and charged for their roles in a conspiracy to hire illegal aliens.
The three accused conspirators, who were responsible for running the day-to-day operations at Gonmor Inc., a Laredo-based commercial trucking company, allegedly prepared fraudulent paperwork allowing the illegal immigrants to obtain an I-94 permit to stay in the United States longer than 30 days.
The paperwork allegedly included a letter from a fake Mexican trucking company stating that the individuals were employed there as truck drivers and requested that they receive an I-94 permit so they could travel into the United States.
Illegal aliens seeking entry were allegedly instructed by the conspirators to present the letter to border officials in Laredo and apply for the permit. Once the individuals received the I-94, they were hired by the conspirators to transport cargo throughout the United States even though they were not legally eligible to work in the country.
“Gonzalez is a former BP agent and allegedly utilized his knowledge, training, and experience to facilitate the employment of undocumented individuals and obtaining the I-94 permits,” prosecutors said in the statement.
A conviction on the lesser charge of conspiracy to fraudulently obtain immigration permits can result in a penalty of up to five years behind bars.
The more serious charges of conspiring to encourage an illegal alien to remain in the United States or conspiring to shield them from detection each carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.
It comes amid what many have described as a crisis along the U.S.-Mexico border, with millions of illegal immigrants having crossed into the United States since President Joe Biden took office last year, drawing Republican condemnation and accusations.
The influx has seen Texas Gov. Greg Abbott turn to busing illegal aliens out of the state and toward predominantly Democrat-run areas of the country in a bid to relieve overwhelmed Texas communities.
Also, Abbott has invoked “invasion clauses” in response to the border crisis, allowing his administration to use the National Guard to repel illegal aliens, construct a border wall, and deploy gunboats.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) guidance for people to “stop” taking ivermectin for COVID-19 was informal and just a recommendation, government lawyers argued during a recent hearing.
“The cited statements were not directives. They were not mandatory. They were recommendations. They said what parties should do. They said, for example, why you should not take ivermectin to treat COVID-19. They did not say you may not do it, you must not do it. They did not say it’s prohibited or it’s unlawful. They also did not say that doctors may not prescribe ivermectin,” Isaac Belfer, one of the lawyers, said during a Nov. 1 hearing in federal court in Texas.
“They use informal language, that is true. It’s conversational but not mandatory.”
The hearing was held in a case brought by three doctors who say the FDA illegally interfered with their ability to prescribe medicine to their patients when it issued statements on ivermectin, an anti-parasitic that has shown positive results in some trials against COVID-19.
Ivermectin is approved by the FDA but not for COVID-19. Drugs are commonly used for nonapproved purposes in the United States; the practice is known as an off-label treatment.
The FDA created a webpage in 2021 titled “Why You Should Not Use Ivermectin to Treat or Prevent COVID-19” and later posted a link to the page on Twitter while writing: “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.”
A second post stated: “Hold your horses, y’all. Ivermectin may be trending, but it still isn’t authorized or approved to treat COVID-19.”
On a separate page, the FDA stated: “Q: Should I take ivermectin to prevent or treat COVID-19? A: No.”
Those actions interfered with the doctors’ practice of medicine, violating the laws including the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, the lawsuit alleges.
It asked the court to rule the actions unlawful and bar the FDA from directing or opining as to whether ivermectin should be used to treat COVID-19.
Jared Kelson, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, told the court during the hearing that that informal claim “doesn’t explain the language they actually used: ‘Stop it. Stop it with the ivermectin.’”
The FDA’s actions “clearly convey that this is not an acceptable way to treat these patients,” he argued.
Plaintiffs in the case include Dr. Paul Marik, who began utilizing ivermectin in his COVID-19 treatment protocol in 2020 while he was chief of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School and director of the intensive care unit at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital.
After the FDA’s statements, Marik was told to remove the protocol from the school’s servers while Sentara issued a memorandum to hospitals telling them to stop using ivermectin against COVID-19, with a citation to the FDA.
Marik was forced to resign from his positions because he couldn’t prescribe ivermectin because of the FDA’s statements, the suit alleges.
The government has moved to dismiss the complaint, asserting plaintiffs lack standing because the injuries can’t be traced back to the FDA.
Dr. Paul Marik in Kissimmee, Fla., on Oct. 14, 2022. (The Epoch Times)
More From the Hearing
During the recent hearing, which was on the motion to dismiss, the government stated that the FDA couldn’t be blamed for the injuries.
“Plaintiffs have also not shown that any of their claimed injuries are fairly traceable to defendants’ statements because their injuries were caused by independent third-party conduct that was not a predictable response to those statements,” Belfer said.
He noted that the FDA’s pages say people can use ivermectin if their health care provider prescribes it; argued that the statements “did not bind the public or FDA, did not interpret any substantive rules, and did not set agency policy”; and said the FDA’s position could change in the future if new data become available.
“They also do not have legal consequences for anyone but simply provide nonbinding recommendations to consumers,” he said.
Kelson disagreed.
“If the government is going to label ivermectin a horse medicine or a horse dewormer and promulgate the idea that it is only for animals, then the natural correlation is that doctors who prescribe it are horse doctors or quack doctors, which has played out,” he said. “That is enough of a harm to get into court” or have the motion to dismiss rejected, he said.
Ivermectin is used on animals in addition to humans. The FDA used a picture of a horse in its Twitter posts and on one of its pages.
“The government engaged in a singularly effective campaign here to malign a common drug that has been used for a very long time and has been dispensed in billions of doses. It’s one of the most famously safe drugs in the history of human medicine. And when people did exactly what the FDA said to ‘Stop it. Stop it with the ivermectin,’ I don’t understand how that would not be traceable back to the FDA,” Kelson said.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown, a Trump appointee overseeing the case, said he was most concerned about the social media statements because they didn’t include any qualifiers.
Belfer argued the statements were aimed at consumers and that the Twitter posts linked to one of the pages, which does include the qualifier.
“So it was predictable that if you include the link to the article, people will click on the link and will see the full article, which includes that disclaimer that if your doctor writes you a prescription, you should fill it exactly as prescribed,” he said.
“The plaintiffs, by their own admission, have continued to prescribe ivermectin. So they always had the authority. It may be that patients were not able to fill prescriptions, but the doctors themselves always had the authority.”
Brown said he appreciated the briefing from the parties and that he would rule “as quickly as we can for ya’ll.” As of Nov. 19, he hadn’t issued a ruling.
Ten days after Election Day, Alaska voters know that the U.S. Senate seat up for grabs in their state will remain in Republican hands, yet it remains unclear whether that person will be incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski or challenger Kelly Tshibaka.
With 95 percent of the ballots counted, Tshibaka held a slim lead with 104,898 votes (43.28 percent) compared to 104,470 (43.11 percent) for Murkowski, according to the Associated Press.
Since neither candidate reached the 50 percent threshold needed for a victory, Tshibaka and Murkowski will advance to the final round of a ranked-choice tabulation, it was announced on Nov. 18.
In 2020, Alaska voters narrowly approved a ballot measure that sent the top four finishers in nonpartisan primaries to ranked-choice general elections in which voters rank their top four candidates, regardless of party affiliation.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) speaks to reporters in Washington on May 18, 2022. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
If nobody reaches 50 percent of the vote in the first round, voters’ second, third and fourth options are counted until a candidate gets to 50 percent.
The first person who receives a majority of the vote wins.
Democrat Patricia Chesbro, who is currently in third with 24,377 votes (10.06 percent), will be removed from the ballot if Tshibaka or Murkowski do not reach the 50 percent threshold.
Republican Buzz Kelley also advanced from the August primary. He dropped out of the race in September and backed Tshibaka, but he still appeared on the ballot and received votes.
Ranked-choice voting results will be tabulated on Nov. 23 once all eligible ballots are reviewed and counted, according to the State of Alaska Division of Elections.
Murkowski, who is vying for her fourth full term, drew the ire of former President Donald Trump when she was one of seven Senate Republicans who voted to impeach him for the Jan. 6, 2021 breach of the U.S. Capitol. She also voted against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and was one of three Republicans who chose to confirm Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in April 2022.
Trump, who won Alaska by 10 percentage points in the 2020 presidential election, endorsed Tshibaka, the former director of Alaska’s Department of Administration.
The Senate Leadership Fund, which is aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), spent more than $5 million in Alaska supporting Murkowski and attacking Tshibaka.
When the ranked-choice tabulation takes place, Tshibaka is expected to get votes from Kelley supporters since he dropped out of the race and supported her. Most of Chesbro’s backers are expected to rank Murkowski ahead of Tshibaka since Murkowski’s strategy is to embrace moderates.
Cartels use Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, other sites to drive human smuggling schemes
The world’s largest social media companies are facing pressure from Republican lawmakers to “take immediate steps to stop facilitating illegal immigration” as cartels use their platforms to recruit drivers for human smuggling schemes.
In a Thursday letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Republican senators Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.), Thom Tillis (N.C.), and Steve Daines (Mont.) accused the company of failing to curtail the solicitation of those smuggling schemes on its platforms, which include Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Cartel smugglers often use those sites, the Wall Street Journalreported last month, to anonymously post advertisements promising thousands of dollars to Americans in border states if they complete a short driving job, which really consists of picking up illegal migrants who have just crossed into the United States. For Blackburn, Tillis, and Daines, Meta should be able to shut down those posts, which they say have “led to a devastating amount of drug and human trafficking and other forms of violent crime.”
“Although your company has developed—and long enjoyed the benefits of—incredibly complex algorithms and other technology to keep users addicted, you claim to be unable to curb these illegal immigration schemes,” the letter, which the Washington Free Beacon obtained exclusively, states. “You have the ability to address this problem, and it is critical that you take immediate steps to stop facilitating illegal immigration on your platform.”
Meta responded to the Journal‘s report by saying it “prohibits the facilitation of human smuggling and invests in technology and works with law enforcement to address the issue.” In late January, however, the company privately announced it would allow users to solicit human smugglers on its platforms, the Free Beacon reported. In an internal memo detailing the decision, Meta stressed the need to allow people to use Facebook and its other platforms to “seek safety or exercise their human rights,” a move it acknowledged comes with “tradeoffs” such as scrutiny from “law enforcement and government bodies.”
Meta is not the only social media giant that has a cartel problem. TikTok—whose CEO received a similar letter from Blackburn, Tillis, and Daines—has been flooded with cartel recruitment posts, which promise fast cash and lavish parties for those who drive for the criminal organizations. “Cartels are trying to get workers. … [They] show lots of money, they show lots of drinking, partying, and everything else,” Commander Jorge Esparza of the Brooks County Sheriff Department told the Free Beacon in May. “It’s like a joke on law enforcement,” Sgt. Aaron Moreno of the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Department added. “I’ve seen TikTok videos where there’s coyotes in a vehicle and they have a long rifle.”
Beyond Meta and TikTok, Blackburn, Tillis, and Daines also sent letters to executives at Snapchat and Twitter. The letters include a deadline of December 16 for the companies to answer an array of questions, including the volume of smuggling posts on their platforms, whether they use “algorithms and artificial intelligence” to identify and remove those posts, and how they “coordinate with law enforcement to help them identify people involved in smuggling groups.” None of the companies returned requests for comment.
Illegal immigration has exploded under President Joe Biden. Customs and Border Protection encountered more than two million migrants at the southern border in the last fiscal year alone, the first time that figure has been reached in American history. Still, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre assured reporters in September that the Biden administration has “taken unprecedented action over the past year and a half to secure our border.”
Sen. Bob Menendez (D., N.J.) and his wife are under federal investigation for allegedly taking gifts and services in exchange for political favors, the Wall Street Journalreported Friday.
Associates of Nadine Arslanian, who married Menendez in 2020, were subpoenaed by the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York. It is not clear what specific information the office is seeking.
The investigation dates back to 2019, according to the Journal:
Late that year, court records show, federal investigators executed search warrants at the home and office of Wael Hana, the founder of IS EG Halal, an Edgewater, N.J., company that was designated the only business allowed to certify halal meat being exported to Egypt.
Mr. Hana is an associate of Ms. Arslanian, according to the people familiar with the matter.
Prosecutors were investigating possible undisclosed foreign lobbying in the U.S. and other potential violations of federal law, according to court documents filed in 2020 by Lawrence Lustberg, a lawyer for Mr. Hana, who was seeking the return of property seized by the government.
Menendez was previously tried in 2017 in a public-corruption case, which ended in a mistrial. He was tried for allegedly taking $1 million in gifts—including private flights and trips—from a Florida doctor who wanted help with visas.
House Financial Services Committee chair Maxine Waters has dodged questions about crypto titan’s donations
Sam Bankman-Fried and executives at his cryptocurrency firm contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to members of the House committee that will hold hearings next month on the company’s collapse.
Bankman-Fried and his co-founders at FTX contributed $300,351 to nine members of the House Financial Services Committee, according to Federal Election Commission records. Some of the largest contributions were to Democrats on the committee’s Digital Assets Working Group, which worked on regulation of the crypto industry. Rep. Maxine Waters (D., Calif.), who chairs the committee, announced a probe this week into FTX’s collapse after the company declared bankruptcy, wiping out billions of dollars in customers’ portfolios. The Justice Department and Securities Exchange Commission are reportedly investigating Bankman-Fried for potential misuse of customer funds.
Bankman-Fried’s donations to committee members could raise concerns that the lawmakers will not adequately investigate the crypto kingpin, who spent millions on advertising, lobbying, and philanthropic causes to burnish his company’s image as an ethical crypto company in an industry rife with scam artists. Of the nine committee members who received contributions from Bankman-Fried, only Rep. Chuy Garcia (D., Ill.) has said he would return a $2,900 contribution from the billionaire. While Waters said the committee will investigate FTX’s “collapse,” the Democrat has no apparent plans to look into Bankman-Fried’s efforts to buy favor in Washington.
Waters dodged questions this week about whether she is concerned about Bankman-Fried’s political donations. “Well, I don’t want to get into that. As a matter of fact, both sides, Democrats and Republicans, have received donations,” she told Fox Business.
While Bankman-Fried has donated to Republicans, more than 95 percent of his contributions have gone to Democrats and Democratic committees. Along with top FTX executives, he contributed to seven Democrats and two Republicans on the Financial Services committee. They gave to five members of the committee’s Digital Assets Working Group, which Waters launched last year to “support responsible innovation that protects consumers and investors” and to craft regulations for the industry. To date, the Digital Assets Working Group has not proposed regulations for the industry, which some lawmakers say would have blunted the impact of FTX’s bankruptcy on its customers.
Garcia was the biggest recipient of Bankman-Fried cash. Bankman-Fried’s political action committee, Protect Our Future PAC, spent $199,851 on ads supporting Garcia, who serves on the committee’s Digital Assets Working Group. Bankman-Fried contributed another $2,900 to Garcia’s campaign.
Bankman-Fried and his associates gave to four other members of the Digital Assets Working Group, Reps. Ritchie Torres (D., N.Y.), Josh Gottheimer (D., N.J.), Jim Himes (D., Conn.), and Sean Casten (D., Ill.).
Bankman-Fried and his brother Gabriel gave $40,300 in all to Torres’s campaign and two of his political committees, the Torres Victory Fund and La Bamba PAC. Bankman-Fried and the head of FTX’s regulatory division gave $16,600 to Gottheimer, while other Bankman-Fried associates contributed $500 to Himes and $9,100 to Casten.
Casten has another link to the embattled crypto titan. Gabriel Bankman-Fried, who directs his brother’s political outreach, worked as a congressional aide for Casten until last year. He visited the White House on March 7 along with an adviser to the Democracy Alliance, the progressive network funded by Democratic billionaire donors.
Bankman-Fried contributed $11,600 to House Financial Services Committee members Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D., Mass.) and $5,000 to the super PAC for Rep. Cindy Axne (D., Iowa), an apparent violation of her self-imposed pledge to reject campaign donations from corporations.
His intensive lobbying campaign appeared to pay off before his company’s demise. He supported legislation proposed by Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D., Mich.) and Sen. John Boozman (R., Ark.) that would have subjected the crypto industry to regulation by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, not the larger and aggressive Securities and Exchange Commission.
Bankman-Fried donated $5,800 to Stabenow’s campaign in February and $20,800 to her joint fundraising committee in January. Bankman-Fried gave $5,800 to Boozman in January and $5,800 to committee member Sen. John Hoeven (R., N.D.) in June. He gave a combined $31,000 to campaigns and joint fundraising committees tied to Sens. Cory Booker (D., N.J.), Tina Smith (D., Minn.), Dick Durbin (D., Ill.), and Kirsten Gillibrand (D., N.Y.), who serve on the Senate Agriculture Committee.
The 30-year-old entrepreneur donated $5 million to a super PAC that supported President Joe Biden in 2020 and $40 million this cycle, largely to Democrats. He contributed $6 million to the House Majority PAC, $1 million to the Senate Majority PAC, and nearly $900,000 to the Democratic National Committee.
The donations secured him White House meetings and appearances earlier this year at Democrats’ annual retreat in Philadelphia. Bankman-Fried visited the White House three times this year with lobbyists from his company, the Washington Free Beaconreported. They met on April 22 and May 12 with Steve Ricchetti, one of Biden’s closest advisers. Bankman-Fried testified before the House Financial Services Committee on Dec. 7, where he said his goal in starting FTX was to “have a positive impact around the world.” He appeared on a panel with Waters at the Democratic retreat in Philadelphia in March and was photographed arm-in-arm with the committee chairwoman after the event.
Waters’s office did not respond to questions about Bankman-Fried’s donations to committee members.
Naomi, 28, is the president’s oldest legitimate grandchild. (He still won’t acknowledge Hunter’s lovechild with a stripper.)
Naomi Biden, the oldest legitimate daughter of amateur adult film star Hunter Biden, lives at the White House with her fiancé and elderly grandfather, according to the New York Times.
The newsworthy revelation was included as an aside in a fawning piece about Naomi’s plans to marry her fiancé, former Hillary Clinton intern Peter Neal, at a White House ceremony on Saturday, which happens to be President Joe Biden’s last day as a mere septuagenarian. The hard-hitting journalists at CNN report that the wedding will offer a “youthful spin” for the president on his 80th birthday.
The news that one of Hunter’s legitimate daughters is living at the White House comes after House Republicans announced plans to investigate “all avenues” of Hunter’s shady foreign business arrangements, and the extent to which President Biden was aware of and helped facilitate his troubled son’s money-making ventures. It is not entirely clear why Naomi and Peter—both lawyers who could certainly afford their own apartment—are living in a taxpayer-funded mansion, and why it is just now being reported in a mainstream news outlet.
Hunter Biden has three legitimate daughters—Naomi (28), Finnegan (22), and Maisy (21)—as well as a four-year-old daughter born to a former stripper named “Dallas.” Hunter aggressively challenged his paternity in Arkansas state court until a DNA test determined with “scientific certainty” that he was indeed the child’s father, which prompted an undisclosed financial settlement with the mother, Lunden Alexis Roberts. In his 2021 memoir, Beautiful Things, the First Son described Roberts as “hardly the dating type.”
President Biden has repeatedly refused to acknowledge the existence of his own grandchild, Navy Joan Roberts, and declined to provide Secret Service protection after the child and mother were threatened by a deranged MMA fighter. The president’s callousness stands in contrast to how his legitimate offspring are treated. Hunter’s ex-wife Kathleen Buhle wrote in her own memoir, If We Break, that she received a large private hospital room after giving birth to Naomi—a “gift from the hospital” in exchange for which the doctor asked Kathleen to deliver a letter to her father-in-law, then a high-ranking U.S. senator.
Hunter cheated on Kathleen with many women, including Hallie Biden, his brother Beau’s widow.
Court docs reveal messy divorce now involves political operative’s ritzy golf club membership
The ex-wife of Steve Schmidt, the disgraced Lincoln Project cofounder, has asked a Utah court to hold the liberal political operative in contempt of court for his failure to fork over money she claims he owes her, including for her interest in a membership at one of the priciest private clubs in the country, according to documents reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.
A court order filed on Nov. 7, 2022, reveals that lawyers for Schmidt’s ex-wife, Angela Schmidt, say that the man who reportedly talked of turning the anti-Trump Lincoln Project into a vehicle for “generational wealth” owes her for her part of a membership at the Glenwild Golf Club in Park City, Utah, which boasts that it is “as exclusive as it is desirable” and at one point counted Michael Jordan as a member.
Angela Schmidt also says her ex-husband owes her $84,000 for “mortgage payments Stephen has failed to pay,” and at least $50,000 for “$10,000 monthly payments Stephen has failed to pay Angela.” Her attorneys want Schmidt to be held in contempt of court for his alleged failure to comply with his court-ordered obligations and for the court to slap him with a “sentence of up to 30 days in jail for each contempt charge pursuant to Utah Code 78B-6-310.” The court ordered Steve Schmidt to appear later this month on Nov. 29 for a hearing on her claims.
Schmidt’s finances have been under the microscope since news reports revealed that he and other officials at the Lincoln Project were using the millions of dollars the group raised from anti-Trump donors to enrich themselves. During his time with the Lincoln Project, Schmidt purchased a $1.4 million mansion in Utah, according to the Associated Press. The five bedroom, seven bath home is located near the Glenwild Golf Club, which, according to a website for golf enthusiasts, has an initiation fee of $200,000 and annual dues of $18,800. The club did not respond to an inquiry regarding the status of Steve Schmidt’s membership.
The court filing came just days before the Daily Callerreported that Angela Schmidt had, in mid-August, filed for a temporary restraining order against Schmidt, who vehemently denied the report and threatened to sue the outlet for defamation. Court documents reviewed by the Free Beacon show that Angela Schmidt did indeed ask the court for a restraining order on Aug. 15, 2022. “The Commissioner has reviewed Angela’s Ex Parte Application for Temporary Restraining Order,” the court wrote the next day. “It is appropriate for the documents to be served upon Stephen or his counsel.”
Court documents reviewed by the Free Beacon do not indicate how the court resolved her request, but the case docket shows that Steve Schmidt opposed it a week later. A lawyer for Steve Schmidt told the Free Beacon that the court denied the restraining order application on Aug. 30, 2022.
Reached for comment, Steve Schmidt responded with an expletive-laden rant and threatened legal action. “Fuck you,” Schmidt said in a text message. “You print your defamatory bullshit and I’ll have the lawyers take care of business.”
In his public legal threats against the Daily Caller, Schmidt has said he doesn’t care how much money filing a defamation suit would cost him. “I don’t give a f$&@ how much this costs,” he said. “I would rather live broke with my family in a tent.”
Neither Schmidt nor his attorney responded to an inquiry about whether he has met his financial obligations to Angela Schmidt. Lawyers for Angela Schmidt did not respond to a request for comment.
North Carolina business owners who were closed during the declared pandemic are taking another swing at getting financial compensation for their financial losses.
The North Carolina Bar and Tavern Association filed a brief on Monday asking the Court of Appeals to reconsider a lawsuit against Gov. Roy Cooper seeking “compensation for the government’s taking of private property” that a trial judge initially shot down in March.
The brief argues that the private property of members of the association is equivalent to their right to operate their businesses, and that property right was taken by the government when their businesses were closed.
According to the North Carolina Constitution, the brief argues, property seized must be compensated.
“The trial court found that the Appellants’ ability to produce and benefit from their labors through the operation of their businesses was eliminated for 423 days by the Defendant’s Executive Orders,” the brief states. “The trial court erred by dismissing the Appellants’ constitutional claim for the violation of their right to produce and benefit from their labors.”
The brief goes on to state that the Cooper “singled Appellants out for closure despite their bars being indistinguishable in operation and character from bars located in restaurants, hotels, wineries, distilleries, taprooms, brewpubs, breweries, private clubs, and eating establishments.”
“The uncontested facts in this matter show that all other business entities serving alcoholic beverages in the state were allowed by the Defendant’s Executive Orders to operate—except Appellants’ businesses,” the brief states. “The trial court erred by dismissing Appellants’ constitutional claim for violation of their equal protection rights.”
‘Data and Science’
In May 2020, Cooper issued Executive Order 141—Phase 2—which eased restrictions on most businesses, “but not the Appellants’ businesses.”
“Despite having no meaningful distinction, all but private bars were permitted to reopen in restricted form when the Phase 2 order became effective on 22 May 2020,” the brief states.
Cooper cited “data and science” provided by “daily briefings from doctors and health care experts” to justify his restrictions; however when the N.C. Bar and Tavern Association filed a public records request to see the “data and science,” the state provided no records, the brief says, until 112 days later in September 2020, 185 days after Cooper had closed their businesses.
On Tuesday, after the brief was filed, several of the original 185 business owners withdrew their involvement from the case in a motion for partial dismissal of appeal.
The Epoch Times reached out to Cooper’s office for comment.
A firearm trade group has taken Delaware and New Jersey to court, seeking to overturn recently enacted laws that allow governments and individuals to sue gun manufacturers for crimes committed with their products.
The suits were filed separately on Wednesday in federal courts in Delaware and New Jersey. The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), a nonprofit group advocating for the firearm industry, argued that both states have “unconstitutionally vague” laws designed to hold the manufacturers and sellers of weapons liable for criminal actions that take place after weapons are legally sold.
In June, Delaware Gov. John Carney signed into law Senate Bill 302, which allows the state to sue the members of the firearms industry if the making, selling, and marketing of their products “contributes” to “public nuisance” or the endangerment of “health, safety, peace, comfort, or convenience” of the public.
On top of that, the law allows victims of crimes that involve guns to sue industry members for failing to implement “reasonable procedures, safeguards, and business practices” to prevent straw purchases or theft. It doesn’t specify whether plaintiffs have to prove that such failure was done intentionally to cause harm.
Similarly, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy in July signed Assembly Bill 1765, a measure of the same nature. The bill’s passage led to the creation of a new office dedicated to bringing legal actions against gunmakers and sellers for alleged “public nuisance” caused by third-party criminal actions.
“These laws enacted by the Delaware and New Jersey [sic] flout the will of Congress and undermine the U.S. Constitution,” Lawrence Keane, NSSF’s senior vice president, said in a press release.
Keane points to the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), a 2005 federal law which—with the intention of making sure Americans have reasonable access to firearms—explicitly gives legal immunity to gun manufacturers and sellers for damages “resulting from the criminal or unlawful misuse of a qualified product by the person or a third party.”
The PLCAA does not, however, shield the firearm industry from lawsuits on traditional product liability grounds. The law also states that they may still be held liable for negligent entrustment when they have reason to know a gun is intended for use in a crime.
“These state laws are at odds with bedrock principles of American law, which does not hold manufacturers and sellers legally responsible for the actions of criminals and remote third parties over whom the manufacturer and seller have no control when they misuse lawfully sold products,” Keane argued.
Biden Seeks to Remove Federal Protection
The lawsuits comes as President Joe Biden continues to call for an end to the PLCAA.
Biden, who represented Delaware in the U.S. Senate in 2005, voted against the PLCAA. The measure passed 65–31, with 14 of all 43 voting Democrats joining Republicans to vote “yes.”
“What people don’t realize: The only industry in America—a billion-dollar industry—that can’t be sued, has exempt from being sued, are gun manufacturers,” Biden said in April 2021 during a Rose Garden event at the White House.
In a roadmap released in June 2021, the White House said it would, in the meantime, work with state legislators and attorneys general to “discuss strategies” for pushing state liability laws that can be used to hold gunmakers and sellers accountable for “improper conduct not covered by the PLCAA.”
IT IS UNCLEAR WHY CFP WAS TARGETED FOR THE SUSPENSION.
The heavily-trafficked news aggregation site CitizenFreePress.com has been suspended from Twitter for sharing a clip of former President Barack Obama, campaigning in Pennsylvania in 2008, discussing potential problems with American voting machines and demanding paper trails for ballots.
CitizenFressPress.com (CFP) was not the only account to have shared the clip, though appears to be the only one that has received a suspension for doing so. Though the video can still be viewed on Elon Musk’s platform, it now carries a warning label which claims the video is “misleading,” as well as noting that the clip can no longer be replied to, shared, or liked.
CFP – started in 2016 by an editor who goes by the name “Kane” – attracted over 208 million page views in October, placing it above the Wall Street Journal, Politico, TMZ, HuffPo, ZeroHedge, Breitbart, NBC News, the Daily Wire, and many more news sites.
Kane told The National Pulse: “We absolutely love what Elon is doing at Twitter. We support his efforts 100 percent. We view this as an unfortunate mistake, that will hopefully be corrected, with urgency. We would like the suspension to be reversed and removed from our permanent record at Twitter, so the CFP account is not blackmarked going forward.”
“We also understand that Elon is going through hell right now at Twitter HQ, and we appreciate that he never stops fighting. He’s one of us.”
CFP also appears to account for a large amount of inbound Twitter referral traffic, raising questions as to whether a rogue employee at the social media giant is intentionally attempting to drive a wedge between Twitter and one of its regular traffic boosters. In a six and a half day period to midday on November 18th, CFP sent Twitter.com a whopping 1,034,573 clicks, as revealed by CFP’s own outgoing web data:
CITIZENFREEPRESS TO TWITTER TRAFFIC DATA.
Barack vs. The Machines.
In the ostensibly offensive video, former President Obama can be seen campaigning at a rally at Kent State in Ohio.
Around 35 minutes into his speech, he begins to take questions, one of the first being from a lady who asks, “I would just like to know what you can say to reassure us that this election will not be rigged or stolen.”
But the lady isn’t a Capitol-rioting Republican. She’s a Democrat, echoing widespread sentiments of Democrats in the early 2000s, who claimed voting machines in America were rigging elections for Republicans.
The claims began around 2000-2004, as George W. Bush first defeated Al Gore in an election many on the left still claim was “stolen”, and then John Kerry. By 2008, it was a common Democrat talking point that they had to take control of the voting machines, which is precisely how Obama responded in the CFP clip:
“Well, it helps in Ohio but we have Democrats in charge of the machines,” he says to left-wing applause. He continues, in a now rare moment of frankness:
“But, look, I come from Chicago. I want to be honest, it is not as if it is just Republicans who have monkeyed around with elections in the past. Sometimes Democrats have, too. Whenever people are in power, they have this tendency to try to, you know, tilt things in their direction. That is why we have got to have, I believe, a voting rights division in the Justice Department that is non-partisan and that is serious about investigating cases of voter fraud, is serious about making sure the people are not being discouraged to vote. That is why the voting rights legislation was put in place a couple years ago to help the county clerks. We need paper trails on these new electronic machines, so that you actually have something that you can hang on to after you punched that letter to make sure it has not been hacked into.”
In other words, CFP’s clip eschews no context. Indeed, many more examples of Democrats admitting the flaws in machine voting across America exist, from high profile sources.
Stop the Steal 1.0.
Before Donald Trump there was The Atlantic magazine, and MSNBC, and Salon.com, and Democracy Now, to name just a few left-wing publications that were hyping stories of election steals across America.
MSNBC broadcast a single example of a machine flipping a vote from Obama to Romney in 2012. Democracy Now prominently featured John Kerry’s claims that his election was stolen by similar means in 2005. Salon.com insisted that because some of Mitt Romney’s former colleagues went on to work at election systems firms, the 2012 election would be flipped in his favor. The Atlantic even went so far as to bemoan Breitbart for ridiculing the left’s “stolen election” claims:
…during 2004’s election, Bush carried [Ohio] by more than 100,000 votes, even though exit polling showed Kerry winning. And a conspiracy theory was born. Fast-forward eight years later and election this close, and you can see why Salon is freaking out and Breitbart is telling everyone to chill out.
“Unless electronic vote tabulation is history, and these companies are driven out of business, it’s their country. Not ours. Nobody knows, and no one will ever know, what the actual vote count was… Nothing is going to happen; it’s going to get worse. There will never again be a legitimate election in this county. Until we get rid of the machines.
“The people who put the software together—do you think that they are in this business to promote democracy? To promote representative government? Then you are a fool, and you don’t deserve anything other than the lash.
“Kerry did not lose the election. The vote was stolen. Get that through your head.
“The Bush syndicate owns and runs the machines that make the votes. They control all branches of the federal government.”
Rules for Rightists.
Most of the left’s election denying sources are still online, freely available, and many belong to news outlets or journalists who routinely mock those on the right who make similar claims.
In stymieing massive conservative aggregation accounts like CitizenFreePress, however, Musk’s Twitter is acting in very much the same way as before he purchased it.
We at The National Pulse understand that it takes time to turn the ship around – we have even said so. But these policies allowing major conservative news distribution sites to sidelined for days, weeks, or months on end have to come to a halt, immediately.
Hi @elonmusk@Jason. @CitizenFreePres sends 1M+ a week uniques to Twitter but their account was suspended for posting a well known clip of Obama talking about Ohio election machines. Pls check it out & reverse this ban! Thank you. https://t.co/c54VT3upAj
The Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) is facing a class action lawsuit for allegedly working with Google to install “spyware” onto the Android devices of a million state residents without their knowledge during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Plaintiffs Robert Wright and Johnny Kula were among 1 million Massachusetts residents who had the state’s “COVID Exposure Settings: US-MA” app auto-installed without their consent, according to the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), the nonpartisan civil rights group that filed the lawsuit (pdf) on Tuesday.
The app, once automatically installed, didn’t appear on the device’s home screen as newly-installed apps typically do. Instead, it was invisible and could only be found by opening “settings” and using the “view all apps” feature, according to NCLA.
This meant that many device users were unaware of its presence. Many have decried this as an invasion of privacy.
The NCLA declared the action a “brazen disregard” of civil liberties, saying in a statement the app was installed “without obtaining any search warrants, in violation of the device owners’ constitutional and common-law rights to privacy and property.”
“This ‘android attack,’ deliberately designed to override the constitutional and legal rights of citizens to be free from government intrusions upon their privacy without their consent, reads like dystopian science fiction—and must be swiftly invalidated by the court,” said NCLA Senior Litigation Counsel Peggy Little in a statement.
Screenshot of the COVID Exposure Settings: US-MA app on the Google Play Store, on Nov. 18, 2022. (Screenshot via The Epoch Times)
‘Government May Not Secretly Install Surveillance’ on Devices
Other states and foreign countries mostly tried to persuade their citizens to voluntarily install contact tracing apps, even if it meant fewer people took it up, according to Sheng Li, litigation counsel for NCLA.
“The government may not secretly install surveillance devices on your personal property without a warrant—even for a laudable purpose,” Li said. “For the same reason, it may not install surveillance software on your smartphone without your awareness and permission.”
The NCLA has asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts to block the continued installation of the app on private devices “without the knowledge or permission of device owners.”
The lawsuit also asks the judge to make Massachusetts DPH work with Google to uninstall the app from “private Android mobile devices where the device owner did not give permission for such installation.”
The plaintiffs also want the state to declare that its actions violated Fourth Amendment rights and Article 14 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights.
‘Invasion of Privacy’
The NCLA’s lawsuit includes an appendix with screenshots from user reviews for the app on the Google Play Store, where users go to download apps to their devices.
Karla Murray left a review on June 21, 2021, saying she “caught” the app installing covertly and decried it as an “invasion of privacy.”
“I never installed this and never saw it until I went in to update apps. It definitely installed on its own and I believe I caught the tail end of it installing one day when I saw something saying finish installing and I could never find out what that was. Complete invasion of privacy!” she wrote.
Massachusetts Android device user Dawn Driscoll writes a review on the Google Play Store, on June 23, 2021. (NCLA lawsuit/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)
Android user Doreen Gamache wrote a review on Feb. 8, 2022, saying she “did not install” the app, which “[a]ppeared on my phone without my consent.”
On June 23, 2021, Dawn Driscoll left a review on the Google Play Store, saying that her device plan has “very limited data” so she keeps certain features like location and Bluetooth turned off. But she noticed those settings kept “getting turn on.”
“[S]o I went into ‘my apps’ to check why and TADAAA!! Whaddayaknow, this app is the culprit! And it installed SILENTLY? This could have cost me a LOT of $$ had I not figured it out, like most people probably won’t!? Seriously!? Shady,” she wrote.
The app was first released on April 22, 2021, and was last updated on Sept. 7.
The Epoch Times contacted Google and Massachusetts DPH for comment.
FBI Director Christopher Wray said Thursday he cannot “be sure” whether Facebook is sending the agency user information without being compelled to do so, an act that would violate the law.
Wray’s remark in response to a question from Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) comes after Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee released a report (pdf) in early November in which a whistleblower suggested that the FBI has a “special relationship” with Facebook “in which it accepts private user information without any consent or legal process.”
The move is part of a program “likely codenamed ‘Operation Bronze Griffin,’” said the report. It alleges that the types of user content that Facebook provides the FBI “have a partisan focus, tending only to concern users from one side of the political spectrum,” and that there is a pro-Democrat bias within the FBI.
On Thursday, Paul asked Wray at a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing on the report’s allegations, “Is Facebook or any other social media company supplying private messages or data on American users that is not compelled by the government or the FBI?”
“Not compelled, in other words, not in response to legal process?” Wray queried.
“No warrant, no subpoena, they’re just supplying you information on their users?” Paul said.
“I don’t believe so,” Wray responded. “But I can’t sit here and be sure about that as I as I sit here.”
Paul told Wray that if Facebook is supplying the FBI with user information, it would be against the law—the Stored Communications Act, part of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986—which “prohibits providers from sharing electronic communications with any person or entity, unless it’s compelled.”
“This was done to protect the privacy of people, so we could feel like we can send an email or direct message to people without having that information given over,” Paul said.
The Meta logo, and Facebook’s logo on a smartphone screen. (Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images)
“It’s a very specific question,” the senator told Wray. “Will you get with your team of lawyers and give us a specific answer? Because this is the law, if you’re doing it, then we need to go to court to prevent you from receiving this information.”
“Well, I can tell you that I’m quite confident we’re following the law but I will also follow up with you to make sure that we get you more information, more detailed information,” Wray said.
The senator followed up with another question: “Is the FBI obtaining anonymous social media data, and then using technical methods to pierce the anonymous nature of the data? … Are you purchasing what is said to be anonymous data through the marketplace, and then piercing the anonymous nature to attach individual names to that data?”
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) speaks during a hearing on in Washington, on April 26, 2022. (Al Drago-Pool/Getty Images)
“So the manner in which we use—we usually use the term commercial data—is probably longer than I could explain here,” the FBI chief responded.
“So you will not answer the question of whether or not you’re attaching names to anonymous data,” Paul said.
“I think it’s a more complicated answer than I can give here.”
Paul also asked whether the FBI has been circumventing the law by using confidential human sources. Wray responded, “I think what we have had situations where we have confidential human sources—not employees of those companies—but who report to us on their own communication.”
Paul responded: “Once again, I’d like to get the answer to be more specific from your team. Not that I don’t believe so. But you are not using human confidential resources within Facebook? So we get back to the idea of whether or not you’re getting information for them outside the warrant process.
“Because the question, the next question is, which you probably won’t answer either, is, are you taking information that you’re getting not through the warrant process, and then going around and coming back and using that as a predicate for getting a warrant to actually get the information you’ve already been given?”
When Wray said he did not understand the question, Paul explained: “Are you getting information [Facebook is] giving to you, they say, oh, ‘somebody says January 6 was great, here’s information on this guy,’ then you’re taking it and then using it as a predicate to say, ‘Well, now let’s go to the court and get a real warrant and get the information we already actually got without a warrant.’”
An FBI logo. (Saul Loeb/Getty Images)
After some back-and-forth, Wray told Paul that one common instance involves the FBI giving Facebook information about foreign accounts, such as Russian intelligence service accounts, and Facebook will “look in their system for those accounts … find other accounts related to those and they provide tips and leads back to us about those.”
A second common instance would be “where a technology company encounters a threat of violence, on their platform on their services, and they provide tips and leads to us and [FBI agents] follow up.”
Paul asked whether the FBI is receiving things that “could be interpreted” as political speech, such as “someone who questions the election … someone who is mad about something that is going on, it’s not saying they’re directly going to commit violence, they’re mad about things.”
“Whistleblowers are saying you are receiving this information from Facebook and others, and that you are going around the Constitution and to come back and try to get warrants for it,” Paul said.
Wray responded, “We investigate violence, not speech.”
According to the House Judiciary Committee report, whistleblowers have said that the FBI “is pressuring agents to reclassify cases as domestic violent extremism (DVE), but it appears the FBI is also manufacturing DVE cases where they may not otherwise exist and even manipulating its case categorization system to feign a national problem.”
The Epoch Times has reached out to Meta and the Department of Justice for comment.
Leaders of the Group of 20 (G20) have issued a joint declaration promoting a global standard on proof of vaccination for international travel and calling for the establishment of “global digital health networks” that build on existing digital COVID-19 vaccine passport schemes.
The joint statement followed the conclusion of the G20 summit held in Bali, Indonesia, where leaders discussed global challenges and coordinating policies in response, including to future pandemics.
“We acknowledge the importance of shared technical standards and verification methods, under the framework of the IHR (2005), to facilitate seamless international travel, interoperability, and recognizing digital solutions and non-digital solutions, including proof of vaccinations,” the G20 joint declaration reads.
The International Health Regulations (2005) is an instrument of international law developed under the auspices of the World Health Organization (WHO) that lays down a global framework for responding to the international spread of disease.
The WHO-backed standard, which entered into force in 2007, required countries to strengthen surveillance capacities at border crossings and introduced a series of health documents, including international certificates of vaccination.
Besides acknowledging the utility of the IHR framework, the G20 leaders said they support ongoing “international dialogue and collaboration on the establishment of trusted global digital health networks as part of the efforts to strengthen prevention and response to future pandemics.”
They added that these global digital health networks should “capitalize and build on the success of the existing standards and digital COVID-19 certificates.”
COVID-19 vaccine passports—and various other forms of digital identity schemes—have been criticized as an invasion of privacy and as having the potential to enable governments and corporations to coerce human behavior by, for instance, denying access to infrastructure or services.
‘Let’s Have a Digital Health Certificate’?
The joint declaration follows recommendations from Indonesia’s Minister of Health Budi Gunadi Sadikin made during a Business 20 (B20) panel held ahead of the G20 summit.
“Let’s have a digital health certificate acknowledged by WHO—if you have been vaccinated or tested properly—then you can move around,” he said during a panel on Nov. 14.
Sadikin added that the benefit of a global WHO-standardized vaccine passport would be to facilitate international travel.
“So for the next pandemic, instead of stopping the movement of the people 100 percent, which stopped the economy globally, you can still provide some movement of the people,” he added.
Sadikin added that G20 countries have agreed to such a global digital health certificate and that the idea now is to introduce it as a revision to the IHR framework at the next World Health Assembly, scheduled for May 2023 in Geneva, Switzerland.
In a 132-page document that contains a series of recommendations for the G20, the B20 urged the widespread adoption of digital documentation of COVID-19 certificates that would be part of a “technology-enabled ‘always-on’ global health infrastructure.”
The World Economic Forum (WEF) said in a February 2022 report (pdf) that vaccine passports serve as a form of digital identity.
In an earlier report (pdf), the WEF said that “digital identity determines what products, services and information we can access—or, conversely, what is closed off to us.”
‘Digital Gulag’
Journalist Nick Corbishley, who writes about economic and political trends in Europe and Latin America, has warned that vaccine passports can lead to the implementation of a global digital identity scheme that will threaten privacy and freedom across the world.
“It’s like this checkpoint society. Wherever you want to go, you have to show your mobile phone, your identity … even if it’s just to go into a supermarket or go into a shop,” he told EpochTV’s “Crossroads” program.
Corbishley described the negative aspects of a global digital identification scheme as a kind of “digital gulag” in which people could be “effectively banished from society.”
Although we are entering a lame-duck session for Joe Biden, Democrats managed to sneak through one last bill aimed at damaging Americans. The falsely named “Respect for Marriage Act” was sold as a bill that codifies the Supreme Court case that legalized same-sex marriage.
But the bill goes much farther than the court ruling–and could put millions of Americans in jeopardy. Many religious groups have warned this bill could put private Americans in the crosshairs of radical groups ready to sue them. And twelve Republicans joined with the far left to pass it.
From Breitbart:
The 12 Republicans who voted for the bill include Sens. Roy Blunt (R-MO), Richard Burr (R-NC), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Susan Collins (R-ME), Joni Ernst (R-IA), Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Rob Portman (R-OH), Mitt Romney (R-UT), Dan Sullivan (R-AK), Thom Tillis (R-NC), and Todd Young (R-IN)…
The bill does have a “private right of action” clause, which would allow “any person who is harmed by a violation of subsection (b)…[to] bring a civil action in the appropriate district court of the United States against the person who violated such a subsection for declaratory and injunctive relief.”
Twelve Republican Senators voted to pass the left’s marriage bill, which will give gay Americans the power to sue anyone who disagrees with their marriage. Some senators are claiming the bill protects religious institutions after an amendment was added.
But the bill leaves out individuals who protest same-sex marriage on religious grounds. Any private individual (such as a photographer, baker, florist, and another wedding vendor) who refuses to provide services for a wedding will be taken to court. This bill does not uphold Americans’ First Amendment religious rights and enshrines same-sex marriage over religious faith.
Numerous groups have come out against the bill. Yet twelve Republicans voted to pass it. This isn’t the first time this group of “conservatives” betrayed the party and Americans to help Democrats push their radical legislation. They voted to pass gun control bills, wasting spending “infrastructure” bills, and other measures that give the government far too much power.
Now, they could be responsible for a bill that will wipe out the religious rights of every American.
Key Takeaways:
Twelve Republicans voted for the Democrats’ marriage bill that endangers religious Americans.
The bill protects religious groups, but not private individuals.
The bill could lead to radical groups destroying private citizens, despite their religious rights.
Joe Biden’s top economic advisor, Brian Deese, is anticipated to depart from the administration by next summer after Biden expressed frustration with Deese’s failure to predict the long-term impact of inflation, Bloomberg reported Thursday, citing anonymous sources.
Deese, director of the National Economic Council, not the only cabinet member leaving. Cecilia Rouse, the first African-American chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, is expected to conclude her two-year public service leave from Princeton University in early 2023, according to Bloomberg.
With a recession considered almost certain in the near future, if not already ongoing, replacements for the outgoing duo would join the Biden administration at a critical time, simultaneously fending off the newly GOP-controlled House of Representatives and continuing the administration’s efforts to combat inflation.
Despite having been previously rebuked by the president at multiple meetings for underestimating the impacts of inflation, according to Bloomberg, the president and other advisers have reportedly expressed a desire for Deese to stay.
Talk of personnel changes were simply rumors, one White House official told Bloomberg, citing the lack of a timeline for Deese to depart.
Deese — who was previously a senior Obama administration climate and energy adviser, serving as the deputy director of the National Economic Council — worked for asset-management firm Blackrock when he joined the Biden administration, according to Bloomberg.
Blackrock has been the target of criticism by Republican state treasurers, and they collectively plan to withdraw $1 billion in assets from the company over its alleged boycott of fossil fuels.
Rouse, a professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton, was confirmed on March 2, 2021 and is expected to return to work at the university, according to Bloomberg.
The Biden team is reportedly considering Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo and White House pandemic relief coordinator Gene Sperling — who held Deese’s job under the Obama and Clinton administrations — as potential replacements for Deese. To replace Rouse, the administration is reportedly considering either promoting from within or poaching someone from an academic institution.
The White House did not immediately respond to a Daily Caller News Foundation request for comment.
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The political consultants of the Lincoln Project grift train issued a tweet praising Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi on Thursday.
In a tweet where the well-financed hucksters re-upped an old ad about Pelosi’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021, the fundraising operation hailed the departing Speaker as a “champion of democracy.”
Pelosi announced her retirement as the Democratic leader in the House on Thursday, although she’s not leaving Congress.
The Lincoln Project thanked Pelosi for being a “courageous leader” and “defending our republic.”
#ThankYouMadamSpeaker for being a courageous leader and defending our republic. Speaker Pelosi is a true patriot and champion of democracy. There won’t be another like her.pic.twitter.com/Utq71sUdZe
The Lincoln Project marketed themselves as “Republicans” who merely opposed Donald Trump during the 2020 election, only to become indistinguishable from a communications shop of the Democratic Party that cycle and in the following years.
Predictions of the group’s demise after 2020 proved premature, with the Lincoln Project still churning out partisan advertisements criticizing Republicans.
Out of the $90 million dollars the group raised as of early 2021, more than $50 million ended up paid to political consulting businesses owned by the group’s establishment consultant founders, according to National Review.
That’s another way of saying it ended up in their own pockets.
There’s a market for grabbing the donations of gullible liberals who like the group’s ineffective and partisan ads, which they often don’t even buy much television airtime for.
The Lincoln Project’s grifting ways may even explain its love for Pelosi.
Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul Pelosi has traded in stocks affected by day-to-day votes in Congress for years.
Critics of the trades have pointed to the transactions as the definition of corrupt insider trading.
The Lincoln Project has seen its reputation tarnished amid a series of scandals involving its leaders.
One of the group’s founders, John Weaver, was forced out from the Lincoln Project in response to a series of allegations of pederastic sexual harassment.
Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) was among a crowd of hundreds who broke into cheers as former President Donald Trump formally launched his third bid for the presidency at Mar-a-Lago on Nov. 15.
He came back to Washington the next day feeling upbeat, describing the event as “absolutely fantastic.”
“His message was right on target,” the congressman told The Epoch Times in a phone interview after stepping off the plane.
Like half a dozen others who spoke with The Epoch Times following Trump’s announcement, Nehls was struck by the tone Trump conveyed that marked a departure from his rallies leading up to the midterms. Many described the speech as “forward-looking” that offered a blueprint for remaking America’s future.
“He was deliberate. He just laid out his plan on what he wanted to do,” said Nehls. “For America, I thought he delivered a very, very effective speech that the American people could understand.”
Nehls said he’s “all in with Donald J. Trump.”
“I’m excited for him when he announced yesterday his return, because I believe our country needs him now more than ever,” he said.
Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX) speaks during a press conference at the Capitol Triangle in Washington, on July 21, 2022. (Nathan Howard/Getty Images)
In an hour-long campaign address, Trump painted a dark picture of America under the Democrats’ rule, with soaring inflation, threats of war, a porous southern border, and rampant drug trafficking.
Positioning himself as someone who can turn things around, the former president promised to cut regulations, restore energy independence, lower taxes, and strengthen foreign policies. Notably absent from his speech was Trump’s trademark criticism of legacy media outlets and claims of fraud in the 2020 election, both of which have drawn attacks from the left.
The measured and restrained approach on Tuesday caused some to remark that Trump was too “low energy,” but to his defenders, it was the style befitting such an occasion.
“Taking a look at the problems that we have seen—the downward spiral of the country over the last two years, I think he was right to strike the more serious tone and to come across as very serious and very presidential,” Jenna Ellis, a former senior legal advisor to Trump and contributor to The Epoch Times, said in an interview.
“His bottom line message for heading into 2024 Is that life was better under Trump than it is under Biden. And that’s a message that everyone can resonate with,” said Ellis.
Jenna Ellis, former Legal Advisor and Counsel to former President Donald Trump, speaks during the election night party for Pennsylvania Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano at The Orchards in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, on May 17, 2022. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
According to a Morning Consult survey last updated on Nov. 14, 69 percent of over 6,000 Americans believe the country is on the wrong track, that includes 46 percent of Democrats, 77 percent of independents, and 91 percent of Republicans.
“We’re in a bad state here. And we need to change this now, or we’re going to lose our country,” Mike Lindell, CEO of MyPillow and staunch Trump backer, told The Epoch Times.
When Trump, now the first major contender from either party to enter the 2024 race, called Lindell over to an upstairs table after the speech to ask for his thoughts, his response was that the tone of the speech was “very, very perfect.”
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell speaks to the media before former U.S. President Donald Trump delivers a speech at his Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Florida, on Nov. 15, 2022. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Lindell believes that Trump’s platform proposed “common sense” solutions that should speak to people across the political spectrum.
Running as an ‘Outsider’
To some of his supporters, Trump was rewinding the tape back to 2015 when he first entered the political arena as a New York businessman and won a surprise victory the next year against Democrat frontrunner Hillary Clinton.
The “Trump campaign will be a replay of 2015/2016–an outsider campaign for ‘the forgotten man and woman,’” Steve Bannon, a former White House chief strategist under the Trump administration, told The Epoch Times.
Steve Bannon in Huntington Beach, Calif., on Sept. 18, 2022. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)
“He’s going to really go after the oligarchs, the tech oligarchs, the media oligarchs, the Wall Street oligarchs, and it’s going to be strongly anti-CCP,” he said, referring to the Chinese Communist Party.
Nehls and Kash Patel, a former national security official with the Trump administration, particularly noted Trump’s pledge to reinstate military personnel who were discharged for refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine. Patel believes that this proposal, as well as Trump’s plan to impose term limits for Congressional members, resonates with many across the country.
“I think many Americans find powerful movements like that refreshing and new and attach it immediately to the theme of his speech last night, which was going in and draining the swamp and getting rid of the corruption in government,” Patel told Capitol Report, a program on The Epoch Times’ sister media NTD, on Nov. 16.
Hurdles
There’s no short of hurdles as Trump kicks off his bid to return to the White House, something Trump openly acknowledged on Tuesday.
“We will be resisted by the combined forces of the establishment, the media, the globalists, the Marxist radicals, the woke corporations, the weaponized power of the federal government, the colossal political machines, the tidal wave of dark money, and the most dangerous domestic censorship system ever created by man,” Trump said.
“We will be attacked. We will be slandered. We will be persecuted … but we will not be intimidated.”
Among the clutch of legal challenges shadowing Trump, who survived two impeachments trials during his presidency, is an investigation into his handling of classified documents at the Mar-a-Lago resort, and the ongoing Department of Justice (DOJ) and House select committee probes into his role contesting the 2020 election results and Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
While Bannon and Ellis believe that criminal probes will fade away in the wake of Trump’s presidential bid, Patel was less ready to make a judgment on how the DOJ probes could impact his candidacy.
Former Chief of Staff to the Department of Defense Kash Patel speaks during a campaign rally at Minden-Tahoe Airport in Minden, Nevada, on Oct. 08, 2022. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
“There are very few people in America, even former federal prosecutors, that can answer that question because I just don’t know that it’s been done in recent time or around the same subject matter,” Patel said, noting the unprecedented nature of the probes into a former president.
Whether it’s legal impediments or others, Ellis believes that Trump will not let anything stand in his way.
“He’s waited two years to make this announcement. He’s basically been campaigning for reelection since Jan. 20, 2021, so this wasn’t a surprise,” she said.
“The left has been using and weaponizing any mechanism of law enforcement and Congress oversight to try to continue to take him down, and he has withstood all of their attacks, all of their caucuses, all of the impeachment, everything that has come his way, so I think that’s only made him stronger.”
‘Saddled My Horse’
From the Trump circle, the confidence remains that he is formidable against competition from intraparty challengers, such as the newly reelected Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, his one-time running mate former Vice President Mike Pence, and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Other Republican presidential hopefuls are not expected to announce their bids until well into the new year.
By launching his campaign early, Trump could lock in endorsements before others enter the fray and showcase his enduring appeal.
While the announcement has ignited opposition from some Republicans who believe that conservatives should move on from Trump, he is still the de facto leader of the Republican Party, his allies say.
Former President Donald Trump announces he is running for president in the 2024 presidential election during an announcement at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., on Nov. 15, 2022. (Alon Skuy/AFP via Getty Images)
Since Tuesday, his press team has touted backing from more than a dozen elected officials, including Rep. Elise Stefanik, who on Tuesday won another term as House GOP conference chair.
Lindell, for one, suggests “anybody that’s thinking about running for president against Donald Trump in the Republican Party” should “just forget about it, turn around and endorse him because that’s what the people want.”
“He’s got a strong campaign, strong message in a massive grassroots organization,” said Bannon. “People will run against him, but at the end, he will be the nominee.”
And Nehls believes that Trump, who won 74 million votes in 2020 which is 13 million more than in 2016, will weather the challenge from the left as well.
“Why would the left be so afraid of this if they crushed him so bad in 2020? It’s because he is the leader of our party. He’s coming back,” he said.
To the GOP lawmaker, no candidate in the yet-to-be-determined Democratic field, including President Joe Biden, would be able to triumph over Trump. “He’s gonna beat them all,” Nehls said.
“I saddled my horse. I believe Donald Trump can ‘make America great again,’ again.”
The House Oversight Committee will investigate President Joe Biden and his alleged involvement in his son Hunter’s foreign business deals, Reps. James Comer (R-Ky.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) announced on Nov. 17 ahead of the GOP retaking the chamber in the new year.
Contrary to the president’s claims, the elder Biden was directly involved in Hunter’s international business dealings, Comer said, citing whistleblower evidence.
“This is an investigation of Joe Biden, the president of the United States, and why he lied to the American people about his knowledge and participation in his family’s international business schemes,” he said at a press conference.
Comer, who is the incoming Oversight Committee chairman, said the Biden family “flourished and became millionaires by simply offering access to the family.”
“This committee will evaluate the status of Joe Biden’s relationship with his family’s foreign partners, and whether he is a president who is compromised or swayed by foreign dollars and influence,” Comer said.
Alleged Evidence of Crimes
Committee Republicans released a report (pdf) on Nov. 17 outlining their findings, claiming that they’ve uncovered evidence of federal crimes committed by or to the benefit of the Biden family.
“The Biden family’s business dealings implicate a wide range of criminality from human trafficking, to potential violations of the Constitution,” Comer said.
Such crimes, according to Comer, include conspiracy to defraud the United States, wire fraud, violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Action, tax evasion, money laundering, and violations of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act.
Citing media reports, Comer said more than 150 transactions from the Bidens’ business dealings have been flagged by U.S. banks through filings of Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs). U.S. banks are required by law to flag cash transactions exceeding $10,000 per day and automatically file SARs with a Treasury Department agency in an effort to prevent criminal activities, such as money laundering and tax evasion.
“One SAR generated by an American bank to the Treasury Department connects Hunter Biden and his business associates to international human trafficking, among other illegal activities,” Comer said.
Comer noted that committee Republicans have pressed the Treasury Department to release the SARs records, but the department has refused. They’ll continue to pursue those records in the new Congress, he said, when the Republicans hold subpoena power.
“As part of our investigation, we have evidence that the finances, credit cards, and bank accounts of Hunter and Joe Biden were commingled, if not shared,” Comer said.
The investigation by the committee Republicans has uncovered business deals by the Biden family in more than 50 countries, often led by Hunter Biden, including in Russia and China, according to Comer.
“The investigation reveals a family that engaged with some of America’s most powerful adversaries, planning to sell one of the largest sources of cobalt for electric vehicles in the world to the Chinese, for example,” he said.
Another China business deal involved the sale of natural gas to China from at least 2017.
Comer said that evidence showed that Joe Biden had a 10 percent equity stake in the deal through Hunter.
According to emails disclosed by the committee Republicans, Hunter was facilitating the natural gas deal with top executives from the now-defunct CEFC China Energy, at the time, one of the largest energy firms in China.
In another email from September 2017, Hunter wrote to the landlord of an office building requesting to “have keys made available for new office mates,” whom he identified to be the senior Biden, Jill Biden, and the president’s brother, Jim. Hunter gave his father and uncle’s personal cellphone numbers in case the recipient needed to call for confirmation.
“At a time when Americans are suffering from high energy prices, because of this administration’s terrible energy policy, we find evidence that Hunter Biden and Joe Biden were involved in a scheme to try to get China to buy liquefied natural gas,” Comer said.
The president has repeatedly denied any knowledge of or involvement in his son’s business deals. During a September interview on “60 Minutes,” the president was asked if Hunter’s dealings have caused conflicts for him or the United States, to which the senior Biden replied, “There’s not a single thing that I’ve observed at all that would affect me or the United States relative to my son Hunter.”
Last week, the president brushed off the possibility of investigations by Republicans into his family, saying, “Lots of luck in your senior year, as my coach used to say.”
Separately, federal investigators have been probing Hunter Biden over his tax affairs for at least two years. Thus far, no charges have been announced in that case.
Comer emphasized that their investigation will focus on the senior Biden.
“The domestic and international scheme that promised access to wealth in a future Biden administration constitute fraud. And the President’s participation in enriching his family is in a word abuse of the highest order,” he alleged.
“Rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse will be the primary goal of a Republican House Oversight Committee.”
Responding to the House Republicans’ announcement, Ian Sams, spokesman for the White House Counsel’s office, described the move as “politically-motivated attacks chock full of long-debunked conspiracy theories.”
“President Biden is not going to let these political attacks distract him from focusing on Americans’ priorities, and we hope congressional Republicans will join us in tackling them instead of wasting time and resources on political revenge,” Sams wrote in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times.
Eva Fu contributed to this report.
This article was updated to include a statement from the White House.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is violating the sovereignty of the United States through the creation of secret police stations on U.S. soil, according to FBI Director Christopher Wray.
“I’m very concerned about this,” Wray said during a Nov. 17 hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. “We are aware of the existence of these stations.”
“I have to be careful about discussing our specific investigative work, but to me it is outrageous to think that the Chinese police would attempt to set up shop—you know, in New York let’s say—without proper coordination. It violates sovereignty and circumvents standard judicial and law enforcement cooperation processes.”
Wray’s comments focused on the creation of China’s so-called “service stations,” which effectively act as overseas police stations for the CCP, which rules China as a single-party state.
The overseas police stations ostensibly serve administrative purposes normally entrusted to an embassy, including assisting Chinese immigrants with renewing driver’s licenses without having to leave the country.
But a September report by the nongovernmental organization Safeguard Defenders revealed that these stations also serve more sinister purposes, such as tracking down, arresting, and extraditing people wanted by the CCP, including dissidents against the regime and its leader Xi Jinping.
Wray refrained from commenting on the legality of such outposts, but said that they were part of the CCP regime’s campaign of global transnational repression. Relatedly, the Netherlands previously closed two such stations for illegally conducting Beijing’s campaign to repatriate critics of the regime back to China to be imprisoned. Likewise, Ireland shut down two similar operations in October for illegally acting on behalf of a foreign state.
Concerning the United States, Wray said the stations—one of which is in New York City—were part of a wider effort undermining the United States’ sovereignty.
“The reason this is so important is because we have seen a clear pattern of the Chinese government, the Chinese Communist Party, exporting their repression right here into the U.S.,” Wray said.
“We have seen plenty of situations … where the Chinese government, under the pretext of going after corruption, have essentially used that as a vehicle to surveil. We’ve had situations where they’ve planted bugs inside Americans’ cars.”
Wray explained that Chinese communist intelligence agents, acting both in person and through proxies hired in America, systematically engaged in “harassing, stalking, surveilling, blackmailing people who they just don’t like or who disagree with the Xi regime.”
“It’s a real problem and it’s something that we’re talking with our foreign partners about as well, because we’re not the only country where this has occurred,” Wray said.
While Wray did not comment on the future of the outpost in New York City or what the FBI’s current investigations into it had revealed, he warned that Chinese immigrants and visitors to the United States needed to be wary of the existence of such stations and immediately report any efforts made by such a station to surveil or detain them.
“This is something we’re trying to call out and it’s important that Chinese Americans and Chinese dissidents who are here know to call the FBI to report when they think they may have been been targeted with this conduct,” Wray said.
“I’m deeply concerned about this and I’m not going to just let it lie,” he said.
Election authorities in Arizona have come under fire for how long it took them to count votes in the Nov. 8 midterm elections.
The race for governor, which pitted Democrat Katie Hobbs against Republican Kari Lake, has been particularly close and contentious—Hobbs is the current Arizona secretary of state, the top official responsible for administering the election; Lake is a former TV host who ran partly on a platform to address problems in Arizona’s elections.
Georgia Democratic senator Raphael Warnock’s church, where he serves as senior pastor and CEO, belongs to a coalition of far-left congregations that is calling for an end to U.S. military aid to Israel.
Warnock’s Ebenezer Baptist Church is listed as a member of the Progressive National Baptist Convention, a left-wing Baptist denominational group that has been a staunch critic of the Jewish state. The senator gave the keynote speech at the PNBC’s annual conference last year, where it passed a resolution accusing Israel of “apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing.”
Warnock’s affiliation with the PNBC comes nearly two years after he faced criticism from the Jewish community for signing on to a statement, published by the same organization, that compared Israel to apartheid South Africa. In response to the controversy, Warnock’s campaign said he supported the U.S.-Israel relationship and “opposes ending direct military aid to such a strong ally.”
Despite Warnock’s own history of anti-Israel statements, such as accusing Israel of shooting unarmed Palestinians “like birds of prey,” he pivoted on the campaign trail in 2020 and positioned himself as a supporter of the Jewish state. But his church’s ongoing membership in the PNBC—and Warnock’s decision to headline its annual gathering last year—could reignite questions about his views.
Danielle Repass, the press secretary for the Georgia Republican Party, told the Washington Free Beacon that Warnock’s involvement with the group is in line with his “relentless history of anti-Israel speech.”
“Time and time again, Raphael Warnock proves that he is irreconcilably out of touch with Georgians,” said Repass.
Warnock served as the PNBC’s social justice committee chairman until 2018, according to the group’s newsletter. The organization has been pushing the U.S. government to cut off military aid to Israel since at least 2019.
The PNBC took an even stronger stance at its annual conference that featured Warnock last year, issuing a resolution that slammed “Israel’s long and violent history of ethnic cleansing throughout all of Palestine” and called for “recognizing the reality that the Israel is an apartheid state, that practices separate-but-unequal treatment of Palestinians and denies Palestinian human rights.”
“Therefore be it resolved that the Progressive National Baptist Convention Inc. calls for an immediate end to all U.S. military funding to Israel,” said the PNBC, according to a copy of the resolution.
The PNBC said it would establish a “Palestinian Solidarity Campaign” among its member churches and develop an “Action Plan” to “end the Israel’s Military Occupation of Palestine.”
The resolution also endorsed the Kairos document, issued by Palestinian Christian leaders in 2009 in an effort to recruit churches into a global anti-Israel boycott campaign. The document defends Palestinian terrorism as “legal resistance” and calls for a “system of economic sanctions and boycott to be applied against Israel.”
Warnock came under fire during his last election for signing on to a National Council of Churches statement with other clergy members, which claimed Israel’s policies in the West Bank were “reminiscent” of apartheid South Africa. The PNBC passed the same statement as a resolution at its 2019 conference, which also included a call to cut off military aid, the Jewish Insiderreported.
During a 2018 sermon, Warnock also accused Israel of “shoot[ing] down unarmed Palestinian sisters and brothers like birds of prey.”
The senator tried to distance himself from these comments during his 2020 campaign, saying through a spokesman that the “reservations he has expressed about settlement activity do not change his strong support for Israel and belief in its security—which is exactly why he opposes ending direct military aid to such a strong ally.”
WASHINGTON (Reuters)—U.S. homebuilding fell sharply in October, with single-family projects dropping to the lowest level in nearly 2-1/2 years, as the housing market buckles under the strain of surging mortgage rates, which are pricing out potential homeowners.
Housing starts decreased 4.2% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.425 million units last month, the Commerce Department reported on Thursday. Data for September was revised higher to a rate of 1.488 million units from the previously reported 1.439 million units.
Economists polled by Reuters had forecast starts sliding to a rate of 1.410 million units. Housing starts dropped 8.8% year-on-year in October.
Single-family housing starts, which account for the biggest share of homebuilding, tumbled 6.1% to a rate of 855,000 units, the lowest level since May 2020. Single-family homebuilding declined in all four regions.
Starts for housing projects with five units or more slipped 0.5% to a rate of 556,000 units. Multi-family housing construction has fared better as the soaring mortgage rates force many potential home buyers to remain renters. A key gauge of rents surged by the most on record on a year-on-year basis in October, according to the latest consumer price data.
Mortgage rates have jumped in response to rampant inflation, which has compelled the Federal Reserve to unleash the fastest interest rate-hiking cycle since the 1980s. The 30-year fixed mortgage rate is averaging above 7%, the highest since 2002, according to data from mortgage finance agency Freddie Mac.
Data on Wednesday showed confidence among single-family homebuilders fell for an 11th straight month in November, pushing the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB)/Wells Fargo housing market index to the lowest level since June 2012, excluding the tumble during the initial wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020.
Permits for future home construction fell 2.4% to a rate of 1.526 million units in October. Single-family building permits dropped 3.6% to a rate of 839,000 units.
Permits for housing projects with five units or more slipped 1.9% to a rate of 633,000 units.
(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
SAN JUAN/WASHINGTON (Reuters)—A U.S. federal agent was killed and two were wounded in a gun battle with suspected drug smugglers on Thursday during an inspection of a vessel believed to be carrying drugs off the coast of Puerto Rico, U.S. officials said.
“These are brave members of our Air and Marine Operations within U.S. Customs and Border Protection,” said U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in testimony before a U.S. Senate committee.
“Their bravery and selfless service should be recognized.”
Mayorkas, who was briefed on the situation Thursday morning, said the other agents “were gravely wounded.”
The agents stopped the vessel, believed to be carrying controlled substances, 14 miles (22.5 km) off the coast of the Puerto Rican municipality of Cabo Rojo, CBP spokesperson Jeffrey Quinones told Reuters earlier.
Drug traffickers frequently use Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory, as an entrance point for narcotics being smuggled from the Caribbean to the continental United States.
Puerto Rican police on Wednesday reported finding 38 kg (84 lbs) of what was believed to be cocaine, as well as the body of a man underneath a 19-foot (6-meter) boat abandoned on a beach in the western municipality of Isabela.
(Reporting by Ivelisse Rivera in San Juan and Ted Hesson in Washington, writing by Brian Ellsworth in Miami; Editing by David Gregorio and Richard Chang)
Former Vox employee Aaron Rupar throws Twitter tantrum
Aaron Rupar, the left-wing activist who visited the White House last month, threw a tantrum on Twitter. The former Vox employee accused a rival journalist of committing “stolen valor” after retired NBC executive Mike Sington shared a video Rupar clipped from OAN’s coverage of a Herschel Walker campaign event.
Rupar lashed out at Sington’s “sleazy” behavior in a rant posted on the immigrant-owned social networking website. “I actually watched the speech, you lazily saw my video go viral and decided to rip it off for stolen valor,” he wrote. “You do this all the time and people notice. Give people credit for their work when it is due.”
Crucial context:
The “work” to which Rupar is referring is the act of watching television, using a third-party application to clip a portion of the footage, and posting the clip on Twitter.
“Stolen valor” is a term most commonly used to describe the act of lying about or exaggerating one’s military service.
Urban Dictionary defines the word “rupar” as follows: “To lie with impunity; a brazen statement with a focus on misleading, usually with intention of a predetermined outcome.”
Rupar has tweeted 111,500 times since April 2011, which works out to an average of 26 tweets per day.
Why it matters:
It doesn’t, really. It’s just another annoying example of a journalist comparing his job to military service. Many have claimed that covering the Donald Trump administration and the COVID-19 pandemic has given them post-traumatic stress disorder. The Poynter Institute developed a course to help journalists cope with this trauma, which includes suggestions such as “take time to be sexual with yourself.”
Alexander Nazaryan, the journalist best known for comparing Ted Cruz supporters to Nazis, described covering the Trump administration as “thrilling for many journalists, in the way that I imagine storming Omaha Beach must have been for a 20-year-old fresh from the plains of Kansas. He hadn’t signed up for battle, but there he was, liberating France.”
Go deeper:
The Lincoln Project schlubs have also compared themselves to the American soldiers who took part in the D-Day invasion.
We admire their passion and honor their sacrifice.
San Francisco’s transgender community will receive taxpayer money from the city’s newest guaranteed income program, Mayor London Breed (D.) announced Wednesday.
The Guaranteed Income for Trans People program (GIFT) uses taxpayer dollars to provide low-income transgender San Franciscans a $1,200 monthly stipend for up to 18 months to “help address financial insecurity within trans communities,” local news station KTLA reported.
“We know that our trans communities experience much higher rates of poverty and discrimination,” Breed said in a statement, “so this program will target support to lift individuals in this community up.”
San Francisco’s other guaranteed income programs include the Abundant Birth Project, which subsidizes black and Pacific Islander mothers during pregnancy, and a pandemic-era cash relief program for local artists. Palm Springs, Calif., in March announced a similar program for transgender residents.
Unlike other aid programs, GIFT sets no limitations on the cash received, KTLA reports:
The pilot program is the first guaranteed income initiative to focus solely on trans people and will provide regular, unconditional cash transfers to individuals or households who qualify, according to the mayor’s office. This differs from other social safety net practices by providing a steady, predictable stream of cash to recipients to spend as they see fit without limitations.
The GIFT program will provide eligible trans individuals with temporary income and a range of wrap-around direct services, such as gender-affirming medical and mental health care, as well as financial coaching, according to the mayor’s office.
Those applying for the program can choose from 97 different genders and 18 preferred pronouns on the application paperwork, which must be submitted by Dec. 15.
Democratic senator says Elizabeth Holmes has ‘sincere desire to help others’
Sen. Cory Booker (D., N.J.) last week requested that a federal judge give Theranos fraudster Elizabeth Holmes a “fair and just sentence.”
Holmes, who was convicted in January on four counts of defrauding investors and faces up to 20 years in prison, “has within her a sincere desire to help others” by fighting world hunger and climate change, Booker wrote in a letter to Judge Edward Davila. “I knew Ms. Holmes for about six years before charges were brought.”
Davila is expected to issue a sentence Friday for Holmes, who was found guilty of lying to investors about her company’s blood testing machines, which she falsely claimed could run multiple tests on a single drop of blood. Theranos was once valued at $9 billion.
Booker’s letter comes as critics compare Democratic megadonor Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto company FTX, which is under federal investigation for defrauding investors of billions of dollars, to Holmes’s failed company.
Theranos made Holmes a favorite among Democrats and the Obama administration, which named her a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship. Then-vice president Joe Biden toured her Newark, Calif., facilities in 2015, praising the company for its “confidence.”
“Talk about being inspired,” Biden said at the event. “This is inspiration. It is amazing to me, Elizabeth, what you’ve been able to do.”
Former president Bill Clinton hosted Holmes at the Clinton Global Initiative’s annual meeting in 2015. The discussion revolved around bringing “equality” into health care.
New Georgia Project missed crucial tax filing deadline
ATLANTA — It’s been a rough few months for the New Georgia Project.
The nonprofit founded by Stacey Abrams and once helmed by Sen. Raphael Warnock (D., Ga.) dismissed most of its leadership over the summer. A former executive told the Washington Free Beacon that the group’s top accountant was fired after saying he couldn’t do his job without violating the law. Now the group missed a crucial IRS filing deadline, an error that puts it on the wrong side of federal law.
Such chaos is now commonplace at the New Georgia Project, which Abrams founded in 2013 to register non-white voters in the Peach State. The group, and its affiliate New Georgia Project Action Fund, appear to have fallen into dire financial straits since the June dismissal of chief financial officer Randall Frazier. Although the groups raised a combined $37 million in 2020, their human resource director claimed in an October video call terminating three top employees that the New Georgia Project could no longer afford to pay their salaries.
The New Georgia Project’s Form 990 financial disclosure, which was due to the IRS on Tuesday, would shed light into what the two groups did with their millions in 2021. The forms offer a detailed picture of a nonprofit’s finances, including how much was paid to top officials and contractors. But New Georgia Project Legal Affairs Director Tangi Bush told the Free Beacon on Wednesday that the group’s “finance department” was still preparing the disclosures. Nonprofits and charities must provide their 990s to the public within 24 hours of an in-person request.
The former executive who spoke to the Free Beacon says that the New Georgia Project’s lack of staff and culture of secrecy are to blame for the groups’ missed IRS filing. Bush could not even say who works in NGP’s finance department when asked by the Free Beacon, citing a “personnel issue.”
According to National Legal and Policy Center counsel Paul Kamenar, the groups’ failure to file the Form 990 on time suggests “serious financial irregularities that should be audited.” With no known leadership in its accounting division, the New Georgia Project seems unable to comply with federal laws governing nonprofits, and faces potential fines or other penalties.
The New Georgia Project could also face sanctions from state authorities for failing to disclose its finances. Black Lives Matter group was temporarily barred from raising charitable funds in California and Washington in February after it failed to report its 2020 finances on time.
Abrams and Warnock are no longer affiliated with the New Georgia Project and the New Georgia Project Action Fund, although they both maintain ties with the groups’ leaders, including board chairman Francys Johnson. Warnock, who led the group from 2017 to 2019, appointed Johnson to his “Federal Nominations Advisory Commission” in March 2021. In September, he co-hosted a rally for Abrams.
The New Georgia Project worked to get both Abrams and Warnock elected this cycle, with mixed results. Abrams lost her second gubernatorial bid by nearly eight points. Warnock will face Republican challenger Herschel Walker in a December run-off after failing to earn 50 percent of the vote on Election Day.
2 Russians, Ukrainian found guilty over downing of Flight 17 in Dutch court
A court in the Netherlands determined what country manufactured the missile that struck down a Malaysia Airlines flight in 2014 over eastern Ukraine, killing 298 people.
“The court is of the opinion that MH17 (Flight 17) was brought down by the firing of a BUK missile from a farm field near Pervomaisk, killing all 283 passengers and 15 crew members,” presiding judge Hendrik Steenhuis said, according to Reuters news agency.
That flight is different than Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared in 2014 while flying from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing. The location of Flight 370, which disappeared about four months before Flight 17 was shot down, has still never been determined.
The statement was issued in the trial of several Russians and a separatist Ukrainian who were found guilty in absentia of the mass murder for their alleged involvement in shooting down Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine.
Russians Igor Girkin, Sergey Dubinskiy, and Oleg Pulatov and Ukrainian separatist Leonid Kharchenko were on trial at the Schiphol Judicial Complex in Badhoevedorp, Netherlands, according to reports. Pulatov was acquitted while the three others were found guilty.
None of the defendants appeared for the trial that began in March 2020, and if they’re convicted, it’s unlikely they’ll serve any sentence anytime soon. Prosecutors had sought life sentences for all four. Prosecutors and the suspects have two weeks to file an appeal.
People inspect the crash site of a passenger plane near the village of Grabovo, Ukraine, on July 17, 2014. (Dmitry Lovetsky/AP Photo)A Malaysian air crash investigator inspects the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, near the village of Hrabove (Grabovo) in Donetsk region, Ukraine, July 22, 2014. (Maxim Zmeyev/File Photo/Reuters)
Pulatov was the only one of the suspects who was acquitted and was represented by defense lawyers at the trial. They accused prosecutors of “tunnel vision” in basing their case on the findings of an international investigation into the downing while ignoring other possible causes.
Steenhuis said he would go on to rule on other legal issues and the guilt or innocence of the suspects later in the hearing.
Robbert van Heijningen, who lost his brother, sister-in-law, and nephew, called the downing “an act of barbarism” that he could never put behind him, regardless of the verdict.
“I call it a stone in my heart, and stones … don’t disappear,” he said.
Flight 17 was traveling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on July 17, 2014, when it was shot down over eastern Ukraine following Russia’s seizure of the Crimean Peninsula. That occurred following mass protests and the overthrowing of the previous Ukrainian government, known as the Euromaidan or the Maidan Uprising.
PERHAPS WE NEED TO START REFERRING TO THE “CHINA-BACKED WALL STREET JOURNAL”?
Many of the billionaires lining up against President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign share more in common than exorbitant wealth.
Perhaps it isn’t a surprise that ruling class members with China links are lining up against a populist that says he wants to “launch an all-out campaign to eliminate America’s dependence on China.”
Take the Murdochs, for example. Their New York Postmocked President Trump’s campaign roll-out with the headline: “Florida Man Makes Announcement.”
Perhaps Trump should respond by highlighting a more shocking headline – this one from Crikey in Australia, “Murdoch empire borrows US$100m from state-owned Bank of China.”
The article details how News Corp, the parent of the New York Post and Wall Street Journal, took a 9-figure loan from a Chinese Communist-owned bank.
The Bank of China is the second biggest player in the 13-bank News Corp syndicate after Bank of America, which is contributing US$111.7 million. The Bank of China is massive — it has an estimated US$3.7 trillion in assets and is the largest and oldest bank on the Chinese mainland.
Then there’s Ken Griffin. Two days before the midterms, the financier spoke to Politico about how he wants to spend his billions to get Gov. Ron DeSantis in the White House. Keen observers will note Trump’s first salvo against DeSantis came hours before this Politico puff piece which had been in the works for some time. It’s no stretch to connect the dots: Trump heard about the piece. Perhaps he was even asked for comment on the fact that a China-linked billionaire was now one of Ron DeSantis’s largest donors.
Griffin himself became massively wealthy – an estimated net worth of $22 billion – through his investment firm Citadel. A report this year revealed that in 2006, Citadel “loaned $110 million to China Security & Surveillance Technology. The company used the funds to acquire ‘10 of the 50 biggest surveillance companies in China.’”
Citadel is also partly owned now by Sequoia Capital, which is the venture capital firm that “has produced more investment gains from China” than any other firm and has close ties to the CCP. Sequoia’s China division even employed a daughter of a politburo member.
Griffin and Murdoch are not alone. As Murdoch’s New York Post reported Wednesday, “GOP megadonors ditch Donald Trump’s 2024 White House run.” One of those megadonors is Stephen Schwarzman.
The day after Trump’s announcement speech attacking Chinese dependence, Schwarzman let Axios know that he will back any other Republican than the former president in the 2024 primary.
It shouldn’t surprise you that Schwarzman has deep ties to the Chinese Communist regime.
Schwarzman is the chairman and CEO of Blackstone Group, that’s the company that was partly owned for over a decade by the Chinese sovereign wealth fund. Between 2013-2018, his firm did $32 billion of Chinese deals, according to the Financial Times.
If you were the CEO of a company that’s done tens of billions of dollars worth of deals in China, would you want a populist that wants to punish Xi Jinping for the “China virus” in office? Probably not.
It’s rather shocking how the elite is trying to re-engineer the dynamics of the 2016 primary. The stage is set for Trump to rail against the billionaires putting China’s interests ahead of yours. Will he take advantage of it?
Mexico has seen a rapid increase in the number of Americans choosing to live in the country since the pandemic started a new trend of remote work.
Nearly 1.6 million Americans live in Mexico, according to the U.S. State Department. Many of them are digital nomads and have chosen destinations like Mexico City, Guadalajara, Puerto Vallarta, and Mazatlan to call home. The reason is simple: it’s much cheaper to live there than in the United States.
“I pay $600 for a one-bedroom apartment near the middle of the city,” says Cody Anderson, who recently moved to Guadalajara from Los Angeles. “There’s no way, with my income, I can have the lifestyle I have here in the United States.”
One would imagine the influx of Americans migrating to Mexico with more buying power would be a boon for the economy, especially as the dollar remains strong against the peso. But for some Mexicans, that boon is a nightmare.
“It’s not as simple as spending your money here is good for the economy,” says Carriane Garcia, a Mexico City native. “Foreigners drive up prices, and certain neighborhoods are basically catering to them instead of the locals. It’s definitely a problem.”
She’s not the only one who feels that way. In speaking with several Mexico City natives, they say that rent has skyrocketed since foreigners began to move into desirable neighborhoods like Roma Norte and La Condessa.
“Most Mexicans maybe have a Starbucks [drink] twice in their life,” says David Alvarez, who works at a lavenderia (laundromat) in the city. “How are we expected to pay for roofs over our heads with all the gringos taking over.”
The surge in migration has also resulted in restaurants increasing their prices or local bodegas turning into cafes with free WiFi.
Kirsty Hall, a digital nomad from Scotland who lives in Mexico but works remotely with a start-up in San Francisco, in the U.S., works on her laptop at WeWork, a coworking and office space in Mexico City, on Sept. 13, 2022. (Claudio Cruz/AFP via Getty Images)
Natives vs. Foreigners
The anger that Mexican natives feel towards Americans, who often make more in one month than they do in six months, has finally reached a boiling point. There are crude signs posted across Mexico City telling foreigners to leave.
“New to the city? Working Remotely? You’re a [expletive] plague, and the LOCALS [expletive] HATE YOU. LEAVE,” reads one such sign that has since gone viral online.
But many foreigners plan to stay put. “If Mexicans had this much rage for foreigners coming in, they should limit their borders as other countries do,” says Asif Khan from India.
“You can complain and say don’t bring your money here!’ Or you can start a business and take the foreigner’s money,” says Kevin Hake, a businessman from the United States. “The complainers will be angry and poor, and the others will happily raise the rent and serve sandwiches the complainers can’t afford.”
In the meantime, it doesn’t appear that local governments have much of a problem with a surge of ex-pats displacing Mexican residents. Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum announced an agreement between the city and Airbnb to increase the number of digital nomads coming to live and work there.
Former Vice President Mike Pence has ruled out testifying before the House Jan. 6 committee, saying that Congress “has no right” to his testimony.
The comment was made during an interview with CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Nov. 16.
“I am closing the door on that,” he said, contending, “We have a separation of powers under the Constitution of the United States.”
The former vice president said that such an act would create a bad precedent.
“And I believe it would establish a terrible precedent for the Congress to summon a vice president of the United States to speak about deliberations that took place at the White House,” he said.
Pence further raised concern about the partisan nature of the Democrat-led committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach.
“But I must say again, the partisan nature of the January 6 committee has been a disappointment to me,” he added. “It seemed to me in the beginning, there was an opportunity to examine every aspect of what happened on January 6, and to do so more in the spirit of the 9/11 Commission—nonpartisan, nonpolitical—and that was an opportunity lost.”
The investigation panel consists of nine representatives but only two GOP members, both of whom are outspoken critics of former President Donald Trump who voted to impeach him in January 2021, and were picked by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
Yet Pence stressed that he had never obstructed his staffers from appearing before the committee.
“I never stood in the way of senior members of my team cooperating with the committee and testifying,” he said.
Pence aides, including his former chief of staff Marc Short and legal counsel Greg Jacob, have testified before the panel.
They told the Jan. 6 panel in a June hearing that Trump pressured the then-vice president to overturn his 2020 election defeat, before and during the Capitol breach.
Reversal of Earlier Stance
With these new comments, Pence reversed his earlier position.
Back in August, Pence said he would consider appearing before the panel if subpoenaed.
“If there [were] an invitation to participate, I would consider it,” Pence said at an event at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire.
Later, he backpedaled his willingness while speaking with a more cautious tone about the matter.
“If the committee wanted to extend a formal invitation I would consider it, but we would reflect very carefully on my obligations to preserve the separation of powers and the constitutional framework that I served in,” he said at the time.
Panel’s Response
The Jan. 6 committee swiftly responded to Pence’s comments.
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the panel’s chair, and Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), its vice chair, issued a joint statement criticizing Pence’s comments as “not accurate.”
“The Select Committee has proceeded respectfully and responsibly in our engagement with Vice President Pence, so it is disappointing that he is misrepresenting the nature of our investigation while giving interviews to promote his new book,” Thompson and Cheney said.
“Our investigation has publicly presented the testimony of more than 50 Republican witnesses, including senior members of the Trump White House, the Trump Campaign, and the Trump Justice Department,” the statement said.
The interview with CBS was part of the rounds that Pence made recently to promote his newly-published book “So Help Me God,” a recollection of his experiences under the Trump administration.
During the talk show, in comments on his former boss’s third bid for the White House, Pence said, “I believe as we look to the future, we’ll have better choices.”
Pence has several times hinted at a presidential race.
“We’re giving it consideration in our house. Prayerful consideration,” he said in an extended interview for ABC’s “World News Tonight.”
