The pose of wokeness is a costume that the left liberal elite puts on to virtue signal that they care about social justice and to hide their greed and corruption, said the former executive of a major brand-name apparel manufacturer.
Jennifer Sey, former chief marketing officer and brand president of Levi Strauss & Co., told EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program that she had “pushed back” on the public school closures due to COVID-19 for two years, and in the end, she was pushed out of the company for her advocacy.
Sey, who was sending her children to public schools, believed that prolonged school lockdowns were harmful to children and started speaking out against them at the beginning of the pandemic.
Sey said she and her husband were reading the data that was coming out of Italy at the start of the pandemic, a country heavily hit by the disease, and the data showed that the median age of death due to the disease was over 80.
“Nobody was bothering to look at actual data or adhere to the pre-pandemic playbook, which said you never shut schools down for more than a couple of weeks,” Sey pointed out. “It was from day one that me and my husband, we both said, ‘Hell no, this is wrong. People are going to be harmed.’”
An aerial view of the schoolyard at Frank McCoppin Elementary School in San Francisco on March 18, 2020. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
In September 2020, Sey’s company warned her that her advocacy against school closures could be considered speaking on behalf of the company, “the implication being, there would be reputational harm to the company caused,” she said.
At the same time, her peers began sending their kids back to private in-person schools, Sey continued.
“I was so angry that these people would dare to say to me while sending their own kids to in-person school: ‘You can’t advocate for poor children to be in school.’”
Sey said it was atypical for her peers—and even for employees two or three levels below her in the corporate hierarchy—to send their kids to public school in her city of San Francisco.
“I thought the lightbulb would go off, and people would see the hypocrisy if I just made it clear in a calm, nice way. But they didn’t, because the hypocrisy, in a sense, is the point.”
“This pose of wokeness, it’s a cloak they wrap themselves in to signal virtue … to hide greed, corruption, keeping all the good stuff for themselves,” she said.
“It’s this costume that the left, liberal elite wraps around themselves to say, ‘I care about social justice. I care about all these causes. I am a good person.’ If you threaten to expose that, you need to be banished.”
Sacrificed Career for Speaking Out
Around the time of the new year in 2022, Sey was told that there was no longer a place for her at the company.
“You can’t be the CEO because of the things you’ve been saying and doing. Therefore, you can’t sit in your current chair because that is the role that ultimately becomes the CEO, so you need to leave,” Sey said she was told.
She was offered a $1 million severance package, which she decided to turn down because it would come with the signing of a nondisclosure agreement.
“What the nondisclosure agreement would require is that I never speak about the terms of my ousting. I was not OK with that,” she said.
In February, Sey resigned from her post at Levi Strauss & Co. after almost 23 years with the company.
The Epoch Times reached out to Levi Strauss & Co. for comment.
Sey said the illiberalism that has traveled from college campuses into companies and taken hold of corporations across the country is “incredibly dangerous.”
“If you insist on a culture where free speech is not tolerated, not only is it non-inclusive, which is problematic in and of itself, but I actually think it’s fraught and rife with the potential for corruption and fraud, like we’ve seen with Theranos and FTX and Enron,” she said,
Theranos, a company that claimed to provide blood testing lab services with a single drop of blood, defrauded its investors in a multimillion-dollar scheme. Its founder, Elizabeth Holmes, was recently sentenced to 11 years in prison.
FTX, a Bahamas-based cryptocurrency exchange, recently went bankrupt along with more than 130 affiliate companies due to insufficient liquidity. FTX users are potentially facing $8 billion in cumulative losses, while investors in the company are likely to lose their entire investment as a result of the bankruptcy.
Enron, a Texas-based energy-trading company, went bankrupt in 2001 due to fraudulent accounting practices and conflicts of interest. Within a year, Enron’s stock price plummeted from about $90 per share to 26 cents per share, which caused billion-dollar losses to investors, thousands of job losses, and the liquidation of more than $2 billion in pension plans.
“There were people in those companies who knew what was going on, but they didn’t feel they could say anything,” Sey said.
“If you cannot have a conversation in the company about what is working and what is not working, what is true and what is not, you can’t innovate. You can’t move forward,” she said. “It stands in the way of progress when we can’t have these conversations because we’re all just adhering to propaganda.”
“It is a violation of the spirit of the First Amendment,” Sey added.
Jennifer Sey (R) is seen at the Levi’s Times Square Store Opening in New York City on Nov. 15, 2018. (Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images for Levi’s)
Wokeism Is an Ideology
Being “woke” during the 1940s through the beginning of the 1960s meant “being awake or alert to the fact that there was racial inequality, and being part of the movement to change that,” Sey said. “It’s admirable, I have no issue with that.”
However, in the last 10 or 15 years, and especially in the last three to five years, those beliefs have been corrupted and commodified “into an ideology which can never be questioned,” such as gender ideology, race ideology, or body positivity, Sey explained.
Sey said that she was very supportive of transgender people working in her team. “I would never want a person to be discriminated against for anything, including being unvaccinated.”
But someone who questions whether an 11-year-old should be on puberty blockers, when there is no research on the mid- to long-term impacts of this therapy, is considered evil and must be banished for violating this ideology, Sey said.
“[Wokeism] has become religious in nature. Woke capitalism is really just an attempt to profit off of this ideology and the passion behind this ideology amongst primarily Gen Z and millennial consumers,” she said.
Another example of ideology that cannot be questioned is the idea of “body positivity,” which touts that the size of the body does not affect its health, Sey said.
“We couldn’t say during COVID that it was dangerous to be overweight. I said it, and that made me a fat-phobe,” she said.
“We can’t say that, because the mantra is ‘healthy at any size.’ It’s ideological. And you have to be pure in the belief of that ideology, or you are evil and must be shunned.”
A study conducted in the spring of 2020 by researchers from the University of Bologna in Italy concluded that “obesity is a strong, independent risk factor for respiratory failure, admission to the ICU, and death among COVID-19 patients.”
Even patients with mild obesity had a 2.5 times greater risk of respiratory failure and a five times greater risk of being admitted to an intensive care unit than non-obese patients, the study said.
Obesity also increases the risk of many serious diseases and health conditions, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Wokeism Is Religion Substitute
“Most people want some sort of a moral framework to help them make decisions so that they can feel virtuous and be good people. And in a world where religion is less and less relevant—and I say this as someone who is an atheist—we still look for those constructs and frameworks elsewhere.”
Sey said there is still a human impulse for religiosity.
“It’s our desire to believe in something and want to be part of something bigger than ourselves and have this framework for how to make good decisions to be a good person,” Sey said. “That’s what I think the impetus is.”
Mimi Nguyen Ly and Liam Cosgrove contributed to this report.
The head of the largest oil and natural gas trade association warned that failure to replenish the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) could trigger another oil crisis in the coming weeks.
“The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, unfortunately, has become the strategic political reserve. And we have grave concerns about how it has been so politicized. This is for emergency purposes, not to lower gasoline prices during a time during a political season,” American Petroleum Institute CEO Mike Sommers said in a Friday interview on Fox News.
Sommers added that “I think doing this willy-nilly and doing it in a way that that doesn’t make sense for the market we’re in, we could be dealing with another major oil crisis here in the next few weeks.” Sommers did not elaborate.
Starting earlier this year, the Biden administration has been releasing oil from the SPR in the midst of historically high gas prices. After tens of millions of barrels of oil were released, as of Nov. 25, it’s down to 389.1 million barrels—the lowest amount in decades.
“We’re also real concerned, Maria, about how low it has gone. Lowest level since 1984, not necessarily because of market conditions, but because of political concerns,” Sommers told the news outlet Friday, adding that the federal government needs to start replenishing the SPR in the near future.
“The best plan, in my view, is for us not to continue to use it in a way that is for political purposes and rather do it in a market-based way. And if there is an emergency, that’s what this is for. And the real concern is that 1984, when it was at the levels that we’re in currently, we were using 20 percent less oil,” Sommers said.
President Joe Biden and other White House officials have denied the SPR is being used for political purposes, instead blaming the release and relatively high gas prices on the Ukraine–Russia conflict. Earlier this week, White House spokesman John Kirby told reporters that the federal government has issued about 9,000 permits for drilling on federal lands.
Sommers disputed Kirby’s recent statement by saying that “they make it seem like as soon as you get a lease that you can start drilling on that property,” adding that companies “have to do a lot of prep work before you actually produce on those federal leases, including getting multiple permits.”
In October, after Biden released another 180 million barrels, the White House indicated it would start refilling the SPR once the price of crude oil drops to around $70 per barrel. Earlier this week, U.S. energy security advisor Amos Hochstein told Bloomberg News the White House would consider replenishing the SPR once oil prices are “consistently” around $70, although he didn’t say for how long.
Other than Sommers, Chevron CEO Mike Wirth said Thursday during a New York event that the plan to refill at $70 per barrel is “not necessarily a wise move.” He added that “durable and meaningful permitting reform” would be a “huge step forward.”
More Activity
As of Friday, automotive group AAA says the average price for a gallon of regular gasoline stands at $3.44. That’s down about 30 cents from one month ago, and it’s slightly higher than the average price exactly one year ago.
Republicans and oil industry officials have said that Biden’s move to release oil from the SPR was designed to keep gas prices artificially low ahead of the Nov. 8 midterm elections. But they have argued that the long-term effects of the order may be devastating.
In an aerial view, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve storage at the Bryan Mound site is seen in Freeport, Texas, on Oct. 19, 2022. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
Earlier this month, the White House asked Congress for $500 million to modernize the SPR, according to a document. If approved by Congress, the request, issued by the White House on Nov. 15, provides the Department of Energy with funding to improve the four SPR sites along the Texas and Louisiana coasts.
The SPR oil is stored in hollowed-out, underground salt caverns that can shift and potentially require maintenance when petroleum is removed and replaced. The facility’s steel pumps and equipment are also subject to constant lashing of moist, salty air, which can be corrosive.
The proposed funding “would allow the SPR to both maintain operational readiness levels and also alleviate anticipated shortfalls due to supply chain issues, the COVID-19 pandemic, and related schedule delays,” the White House said in the request.
Leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have no scruples about killing their citizens to preserve power, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said as he reflected on the recent death of former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin.
For their deliberate policies of repression and violence, Gingrich believes China’s leaders have a lot to answer for.
Since the CCP’s founding in the 1920s, “every single leader of that Party has been a totalitarian dictator,” Gingrich, an Epoch Times contributor, said in an interview.
“None of them have been moderates. None of them have been nice, pleasant people in the sense that we think, and all of them have been prepared to kill people. That’s what it took to stay in power.”
Human rights advocates describe Jiang as the architect of one of the largest anti-faith campaigns in modern history, in launching the persecution of Falun Gong, a spiritual group consisting of meditative exercises and moral teachings centered on truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.
Perceiving the practice’s surging popularity as a threat to his rule, Jiang ordered an all-out suppression campaign in 1999, subjecting adherents to a range of abuses including torture, harsh labor, imprisonment, and forced organ harvesting.
Gingrich, who as House speaker had hosted Jiang in Washington in 1997, considered Jiang a “very good defender of the Chinese communist government.”
But the Party’s nature reveals itself when it comes to any perceived challenge to its rule.
“Clearly, the dictatorship reached the conclusion that Falun Gong was a mortal threat because it represented an alternative center of legitimacy,” Gingrich said.
“From their perspective, to believe in anything other than the state is a threat to the very survival of the state,” he said, pointing to how other faith groups such as Christians and Tibetan Buddhists have also been persecuted for that reason.
“The persecution of Falun Gong, and the intensity of it, is really stunning, and tells you all you need to know about how deeply totalitarian the system is.”
Rising Discontent
Jiang’s death occurs at a particularly sensitive time, as the regime faces widespread dissatisfaction from the Chinese public, who have had enough of the regime’s draconian COVID-19 policies.
The death of a leader has historically provided an outlet for those unhappy with the status quo to air grievances. In 1989, mourning that followed the death of reformist leader Hu Yaobang turned into a mass movement calling for reforms and democracy in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. The Chinese regime ordered tanks and soldiers to move in to violently crush the protesters. The bloody clampdown, which shocked the Western world, turned out to be the springboard for Jiang’s political rise.
The recent anti-lockdown protests in China have evoked more than a faint echo of that period.
“These are the first demonstrations I can remember even including Tiananmen Square, where you actually have people calling for the replacement of the dictatorship,” Gingrich said, citing the chants of “Chinese Communist Party step down” and “Xi Jinping step down” that emerged during the recent protests.
“I think that is a significant shift.”
Protesters take part in a rally commemorating victims of China’s zero-COVID policy outside Shinjuku Station in Tokyo on Nov. 30, 2022. (Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images)
Their calls are hardly a surprise given the persistently weak economy and the “repressive” COVID rules, Gingrich said.
The unwritten contract the Chinese people have with the CCP has been that “as long as the economy works, we’ll tolerate the dictatorship,” he said.
“Now, the economy is not working.”
Gingrich is cautious about how far the Chinese protesters can keep up the momentum, not the least because the regime has the world’s largest surveillance system at its disposal to snuff out any perceived threats.
Soviet and Chinese communist leaders each have a track record of mass killing. November marks the anniversary of the “Holodomor” famine, which then-Soviet head Joseph Stalin engineered in the 1930s, causing millions of Ukrainians to starve to death.
In China, Mao Zedong, the regime’s first leader, presided over the Great Leap Forward economic campaign to industrialize China, which led to a three-year famine from 1959 to 1962 that some historians estimate to have resulted in 30 million deaths.
“These dictatorships have a deep capacity for dominating with just brute force terror,” said Gingrich.
Weakened Regime
Even if these protests don’t lead to political change, the sign of weakness from Beijing is hard to miss.
Zhao Lijian, the spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry, on Nov. 28 revealed a rare moment of hesitation when a reporter asked whether China would end the zero-COVID policy to appease the protesters.
Zhao flipped through notes for about a minute before responding that the reporter’s description of the situation “does not reflect what actually happened.” His answer wasn’t included in the official published transcript.
That was a sign to Gingrich of how “shaken” a lot of senior Chinese officials are by the scale of and the spontaneity of the demonstrations, which were sparked by deaths in a Xinjiang apartment fire that many at least partly attributed to COVID curbs that are some of the world’s toughest.
“Even with all of their efforts and propaganda, and all their efforts at controlling communication, they have not been able to contain it,” he said, referring to the protests.
Epidemic control workers wear PPE to prevent the spread of COVID-19 as they walk across a road on their way to perform nucleic acid tests in an area with communities in lockdown in Beijing, on Dec. 1, 2022. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)
The widespread discontent, coupled with China’s struggling economy, poses a huge challenge for CCP leader Xi Jinping, who just secured an unprecedented third term in office in October, and could rapidly erode his authority.
Chinese officials appear to have begun softening their COVID messaging. Sun Chunlan, the vice premier, said this week that the country is facing “new situations” with the weakening of the Omicron variant and the widespread vaccination. Multiple cities also relaxed some of the virus restrictions after the protests.
“The degree to which everybody who’s currently protesting is at risk of having the dictatorship arrest them, and disappearance is enormous, and it tells you the courage and also the desperation” of the protestors, Gingrich said.
He says he’s disappointed to see a lack of active U.S. support for the protesters and condemnation of Beijing’s repression of them.
Washington has a more aggressive role to play, Gingrich says, whether on the issue of the regime’s persecution of Falun Gong or its COVID restrictions. It should borrow tools deployed during the Cold War, including sanctioning of officials, to apply pressure, he said.
“If you believe in human rights, and you believe in the legitimacy of people governing themselves and speaking out and having the right of free speech, there’s a lot to hold the Chinese communist dictatorship accountable for, and there’s a lot to hold their leaders accountable for.”
InfoWars host Alex Jones filed for bankruptcy on Friday after he was ordered to pay about $1.5 billion for his comments about the 2012 Sandy Hook mass shooting.
A filing from Jones said that he has between $1 million and $10 million in assets and between $1 billion and $10 billion in liabilities. His lawyers made the filing (pdf) at a U.S. bankruptcy court in Houston, asking for Chapter 11 protection from creditors.
The extent of Jones’s personal wealth is not clear, according to the filing.
“I, Alexander E. Jones, the Debtor in the above-styled bankruptcy proceeding, state under penalty of perjury and pursuant to 11 U.S.C. § 1116(1)(B) that I have no balance sheet, statement of operations, or cash-flow statement,” it further states.
An attached document says attorney Vickie L. Driver, who filed the bankruptcy petition for Jones, was being paid $500,000 for legal services and was paid $48,193 to file the petition on Friday.
It comes months after Jones’s primary company, Free Speech Systems, filed for bankruptcy protection. Several of his other companies—InfoWars, Prison Planet, and IW Health—filed for bankruptcy in April.
The 48-year-old Jones was ordered to pay some $1.4 billion in a Connecticut case and $45.2 million in a separate case in Texas to families who say they were harmed by his claims about the Sandy Hook mass shooting that left 20 children and six adults dead. Both Jones and his lawyers said he will appeal both cases.
Alex Jones during trial at the Travis County Courthouse in Austin, Texas, on Aug. 3, 2022. (Briana Sanchez/Pool via Reuters)
A Connecticut jury in October awarded Sandy Hook families $965 million in compensatory damages, while a judge added an additional $473 million in punitive damages. A jury in Texas awarded the parents of a child who died in the mass shooting the $49 million in damages, and earlier this week, a Texas judge rejected Jones’s bid to reduce the millions he owes to the families.
Jones has acknowledged the 2012 shooting took place and tried to correct the claims that he initially made. However, media outlets “won’t let me take it back,” he said.
After the $965 million verdict was handed down, Jones stated that he will not pay it back, in part, because he doesn’t have the money.
“So, look, nobody’s talking about the appeal,” Jones told Newsmax in mid-October. “We are very, very sure—like 99 percent—that this is such a joke, this thing is such a fiasco, such a kangaroo court, such a railroad job that these will be overturned, both the Texas rulings and the Connecticut rulings, at the Supreme Court of Connecticut and Texas, if not the Supreme Court of the United States.”
Jones noted that the verdict “doesn’t matter at the end of the day” because “I don’t have $10 million cash.”
“I got a couple of houses, a couple million bucks in the bank,” he remarked. “It’s a total joke. And so if they think they’re gonna get 900-plus million dollars, they’re gravely mistaken.”
Response
An attorney for the Sandy Hook families released a sharply critical statement after Jones filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Friday.
Lawyer Chris Mattei told news outlets that Jones’s filing for “bankruptcy will not work,” adding, “The bankruptcy system does not protect anyone who engages in intentional and egregious attacks on others, as Mr. Jones did.”
“The American judicial system will hold Alex Jones accountable, and we will never stop working to enforce the jury’s verdict,” Mattei stated.
The filing from Jones Friday also lists the plaintiffs who won verdicts against Jones as his largest unsecured creditors. Among them are Robert Parker, father of 6-year-old Emilie Parker, who was awarded $120 million by the Connecticut jury, and FBI agent William Aldenberg, who was among the first law enforcement officers on the scene of the 2012 shooting.
Connecticut judge Barbara Bellis had temporarily blocked Jones from moving any personal assets out of the country at the request of the plaintiffs, who claimed Jones was trying to hide assets to avoid paying.
The families have sued Jones in Texas state court seeking to unwind what they say are millions of dollars worth of illegitimate transfers from Jones’s company to shell entities he controls. They allege those transactions were intended to shield Jones’s assets from potential judgments.
Authorities said that Adam Lanza, 20, shot and killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012 before he turned the gun on himself. The mass shooting triggered a slew of gun control measures in several different Democrat-led states, including New York, Connecticut, Maryland, and Colorado.
Senate Republicans have vowed to oppose any spending bill that would go on beyond the 117th Congress.
After a long effort to pass an omnibus spending bill for fiscal year 2023, Democrats were forced to accept a short-term continuing resolution (CR) instead.
CRs, while they prevent the government from shutting down, make no changes to long-term federal spending. Rather, they simply continue to spend at levels set the prior fiscal year.
Earlier this year, Democrats passed a CR that will fund the government through Dec. 16, at which point the government will shut down if lawmakers have not passed a new spending bill.
One of the Democrats’ many agenda items during the lame-duck session is the passage of a more comprehensive omnibus spending bill. In contrast to a CR, an omnibus bill, if passed, would allow Democrats to set appropriations levels for next year even though they’ll be in the House minority.
Because the 118th Congress will sit for the first time on Jan. 3, 2022, allowing a CR to run out before then could give a lame-duck Democrat majority a last-minute chance to fund its policies through all of fiscal year 2023.
The letter was written by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and signed onto by three other Republicans—Sens. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), and Mike Braun (R-Ind.).
In it, the coalition demanded that McConnell not allow Democrats to succeed in their efforts to set next year’s spending levels.
“On November 8, 2022, the American people made their voices heard at the ballot box,” the letter opened. “Using the Democratic process, millions of Americans sent a message—they want divided power in Washington to curb the worst excesses of both parties.”
The four Republicans said they “stand with the voters.”
They wrote, “We believe it would be both imprudent, and a reflection of poor leadership, for Republicans to ignore the will of the American people and rubber stamp an omnibus spending bill that funds ten more months of [President Joe Biden’s] agenda without any check on his reckless policies that have led to a 40-year high in inflation.”
According to the most recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, inflation has slowed from its peak of over nine percent in June, but it remains high. In October, the value of the dollar dropped by 7.7 percent, a situation that Republicans have blamed on Democrats’ “out of control spending” (pdf).
Since taking unilateral control of the government, Democrats have rushed through trillions in new spending: first with the passage of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which received no GOP support, the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and the $740 billion Inflation Reduction Act.
The effect of this spending, the Republicans wrote, has been higher costs for American households. They cited a figure provided by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget which estimates that Democrats have authorized $4.8 trillion in new borrowing since Biden took office.
“Since taking office, President Biden has overseen a $4.8 trillion increase in the national deficit, costing the average American household an estimated $753 more a month,” the lawmakers wrote. “It should be up to the new Congress to set spending priorities for the remainder of this fiscal year.”
Concluding the letter the Republicans wrote: “Now is the time for Republicans to get serious about leading America towards a better future.”
They demanded that McConnell not make any deals that would fund the government well into the next fiscal year.
“We must not accept anything other than a short-term Continuing Resolution that funds the federal government until shortly after the 118th Congress is sworn in,” they wrote, demanding that “[no] additional spending, [and] no additional policy priorities should be included.”
Anything more urgent, they added, should be handled as an individual bill rather than as part of an omnibus spending bill.
‘A Lame Duck Spending Blowout’: Roy
This demand, the passage of a short-term “clean” CR with no changes to current spending, has been growing among Republicans.
In the letter, Roy wrote: “Federal dollars are fueling rampant inflation and funding the Biden administration’s radical agenda. This includes empowering authoritarian bureaucrats at agencies like the IRS and FBI, implementing open-border policies that are threatening our communities, imposing COVID-19 mandates that shut down schools and are forcing our military servicemembers out of their jobs, and advancing self-destructive energy policies.
“As the September 30th federal funding deadline approaches, Republicans must do what is necessary to ensure that not one additional penny will go toward this administration’s radical, inflationary agenda,” he continued. “Any legislation that sets the stage for a ‘lame duck’ fight on government funding gives Democrats one final opportunity to pass that agenda.
“Therefore, we, the undersigned, pledge to the American people to reject any continuing resolution that expires prior to the first day of the 118th Congress, or any appropriations package put forward in the remaining months of this Democrat-led Congress.”
On Dec. 1, Roy re-upped these demands in an op-ed for the Washington Examiner. He described Democrats’ ongoing efforts to pass an omnibus bill as “a lame-duck spending blowout.”
“When is $5 trillion still not enough?” Roy quipped. “Answer: When you’re a progressive about to lose your grip on total power.”
Later, he wrote: “Taxpayers … deserve better than another rushed backroom deal as lawmakers sprint home for Christmas. Democrats ran all of government for two years but focused on their special spending causes rather than pass individual bills to finance the government. Now with three weeks left in a lame duck, they want to jam the GOP again.”
Roy said that Republicans should not be cowed by Democrats threatening to shut down the government to pass a spending bill.
“The GOP campaigned on a return to regular fiscal order, and why not start now?” Roy wrote. “Democrats can threaten a government shutdown, but they’d own it as the party in control. If Republicans aren’t going to use their power to enforce some fiscal discipline, they might as well stay in the minority.”
What’s Next
Despite opposition to an omnibus bill among both House and Senate Republicans, Democrats could still get what they hope for.
In the House, a Democrat-crafted spending bill would need only a simple majority—a simple majority that Democrats have until Jan. 3. Thus, passing an omnibus bill through the lower chamber would be relatively painless for the party.
In the Senate, any spending bill’s fate will be contingent on how Republicans respond to it.
Unlike in the House, where simple majority rules, almost all bills that go to the Senate must first overcome the 60-vote filibuster threshold before they can go to the floor for a simple majority vote. This means that Democrats will need the support of at least ten Republicans to end debate and send the bill to the floor for a vote.
For Republicans hoping to stave off a Democrat-made spending bill, a key player will be McConnell, who has the influence among Senate Republicans to make or break such a bill.
On Nov. 29, McConnell indicated that there is “widespread agreement” on the need for an omnibus, a sign that McConnell may be willing to support a Democrat spending bill when it comes to the upper chamber.
Another risk, according to Roy, is that “retiring GOP appropriators like Alabama Senator Richard Shelby see the omnibus as a last chance to pave his Birmingham streets in earmark gold.”
Shelby is one of several GOP lawmakers in the upper chamber, joined by Sens. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), Rob Portman (R-Ohio), and Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), who will not be around during the next Congress.
It remains unclear whether the sentiments expressed by Roy, Cruz, Scott, Braun, and Lee are shared by enough Senate Republicans to kill a Democrat omnibus bill.
Federal officials forgave $809 million in Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans handed out during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 to more than 100 of the nation’s top law firms and another $635 million given to hundreds of elite accounting offices, according to a new analysis of government spending to be made public on Dec. 2.
As described by the Department of Treasury, the PPP was established in 2020 to provide “small businesses with the resources they need to maintain their payroll, hire back employees who may have been laid off, and cover applicable overhead.”
The program was administered by the federal Small Business Administration, which made $787 billion in federal loans to companies and firms spanning all industries. The vast majority of the “loans” were subsequently turned into grants, which didn’t require repayment.
An investigation by Open the Books found that hundreds of millions of federal tax dollars went to top law and accounting firms even though most of them didn’t qualify as small businesses and didn’t have to lay off employees.
Open the Books is a nonprofit watchdog that uses public information laws such as the federal Freedom of Information Act to make government spending public, including “every dime online, in real time.”
The Epoch Times obtained an advance copy of the investigative report.
Auditors “found an astonishing $1.4 billion in forgiven PPP loans that flowed to the largest and most successful law and accounting firms across America,” the report stated.
“Today, it is an open question whether many of the firms needed a taxpayer subsidy to ‘save’ any jobs during the Covid-pandemic. Many racked up record revenues while their equity partners made millions of dollars.
“For example, in the years 2020 and 2021, we found equity partners individually received $7 million in profits while their law firms received $10 million in forgiven PPP ‘loans.’ The Guam office of Ernst & Young, a Big Three accounting firm with 365,000 employees, took a $750,000 forgiven loan.
“In 2020, millions of mom and pop businesses on Main Street had to shut down during the forced economic lockdown [occasioned by the pandemic]. So, Congress created the Paycheck Protection Plan (PPP) to compensate those businesses for their economic losses.
“Firms with 500 employees or fewer met eligibility requirements. However, Congress didn’t anticipate that Biglaw and the largest accounting firms would cash in so profitably.”
Among the biggest winners was Boies Schiller Flexner LLP, the New York City-based law firm of Democratic superlawyer David Boies, which received a forgiven $10.14 million PPP loan.
Boies first came into national prominence in 2000, when he headed Vice President Al Gore’s legal team during the Florida presidential election recount. The election wasn’t decided until the Supreme Court’s Bush v. Gore decision, which put Texas Gov. George W. Bush in the Oval Office.
Boies also gained national notoriety by representing the Department of Justice in its successful prosecution of Microsoft, and he headed a legal team that challenged California’s Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriages. The proposition was approved in 2008 by voters, but the Supreme Court effectively nullified it in a 2013 decision.
His firm’s PPP debt was forgiven in October 2021 under the Biden administration, even though during the period covered by the loan “the firm’s equity partners earned $4.5 million each in profit compensation—receiving $2.219 million (2021) and $2.283 million (2020). The firm billed clients $480 million during this two-year period,” Open the Books found.
The second-biggest law firm beneficiary of PPP loans was the Birmingham, Alabama-based Maynard Cooper & Gale, which received $10.13 million under the pandemic relief program. Even so, the firm’s workforce increased from 247 in 2019 before the pandemic, to 260 in 2020 during the pandemic, and 283 in 2021.
No. 3 among the white-shoe law firms getting tax dollars via the PPP program was the New York-based Kasowitz Benson Torres. The firm’s “revenues grew from $216.8 million (2019), to $219.4 million (2020) and then $238.4 million (2021). In April 2020, the firm received a $10.13 million PPP loan that was forgiven in July 2021—while profit per equity partner averaged $2.418 million (2021),” according to Open the Books.
Among the big accounting firms getting tax dollars, Prager Metis CPAs in New York City received $10.2 million, which was forgiven in June. Revenues for 2021 reached $139 million, an increase from 2020’s total of $123.9 million.
Withum’s of Princeton, New Jersey, was next, getting a PPP loan worth $10.1 million that was forgiven in June 2021. Withum’s revenues were $425.3 million in 2021, up significantly from its 2020 total of $257 million, according to Open the Books.
Third among the accounting firms was Friedman LLP (Now Marcum LLP), to which the government gave $9.4 million in a PPP loan. That loan was forgiven in August 2021. The firm’s 2020 revenues topped $145 million before its sale to Marcum.
“When you think about it, law and accounting firms are uniquely well-positioned to take advantage of legal loopholes and maximize benefits available to their clients under current statute,” Adam Andrzejewski, founder and CEO of Open the Books, told The Epoch Times. “It should be no surprise, then, that huge national outfits managed to secure taxpayer dollars not just to pay staff, but also to pay rent, interest on mortgages, and more.
“As they were leveraging every tax dollar available to them, many of their revenue numbers continued to grow. It’s a stark contrast to what was happening to small businesses across the country, particularly in retail and hospitality, as they struggled to stay afloat. Did taxpayers, many of us economically strapped, really need to reach into our pockets for these firms doing colossal business?”
The past three years have generated millions of case vignettes of patients with COVID-19 respiratory illness. The most dramatic cases include critically ill inpatients with severe hypoxemia despite maximum respiratory support.
By far, the most notable cases of survival have occurred with the administration of ivermectin. Former NIH researcher David Scheim, PhD, early in the pandemic proposed that SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein was acting like a grappling hook pulling together circulating red blood cells into long chains and clumps in a process called hemagglutination. This explained why the red blood cells could not carry oxygen normally and was congruent with the finding of micro blood clots in the lungs. Recently, Boschi et al have provided additional support for this mechanism.[i] In a spectacular publication, Stone et al, describes the prompt improvement of oxygenation in patients with ivermectin.[ii]
Stone JC, Ndarukwa P, Scheim DE, Dancis BM, Dancis J, et al. Changes in SpO2 on Room Air for 34 Severe COVID-19 Patients after Ivermectin-Based Combination Treatment: 62% Normalization within 24 Hours. Biologics. 2022;2(3):196-210
The published oxygenation curves from multiple studies clearly show this physiological effect of ivermectin occurs so rapidly, it must be explained by a direct anti-Spike protein effect of ivermectin. An anonymous video of a critically ill man demonstrates the very effect that Scheim, Stone, Hazan, and Babalola have described in the Figure.[iii] So for the next critically ill patient with COVID-19, if the opportunity presents itself, push for the administration of ivermectin. This is the only published therapy for COVID-19 that improves oxygen saturation while the patient mounts a recovery. As in this man, it may be the critical factor for a turnaround and a chance to walk out of the hospital.
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.
Democrats might have escaped the midterm bloodbath they so richly deserved, but the scandals surrounding Joe Biden and his son are still making them nervous.
That much was obvious from a Tuesday hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where a question from Republican Sen. Ted Cruz for a Biden ambassador nominee sparked an angry exchange between Cruz and Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen.
It gave a hint at what the country can look forward to when Republicans take over the House in January.
Wednesday’s clash erupted when Cruz used Biden’s own words in grilling George Kent, the president’s nominee for ambassador to Estonia.
Check it out here:
WATCH: Senator Jeanne Shaheen tried to stop @tedcruz from asking all the right questions about Hunter Biden’s corruption. pic.twitter.com/Jue2yvi2Do
Cruz’s questioning began a few minutes earlier than the video above, when he opened by stating clearly that “I want to talk about corruption.”
“I want to talk in particular about corruption in the current administration. And I have serious concerns about corruption of President Joe Biden that extends for considerable time, both his time as president and his time as vice president.”
Cruz then referred to first son Hunter Biden well-documented, multi-million-dollar grifting with Chinese business interests (grifting that’s all but ignored by the establishment media) before turning to Hunter Biden’s equally well-documented multi-million grifting in Ukraine (that’s equally ignored by the establishment media).
The Texas senator’s full questioning is here:
According to a New York Post report in May 2021, information recovered from Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop showed he was paid $83,333 a month, or $1 million a year, from May 2014 to serve on the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma — despite not having any specialized knowledge in the field of energy or even the ability to speak Ukrainian.
The fact that his father was vice president of the United States at the time was obviously worth a lot. According to the Post report, the laptop showed Hunter Biden’s salary was cut in half in 2017, after Joe Biden was no longer the second most powerful man in the world.
But Cruz was focused on an event in 2016, when Joe Biden was still President Barack Obama’s No. 2 man, and Hunter Biden was an insanely well-paid board member of a company founded by Ukrainian oligarch and former government official Mykola Zlochevsky,
“The concern here is not Hunter Biden’s own problems, but rather it is official corruption from the then-vice president of the United States, Joe Biden, and now the president of the United States, Joe Biden,” Cruz said.
“Let me ask you, while his son was on the board of Burisma, making a million dollars a year, did Joe Biden do anything that benefited the corrupt oligarch who was paying his son?” Cruz asked Kent.
Kent, who served as the State Department’s chief of mission to Ukraine at the end of the Obama administration and had personally (but not publicly) expressed concerns about Hunter Biden’s activities, weaseled at first, but after Cruz repeated the question, he answered simply: “He did not.”
That’s when Cruz pounced, bringing up an instance — again, well documented yet studiously ignored — of Biden bragging during a 2018 meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations about using the threat of withholding $1 billion in U.S. aid in 2016 unless the Ukrainian government of the time fired a prosecutor investigating corruption that included Burisma.
FLASHBACK: Two years ago, Joe Biden bragged about holding up $1 BILLION in U.S. loans unless Ukraine fired the prosecutor investigating Burisma, the corrupt company paying Hunter $80k+ per month.
“Let me ask you something,” Cruz said to Kent. “Do you think Joe Biden holding a billion dollars hostage to force the Ukrainian government to fire the prosecutor that is investigating the corrupt oligarch who’s paying his son a million dollars a year, did getting that prosecutor fired benefit that oligarch?”
And that’s when Shaheen went into cover-up mode. The New Hampshire Democrat used her position chairing Tuesday’s meeting to interrupt Cruz’s question and prevent Kent from answering immediately.
The Cruz-Shaheen exchange was illuminating. Rather than dealing with the essence of Cruz’s question — a credible allegation of corruption involving the current president of the United States — she pretended it was making Kent “uncomfortable.”
“Why are you afraid of him answering the question?” Cruz asked.
“I’m not,” Shaheen said, her voice rising. “I just want to move on because …”
She trailed off there as Cruz kept talking, but the point was made — even though Kent did answer with some boilerplate denial of the premise of Cruz’s question and a claim that Biden acted “in good faith to reduce corruption and help the Ukrainian people.” Because of course they did.
But the real takeaway here is that Democrats want nothing better than to “move on” from questions about the Biden crime family and the corruption of the first son in countries that span the globe. They want nothing better than for their allies in the establishment media and Big Tech to ensure that Americans hear nothing incriminating about the doddering dishonesty of the man who now occupies the White House.
They’ll be able to keep up the cover-up in the Senate, where Biden’s party remains the majority.
But when Republicans take control of the House in January, there won’t be committee chairs like Shaheen to shut down questions that make Democrats nervous.
There are going to be bulldogs like Kentucky’s James Cormer and Ohio’s Jim Jordan on the House Oversight Committee demanding answers to the kinds of questions Shaheen was trying to squelch.
In a House finally rid of the control of Nancy Pelosi and her politburo, lawmakers with the drive to dive into the evident corruption of the Biden White House and the deep state control over the FBI are going to have the power to shine a light into the darkness that has overcome the United States government since January 2021.
Whether they’ll use it remains to be seen. But the clash on Tuesday between Shaheen and Cruz is an example of how Democrats are willing to use their powers in Congress to shield the president from questions about the scandals surrounding him and his son.
Come January, they won’t be able to do that in the House. And that has to make them very, very nervous.
CNN isn’t exactly known for espousing conservative talking points — quite the opposite, in fact.
So when the typically liberal-leaning Don Lemon made an argument that you would expect to hear in conservative circles, it wasn’t a huge surprise that his co-hosts lost it.
But what, pray tell, did Lemon say that got his colleagues so riled up? He simply shared some basic economics and how it impacts men’s pay and women’s pay when it comes to the sports world.
Lemon and his fellow “CNN This Morning” hosts Poppy Harlow and Kaitlan Collins were discussing the ongoing controversy involving the forced equal pay of the U.S. men’s and women’s soccer teams.
“I know everyone’s going to hate me,” Lemon began. “But the men’s team makes more money. If they make more money, then they should get more money. … The men’s team makes more money because people are more interested in the men.”
That’s when Harlow jumped in to pin the blame on big media companies, not unlike CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, which is quite cozy with the NBA, but not so much the WNBA.
Harlow brought up the WNBA, in fact, before Lemon retorted, “There’s also more interest in the NBA.”
Should the U.S. men’s and women’s soccer teams be paid the same?Yes No
Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
“Allow people to see [women’s sports] more and gain more fans, then you will push toward more equality,” Harlow argued.
Harlow’s questionable premise notwithstanding, her remarks are a good representation of one of the more common arguments you’ll hear when it comes to men’s versus women’s sports.
The other common argument you’ll hear is that the USWNT is “more skilled” than the USMNT.
“You’re right that not everyone has the same skills because the women are better skilled,” Collins told Lemon. Harlow responded with, “Mic drop.”
Unfortunately for both Collins and Harlow, their premise is, once again, faulty.
If you want to argue that the USWNT has had more success in international soccer, that’s true. But it’s also true that women’s soccer simply does not have the same level of talent that men’s soccer does.
If you need proof of this, look no further than the USWNT getting trounced 5-2 by the FC Dallas men’s soccer team — excuse me, the FC Dallas under-15 boys’ academy team.
Collins’ and Harlow’s line of thinking is missing the crucial context that CNN loves so much.
“The women are better skilled against other women,” Lemon said in response to Collins. “But if the women played the men, they wouldn’t be winning the way that they win.”
Good morning, America? More like good morning, adulterers.
Multiple outlets, including the U.K.’s Daily Mail and the New York Post’s Page Six, are reporting that “Good Morning America” co-hosts T.J. Holmes and Amy Robach have been engaged in a months-long affair.
Holmes, 45, is married to lawyer Marilee Fiebig, while Robach, 49, is married to actor Andrew Shue.
On Wednesday, the Daily Mail published multiple photos of the couple out in public, flaunting the relationship for all to see.
EXCLUSIVE: Married GMA anchors Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes’s romance REVEALED https://t.co/EGXgVWpcpY
People quoted an inside source as saying both Holmes and Robach had split from their spouses before getting together.
“This was two consenting adults who were each separated. They both broke up with their spouses in August within weeks of each other,” the source said. “The relationship didn’t start until after that.”
However, neither has made a public statement about such a separation as of Thursday.
Should these two be fired?Yes No
Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
A noteworthy cheating scandal needs to hit a few prerequisites, and the one rocking the set of “Good Morning America” nails all of them.
The people involved have to be well-known. Given that Holmes and Robach are co-hosts of one of the most-watched American morning shows, that box is certainly checked.
There has to be an element of brazenness. The photos that the Daily Mail posted were not particularly secretive or clandestine. These were two very public faces showing clear signs of affection in public. That’s as brazen as it gets.
There has to be an attempt to remove themselves from public view. Holmes appears to have deleted his Twitter altogether (Robach’s Twitter is still active, but she hasn’t posted since May.) Both Holmes and Robach have deleted their Instagram accounts as well.
But all joking aside, this situation exposes the hypocrisy that runs rampant in today’s world — particularly on the left and in Hollywood.
Look, there’s no true way of knowing what Holmes’ and Robach’s political leanings are. What is known is that they both represent “Good Morning America,” ABC and its parent company, Disney.
First, ABC and Disney (really, all leftists) like to claim the moral high ground and present themselves as “family-friendly.”
GMA bills itself as “your source for useful news and inspiration on how to live your best life.” Does your best life include cheating on your spouse and then having co-workers blatantly ignore the scandal?
There was certainly a learning and teaching opportunity here, but clearly, GMA had no interest in that.
ABC and Disney, meanwhile, appear to be kneeling at the altar of profitability (surprise, surprise), according to a follow-up New York Post report.
“It’s ultimately about the ratings,” a source told the Post, adding that Holmes and Robach could “keep their jobs if their ratings hold up.”
Got it. So when the ostensibly family-friendly Disney has a chance to make a very public statement about the sanctity of marriage and the importance of character, it chooses to look behind the curtain adorned with dollar signs.
Interestingly, if you search for “affair” on GMA’s website, you’ll also notice a peculiar pattern in the way the show covers adultery.
Now, compare the above to how GMA covered the affairs of people who aren’t in the good graces of the left.
Former Trump adviser Rick Gates, former Republican Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens and former evangelical leader Jerry Falwell Jr. all received more severe treatment.
A new poll finds 69 percent of Democrats surveyed believe that Arizonans were denied the “sacred right to vote” due to the Election Day polling site problems that happened in Maricopa County leading to hours-long lines.
Further 65 percent of Democratic respondents in the Rasmussen Reports survey agreed it likely affected the outcome of the U.S. Senate race in Arizona between Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly and Republican candidate Blake Masters.
Overall, 71 percent of the likely U.S. voters thought it likely affected the outcome, including 40 percent who said it “very likely” did.
Kelly won the race by 51.4 percent to Masters’ 46.5 percent, a difference of about 125,000 votes.
The RealClearPolitics polling average had the race pretty much at a dead heat going into Election Day. Kelly ended up winning the match-up 51.4 percent to Masters’ 46.5 percent, a difference of about 125,000 votes.
The race for the open governor’s seat was much tighter, with Democrat Katie Hobbs topping Kari Lake by just 17,000 votes.
Those surveyed were not asked about that race, but clearly if the senate race was impacted, how much more so in the governor’s contest.
Do you agree that voters in Arizona were denied their sacred right to vote?Yes No
Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Lake has argued that since Republicans voted 3-to-1 over Democrats on Election Day, what happened was large-scale vote suppression of her supporters.
Democrats clearly are sympathetic to that view.
Rasmussen lead pollster Mark Mitchell pointed out in a Real America’s Voice interview that voter suppression is a big deal with Democrats, really the biggest one when it comes to elections.
“If you ask somebody if it’s more important to prevent cheating or to make sure everyone votes, every single demographic says it’s more important to prevent cheating, except for Democrats,” he said.
“Here is an example where very clearly maybe hundreds of thousands of people were disenfranchised,” Mitchell added. “That is breaking through the Democrat shell on this issue in a big way.”
He further noted when Rasmussen asked, “Do you agree or disagree with this statement about the election problems in Arizona: ‘This isn’t about Republicans or Democrats. This is about our sacred right to vote, a right that many voters were, sadly, deprived of on November 8th?’” 72 percent agreed, including 69 percent of Democrats.
“And that’s a Kari Lake quote,” Mitchell said. “We have 69 percent of Democrats, 35 percent strongly agreeing with Kari Lake, that voters in Arizona were denied their sacred right to vote.”
“We have 69% of Democrats, 35% strongly agreeing with @KariLake, that voters in Arizona were denied their sacred right to vote.”
The Rasmussen survey of 750 U.S. Likely Voters was conducted on November 27-28, 2022. The margin of error is +/- 3.6 percentage points.
Lake held the lead in nearly every poll in the month-and-a-half period leading into the Nov. 8 election and had a 3.5 percent advantage in the RCP average, yet Hobbs won.
One explanation for Lake coming up short in the vote tally, and what her campaign has pointed to, is the chaos that happened in Maricopa County on Election Day, when ballot tabulators and ballot printers were not functioning at 71 polling locations, according to the county — though the Lake campaign puts the number at 114, or 53 percent of the sites.
Here is one example I witnessed firsthand in the ruby-red community of Anthem on the north side of Phoenix, where the line was about two hours both at midday and again at 6 p.m.
Here is the problem w/ what happened in Maricopa County on Election Day. This is Anthem, north of Phoenix at about 1:15 pm. Ruby red district of about 30K people. Only one polling location. Ballot tabulators not working in the morning. 2 hr wait to vote midday and still at 6 pm. pic.twitter.com/CY35yQWwq5
Here’s another example in Chandler, southeast of Phoenix.
I was outside a polling location in SE Chandler for 3 hours Tues morning as a campaign supporter; we were told that polling locations in N Gilbert were down, so those voters were being sent to ours…wonder how many never voted at all, on leaving Gilbert?https://t.co/bNmK9rkTPa
A week after the race, Lake told supporters, “What happened to Arizonans on Election Day is unforgivable.”
“Tens of thousands of Maricopa County voters were disenfranchised,” she added, as footage of the long lines throughout the county appeared on the screen.
Poll worker Mike Peterson told the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors on Monday that hundreds of people at his voting location in the Paradise Valley area of Phoenix were in effect disenfranchised.
Peterson said 675 people were waiting in line when his location officially closed at 7 p.m. The would-be voters could have stayed in line and waited to cast a ballot, but most apparently gave up.
“Of those 675, do you know how many came in? One hundred and fifty. It means that you have personally disenfranchised voters. They have [come], they have seen and they have given up because they know what is going on,” he said.
In other words, more than 500 people who clearly wanted to vote did not, and that was just voters who showed up near the end of Election Day at one site.
Maricopa Poll Worker CONFIRMS: Poll Workers WERE NOT trained properly, voters were 100% disenfranchised.
This figure would not include those who might have been discouraged by long lines during the day.
Given the approximately 17,000 votes separating Lake and Hobbs, it would take a net of about 240 Lake supporters being prevented or discouraged from voting in each of the 70 ill-functioning polling stations to make the difference. If the true number of polling locations experiencing issues was 114, that would translate to 149 voters per location.
Lake has called for a redo of the election in Maricopa County, and the candidate said Wednesday she will be seeking that in court.
.@KariLake: “The people who chose to show up on Election Day were abused by a system ran by men who wanted to bring me down & stop a movement in Arizona.” pic.twitter.com/Q7Kk1OeqZo
WASHINGTON (Reuters)—U.S. manufacturing activity contracted for the first time in 2-1/2 years in November as higher borrowing costs weighed on demand for goods, but a measure of prices paid by factories for inputs fell for a second straight month, supporting views that inflation could continue trending lower.
The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) said on Thursday that its manufacturing PMI fell to 49.0 last month. That was the first contraction and also the weakest reading since May 2020, when the economy was reeling from the initial wave of COVID-19 infections, and followed 50.2 in October.
A reading below 50 indicates contraction in manufacturing, which accounts for 11.3% of the U.S. economy. Still, the index remains above the level that is typically associated with a recession in the broader U.S. economy. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the index sliding to 49.8.
The Federal Reserve is in the midst of what has become the fastest rate-hiking cycle since the 1980s, as it battles inflation, raising the risks of a recession next year.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell said on Wednesday the U.S. central bank could scale back the pace of its rate increases “as soon as December.” The Fed has raised its policy rate by 375 basis points this year from near zero to a 3.75%-4.00% range.
Manufacturing is also being pressured by the rotation of spending back to services from goods as the nation moves away from the pandemic.
The ISM survey’s forward-looking new orders sub-index dropped to 47.2, remaining in contraction territory for a third straight month. Order backlogs also dwindled further also a function of improving supply chains.
The survey’s measure of supplier deliveries rose to 47.2 from 46.8 in September, which was the first decline below the 50 threshold since February 2016. A reading below 50 indicates faster deliveries to factories.
With supply chain bottlenecks easing, the outlook for inflation is improving. A measure of prices paid by manufacturers fell to a 2-1/2 year low of 43.0 from 46.6 in October. The drop, which also reflected a moderation in commodity prices, offers hope that inflation has already peaked.
Annual consumer prices increased below 8% in October for the first time in eight months.
The ISM survey’s measure of factory employment decreased to 48.4 from 50.0 in October. The decline is likely because of slowing demand for labor as manufacturers brace for economic turbulence.
The government reported on Wednesday that nondurable manufacturing job openings decreased by 95,000 at the end of October, contributing to a drop in overall vacancies in the economy. Still job openings remain considerably high and there were 1.7 openings for every unemployed person in October.
(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
(Reuters)—Florida’s Chief Financial Officer said on Thursday his department would pull $2 billion worth of its assets managed by BlackRock Inc, the biggest such divestment by a state opposed to the asset manager’s environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) policies.
While the move will hardly dent BlackRock’s $8 trillion in assets, it underscores how the backlash among many Republican politicians, such as those in Florida, against ESG investing, which they see as promoting a “woke agenda,” is gathering steam.
Republicans are set to assume control of the House of Representatives in January. This will allow them to hold hearings on ESG and grill the chief executives of BlackRock and other major assets managers about their ESG policies, and also pressure regulators to scrutinize them.
In a statement, Florida CFO Jimmy Patronis said the state’s Treasury, which he oversees, would remove BlackRock as manager of about $600 million of short-term investments and have its custodian freeze $1.43 billion of long-term securities now with BlackRock, with an eye on reallocating the money to other money managers by the start of 2023.
Patronis accused BlackRock of focusing on ESG rather than higher returns for investors.
“Florida’s Treasury Division is divesting from BlackRock because they have openly stated they’ve got other goals than producing returns,” Patronis said in the statement provided by his office.
A BlackRock representative did not immediately comment.
While BlackRock has encouraged portfolio companies to take steps like disclosing more data about their carbon emissions or to add more diverse board members, it has said its efforts are aimed at improving company performance and resisted calls for steps like divesting from oil companies. U.S. Democratic officials have argued BlackRock doesn’t press ESG concerns enough.
So far, only Republican-controlled states have made major reallocations away from BlackRock, including $794 million pulled by Louisiana’s treasurer and $500 million by Missouri’s treasurer, both in October.
Earlier this week, Republican attorneys general from various states asked a federal regulator to limit Vanguard Group Inc’s activities over ESG concerns, and asked United Parcel Service Inc and FedEx Corp to clarify their policies on tracking firearms shipments.
(Reporting by Ross Kerber in New York; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
Classes at kink conference include ‘Running a Dungeon 101’ and ‘Fisting Fundamentals’
The Biden administration’s most infamous “genderfluid” official isn’t letting a pesky felony charge get in the way of a good time.
Sam Brinton, who was placed on leave at the Department of Energy after stealing a suitcase full of women’s clothes, last weekend delivered a seminar on the science of spanking and “turning butts red” at a Los Angeles kink conference. Speaking under the pseudonym “NuclearNerd,” Brinton delivered the hands-on “Spanking: From Calculus To Chemistry” seminar at the Leather Getaway conference, the Daily Mailreported.
“Taught by NuclearNerd, a nerd with graduate degrees from MIT in nuclear engineering with a sincere passion in turning butts red, this class will demonstrate a variety of physics principles with live demonstrations,” an online advertisement for Brinton’s seminar states. “Oh, and if you stick around, you’ll get the physics version of the class where you can hear about Sam’s original calculation of the spring force coefficient of a butt being spanked!”
Brinton, who was named deputy assistant secretary of the Office of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition at the Department of Energy in June, knows a thing or two about spanking. The federal official gets reps in at regular “kink parties” Brinton hosts in their Washington, D.C., “dungeon,” according to the bureaucrat’s presenter bio on the conference’s website.
“As a graduate of MIT, NuclearNerd has been teaching their ‘Physics of Kink’ class in universities and community events across the country for years,” the bio states. “They have been active in the kink world since 2013, host monthly kink parties in their dungeon in Washington, DC, and estimate they have spanked over 2,000 cute butts.”
Brinton uses the same NuclearNerd pseudonym for an active profile on the fetish hookup app Recon, according to the Daily Mail. On Oct. 27, the bureaucrat was charged with felony theft for swiping a Vera Bradley suitcase, which with its contents was worth $2,325, from the Minneapolis-Saint Paul airport.
Other seminars taught at the leather kink conference included: “Heavy Metal Torture,” “Fisting Fundamentals,” “Cowboy Rope Bondage,” “Running a Dungeon 101,” “Pushing Limits: Managing Fear and Hesitation,” “Ball Stretching 101,” and “Advanced Flogging.”
Brinton faces up to five years in prison if convicted of felony theft. A hearing for Brinton’s case is scheduled to take place in Minneapolis on Dec. 19.
Liberal media outlets like the New York Times and MSNBC claimed former President Donald Trump ordered audits of former FBI chiefs James Comey and Andrew McCabe for political payback. According to the Internal Revenue Service’s internal watchdog, that’s not true.
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration determined that the IRS randomly selected Comey and McCabe for audits of their tax returns from 2017 and 2019 as part of a program the IRS uses to refine its technology, according to a report released Thursday. The watchdog found no evidence of malfeasance on the part of Trump or any Trump-appointed officials.
It’s the latest media-propelled narrative disproved by federal watchdogs. The Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general exonerated border patrol agents who were accused in the liberal media of whipping Haitian migrants as they crossed into the United States from Mexico. The Justice Department’s inspector general debunked the infamous Steele dossier, which the media cited as evidence that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to influence the 2016 election.
The audits of Comey and McCabe, which the New York Timesreported on July 6, fed the narrative that Trump sought revenge on Comey and McCabe for opening an investigation into his campaign in 2016. According to the Times, Comey and McCabe were subject to “intensive” audits of their tax returns from 2017 and 2019. The paper followed up with an analysis of the audits and determined that there was a “minuscule” chance that the audits were random.
Breaking News: James Comey and Andrew McCabe, former FBI officials who Donald Trump wanted prosecuted, were both subjected to rare, intensive IRS audits. https://t.co/0TiHYvn7Uy
Comey and McCabe said they believed they were targeted for the audits.
“Maybe it’s a coincidence or maybe somebody misused the IRS to get at a political enemy. Given the role Trump wants to continue to play in our country, we should know the answer to that question,” Comey said.
“The revenue agent I dealt with was professional and responsive,” McCabe said. “Nevertheless, I have significant questions about how or why I was selected for this.”
Michael Schmidt, the Times reporter who broke the story, said in an MSNBC interview that because of Trump’s “continued harping” on Comey and McCabe, “it’s hard on the face of it to simply accept that this is random.”
Schmidt and MSNBC host Chris Hayes further suggested that then-IRS commissioner Charles Rettig, a Trump appointee, may have had a hand in the audits. Schmidt noted that Rettig had supported Trump’s argument to withhold the release of his tax returns during the 2016 campaign. He also said that Rettig “owns two properties at a Trump property in Waikiki, Hawaii.”
“Because of Donald Trump’s continued harping on these two individuals, it’s hard on the face of it to simply accept that this is random,” says @nytmike on the IRS audits of James Comey and Andrew McCabe. https://t.co/uQnXM3hfcn
— All In with Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) July 8, 2022
But according to the watchdog report, Rettig was appointed months after the audit program that selected Comey and McCabe started. Rettig told the inspector general’s team that he had no discussions with the Trump administration regarding the audit program.
CNN, too, pushed the conspiracy theory that Trump was behind the audits. Pundit Chris Cilizza wrote that “it’s *very* hard to see the audits of former FBI officials as coincidence.” McCabe, a CNN law enforcement analyst, told CNN’s Don Lemon it was “scary to be targeted” in an audit.
Comey’s and McCabe’s claims to have been unfairly targeted by the federal government marks an ironic twist given their mishandling of the investigation into the Trump campaign and Russia. Both signed off on surveillance warrants against a Trump campaign adviser that were based on faulty information from the Steele dossier. The Justice Department’s inspector general found that the FBI failed to verify information in the dossier, which was funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign, before using it as part of the investigation into the Trump campaign.
Trump fired Comey on May 10, 2017, after Comey publicly testified that the FBI was investigating the Trump campaign. McCabe was fired from the FBI in 2018 after the Justice Department’s inspector general found that he lied to federal investigators about his role in a leak of information about a bureau investigation into the Clinton Foundation.
From decorating a hallway at HHS to promoting ‘Indigenous Knowledge,’ White House spends big on Native projects
The White House hosted its second Tribal Native Summit this week, where it outlined how the Biden administration will spend more than $45 billion for “Tribal communities and Native people.”
“I made a commitment that my administration would prioritize and respect Nation to Nation relationships,” President Joe Biden said Wednesday at the summit, which brought tribal leaders from across the country to Washington, D.C.
More than 20 federal agencies laid out proposals for how this massive sum of money would be spent on Native issues. From attempting to revitalize old tribal languages to putting up new Native-themed decorations at a federal agency, it is unclear how most of the spending spree will improve everyday life in the Native population.
Here are some of the most bizarre ways the Biden administration plans to spend the $45 billion.
1. Decorating a hallway at the Department of Health and Human Services
Employees at the Department of Health and Human Services will soon have “visibility of Tribal Nations as Nation-to-Nation partners” every single day. The agency is set to unveil plans for a new “Hall of Tribal Nations” at its Washington, D.C., headquarters, the White House says.
The hall, set to be complete in the next few months, will be decorated with tribal flags.
2. Revitalizing Native Languages
Americans across the country must be aware of the “crisis of Native language loss” and the “urgency for immediate action” to revitalize lost languages, according to a White House fact sheet.
To address the urgent crisis, the administration promised a 10-Year National Plan on Native Language Revitalization, which will focus first on “establishing a formal policy recognizing the role that the United States government played in erasing Native languages and affirming the need for federal resources and support for Native language revitalization.”
The administration says it wants Native languages integrated back into “mainstream society.” It is still working on identifying how exactly to fund this initiative.
It is unclear which languages the administration wants to integrate. According to the Indigenous Language Institute, there are nearly 200 languages still spoken in the Native population. Three-quarters of the population, however, just speak English.
3. Promoting “Indigenous Knowledge” in Federal Agencies
The White House is unveiling guidance to use “Indigenous Knowledge” in federal policymaking. The administration crafted this “first-of-its-kind” guidance to elevate indigenous “observations,” “oral and written knowledge,” and “practices” in government research and decision-making.
Among other issues, the federal government will rely on Indigenous Knowledge to address environmental sustainability and “responsible stewardship” of natural resources, according to the White House.
4. Helping Native Communities Relocate Over Threat of Climate Change
The Department of Interior is making a “vital investment” of $135 million to help tribes face the “growing risks” of climate change.
Three tribes “at risk of being washed away,” Biden said Wednesday, will receive $25 million each. The money will help provide “early learning opportunities” on how to move their communities away from water.
The relocations will provide “long-term resilience” from the “imminent” and “immediate” threat of climate change, according to a department press release.
One in 10 Native people, meanwhile, lack access to clean water or basic sanitation.
5. Installing Electric Vehicle Infrastructure on Native Lands
The Biden administration wants to ensure Native communities are a part of the “EV future of the country,” according to the White House. Ten federal agencies will coordinate in building up tribal access to electric vehicles, including providing zero-emissions school buses, helping tribes purchase “EV fleet vehicles,” and “supporting Tribal Nations’ roles in the EV battery supply chain.”
While the White House looks to expand access to electric vehicles among tribal communities, 14 percent of Native households on reservations have no access to electricity.
6. Prioritizing Environmental Justice
The Department of Justice will host an “Environmental Justice Convening” in 2023. It will address “harms” caused by “environmental crimes” against tribal communities, including pollution and climate change.
7. Restoring Bison Populations
The United States Department of Agriculture will work to “restore bison populations” and “promote species conservation.” They will work closely with the InterTribal Buffalo Council to “assist Tribes in developing new bison herds.” The initiative will also release a handbook and “hands-on” curriculum for Native people.
(Reuters)—The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to hear President Joe Biden’s bid to reinstate his plan to cancel billions of dollars in student debt after it was blocked by a lower court in a challenge by six states that have accused his administration of exceeding its authority.
The justices deferred taking action on Biden’s request to lift an injunction issued on Nov. 14 by the St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocking the program, but said in a brief order that they would hear oral arguments in the case in their session that runs from late February to early March.
The challenge to the Democratic president’s policy was brought by Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and South Carolina. Five of those six states are Republican governed while the other, Kansas, has a Republican attorney general.
The policy faces another hurdle as the administration contests a separate Nov. 10 ruling by a federal judge in Texas deeming the program unlawful. A federal appeals court on Wednesday declined to put that decision on hold, and the administration has said it plans to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene.
(Reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham)
Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to headline a conference held by one of the foremost anti-Israel groups in the country, a move that is being interpreted as a shot at Israel’s newly elected government led by incoming prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Blinken on Wednesday announced that he will serve as the headline speaker at the annual conference for J Street, which as recently as last month trashed Netanyahu, accusing the incoming prime minister of “building and bulldozing [his] way to permanent, undemocratic control of the West Bank.” The group also advocates conditioning U.S. aid to Israel, routinely attacks the Jewish state for defending itself against Palestinian terrorism, and employs notoriously terrible pumpkin carvers. It is funded by liberal anti-Israel billionaire George Soros, though the organization initially tried to hide this fact, as well as by far-left groups such as the Ploughshares Fund, one of the chief proponents of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.
The conference kicks off this weekend, with Blinken set to address the confab on Sunday, alongside former Bernie Sanders adviser and longtime Israel critic Matt Duss, Daily Beast writer Wajahat Ali, a cadre of pro-Palestinian activists, and several Democratic members of Congress, including Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.) and senator-elect Peter Welch (D., Vt.).
Blinken’s decision to attend J Street’s headline event is eliciting concerns at Foggy Bottom and sparking outrage among friends of the Jewish state already aggrieved at the Biden administration’s decision last month to launch an unprecedented FBI investigation into the death in Israel of a Palestinian-American journalist. Israel determined that the journalist was unintentionally shot by its security forces during a standoff with Palestinian terrorists.
Multiple sources, both within and outside the State Department, who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon said Blinken’s decision to attend J Street’s conference is part of an effort by the Biden administration to undermine the new Netanyahu government and distance itself from the incoming prime minister’s conservative coalition.
“It’s repugnant that while Israelis are being repeatedly targeted by terrorists, and the [Department of Justice] launches an unwarranted and politicized investigation of our ally, the secretary of state thinks it’s a good idea to elevate an organization that spends its time demanding aid to Israel be conditioned and criticizing the Jewish state for defending herself,” Sandra Parker, the chairwoman of the CUFI Action Fund, told the Free Beacon in a statement.
A State Department spokesman told the Free Beacon that Blinken’s engagement with anti-Israel groups like J Street is an “important part” of the agency’s mission.
“It is routine for the secretary of state to engage with different civil society groups representing a broad array of foreign policy interests, this is an important part of the State Department’s domestic outreach,” the spokesman said.
While Blinken is not the first secretary of state to address a J Street conference—then-secretary John Kerry and then-vice president Joe Biden both spoke in 2016—the timing of his address is being viewed as highly symbolic. The Biden administration in December took the extraordinary step of launching a Justice Department investigation into the shooting of a Palestinian-American reporter by the Israel Defense Forces.
Israel in September conducted its own independent review in cooperation with the U.S. State Department, and U.S. lawmakers are accusing the administration—given the president’s support for an additional FBI investigation—of kowtowing to radical elements in the Democratic Party who seek to transform Israel into a pariah state.
One senior State Department official told the Free Beacon that “attending this J Street event is like a blatant and obvious attempt to stick Bibi [Netanyahu] in the eye.”
“Unfortunately,” said the source, who was not authorized to speak on record, “it has the effect of undermining our relationship with Israel, and thus U.S. national security.”
It’s not the first sign that the Biden administration is less than elated at Netanyahu’s reascension to power last month. Biden waited days to congratulate the newly elected Israeli leader, drawing accusations the president was trying to isolate Netanyahu’s conservative government before it even was seated.
“The Biden administration is filled with partisans who hate Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu. They banned the use of the phrase ‘Abraham Accords,’ couldn’t bring themselves to have President Biden call Netanyahu to congratulate him until their silence became comical, and now they’re even unleashing the FBI,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) told the Free Beacon. “So of course Secretary Blinken is going to J Street, an anti-Israel activist group that also criticized the Abraham Accords, loathes Netanyahu, and regularly calls for investigations against Israel. It’s both disgraceful and predictable.”
One former Israeli government official told the Free Beacon the administration is not even trying to hide its disdain for Netanyahu and his conservative coalition.
“This is simply bad diplomatic strategy,” said the source, who would only speak on background so as not to upset either government. “Speaking to J Street may displease the incoming Israeli government, but they’re hardly afraid of the lobby. This doesn’t send a message of strength but rather one of petulance. Secretary Blinken should know better.”
Update Dec. 2, 7:48 a.m.: This post has been updated with comment from the State Department.
Two top leaders at Dechert law firm are stepping down from their roles, one month after the legal powerhouse was hit with a pair of racketeering lawsuits related to its alleged role in a hack-and-leak operation on behalf of a Gulf state sheikh.
The departure of CEO Henry Nassau and chairman Andrew Levander—who threatened to sue the Washington Free Beacon three years ago for reporting on separate litigation related to the alleged hacking plot—comes as Dechert faces at least six lawsuits in London, New York, and Washington, D.C., accusing the firm or its attorneys of misconduct.
Most of the allegations involve Dechert’s former head of global litigation Neil Gerrard and one of the firm’s former clients, the leader of United Arab Emirates kingdom Ras al-Khaimah.
Dechert confirmed the shakeup on Thursday and said the company “achieved tremendous success under Andy and Henry’s leadership,” according to Reuters.
Jay Solomon, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, filed a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) suit against Dechert in October in Washington, D.C. Solomon said he was fired from the Wall Street Journal after Dechert lawyers helped orchestrate a plot to steal and leak emails between him and one of his sources, Aviation magnate Farhad Azima. Dechert’s client, the leader of United Arab Emirates kingdom Ras al-Khaimah, was reportedly feuding with Azima at the time of the hack.
Azima filed a similar RICO case against Dechert in New York last month and has ongoing litigation against the group in London. Former Georgian politician Gela Mikadze sued the firm in London in September. Two Jordanian businessmen are also suing Dechert in London as part of a kidnapping and torture case involving the kingdom of Ras al-Khaimah.
Dechert and Gerrard lost a lengthy legal battle earlier this year against the Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation, an African mining company and former client. The ENRC claimed Gerrard secretly leaked damaging information about the company while serving as its lawyer to induce it to pay him higher legal fees.
In the ruling, a London judge said Gerrard “lied continuously” throughout the case and was “so obsessed with making money from his work that he lost any real sense of objectivity, proportion, or indeed loyalty to his client.”
With less than a week before Oregon enacts the most restrictive gun measure in the nation, a second legal challenge has been filed in federal court. Meanwhile, firearm sales continue to set records in the state.
Passed with just 50.7 percent of the vote, Ballot Measure 114 requires Oregonians to undergo a background check and take a class, which does not yet exist, to obtain a firearm permit. It also bans magazines that hold more than 10 rounds.
The measure is set to take effect on Dec. 8, essentially halting legal gun sales in the state.
Guns are displayed in a store during the Rod of Iron Freedom Festival in Greeley, Pa. on Oct. 9, 2022. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
The first legal challenge to the measure was filed in federal court on Nov. 20 by the Oregon Firearms Federation, the Sherman County Sheriff’s Office, and Adam Johnson the owner of Coat of Arms Custom Firearms in Keizer.
That suit is scheduled for oral arguments in the U.S. District Court in Portland on Dec. 2.
On Nov. 30, the Washington-based Second Amendment Foundation (SAF)—joined by the Firearms Policy Coalition, two federally licensed firearms dealers, and one private gun owner—filed a separate lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Portland.
Both complaints focus on the magazine ban, list Oregon Gov. Kate Brown and state Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum as defendants, and seek to prevent the measure from taking effect while a judge weighs its constitutional merit.
The SAF suit also focused on the magazine ban.
“As we immediately explain in our lawsuit, the State of Oregon has criminalized one of the most common and important means by which its citizens can exercise their fundamental right of self-defense,” wrote SAF executive director Adam Kraut on the foundation website.
“By banning … standard-capacity magazines that can hold more than 10 rounds, the state has barred law-abiding, peaceable residents from legally acquiring or possessing common ammunition magazines and deprived them of an effective means of self-defense,” he continued.
“A regulation eliminating a person’s ability to obtain or use ammunition could make it impossible to use firearms,” plaintiff’s attorney James Buchal wrote in the complaint obtained by The Epoch Times.
He argued that the constitutionally protected right to bear arms “must include the right to own magazines,” since “without bullets the right to bear arms would be meaningless.”
As noted in SAF’s complaint, the magazines banned under the language of Measure 114 are commonly-owned across the United States.
According to the 2021 National Firearms Survey, an estimated 48 percent of American gun owners have owned magazines that hold more than 10 cartridges.
“Maybe the most frustrating thing about the Oregon measure is that officials there are willing to enforce the law’s provisions despite any real prospect this law is going to reduce violent crime,” added SAF founder and executive vice president Alan Gottlieb.
“The only people actually impacted are law-abiding citizens who don’t commit crimes, and who will be left more vulnerable to attack because of this new law,” he continued.
Because the provisions of Measure 114 are scheduled to take effect on Dec. 8, Kraut noted, “we are asking the court for a declaratory judgment and injunctive relief.”
Meanwhile, uncertainty about the measure continues to drive gun sales in the state.
“We’re busier than we were during the Covid lockdowns and the George Floyd protests and riots in Portland,” a clerk at Armac Tactical in Junction City told The Epoch Times.
To accommodate customers who had been standing in line for two hours this week, the small firearm dealer began scheduling appointments for its customers to shop to complete a background check application.
“I think the measure was misleading,” he said. “I mean, it sounds good to say ‘we’ll require background checks.’ But we already do that.”
“All this measure has done is increase our sales.”
Before voters narrowly approved the measure on Nov. 8, the Oregon State Police reported an average of 849 background checks per day. By Nov. 30, the average had quadrupled to 4,092 and more than 29,000 applicants were waiting for approval.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he met with Apple CEO Tim Cook and the two resolved the issue of Twitter potentially being cut from Apple’s App Store, which Musk had earlier identified as a threat facing the social media giant.
Musk said in a post on Twitter late Wednesday that he and Cook had a “good conversation” and that they “resolved the misunderstanding about Twitter potentially being removed from the App Store.”
“Tim was clear that Apple never considered doing so,” Musk added.
Musk also shared a brief video clip of a pond at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California, saying in the caption that Cook had shown him around the “beautiful” site.
Apple CEO Tim Cook announces a new lineup of products during a special event at Apple Park in Cupertino, Calif., on March 8, 2022. (Brooks Kraft/Apple Inc./Handout via Reuters)
‘What’s Going On?’
Musk’s update comes toward the end of a tumultuous week in which the billionaire accused Apple of threatening to block Twitter from its App Store and that the iPhone maker had dialed back its advertising on the social media platform almost entirely.
Musk said Apple had given no explanation for pulling its ad revenue from Twitter, while implying the Big Tech giant hates “free speech.”
“Apple has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter. Do they hate free speech in America?” he asked. “Apple has also threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store,” Musk wrote, “but won’t tell us why.” Musk also asked CEO Tim Cook in a post, “What’s going on?”
Another grievance made by Musk was Apple’s up to 30 percent fee it charges software developers for in-app purchases. The Twitter owner posted a meme suggesting that, rather than pay the commission, he was willing to “go to war” with Apple.
Also, Musk in May of this year wrote that Apple’s 30 percent levy is like having a “30 percent tax” added on. “Literally 10 times higher than it should be,” he wrote in another post at the time.
Apple and Cook have not publicly commented on Musk’s earlier claims nor on the latest information that the “misunderstanding” had been resolved.
The Epoch Times has contacted Apple for comment.
Illustration of a cellphone displaying a photo of Elon Musk placed on a computer monitor filled with Twitter logos in Washington, on Aug. 5, 2022. (Samuel Corum/AFP via Getty Images)
Implications of App Store Ban
Pulling Twitter from Apple’s App Store would have meant the social media platform’s app wouldn’t be available on any iOS-using devices aside from a web browser.
Such a tactic was deployed by Apple, Google, Amazon, and others against free speech-promoting social media platform Parler in 2021. Critics of the move compared it to a form of censorship.
Several months after Parler changed its content moderation policies, the app was restored on the App Store.
But data show Parler’s usage dropped significantly since early 2021, after Amazon Web Services abruptly took the platform down for about a month as the company had to find a new host.
Musk’s recent remarks about Apple came after several events sparked speculation that the iPhone maker might block Twitter from its App Store.
The head of Apple’s App Store appeared to delete his account on Nov. 22, while Apple removed all the Twitter posts from its official account around the same time. Cook’s account, however, remains active.
Musk also said that if Apple were to block Twitter from its App Store, he would make “an alternative phone.”
Jack Phillips and Reuters contributed to this report.
All the darkness of the world cannot put out the light of a single candle
With the current global situation, together we can, and will build a brighter future. In other to give meaningful suggestions for this, we first need to speak candidly about what’s happening in the world at present. It appears for real, that there are factions within the world’s power elite that desire at all costs to exert as much control as possible over the people of the world. It will surprise you that their primary means for establishing control are through causing destabilization, promoting fear, secrecy, polarization, and distracting people from their deeper and core purpose in life. The irony of this is that when these factions and principalities gain greater power and control, our freedoms and liberties will be increasingly taken away, sometimes without us even realizing it.
Fear is often used as a powerful tool of control by these factions of the global powerful elite. Situations like these are highlighted for us as the terrorists want to kill us all, your job, savings, and retirement are no longer secure, you are either for us or against us, we might be attacked at any time, and peace is dangerous. All of these messages push us toward fear. And by encouraging us to lose focus, and put the blame on others such as terrorists and “evil” leaders perhaps bad leadership. Thereby programming us to hate those they want us to hate, believe the lie, trust evil, and debunk the truth.
The global power brokers always push humanity away from feeling or being in control of their lives, rather towards the role of powerless victims. The more we slip into fear and being victims, the easier it is for us all to be manipulated.
Another tool often used by these global elites against us is shrugging their activities in secrecy. This leads to control, by preventing the exposure of hidden agendas, and through breeding distrust, suspicion, and paranoia in our communities, state, nation, and the world at large. In the name of “national security, top secret, and classified.” We have been told more frequently that we should not know what is happening behind government closed doors. Yet we are encouraged to keep a vigilant watch over our neighbors, spy on them, and report them. Those who question the government, and those who look or act differently from us, are your enemies, as they could secretly be terrorists in sheep’s clothing. People with facts, who question the motives, are censored. On the other hand, when their evil plans, are exposed, they have a name for it, it is called, conspiracy theory. In the long run, rampant suspicion makes everyone look suspicious to you, you find it difficult to trust one another, setting up each other as enemies, which further destabilizes us as a community. Secrecy causes us to lose touch with the common human reality we share all around us.
Polarization leads to the “us vs. them, our nation against them,” way of thinking. Divide and conquer is a tactic, that is being used successfully by the power elite of the world for centuries. This style of approach is very common with the Western government. As long as people focus on blaming and attacking “the enemy,” most often the so-called “enemy” is created and may not necessarily exist, this will therefore not likely cause one to look for the deeper causes of their problems. This blindly enables the community to align with the created agenda, we ignorantly support the wrong motive, fighting the wrong battles, neglecting the core purpose and the role Christians, are called to.
Furthermore, controlling factions of the power elite, work to keep public and media attention focused on issues that divide us into two or more polarized camps. So that their greatest concerns of attaining and sustaining power, and establishing their agenda could go on unnoticed. The power brokers then control both sides of the divided public, by assuring corporate ownership of the media and key candidates from all political parties support their deeper power and polarization agendas. Which often involve clashes, destabilization, war profiteering, and much more. The final subtle, yet powerful method of gaining control is to distract people from their purpose in life.
Consider that television, radio, podcast, and movies are filled with ever more greed, violence, immorality, and empty sex. Our educational system has increasingly prioritized passing tests over developing intelligence and creativity. Excessive corporate control of the media has limited people’s thinking faculty, the news is the unquestionable truth, and typically shaped people’s decisions, and the way they think. Our attention is subtly diverted from our deeper purpose in life to the more superficial attractions of sex, fashion, consumerism, materialism, money, and all the irrelevant things. When people succumb to fear, secrecy, and polarization, and when they lose touch with their sense of purpose in life, elements of the global elite can exert ever more control over their lives and the world at large.
Towards a Brighter Future, what can we all do about all of this?
Ultimately, it is the collective fear, secrecy, polarization, and loss of purpose within all of us that has allowed leaders to take power. Subvert democracy, and cause religious clashes, thereby taking away our freedoms and liberties and pushing us all against one another.
If every one of us will make a commitment to work on these issues, both within ourselves, and in every Christian community out there– by inspiring others to do the same, we can change our collective direction, and build a solid foundation for a brighter future. Several actions can help us to take firm steps in that direction.
Firstly, develop a purpose and intention for your life. To live rich, full lives in today’s complex world, it is vitally important to give your life a clear direction by exploring what is deepest and most meaningful to you. By developing a life purpose and life intentions based on this, choose to live your intentions and follow your purpose to the best of your ability every day. By deciding to live with a clear direction and focus, life becomes deeper and more meaningful. This then weakens the seduction of consumerism and media hype which has distracted everyone from their core God-given purpose.
Transform fear into acceptance and love. When we notice ourselves feeling and nurturing fear, we can trace the roots of that fear, so that we can identify our core challenges and deal more consciously with them. We can be open to guidance from friends, teachers, and spiritual sources in helping us to move from fear to acceptance, and understanding of what love is all about. We can also transform our fears by welcoming the ever-present love of God, and the love that always lies deep within our hearts, and in the hearts of those around us. In doing this, we begin to recognize fear as an invitation against personal and community growth.
Self-awareness also helps you know when you are playing the role of victim, and choose instead to take personal responsibility for building a brighter future. Blaming others for our problems, doing what the global elite wants us to do, and yielding to their plan, detach us from taking responsibility. We become involved in creating and becoming part of these issues, through the choices we make. Rather than playing the role of victim, by blaming others (including the government, and power elite) for everything wrong in our lives, we, can decide to take a look inside ourselves and take responsibility for what’s happening to us. By focusing less on blaming others, deciding to stick to the narrow path, and more likewise, improving ourselves, both in our lives and in our community, creating, building, and establishing our system, economy, and tech, among others. Every one of us can make a huge difference.
Avoiding secrecy and encouraging openness and transparency is an important way we can work together to inform friends and colleagues about the major cover-ups being hidden from the public. Then in our personal lives, when we notice ourselves keeping information from others, we can examine our motives for this secrecy. Are we withholding information out of our self-interest, or because this is really what’s best for all involved? And on a deeper level, why are we avoiding being honest with ourselves? It is high time we embrace transparency in all of our dealings. Transparency breeds trust, sincerity, and drives loyal within any community.
Move beyond polarization and the focus of “us vs. them.” Every person in the world has a heart. And each of us has a place in our hearts that wants only to love and be loved. Consider the possibility that all of us are doing what we believe to be right, which is based on the word of God. If we all just keep to the commandment and live a Christ-centered life, our community will evenly radiate in peace, love, and harmony. Once we focus less on blaming and judging “them,” – we increasingly come to see and understand that we are all one human family, and, we can choose to transform our world by working together for the good of all. Finally, let’s come together in groups and communities to support each other in making these positive changes.
In these groups and communities, such as our place of worship, among our friends, family, colleagues, and neighborhood, let’s support each other in transforming fear into acceptance and love. We exchange information about all that is being hidden from us and explore ways to move beyond polarization. We also share our life purpose and intentions and encourage each other to live these as fully as we can. Let’s inspire each other to take responsibility for our lives and to be the best that we can be. Let us also support those that need help, and embrace love over hatred. When we support each other in these intentions, we join in building a growing network of inspiration and empowerment around the planet. These suggestions emphasize changing the collective consciousness of the world by transforming both our personal lives and establishing a Christian value community in the world around and beyond us. Let us all do what we can to stop the destructive behaviors of the global power elite against us. It is high time you play your role now.
God Bless you.
Co-founder, Generations of Jesus Christ, a non-profit ministry reaching out to the world’s citizens by sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ and harvesting souls for Christ.
A Christian and motivational writer with 16 years of experience. Publisher of Christian books, magazines, newsletters and devotional guides. Such as My Grace is Sufficient, The Path, and Closer to God, among others.
A Texas mother, frustrated by her school board’s reluctance to remove books with graphic sexual content from school libraries, found an embarrassing technique for getting board members and the public to pay attention.
Her unusual method may have hastened the removal of one objectionable book from shelves and brought the issue of sexual content in school libraries to the attention of social media viewers worldwide.
At last count, the number of views of her most-recent appearance at a school board meeting had reached nearly 372,000 on Twitter after being shared by Libs of TikTok.
The video shows Shannon Ayres reading from the book, “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” at a board meeting of the Frisco Independent School District on Nov. 16.
Ayres, the mother of grown children who attended school in the district, now serves on the board of the local chapter of the watchdog group County Citizens Defending Freedom.
In the clip, Ayres takes her spot at the podium during public comment and begins reading a passage from the book found in the library of at least one district high school. The excerpt graphically describes a young girl protesting and crying as a boy forces her to perform oral sex.
“I ask you why this book has survived two attempts…” Ayres tries to ask board members.
Off-camera, a school board trustee can be heard talking over her as Ayres’ microphone is turned off at the end of her comment period.
“Thank you. Your time is up. Thank you so much. There’s a child in our boardroom, so I’d like for you to please stop reading that,” board president Rene Archambault interrupts, drawing loud complaints from the audience.
Ayres told The Epoch Times she decided to begin reading excerpts from books that remained in libraries after making it through at least one review process. Though distasteful, she felt reading passages would focus attention on the remaining books.
“Identical,” which has a scene where a father rapes his daughter, was already under a second review but removed within 48 hours after she read from it at a previous school board meeting.
So Ayres signed up to speak again during the meeting set aside for public comment. And that’s what drew her public scolding now circulating around the world.
“My heart was beating so hard I felt like they could see it beating through my shirt. It was scary. I had to say a little prayer to get the words out. It’s just vile,” she said.
The irony of Archambault’s comment seems to amaze viewers—that a school library book is too graphic to be presented in front of children.
“The hypocrisy was so blatant,” Ayres said.
Archambault’s comments later in the meeting indicated that the child in the audience was of elementary-school age. She said it was vastly different for a child to be “forced” to listen to the material read during a board meeting versus checking out a book from the library.
She apologized that the child’s mother had to cover her ears while the book passage was read and asked people to email concerns about books in the future so children wouldn’t be exposed to the content during board meetings.
At that point, trustee Marvin Lowe, one of two conservative board members, spoke up.
“I understand what you’re saying for a kid to hear what was in that book, but do we need to apologize to the community that those books are in our library, to begin with?” Lowe said, prompting applause from the audience.
Ayres said she did not realize a child was at the meeting.
“And I was upset when I realized afterward there was a child in the room because obviously that’s what I’m trying to avoid is children having to be exposed to that,” she said.
“Parents rights first”: Fairfax County resident Lin-Dai Kendall protests at a rally outside Luther Jackson Middle School before a Fairfax County Public Schools board meeting, in Falls Church, Va., on Sept. 15, 2022. (Terri Wu/The Epoch Times)
The frustrating part is that she said some objectionable books have been on shelves for a year after being challenged.
Besides the “Wallflower” book, six other titles remain on the shelves: “Check, Please! Book 1:#1 Hockey,” “Chicken Girl,” “Glass,” “Glass Castle,” “The Perks of Being a Wildflower,” “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” and “The Exact Opposite of Okay.”
Frisco ISD’s website says parents and community members may object to titles that don’t follow district policy. But it also noted that the district must protect students’ First Amendment rights.
Ayres said board members shouldn’t hide behind claims that removing inappropriate books would violate students’ rights.
Ayres said minors aren’t allowed to carry guns, which isn’t an infringement on their Second Amendment rights. Likewise, she added, taking books with sexual content out of libraries doesn’t infringe upon their First Amendment rights.
Even with the intervention of state Rep. Jared Patterson, a Frisco Republican, the seven books remain on school library shelves after two appeals.
Patterson told The Epoch Times he was sorry the child in the audience heard the book’s content.
“I’m sorry that any child has to see that in their school,” he said.
Patterson started objecting to books last November, he said. But when school started in August 2022, there were still 28 books with sexual or inappropriate content in Frisco ISD libraries.
Texas state Rep. Jared Patterson (R-Texas). (Photo courtesy of Jared Patterson)
After he filed complaints about the books, Frisco ISD went through its entire process of staff review and reconsideration committees. The rubric they used to evaluate the books parents found objectionable didn’t list obscenity as a factor to consider. Of the 28 books parents wanted removed, only five were pulled from school libraries, he said.
Neighboring districts or publishers already had pulled the books, he said. But he said that Frisco’s superintendent and most of the board members had stonewalled efforts by parents and him.
Patterson appealed again, and ISD staff reviewed the remaining books and eventually pulled 21 titles.
On Oct. 17, Patterson joined forces with state Rep. Matt Shaheen, a Republican from Plano, and state Sen. Drew Springer, a Republican from Muenster. Together, they met with Frisco ISD superintendent Mike Waldrip and Archambault. Their discussion of the book issue didn’t go anywhere, Patterson said.
Parents and Patterson escalated their request to remove the books to level-three appeal on Oct. 26, asking again to remove the remaining seven books they say are inappropriate for children. On a level-three appeal, the school’s process is that trustees vote on the individual books. The vote is scheduled for Nov. 30.
Patterson said he feels the board has stonewalled the issue because of a culture within the school district of acceptance in promoting these types of materials to students.
“They hand-picked these local liberal activists to be on these reconsideration committees that they knew weren’t going to pull any of these books,” he said.
Parents shouldn’t have to fight “to take this filth out of libraries,” Ayres added. But recently, it’s been a trend nationwide.
Sexualized content has no educational value, Ayres said. She believes it’s used to normalize sex for students, lowering their inhibitions through exposure at a young age.
“It’s definitely an agenda. It’s not just Frisco ISD,” she said.
However, the district allocated $387,000 for new library positions to help with ongoing reviews of library materials to ensure they meet guidelines. According to its website, the district is also working on updating administrative regulations and procedures related to the weeding of library materials and challenging instructional materials.
Archambault did not respond to The Epoch Times’ requests for comment by publication.
An Arizona county’s refusal to certify the results of the Nov. 8 election might cost Republicans a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, although one county supervisor said it likely won’t come to that.
As of Dec. 1, Cochise County hasn’t certified its results, drawing a lawsuit from Secretary of State and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs. On Nov. 28, the Cochise County Board of Supervisors voted 2–1 against certifying the results after one member said it was to protest against reported voting issues in Maricopa County.
The board stated that it would hold a second meeting to vote on certification on Dec. 2 and discuss election issues. It isn’t clear what would happen if officials don’t certify the Nov. 8 results, although it’s likely the courts would then step in.
Republican Juan Ciscomani is the projected winner of Arizona’s 6th Congressional District, which includes Cochise County. Data show that he defeated Democrat Kirsten Engel by about 5,400 votes.
About 47,000 votes were cast in Cochise, a predominantly rural county located along the U.S.–Mexico border. In the county, Ciscomani leads Engel by 13,775 votes.
If Cochise County’s results aren’t certified by the time Hobbs certifies the statewide results on Dec. 5, the vote totals won’t include those 47,000 votes, according to Bloomberg.
Hobbs said in the suit against Cochise County that the county is allegedly violating Arizona state law and claimed that it may “potentially disenfranchise the voters of Cochise County.” A court needs to intervene or Hobbs “will have no choice but to complete the statewide canvass by Dec. 8 without Cochise County’s votes included,” the lawsuit states (pdf).
“Thus, the Board’s inaction not only violates the plain language of the statute, but undermines a basic tenet of free and fair elections in this state: ensuring that every Arizonan’s voice is heard,” the lawsuit reads.
However, Cochise County Supervisor Peggy Judd said that “we are gonna certify it,” according to The Daily Beast.
“We’re just trying to get some answers to things about the machines. We full well intend to certify it. Why would we not? You know? So we’re going to, we’re just holding off as long as we can, doing things that are legal for us to do, no matter what they say. It’s so weird, we’ve been kind of dealing with this the whole time,” Judd told the outlet on Nov. 30.
“They keep telling us ‘That’s illegal. You’re gonna go to jail,’ but it hasn’t been so, you know, law is up to interpretation. Only the judge in the end can say.”
Other Details
The Associated Press last month called the race in favor of Ciscomani, who got 50.7 percent of the votes, while Engel got about 49.3 percent. The AP noted that if Cochise County’s results are excluded, the race could reportedly flip in favor of Engel.
Juan Ciscomani, the Republican U.S. House candidate for the 6th Congressional District, speaks at an event in Tucson, Ariz., on Aug. 19, 2022. (Rick Wiley/Arizona Daily Star via AP)
Judd previously told media outlets that the delay in certification was designed to protest against problems that were reported on Election Day in Maricopa County, the state’s most populous county.
On Nov. 8, Maricopa County Supervisor Bill Gates and County Recorder Stephen Richer confirmed that there were issues with tabulation equipment but stressed that those problems were resolved later that day. The Arizona Attorney General’s Office later sent a letter to county officials and demanded answers and information about the incident, which led Maricopa County officials to tell Election Day voters to place ballots in drop-boxes.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake filed a lawsuit to obtain information from the county, which voted to certify the election results earlier this week. In a later video, Lake signaled that she wouldn’t concede and that she plans more legal challenges.
Judd told the Daily Beast that she believes she hasn’t broken any state laws, contrary to what Hobbs’s lawsuit claims. She also believes the deadline to extend certification is Dec. 8.
“I don’t wanna go to jail, but we don’t see that happening,” Judd told the outlet. “There are people that are working on things, and I’m giving them a chance to work on things.
“It’s extended till the 8th for the secretary of state and she will get her certification. She just needs to wait. And hopefully, something happens between now and then with these other players. But if it doesn’t, it doesn’t, I’m not gonna let my county’s voters not get counted. It wouldn’t be beneficial to anyone.”
As of Dec. 1, Republicans, who have secured control of the House for 2023, currently hold a seven-seat majority over Democrats in the chamber. Just two races, which are led by Republicans, remain undeclared.
Bankman-Fried says his wealth is down to $100,000 and that he has just one active credit card
Appearing at times contrite, at times evasive, former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried told viewers at a New York Times DealBook Summit that he was “deeply sorry about what happened,” referring to the collapse into bankruptcy of his crypto currency exchange and hedge fund in early November, but that he was unaware of any intentional misuses of customer funds.
Host Andrew Ross Sorkin opened their video interview, which Bankman-Fried joined from the Bahamas, with a question from a man named “Andrew,” who claimed to have lost his life savings investing in the FTT crypto currency on the FTX exchange.
“Bankman-Fried stole $2 million from me,” the man stated. “Can you please ask why he decided to steal my life savings, and the $10 billion more from customers to give to his hedge fund, Alameda?” Alameda Research, a now-bankrupt hedge fund, was a sister company to the FTX crypto exchange, both owned by Bankman-Fried, and it is alleged that customer funds flowed freely between the two entities.
Bankman-Fried responded that although his subsidiary companies spanned numerous jurisdictions around the world, the U.S. subsidiary was “fully solvent [and] fully funded, and you know I believe that withdrawals could be opened up today and everyone could be made whole from that.”
Throughout the Q&A, Bankman-Fried stated that he was either unaware of improprieties or made honest mistakes. He frequently avoided eye contact, looking away from the camera or staring at the floor as he spoke.
Improper Use of Funds
Among the charges against his company was that money that customers thought they were investing in crypto currency for their own accounts was in fact being used to fund loans and cover speculative losses at Alameda Research.
“I unknowingly commingled funds,” Bankman-Fried said, adding that he was “frankly surprised” by the extent of risk that some of his subsidiaries had taken with client funds, “but I wasn’t trying to commingle funds.”
Illustration by The Epoch Times. (Craig Barritt/Getty Images)
When Bankman-Fried was pressed on the fact that managers of both FTX and Alameda were living together, often engaging in intimate relationships, in a luxury Bahamas resort, he responded, “I did live with one or two members of Alameda for a little while, and also say that, you know, as I was, you know, earlier this summer looking at the relationship, and this is a pretty big mistake and oversight of mine.” But he maintained that he wasn’t aware of any intentional malfeasance.
“I wasn’t running Alameda,” Bankman-Fried said. “I didn’t know exactly what was going on. I didn’t know the size of their position. A lot of these things are things I’ve learned over the last month, that I learned as I was sort of frantically digging into this on November 6, November 7, November 8, and obviously that’s a pretty big mistake; that’s a pretty big oversight that I wasn’t more aware.”
Bankman-Fried explained that Alameda received funds from the customers of the FTX exchange because when the exchange was first established, it didn’t have its own bank accounts.
“We were trying to get them; it took us a while, took us a few years,” he said, and in the meantime, customers who wanted to trade crypto on the FTX exchange “were wiring money to Alameda Research to get credited.”
Criminal Charges Ahead?
Bankman-Fried said he is staying in the Bahamas for the time being to assist regulators there in combing through the assets of the various companies to see what funds can be returned to investors. He also revealed that his wealth was down to $100,000 and that he had just one active credit card.
Asked if he was concerned about facing criminal charges, Bankman-Fried replied, “Sounds weird to say, but I think the real answer is, that’s not what I’m focusing on … Like, what matters here is the millions of customers, what matters here is all the stakeholders in FTX who got hurt and trying to do everything I can to help them out.”
At the height of his success, Bankman-Fried was hailed as a philanthropist and one of the largest donors to political campaigns and environmental and social causes. In a recent interview, however, he repudiated much of that as “shibboleths” to gain access to influential politicians and key regulators. He is reported to have had a 45-minute phone call with Gary Gensler, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and to have consulted on aspects of draft regulation of the digital currency market.
Bankman-Fried explained that his cynical remarks to a Vox reporter “were not meant to be a public interview. It was a longtime friend of mine who I stupidly forgot was a reporter.”
The FTX logo and mobile app adverts are displayed on screens on November 10, 2022 in London, England. (Illustration by Leon Neal/Getty Images)
Among the concerns raised regarding misuse of FTX funds were various real estate purchases that may have been made with customers’ money, including the purchase of a house with FTX money in the name of Bankman-Fried’s parents, Barbara Fried and Joseph Bankman.
“I don’t know the details of the house for my parents,” Bankman-Fried said, “but I knew that it was not intended to be their long-term property, it was intended to be the company’s property. I don’t know how that was papered in, and I think that was, where it was, it will end up I think they may have stayed there, well, working with the company.”
Asked if he had been honest during the interview, Bankman-Fried said, “I was as truthful as I, you know, I’m knowledgable to be.”
Bankman-Fried said he was making his remarks against the advice of his lawyers, given that he might one day be facing criminal and civil charges. After the hour-long conference call, he was greeted with applause from the audience that gathered at the New York Times event. But it was unclear if he was being lauded for his honesty or receiving sympathy for speaking, when his words could potentially be used against him if a trial is in his future.
Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed that vaccinated and boosted people made up most of the COVID-19 deaths in August.
Of the total 6,512 deaths recorded in August 2022, 58.6 percent of the deaths were attributed to vaccinated or boosted people, and seem to be a sign of a growing trend where vaccinated individuals are increasingly becoming the majority in COVID-19 mortalities.
In January 2022, COVID-19 mortalities in the vaccinated was still the minority with 41 percent of the data related to vaccinated or boosted individuals.
However, analysis of the CDC data from June and July showed over 50 percent of deaths were being reported in vaccinated individuals, with 62 and 61 percent reported respectively.
COVID mortality data from September 2021 to August 2022 (Courtesy of the Kaiser Family Foundation)
Cox, while in support of COVID-19 vaccination, gave three reasons that may explain why.
One was that the majority of Americans have at least been given the primary series. Her second reason is that elderly, who have the greatest risk of dying from COVID, are also more likely to take up vaccinations.
Cox’s final reason was that the potency of the vaccine will wane over time and as variants become more resistant, and therefore recommended more booster uptake.
Professor Jeffrey Townsend from Yale University, biostatistician, and lead author to a research study evaluating natural and vaccinated immunity against COVID-19, wrote in an email to The Epoch Times that at this stage in the pandemic, rather than comparing the vaccinated against the unvaccinated, it is more helpful to look at an individual’s time since last exposure instead, with exposures meaning vaccinations or infections.
“Most people have had some kind of exposure, the time since last exposure, along with what the last exposure was, dictates the level of immunity and can explain most variation in susceptibility, morbidity, and mortality,” Townsend wrote.
Currently, long term studies on immunity against COVID-19 have shown that whether a person is vaccinated or infected with COVID-19, their immunity wanes over time.
Other research compared natural immunity with vaccinations often showed that vaccination tend to wane at a much higher rate than that of natural infection.
Some scientists also posited that mRNA vaccines may interfere with the body’s natural immune response. Since the current technology used in mRNA vaccines may “hide the mRNA from cellular defenses and promote a longer biological half-life and high production of spike protein,” according to a June 2022 paper published in Food and Chemical Toxicology. The spike protein is the main pathogenic part of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Clinicians Question ‘Pandemic of the Unvaccinated’ Narrative
Internal medical physician and cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough told The Epoch Times that the pandemic was only driven by the unvaccinated in 2020, where there were no vaccines available, and from 2021 it was mostly the vaccinated people who were dying from COVID-19. He reasoned that it is simply because the vaccine did little to control mortality.
“[The CDC data] is far too late in drawing that conclusion, [the vaccinated] probably assumed the majority sometime during 2021,” said McCullough.
In 2020, more than 385,000 COVID deaths were documented by the CDC, whereas in 2021, when vaccinations were rolling out, there were more than 463,000 COVID-19 deaths.
By June of 2021, around 53 percent of the U.S. population had received their first dose and 44 percent were fully vaccinated.
Yet there was little difference in COVID-19 mortality cases between the first half of 2021 and the second half, with over 244,000 cases (more than 50 percent of the whole year) reported from July to December.
“It certainly can’t be a situation where we blame the unvaccinated for COVID deaths. And we certainly wouldn’t conclude that the vaccines made any impact on us as the majority of deaths happened during the era of vaccinations,” said McCullough.
Data from other countries have also demonstrated higher rates of vaccinated patients being hospitalized with COVID as vaccination rates overall rose.
As early as January 2022, hospitalization data coming out from the state of New South Wales (NSW) in Australia showed that a greater proportion of hospitalized patients were vaccinated. The vaccinated contributed to 50.3 percent of ICU presentations as compared to the 49.1 percent who were unvaccinated.
NSW was the only state that continued to track and publicize the vaccine status of the people being hospitalized in Australia. It is one of the most vaccinated places; by Nov. 24, over 80 percent of people over the age of 16 received their first boosters.
The most recent weekly data from NSW continued to show that the vaccinated make up the majority of COVID hospitalizations, ICU admission, and deaths. The most recent report, dated to Nov. 12, showed that unvaccinated patients contributed to 21 percent of COVID deaths, and less than 1 percent of hospitalizations and ICU admissions.
However, it should be noted that there was only 24 cases of COVID deaths reported in the report, with 440 hospitalizations and 40 ICU admissions, suggestive of a decline in disease severity.
Mortality data from Manitoba in Canada in the week July 31 to Aug. 6, 2022 also showed that while the boosted population made up 70 percent of all COVID mortalities, the unvaccinated contributed to less than 10 percent of deaths. This is with 43 percent of the population boosted.
Reports out of the UK also showed similar findings. A report (pdf) published on March 31, 2022 showed that almost 73 percent of COVID mortalities were in boosted individuals while 10 percent were attributed to unvaccinated people. At the time, over 57 percent of the population received a booster shot and 73 percent received their primary doses.
Unvaccinated Mortality Rates May Not Reflect the Whole Picture
McCullough added that with the decrease in overall disease severity with Omicron, the data may not present an accurate understanding on COVID deaths.
“The CDC death data has to be interpreted with caution, because they’re not adjudicated as dying of COVID. They can actually die with COVID.”
The CDC’s website currently estimates that only 10 percent of COVID-19 deaths have COVID as the contributor of deaths. Therefore, there may be cases counted as a COVID mortality even if COVID was not the primary driver for the death.
McCullough gave the example that a person may be admitted to the hospital for a heart attack and test positive on the COVID test from having contracted the disease 6 months ago.
This could imply that, for some deaths, “whether they’re vaccinated or unvaccinated is relatively irrelevant,” said McCullough.
McCullough said that studies that assess COVID hospitalizations but do not adjudicate for COVID diseases or respiratory illnesses may also not be directly reflective on the prevalence or significance of COVID diseases.
“Patients can be intermittently positive for COVID for many months after the illness. So if a patient comes in for an ankle sprain or unrelated problem, they can count it as COVID hospitalization.”
McCullough also warned that hospital studies on disease outcomes between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals often collected vaccine data that was unsynchronized with the U.S. vaccine administration record.
“The hospital electronic medical records assume that the patient is unvaccinated unless the patient really makes the case that they are indeed vaccinated. Many patients who are on the ventilator are in the ICU, they can’t produce their vaccine card.” The CDC’s MMWR reports list people who were vaccinated but received their two primary shots less than 14 days before the initial infection as unvaccinated; another report wrote that unvaccinated also included people who could not be matched to the registry.
Correction: The Epoch Times cited the percentage in COVID deaths where COVID is the sole morbidity, rather than the percentage of COVID-contributed mortality. The percentage has been updated to 10 percent. The Epoch Times regrets the error.
One of the oddities of the midterm elections in Arizona was Republican turnout was up and Democratic turnout down from 2018 in Maricopa County, yet some of the top-of-the-ticket GOP candidates lost their races.
The county, encompassing the Phoenix metropolitan area, includes 60 percent of registered voters in the state.
Republicans outnumber Democrats in Arizona overall by more than 166,000 people.
Maricopa County had a 64.2 percent voter participation rate in the midterms, which was about 8 percent above the average 56.3 percent going back to the 1970s, according to the county’s Election Day director, Scott Jarrett, who provided an election summary at the county Board of Supervisors meeting Monday.
However, that was not quite as high as the 2018 midterm participation rate of 64.5 percent.
In this month’s election, 75.4 percent of Republicans turned out and voted, according to Jarrett. In 2018, the GOP turnout was more than 1 percentage point lower at 74.2 percent.
Meanwhile, Democrats saw a lighter turnout this year than in 2018: 68.5 percent versus 69.9 percent.
Despite Democratic turnout being down from 2018, the party’s gubernatorial candidate and Arizona’s secretary of state, Katie Hobbs, won her race against Republican Kari Lake.
Additionally, Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly defeated GOP challenger Blake Masters.
Democratic attorney general candidate Kris Mayes held a lead of about 500 votes over Republican Abe Hamadeh, though that race is heading to a recount.
In 2022, according to Maricopa County:
75.4% of Republicans turned out, up from 2018
68.5% of Democrats turned out, down from 2018
There are more registered Republicans (1,436,852) than Democrats (1,270,544) in AZ
The Kelly victory can be explained. He is the incumbent, an astronaut, a Navy veteran and the husband of former Arizona U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, who suffered a grievous and lasting injury during a 2011 assassination attempt.
Understandably, there is a lot of goodwill toward Kelly, among Democrats and apparently independents too, though he voted with the very unpopular President Joe Biden 94.5 percent of the time.
Biden’s approval rating in the Grand Canyon State stood at 36 percent last month, but Kelly held a 49 percent to 42 percent lead in that same Civiqs poll.
The RealClearPolitics polling average had the race pretty much at a dead heat going into Election Day. Kelly ended up winning the contest 51.4 percent to Masters’ 46.5 percent, a difference of about 125,000 votes.
Less understandable is the Hobbs win over Lake for the open governor’s seat. The Republican candidate held the lead in nearly every poll in the month-and-a-half period leading into the election and had a 3.5 percent advantage in the RCP average, yet Hobbs won by about 17,000 votes.
The Democratic candidate, like Kelly, carried independents, but by a smaller margin of 7 percent, 52 percent to 45 percent.
One explanation for Lake coming up short in the vote tally, and what her campaign has pointed to, is the chaos that happened in Maricopa County on Election Day, when ballot tabulators and ballot printers were not functioning at 71 polling locations, according to the county — though the Lake campaign puts the number at 114, or 53 percent of the sites.
Hours-long lines developed at multiple sites experiencing these problems, leading the Lake campaign to argue that since Republicans voted 3-to-1 over Democrats on Election Day, what happened was large-scale vote suppression of her supporters.
Here is one example I witnessed firsthand in the ruby-red community of Anthem on the north side of Phoenix, where the line was about two hours both at midday and again at 6 p.m.
Here is the problem w/ what happened in Maricopa County on Election Day. This is Anthem, north of Phoenix at about 1:15 pm. Ruby red district of about 30K people. Only one polling location. Ballot tabulators not working in the morning. 2 hr wait to vote midday and still at 6 pm. pic.twitter.com/CY35yQWwq5
Poll worker Mike Peterson told the Board of Supervisors on Monday that hundreds of people at his voting location in the Paradise Valley area of Phoenix were in effect disenfranchised.
Peterson said 675 people were waiting in line when his location officially closed at 7 p.m. The would-be voters could have stayed in line and waited to cast a ballot, but most apparently gave up.
“Of those 675, do you know how many came in? One hundred and fifty. It means that you have personally disenfranchised voters. They have [come], they have seen and they have given up because they know what is going on,” he said.
In other words, more than 500 people who clearly wanted to vote did not, and that was just voters who showed up near the end of Election Day at one site.
Maricopa Poll Worker CONFIRMS: Poll Workers WERE NOT trained properly, voters were 100% disenfranchised.
This figure would not include those who might have been discouraged by long lines during the day.
Given the approximately 17,000 votes separating Lake and Hobbs, it would take a net of about 240 Lake supporters being prevented or discouraged from voting in each of the 70 ill-functioning polling stations to make the difference. If the true number of polling locations experiencing issues was 114, that would translate to 149 voters per location.
The county claims only 62 of 223 polling locations had wait times of over 30 minutes, with only 16 having hour-plus wait times.
In a letter to the Maricopa board last week, the Arizona attorney general’s office highlighted other issues arising from the ballot printer and tabulation problems on Election Day.
“The Elections Integrity Unit (‘Unit’) of the Arizona Attorney General’s Office (‘AGO’) has received hundreds of complaints since Election Day pertaining to issues related to the administration of the 2022 General Election in Maricopa County,” Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Wright wrote.
“These complaints go beyond pure speculation, but include first-hand witness accounts that raise concerns regarding Maricopa’s lawful compliance with Arizona election law,” she said.
Wright noted among other issues that there were reports about — and the county has admitted to — the commingling of ballots at some polling places with those that were not able to be read by the machines.
The Lake campaign has called for a redo of the election in Maricopa County, and the candidate said Wednesday she will be seeking that in court.
This time the election should be run by competent, unbiased people, Lake argued.
“We definitely can’t have Maricopa County and these same clowns who ran this circus of an election run the next one,” she said.
“And I think a lot of people in Arizona want to have a new election in Maricopa County,” the Republican said. “We’ll see what the court says.”
Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates and County Recorder Stephen Richer founded a political action committee last year dedicated to defeating MAGA Republican candidates like Lake.
One of the oddities of the midterm elections in Arizona was Republican turnout was up and Democratic turnout down from 2018 in Maricopa County, yet some of the top-of-the-ticket GOP candidates lost their races.
The county, encompassing the Phoenix metropolitan area, includes 60 percent of registered voters in the state.
Republicans outnumber Democrats in Arizona overall by more than 166,000 people.
Advertisement – story continues below
Maricopa County had a 64.2 percent voter participation rate in the midterms, which was about 8 percent above the average 56.3 percent going back to the 1970s, according to the county’s Election Day director, Scott Jarrett, who provided an election summary at the county Board of Supervisors meeting Monday.
However, that was not quite as high as the 2018 midterm participation rate of 64.5 percent.
In this month’s election, 75.4 percent of Republicans turned out and voted, according to Jarrett. In 2018, the GOP turnout was more than 1 percentage point lower at 74.2 percent.
Meanwhile, Democrats saw a lighter turnout this year than in 2018: 68.5 percent versus 69.9 percent.
Despite Democratic turnout being down from 2018, the party’s gubernatorial candidate and Arizona’s secretary of state, Katie Hobbs, won her race against Republican Kari Lake.
Additionally, Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly defeated GOP challenger Blake Masters.
Democratic attorney general candidate Kris Mayes held a lead of about 500 votes over Republican Abe Hamadeh, though that race is heading to a recount.
In 2022, according to Maricopa County:
75.4% of Republicans turned out, up from 2018
68.5% of Democrats turned out, down from 2018
There are more registered Republicans (1,436,852) than Democrats (1,270,544) in AZ
The Kelly victory can be explained. He is the incumbent, an astronaut, a Navy veteran and the husband of former Arizona U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, who suffered a grievous and lasting injury during a 2011 assassination attempt.
Understandably, there is a lot of goodwill toward Kelly, among Democrats and apparently independents too, though he voted with the very unpopular President Joe Biden 94.5 percent of the time.
Biden’s approval rating in the Grand Canyon State stood at 36 percent last month, but Kelly held a 49 percent to 42 percent lead in that same Civiqs poll.
The RealClearPolitics polling average had the race pretty much at a dead heat going into Election Day. Kelly ended up winning the contest 51.4 percent to Masters’ 46.5 percent, a difference of about 125,000 votes.
Do you find the numbers from Maricopa County puzzling?Yes No
Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Less understandable is the Hobbs win over Lake for the open governor’s seat. The Republican candidate held the lead in nearly every poll in the month-and-a-half period leading into the election and had a 3.5 percent advantage in the RCP average, yet Hobbs won by about 17,000 votes.
The Democratic candidate, like Kelly, carried independents, but by a smaller margin of 7 percent, 52 percent to 45 percent.
Advertisement – story continues below
One explanation for Lake coming up short in the vote tally, and what her campaign has pointed to, is the chaos that happened in Maricopa County on Election Day, when ballot tabulators and ballot printers were not functioning at 71 polling locations, according to the county — though the Lake campaign puts the number at 114, or 53 percent of the sites.
Hours-long lines developed at multiple sites experiencing these problems, leading the Lake campaign to argue that since Republicans voted 3-to-1 over Democrats on Election Day, what happened was large-scale vote suppression of her supporters.
Here is one example I witnessed firsthand in the ruby-red community of Anthem on the north side of Phoenix, where the line was about two hours both at midday and again at 6 p.m.
Here is the problem w/ what happened in Maricopa County on Election Day. This is Anthem, north of Phoenix at about 1:15 pm. Ruby red district of about 30K people. Only one polling location. Ballot tabulators not working in the morning. 2 hr wait to vote midday and still at 6 pm. pic.twitter.com/CY35yQWwq5
Poll worker Mike Peterson told the Board of Supervisors on Monday that hundreds of people at his voting location in the Paradise Valley area of Phoenix were in effect disenfranchised.
Peterson said 675 people were waiting in line when his location officially closed at 7 p.m. The would-be voters could have stayed in line and waited to cast a ballot, but most apparently gave up.
“Of those 675, do you know how many came in? One hundred and fifty. It means that you have personally disenfranchised voters. They have [come], they have seen and they have given up because they know what is going on,” he said.
Advertisement – story continues below
In other words, more than 500 people who clearly wanted to vote did not, and that was just voters who showed up near the end of Election Day at one site.
Maricopa Poll Worker CONFIRMS: Poll Workers WERE NOT trained properly, voters were 100% disenfranchised.
This figure would not include those who might have been discouraged by long lines during the day.
Advertisement – story continues below
Given the approximately 17,000 votes separating Lake and Hobbs, it would take a net of about 240 Lake supporters being prevented or discouraged from voting in each of the 70 ill-functioning polling stations to make the difference. If the true number of polling locations experiencing issues was 114, that would translate to 149 voters per location.
The county claims only 62 of 223 polling locations had wait times of over 30 minutes, with only 16 having hour-plus wait times.
In a letter to the Maricopa board last week, the Arizona attorney general’s office highlighted other issues arising from the ballot printer and tabulation problems on Election Day.
“The Elections Integrity Unit (‘Unit’) of the Arizona Attorney General’s Office (‘AGO’) has received hundreds of complaints since Election Day pertaining to issues related to the administration of the 2022 General Election in Maricopa County,” Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Wright wrote.
Advertisement – story continues below
“These complaints go beyond pure speculation, but include first-hand witness accounts that raise concerns regarding Maricopa’s lawful compliance with Arizona election law,” she said.
Wright noted among other issues that there were reports about — and the county has admitted to — the commingling of ballots at some polling places with those that were not able to be read by the machines.
The Lake campaign has called for a redo of the election in Maricopa County, and the candidate said Wednesday she will be seeking that in court.
This time the election should be run by competent, unbiased people, Lake argued.
Advertisement – story continues below
“We definitely can’t have Maricopa County and these same clowns who ran this circus of an election run the next one,” she said.
“And I think a lot of people in Arizona want to have a new election in Maricopa County,” the Republican said. “We’ll see what the court says.”
Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates and County Recorder Stephen Richer founded a political action committee last year dedicated to defeating MAGA Republican candidates like Lake.
.@KariLake: “The people who chose to show up on Election Day were abused by a system ran by men who wanted to bring me down & stop a movement in Arizona.” pic.twitter.com/Q7Kk1OeqZo
Gates defended the integrity of the Nov. 8 election at Monday’s meeting before the board voted to certify it.
“This was not a perfect election, but it was safe and secure. The votes have been counted accurately,” he said.
Accurately counting the ballots cast is, of course, vitally important, and hopefully that happened, but an even more pressing matter in Maricopa County is the likely thousands of citizens who were in effect denied their chance to vote on Election Day.
.@KariLake: “The people who chose to show up on Election Day were abused by a system ran by men who wanted to bring me down & stop a movement in Arizona.” pic.twitter.com/Q7Kk1OeqZo
The Dec. 9 deadline to avert a rail strike that could cost the nation’s economy $2 billion per day has prompted the Biden administration to ask the lame-duck Congress to step in and force labor and management to accept a deal.
It’s a big change from September when the president made a Rose Garden speech to tout a deal that promised rail union workers “better pay, improved working conditions, and peace of mind around their health care costs.”
The result: the self-proclaimed “most pro-union President leading the most pro-union administration in American history” is turning the federal screws against labor:
I am reluctant to override the ratification procedures and the views of those who voted against the agreement. But in this case – where the economic impact of a shutdown would hurt millions of other working people and families – I believe Congress must use its powers to adopt this deal.
…because the US supply chain and economy are so dependent on rail, the Railway Labor Act was passed in 1926 to give Congress the authority to curtail strikes and resolve them if they do happen.
It hasn’t used this power frequently, and the most recent application of it was roughly 30 years ago, when Congress acted to end a rail strike in 1992. At the time, Congress lawmakers passed a resolution setting up an arbitration system to address disputes between workers and the railroads.
The Railway Labor Act gives lawmakers a lot of leeway over how they could approach the current situation.
“Given that they have the power to force a settlement, I don’t think there are any limits on that,” says Cliff Winston, an economic policy expert at Brookings.
In practice, they could require the unions and carriers to accept the September agreement as is, an option Biden, and business leaders, are advocating for. They could impose additional conditions of their own, including the requirement of paid sick time, taking workers’ reason for striking off the table. They could extend the existing cooling-off period so both sides have more time to negotiate. Or they could turn the talks over to independent arbitrators who would be tasked with finding a resolution.
Any resolution would need the support of 60 members in the Senate, including 10 Republicans. Getting that backing, ultimately, could limit which option lawmakers decide to take.
With the 2022 midterms now in the rear-view mirror, politicos are already looking forward to what the 2024 election will bring as sitting politicians have started making their moves.
One of those politicians making moves is Indiana GOP Sen. Mike Braun who has all but confirmed his intention of leaving his seat to run for governor of his state.
According to Fox News, the first-term senator has filed paperwork to run for Indiana’s gubernatorial race, leaving his seat open to a potentially crowded primary field.
The winner of the GOP primary will likely replace term-limited Republican incumbent Eric Holcomb in the Indiana governor’s mansion.
“I’m going to robustly finish out the two years as a senator,” Braun said, according to Business Insider.
Braun also stated that he would make his announcement official in “10 days to a couple of weeks.”
Braun is widely seen as a conservative stalwart in the Senate and was one of Sen. Rick Scott’s most vocal supporters during the Florida congressman’s attempt to oust Mitch McConnell from Senate leadership after the midterms.
Braun’s departure is sure to attract a sizable GOP primary field to find his replacement.
Two candidates have been heavily mentioned to run, Reps. Jim Banks and Victoria Spartz, as reported by Fox.
Banks, who currently chairs the influential Republican Study Committee, recently fell short of becoming House Majority Whip, losing out to Tom Emmer.
With his bid at leadership not working out, Banks is likely to take a closer look at Braun’s seat.
According to local source Indypolitics, Banks is now “all in for the U.S. Senate” and is building up his support base for his eventual run.
Spartz, who was first elected in 2020, is of Ukrainian descent and has seen her stature rise since the Russian invasion of her former homeland.
Whoever prevails in the GOP primary is heavily favored to win in the general given Indiana’s substantial Republican base.
Indiana’s other sitting Senator, newly re-elected Todd Young, gave his two cents on the upcoming race to succeed his delegation mate.
“I think it’ll be a crowded primary. And fortunately for the Hoosier State, we have a lot of talented people who might run for that seat,” Young said, Business Insider reported.
Braun himself foresees a competitive primary as well.
“I’m sure there’ll be plenty to fill that vacuum.”
Neither Banks nor Spartz have directly commented on Braun’s impending retirement, so speculation will continue as the field becomes more clear.
Surgeon’s testimony smooths out rocky day in court for lawyers defending Arkansas ban law
LITTLE ROCK, Ark.—Surgically removing body parts and destroying healthy human function “violates one of the most fundamental principles of plastic surgery,” Dr. Patrick Lappert testified, explaining why he refuses to remove breasts from females who seek to appear male.
Lappert took the stand on Nov. 29 in federal court as a witness for the state of Arkansas, which is defending a legal challenge on a law banning transgender medical procedures for minors.
Those procedures include hormones and surgeries, such as double mastectomies, which “gender-affirming care” proponents champion as a cure for girls who are distressed over their bodies’ female attributes.
Earlier this year, Lappert testified in favor of a similar measure in Alabama, where he’s based.
Alabama plastic surgeon Patrick Lappert, addressed the Alabama General Assembly on the effects of transitional gender treatment on minors, from his practice at Lappert Skin Care, on April 13, 2022. (Courtesy of Patrick Lappert)
The Arkansas trial began in October but recessed for a month before resuming with testimony intended to support the Arkansas Save Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act. That law has been on hold while the legal battle, which started right after the law’s passage in April 2021, continues.
U.S. District Judge James Moody Jr. will decide the case known as Brandt v. Rutledge; it’s the nation’s first legal test of such a law.
Attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union want the law struck down as unconstitutional. One of their main arguments is that it’s discriminatory for the state to prohibit medical procedures for transgender purposes yet allow them for other reasons.
But Lappert testified that in his private surgery practice, he refuses to perform certain procedures depending on the intended purpose—a nod to the law that seeks to forbid procedures for “gender-transition” purposes.
It’s acceptable to enhance breasts for a grown woman who has finished her childbearing years; it’s not appropriate to do that for a teen who isn’t finished growing and whose future ability to breastfeed an infant might be jeopardized, he said.
Inside the Patient’s Mind
As a plastic and reconstructive surgeon, Lappert said he must dabble in psychology as well. It’s essential to consider the patient’s reasons for wanting the surgery, along with the form and function of the body parts that the patient wants to surgically alter, he said.
For example, there’s a difference between breast augmentation surgery for a woman who just finds that look to be “aesthetically” pleasing versus one who thinks that having bigger breasts would prevent her from losing her intimate partner, he said.
Likewise, it’s one thing to remove breasts from a cancer patient; it’s another to do double mastectomies on young patients who believe that body alteration will cure them of distress over their transgender identity, according to Lappert.
Yet that’s among the procedures labeled “gender-affirming care”—procedures that the SAFE Act seeks to outlaw.
Surgeons are responsible for ferreting out patients who harbor unrealistic beliefs about the benefits of the surgeries they seek, Lappert said. These patients have “an expectation of happiness that is not achievable through plastic surgery.”
They may blame their sorrows on a physical attribute “because they don’t want to look at the actual cause of their sorrow,” he said.
These patients are seeking a surgical solution to an internal conflict, according to Lappert.
As he pointedly stated in a written court filing, “You cannot heal a psychological wound with cosmetic surgery.”
Dismissing such concerns and giving patients what they want in the pursuit of happiness is unethical, he said.
“You’re abusing the patient.”
Because the novelty wears off after an initial period of post-surgery euphoria, such a patient “is left with the same sorrow and a bill for plastic surgery, and their hopes have not been realized,” Lappert said.
Problems Plague Arkansas Lawyers
Lappert’s hour-long testimony went fairly smoothly, capping a Murphy’s Law-type morning for the Arkansas Attorney General’s Office.
Before Lappert took the stand, spotty internet connections interrupted the live video testimony of an expert witness, sociologist Mark Regnerus, who was testifying while out of the country.
A court stenographer’s machine also malfunctioned, forcing another five-minute delay in the proceedings while a replacement stenographer was summoned and set up.
Moody also repeatedly interjected with questions about the purpose of Regnerus’s testimony.
A lawyer for the plaintiff, Daniel Richardson, appeared to have boxed Regnerus into a corner, as he got the witness to acknowledge that his sole expertise is in the field of sociology.
Then, Richardson objected to any questions that Dylan Jacobs, a deputy solicitor general for Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, tried to ask outside that boundary.
Moody also kept admonishing Jacobs about the form and intent of his questions.
“Where are we going with this, Mr. Jacobs? … I need to know what his expertise is going to do to help me answer my questions … beyond the average layperson,” Moody said.
Several times during Regnerus’s testimony, which spanned nearly three hours, the judge appeared flummoxed.
He raked both palms down his cheeks in frustration. But he occasionally overruled objections from opposing counsel and acknowledged that he was giving Jacobs the chance to “make a record.”
‘Castro Consensus’ Emerges
Jacobs did seem to score a few points when he got Regnerus to discuss how his review of articles and discourse revealed a possible “Castro Consensus” about the best way to help youths who are experiencing gender dysphoria.
Such a forced consensus masquerades as truth, according to Regnerus.
“Truth becomes whatever the ‘consensus’ says it is,” he said.
A sociology professor at the University of Texas–Austin, Regnerus said he viewed the transgender phenomenon using his training as a sociologist to study how it has morphed.
He also said he suspects “ideological capture” has taken hold.
Activists have attacked dissenters who oppose transgender medical procedures; some have lost their jobs or been demoted simply by documenting phenomena that they observe, he said.
Thus, activists also appear to have swayed the viewpoints of large professional organizations such as the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics. The activists have latched onto the authority of those organizations to promote a specific agenda and belief system, Regnerus said.
He also noted that changes in language, seemingly driven by ideology, are influencing the way researchers work. One example is the increasing use of the term “sex assigned at birth.”
For as long as almost anyone can recall, “we had the understanding that sex is ‘observed’” and that anyone can tell a baby’s sex—boy or girl—just by taking a peek.
But now, Regnerus said, “We actually put surveys in front of people that ask, ‘What is your sex assigned at birth?’”
Use of this new terminology shows that “there is a particular value embedded,” he said.
“It signals the ideological capture of … the method by which we document basic things,” Regnerus said.
Six of 11 alleged assailants connected with Antifa, a far-left extremist group, have taken plea deals and pled guilty to charges related to violent attacks on supporters of outgoing President Donald Trump at a “Patriot March” in San Diego shortly after the 2020 election.
Five defendants pled guilty on Nov. 18, just over a week after Erich “Nikki” Louis Yach was sentenced to four years and eight months in prison for his role in the violence near Crystal Pier in Pacific Beach on Jan. 9, 2021. Yach was the first of the 11 to be sentenced.
Yach earlier pled guilty to charges of conspiracy, assault, and the unlawful use of tear gas.
At his sentencing hearing, GG Hubbard, Yach’s spouse, urged the court to send Yach—a biological male who identifies as female—to a women’s prison. Yach has spent nearly the past two years in a men’s prison and will be credited for time already served.
“I want to make sure she gets put in the correct facility according to her gender,” Hubbard told the court.
Hubbard claimed Yach is “not violent” and said incarceration in anything but a women’s facility was “violating the law” and “political and fascist nonsense.”
San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan announced in June that a criminal grand jury had two weeks earlier delivered 29 indictments against all 11 defendants, including “conspiracy to commit a riot, use of tear gas, assault with a deadly weapon, and assault by means likely to produce great bodily injury.”
Counter-protesters attack demonstrators during a “Patriot March” demonstration in support of then President Donald Trump in the Pacific Beach neighborhood of San Diego on Jan. 9, 2021. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)
“Antifa uses force, fear, and violence to further their interests and suppress the interests of others. The objective of this conspiracy was to incite and participate in a riot,” the district attorney’s office said.
The defendants named in the indictments are from Los Angeles and San Diego counties and are all “affiliated with Antifa,” according to a statement from the district attorney’s office in December 2021. The named are Alexander Akridgejacobs, Jesse Merel Cannon, Brian Cortez Lightfoot Jr., Christian Martinez, Luis Francisco Mora, Samuel Howard Ogden, Bryan Rivera, Faraz Martin Talab, and Jeremy White.
On Jan. 2, 2021, Antifa supporters posted calls for a “counterprotest” and “direct action” against Trump supporters on social media and then, a week later, gathered with other “uncharged co-conspirators” dressed in black garb with Antifa insignia to confront those participating in the Patriot March, the office stated.
According to the district attorney’s office, such alleged actions included “assault, battery, assault with deadly weapons, arson, and vandalism.”
Videos posted online showed one of the masked, black-clad protesters carrying an “Antifascist Action” banner and another with a sign saying “No Nazis in PB”—a reference to Pacific Beach—as the group of about 100 shouted “Racists go home!” at Trump supporters.
Counter-protesters spray demonstrators during a “Patriot March” demonstration in support of then President Donald Trump in the Pacific Beach neighborhood of San Diego on Jan. 9, 2021. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)
The indictments accused the Antifa-affiliated group of planning the attacks and using a baseball bat, flagpole, stun gun, and tear gas on their victims. They were also accused of throwing a wooden lawn chair at a woman.
Prosecutors also allege some Antifa members in the crowd chased down several minors whom they thought were part of the Patriot March, sprayed them with mace, and pushed one to the ground. The victim was later transported to a hospital for treatment of a concussion.
Other “victims included a journalist [taking] photos, a dog that was maced and a business that was also vandalized,” prosecutors said.
The San Diego Police Department reported a total of 16 separate attacks on eight people.
The Antifa rioters allegedly threw eggs, rocks, and bottles and sprayed mace at officers after police declared the dueling protests an unlawful assembly and tried to disperse the crowd.
All the defendants pleaded not guilty in June.
None of the Trump supporters or other bystanders were charged with any crimes.
“Video evidence analysis shows that overwhelmingly the violence in this incident was perpetrated by the Antifa affiliates and was not a mutual fray with both sides crossing out of lawful First Amendment,” the district attorney’s office stated in June.
Twitter owner Elon Musk on Wednesday wrote that the social media company’s previous management “interfered in elections” after the former head of its security team lobbed accusations against the Tesla CEO.
In a Twitter thread on a Reuters report in which Yoel Roth—Twitter’s former head of trust and safety—said Twitter is not safer now, a user wrote that “Twitter has shown itself to be not safe for the past 10 years and has lost users’ trust” and the “past team of ‘trust and safety’ is a disgrace, so it doesn’t have any right to judge what is being done now.”
Musk then replied, “Exactly. The obvious reality, as long-time users know, is that Twitter has failed in trust & safety for a very long time and has interfered in elections.”
“Twitter 2.0 will be far more effective, transparent and even-handed,” he claimed. He did not elaborate on how Twitter interfered in elections, although Republicans have long said that the social media outlet censored and banned conservatives, including former President Donald Trump.
The former management of Twitter drew criticism for blocking a New York Post report in October 2020 about then-candidate Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, and his business dealings in China and Ukraine. With just weeks to go before the 2020 General Election between Biden and Trump, the paper’s Twitter account was locked for weeks after it published the report on the laptop—the contents of which have been authenticated by numerous media outlets since then.
Months before the 2020 election, Trump asserted on multiple occasions that Twitter was essentially engaging in election interference by adding labels to his posts. In one post in May of that year, Trump wrote that “Twitter is now interfering in the 2020 Presidential Election” and that “Twitter is completely stifling FREE SPEECH, and I, as President, will not allow it to happen!”
After the November 2020 contest, Twitter also repeatedly censored Trump’s posts about alleged irregularities in the election. Later, the company in January 2021 suspended the former president’s account until this month when Musk restored it.
In his interview, Roth conceded both he and Twitter erred when it made its decision on restricting people from sharing the story. Previously, former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey admitted multiple times that the move was a mistake.
“We didn’t know what to believe, we didn’t know what was true, there was smoke—and ultimately for me, it didn’t reach a place where I was comfortable removing this content from Twitter,” said Roth, who left the company several weeks ago after Musk’s takeover. “But it set off every single one of my finely tuned APT28 ‘hack and leak campaign’ alarm bells.”
As talks about Musk taking over Twitter swirled in April, the billionaire criticized suspending the NY Post’s account and how it handled the story.
“Suspending the Twitter account of a major news organization for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate,” Musk remarked a the time.
Yellen Statement
Musk’s comment comes as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen stated Wednesday that she misspoke about a government review of Musk’s purchase of Twitter Inc.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen speaks during her interview with Reuters in New Delhi, India, Nov. 11, 2022. (Altaf Hussain/Reuters)
If there are alleged risks to national security, “it would be appropriate for [the Committee on Foreign Investments] to take a look,” Yellen said Wednesday during a New York Times-hosted event.
Yellen added that she had “misspoke” when she said she saw “no basis for a review” during an interview with CBS News earlier this month. “I’m not going to say specifically what we are looking at,” she added. “We don’t comment on what’s in progress.”
Biden, too, has said that Musk’s purchase of Twitter should be probed, prompting accusations that the White House may attempt to punish the tech billionaire.
Additionally, Thierry Breton, the European Union’s commissioner for the internal market, told Musk on Wednesday that he would have to make significant changes to Twitter under a new EU law governing social media content.
“There is still huge work ahead, as Twitter will have to implement transparent user policies, significantly reinforce content moderation and protect freedom of speech, tackle disinformation with resolve, and limit targeted advertising,” Breton said, according to a summary of the call.
Also Wednesday, some Silicon Valley leaders welcomed Musk’s management of Twitter, with Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings going so far as to call the billionaire “the bravest, most creative person on the planet.”
And Facebook and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he was keen to see how Musk’s management of content moderation on Twitter would fare, arguing it was good for platforms to take different approaches.
“You can agree or disagree with what Elon is doing, or how he’s doing it, but I do think it’s going to be very interesting to see how this plays out,” said Zuckerberg, speaking at the New York Times DealBook conference.
When we heard about Operation Warp Speed there was sense of shock and awe. American greatness was poised to strike the “China Virus” and it was going to be defeated in a matter of weeks.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) created a project many years ago called ADEPT Pandemic Prevention Platform (P3) whose stated goal was to “end pandemics in 60 days with mRNA technology.”[i] Our government has had a love affair with mRNA for over a decade for precisely a time such as the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak.
Hardly a virus from China, we have learned that Dr. Ralph Baric at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill has been publishing on coronaviruses since the 1990’s. Baric and his consortium including Harvard and two Swiss labs conceived the projects, wrote the federal grants, and once awarded, did their development work in the Wuhan Institute of Virology biosecurity annex level 4. The laboratory built by Stephane Bancel formerly at BioMérieux and now CEO of Moderna, the NIH partner in the mRNA patent.[ii]
I wonder in all the DARPA and NIH meetings that occurred in the last ten years on mRNA, did they ever consider reverse transcription?
If the mRNA stays long enough in the cytosol and is not dissolved by enzymes, the human cell could find base pairs of nucleic acids and create a mirror image of the genetic code which could be brought into the nucleus of the cell for insertion into the human genome. This is such a giant consideration because genetic code for a damaging and lethal protein installed into our own cells permanently would be passed down to somatic daughter cells and from spermatocytes and oocytes to an embryo.
Forever changing the human genome for future generations must have been a large part of the safety discussion in those DARPA and NIH transcripts—only investigation and release of documents will tell the story. In the meantime, Alden et al have demonstrated integration of the center 444 base pair amplicon or reporter region from the Pfizer vaccine into the human nucleus in a hepatoma cell line.[iii] This paper has not been challenged by any credible authority nor disproven by any other experiments.
Kyriakopoulos et al (including Dr. McCullough) have illustrated what the ramifications would be for those cells that have been permanently installed with Pfizer or Moderna genetic code.[iv] In addition to the nine well recognized effects of the Spike protein in the human body, one of the potential consequences is oncogenesis. By suppression of the natural tumor surveillance system(s) in even one cell, it is conceivable that reverse transcription could lead to cancer with a single ill-advised injection of mRNA if it was delivered to a cancer-prone cell line in a susceptible person.
At this time, it is fair to say reverse transcription of mRNA into the human genome is still theoretical. But it should be clear that more studies by independent laboratories should be funded immediately. The implications given the massive numbers of recipients are simply too large to ignore this long-term safety concern.
So the next time you see your doctor, ask him or her if they took an mRNA vaccine. When they say yes, ask them if they considered reverse transcription when the needle plunged into the arm. Did they ever think they would be changed permanently? When brushed aside with “the CDC says mRNA does not change the human genome” then forward this issue of Courageous Discourse and suggest a life-altering a five-minute read.
(Reuters)—Warner Bros Discovery-owned CNN’s top boss Chris Licht informed employees in an all-staff memo on Wednesday that layoffs are underway, according to an email seen by Reuters.
Licht said CNN would notify a limited number of individuals, largely some of its paid contributors on Wednesday and the impacted employees on Thursday, according to the memo.
He would follow up with more details on the changes on Thursday afternoon.
“I know these changes affect both our departing colleagues and those who remain,” Licht wrote. “And we have resources to support you.”
The job cuts have been anticipated and come at a time when companies are looking to rein in costs and trim their headcount to brace for an economic slowdown.
In October, Licht had warned CNN would be undergoing changes, citing “widespread concern over the global economic outlook.” The changes would affect “people, budgets and projects,” Licht had said.
Cable channels operator AMC Networks on Tuesday said it would cut 20% of its U.S. staff as it faces industry pressures and a challenging economy.
(Reporting by Eva Mathews in Bengaluru and Dawn Chmielewski in Los Angeles; Editing by Shailesh Kuber and Nick Zieminski)
Joe Biden this week urged Congress to prevent rail worker unions from striking, unions turned against the president, accusing him of betraying his commitment to stand by labor.
“Joe Biden blew it,” Railroad Workers United treasurer Hugh Sawyer said Tuesday. “He had the opportunity to prove his labor-friendly pedigree to millions of workers by simply asking Congress for legislation to end the threat of a national strike on terms more favorable to workers. Sadly, he could not bring himself to advocate for a lousy handful of sick days.”
Biden’s conflict with unions comes after he promised them during his 2020 campaign that he would be the “strongest labor president you’ve ever had.”
The Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes, a Teamsters rail workers’ affiliate, said it was “deeply disappointed” that the president would not back the union’s strike to fight for paid sick days. A national strike could cost the United States $2 billion per day, according to the Association of American Railroads.
The House voted Wednesday to intervene in the labor dispute and avert a strike, pending Senate approval. Congress will also vote on a separate measure that would grant rail workers seven paid sick days.
(Reuters)—The European Union has threatened Elon Musk‘s Twitter with a ban unless the billionaire abides by its strict rules on content moderation, setting up a regulatory battle over the future of the social media platform, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday.
EU industry chief Thierry Breton made the threat during a video meeting with Musk on Wednesday, the FT reported, citing people with knowledge of the conversation.
Breton told Musk he must adhere to a checklist of rules, including ditching an “arbitrary” approach to reinstating banned users and agreeing to an “extensive independent audit” of the platform by next year, according to the report.
Twitter and the EU did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.
Breton had previously urged Musk to comply with landmark EU rules against online hate speech and disinformation. The European Commission’s justice chief Didier Reynders had also voiced similar comments.
(Reporting by Tiyashi Datta in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D’Silva)
A Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece ramped up its spending in Time, the iconic American magazine owned by left-wing activist billionaire Marc Benioff.
China Daily spent $656,885 to publish propaganda in Time from May 1 to Oct 31, according to disclosures under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. That’s up from the $649,603 that China Dailypaid the magazine in the previous six month period. Since 2020, Time has published articles in its print magazine and online promoting Chinese culture, Beijing’s climate change initiatives, and China’s technology as part of a content-sharing deal with China Daily.
Benioff, a prominent Democratic donor who visited President Joe Biden with his family at the White House earlier this year, began an aggressive push into the Chinese market soon after buying Time in 2018. In 2019, Benioff’s software company Salesforce struck a deal with Chinese tech giant Alibaba to provide cloud computing services for the company in China.
Time is strengthening its relationship with China Daily amid heightened scrutiny of the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to influence American audiences through propaganda. The Department of Justice in 2020 required China Daily and other state-controlled media agencies to begin disclosing details of their content-sharing deals with American outlets. According to the latest filings, China Daily increased payments to Time as the propaganda agency cut spending in four other outlets—USA Today, Foreign Policy, Financial Times, and the Los Angeles Times—from $900,540 to $586,860.
Many of the China Daily articles at Time are human interest stories about life and culture in China. But others promote Chinese state-owned companies that the United States has blacklisted for aiding China’s military and its repressive surveillance state.
Last year, Timepublished a story which touted technology from DJI, a Chinese drone maker that the United States government has blacklisted over its surveillance of Uyghurs. One article about the Beijing Olympics highlighted contributions from China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp., a state-owned enterprise that makes missiles for the Chinese military.
Benioff’s expansion into China has opened him up to allegations of hypocrisy. The billionaire, who has been dubbed “Tech’s Woke CEO,” has been a vocal critic of conservative policies at home while ignoring China’s dismal human rights record. In 2019, he announced that Salesforce would no longer do business with any company that sells certain types of firearms or ammunition magazines. In September, he threatened to shut down operations in states that restrict access to abortion.
“If you’re going to discriminate against our employees, we’re not going to set up shop there,” Benioff told CNN. “We have to be for equality, we have to be for dignity, we have to be for the equality and dignity of every human being.”
Meanwhile, Benioff has heaped praise on China for its handling of the coronavirus pandemic and Beijing’s efforts to fight climate change. In 2018, he said China was “leading the way” in electric vehicle manufacturing. He praised China’s response to the coronavirus early in the pandemic, saying that “China has done an amazing job eliminating the virus from their country.” Since then, mounting evidence suggests that the Chinese government lied about the origins of the virus. And this month, citizens across China have risen up against Beijing over its draconian “zero-Covid” policies.
While Time lends its platform to the CCP, another Benioff company has cracked down on American conservative groups. Slack, a popular instant messaging service owned by Salesforce, banned the Federation for American Immigration Reform from its services in June for violating its terms of service, the Washington Free Beaconreported.
A Slack spokesman told the Free Beacon it banned the group, which supports restrictions on illegal immigration, because it violated the company’s policy forbidding incitement of hatred or violence and that the nonprofit is “affiliated with a known hate group.”
New York City mayor Eric Adams (D.) on Tuesday empowered police to remove potentially dangerous mentally ill people from the street and commit them to psychiatric institutions, infuriating liberal groups who say the policy would cause “trauma.”
Adams signed an order instructing police to take mentally ill people into custody for psychiatric evaluations at hospitals. Liberal groups were quick to slam the effort, claiming the mayor’s approach would cause “trauma,” the New York Timesreported. A New York City council member went as far as to suggest that police presence causes mentally ill people to become dangerous.
“The Mayor’s attempt to police away homelessness and sweep individuals out of sight is a page from the failed Giuliani playbook,” said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York chapter of the ACLU.
But New York City Police Department commissioner Keechant Sewell and other city officials welcomed the effort, saying it will resolve a lingering homelessness crisis, which posed a danger to citizens on public transportation this year.
“The NYPD works day and night to improve the quality of life of all New Yorkers, especially our city’s most vulnerable populations,” Sewell said in a statement. “This deserves the full support and attention of our collective efforts.”
The shift comes as crime in New York City approaches its highest level in decades, with a number of high-profile offenses in 2022 caused by mental illness. Just days after Adams’s inauguration, a homeless man with schizophrenia shoved a woman in front of an oncoming train, killing her. In April, a black nationalist, who had related his history of mental illness on social media, shot 10 people in a Brooklyn subway car.
More than 3,000 people live on the streets of New York City, according to a January report. Many are mentally ill.
Adams’s order broadens officers’ authority to remove potentially dangerous mentally ill individuals. Until now, police had only apprehended those who made an “overt act” likely to cause imminent harm—a legal standard that Adams’s office called a “persistent myth” among city law enforcement.
The directive empowers officers to follow existing state laws, which instruct police to apprehend anyone who appears to be mentally ill and is likely to cause harm. Adams said officers had been reluctant to fully enforce the law because they misunderstood its reach. It also forces hospitals to retain the mentally ill until their condition improves or they receive a long-term plan for treatment.
Left-wing activists have hobbled police efforts to handle dangerous mentally ill offenders—an approach supercharged after the police killing of George Floyd in 2020. The backlash led to police budgets being defunded in some cities and low morale causing officers to leave departments in droves.
Before running for mayor, Adams served in the NYPD, where he retired with the rank of captain. In a June poll, 56 percent of New Yorkers said the city was headed in the wrong direction under Adams’s leadership.
Ebenezer Baptist Church under fire for evicting tenants from low-income apartment complex
The chairwoman of Georgia Democratic senator Raphael Warnock’s church, which is under fire for evicting tenants from its low-income apartment complex, is also a director at one of the largest corporate landlord firms in the United States—a company that Democrats have accused of “shamelessly profiting” off the housing crisis.
Renée Glover is the chairwoman of the governing board for Ebenezer Baptist Church, which employs Warnock and paid him $120,000 last year, including an income-tax-free $7,400-per-month housing allowance, according to financial disclosures. Glover, a former housing administrator in Atlanta, is also on the board of directors for Tricon Residential, one of the top five companies buying up rental properties across the United States. The company has come under scrutiny from progressives who say it is “shamelessly profiting” off the “combination of low inventory and low affordability.”
The news comes as Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker has attacked Warnock, the senior pastor and CEO of Ebenezer Baptist Church, over the aggressive eviction policies and maintenance problems at Warnock’s church-owned apartment building. Experts also say the situation creates a conflict of interest for Warnock, who serves on the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, which this year has been investigating the corporate landlord industry.
“The conflicts of interest keep piling up for Senator Warnock,” said Caitlin Sutherland, executive director of Americans for Public Trust, a watchdog group. “His willingness to entangle his Senate office in his personal dealings has become a case study on how not to represent Georgia.”
“How are his constituents ever supposed to trust that he’s properly overseeing the housing industry, especially on the heels of his church trying to evict low-income tenants?” Sutherland asked.
Warnock’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Canada-based Tricon owns 34,000 rental homes concentrated in Sun Belt states like Georgia, North Carolina, and Florida, making it one of the largest corporate landlords of single-family houses in the United States.
Housing activists and populists from both political parties have accused the private-equity-backed rental industry of causing a housing shortage by buying up tens of thousands of properties over the past few years, making homes unaffordable to first-time buyers. Critics say these corporate landlords then hike rental costs and cut maintenance expenses to turn a profit.
Tricon CEO Gary Berman last year faced social media backlash after he told60 Minutes that wannabe homeowners who have been priced out of the market can still “rent the American dream.” The segment said Tricon raised rents on some of its homes by up to 40 percent for new tenants.
The Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, of which Warnock is a member, has taken up the issue, holding several hearings this year on corporate landlords.
Diane Yentel, the president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, singled out Tricon in her testimony in August, saying the company profited by raising renters’ fees and cutting maintenance costs.
“Tricon, whose profits increased from $113 million to $517 million between 2020 and 2021, noted that this significant increase in profits was due in part to fees and other costs and upkeep responsibilities that were transferred to tenants,” Yentel told the committee.
Democratic senators Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and Jack Reed (R.I.), both members of the committee, in May sent a letter to the Biden administration criticizing Tricon and other corporate landlords. The senators said these companies were “shamelessly profiting” off the “combination of low inventory and low affordability.”
“Tricon Residential openly acknowledges in its marketing materials that ‘[h]omeownership in the United States is becoming increasingly out of reach due to rapidly rising home prices’ and describes these developments as ‘favorable industry trends that support our strategy,'” wrote Warren and Reed.
Warnock has also criticized corporate landlords as “bad actors,” and in February he called out Pretium Partners, one of Tricon’s main competitors, for evicting tenants. But he hasn’t mentioned Tricon, and he didn’t sign on to the letter from fellow committee members Warren and Reed.
“Corporate landlords have been aggressively issuing eviction notices,” said Warnock during a committee hearing earlier this year. “We need to do something to address these bad actors.”
Warnock’s complaints about Wall Street-backed rentals are similar to the criticisms from tenants about his church-owned apartment complex.
The building filed eviction proceedings against at least a dozen tenants since the start of the pandemic, including one who owed just $28.55 in late rent, the Free Beacon first reported. The city of Atlanta has cited the apartment complex for multiple code violations, including overflowing trash, mold, and rodent infestations, according to records obtained by the Free Beacon.
Walker, who is facing Warnock in a competitive runoff election next Tuesday, launched a seven-figure TV ad campaign this week highlighting the problems at the apartment.
The ad features one tenant, a 69-year-old Vietnam war veteran, whom the building earlier this year attempted to evict for owing $119.
DIVERSITY IS NOT ALWAYS A STRENGTH. IN THIS CONTEXT, DIVERSITY MEANS FEWER WHITE PEOPLE, FEWER ENGLISHMEN, AND FEWER CHRISTIANS. THERE ARE THOSE WHO WOULD CELEBRATE THAT. I WOULD CALL THEM RACISTS.
Perhaps my mixed heritage provides me with a different perspective on the topic of immigration. My father’s family is from Jamaica, originally Nigeria, and my mother’s family is from England. I am, therefore, ethnically half Afro-Caribbean and half English. Most liberals would defend my father’s family in their right to self-determination, whether in Jamaica or in Africa. Why, then, do they not afford my mother’s family the same privilege? Surely, all countries should be able to have a conversation about national security, borders and immigration levels. Not only is it in their best interest, but it is also the job of any government – to protect the national security and borders of the nation because, without them, we do not have a country.
This isn’t a problem unique to Labour, though. The Conservatives have exacerbated the problem over the past decade, continuously promising to cap/cut/control immigration in their manifestos. It could be argued that the primary reason the Tories gained an 80-seat majority in the last election was to give Boris Johnson a mandate to “get Brexit done” and regain our national sovereignty. Why they squandered it is anyone’s guess.
The strain on public institutions such as schools, hospitals, social care and welfare is obvious and has been covered more extensively elsewhere. It is true that cheap foreign labour is pricing Englishmen out of work, but the liberal response is to mock the working classes by sneering and mimicking, “they’re coming over here, stealing our jobs.” How does the UK economy benefit from a dozen Eastern European migrants holed up in a one-bedroom flat, working all hours in manual labour and sending the money back home to their motherland? The average Englishman cannot compete.
The more immediate problem is the breakdown of social cohesion, culture, and values. Back to my original point, I would defend to the hilt my father’s family’s right to protect their Jamaican culture. I do not see why the liberal Left find it so offensive that I would do the same for my mother’s family’s English culture. In fact, the biggest surprise to me in this debate so far has been the number of people who have insisted there is no English culture.
The English language, including the written works of the King James Bible, William Shakespeare and the Book of Common Prayer – three of the most popular and most commonly read books in the world. English architecture, from Pugin’s Palace of Westminster and the Elizabeth Tower to Wren’s Hampton Court Palace and St Paul’s Cathedral. English food, from a good old English breakfast fry-up to a Sunday roast. English entertainment, ranging from the Royal Ballet to Punch n Judy.
English culture is extensive, varied and beautiful. Our heritage promotes tourism all year round, with people visiting our stately homes and museums. We exported a love of beer, tea, and fish & chips around the world, just as much as our tales of Goldilocks and my childhood favourite, Robin Hood. I didn’t even mention sport, technology, science and religion. To suggest the English have no culture is dishonest and purposefully provocative, if not self-denigration.
As a retort, many on the Left show their racist colours with arguments such as “but the English didn’t invent tea” or “St George wasn’t born in England”. No one is suggesting they did/were. My argument is that it doesn’t matter.
My issue here isn’t exclusively with the Left, either. There are many on the far-Right – “ethnonats” – who would say I have no business in this debate, as I am not English. This seems to be a flawed pure-bloody argument. If ethnicity is rooted in tradition, ancestry, language, history, culture, nationality and religion, then I can attest I am English on all accounts. Then comes the argument that ethnicity is genetic, in which case my DNA test shows I am both English and Afro-Caribbean, 52 percent and 48 percent, respectively – those magic Brexit numbers again. But what the “far-Right” really cares about is skin colour. That’s when we get into the territory of racism. There is an argument to be made that English is a nationality, a culture, and an ethnicity, but I argue against anyone who claims to be English, one has to be white. There is nuance in all things.
Why is any of this important? If we don’t protect our culture, our heritage and our values, if we don’t promote them as important to us, we will lose them. An argument can be made in favour of immigration, but even so, one should acknowledge that incoming immigrants should be expected to integrate into their chosen society. Newcomers should assimilate, not attempt to override. If I moved to Qatar, I would assume that I couldn’t drink alcohol in most places. If I moved to Japan, I would expect to bow when I met a stranger. If someone moves to England, they should be expected to queue for entry to a busy venue. Minor, trivial examples, but the point is clear. If one is moving to England, one should embrace English culture and speak English. There is nothing racist about that expectation.
The recent census data from the Office for National Statistics clearly shows that the English and Christians are the only demographics shrinking in numbers. Every other culture, ethnicity and religion is on the rise. If England is to remain predominantly English and Christian, then something has to be done. There is nothing to suggest England cannot become a multi-racial society, but I would argue it is detrimental to aim for multiculturalism, and there is a difference. There needs to be a primary culture to unite people, and in England, that should be the English culture.
Now, on to Enoch Powell. I do not agree with everything Enoch Powell said. I would struggle to find a single politician I do agree with entirely. But I think there is much to be learnt from his Birmingham speech. Political opponents have tarnished his name, but that does not negate the fact that he had a lot to say on this matter. Powell served this country most of his adult life in the armed forces or the Houses of Parliament. He was a mainstream politician with a tremendous amount of public support. He was an intellectual who spoke multiple languages, including Urdu – which he learnt to better engage with his Pakistani constituents. He was a public servant. Powell’s Birmingham speech (known commonly as “Rivers of Blood” is often commented on as being beyond the pale, but it made a lot of sense.
Raheem Kassam hit the nail on the head in his critically acclaimed book Enoch was Right.
Frander, Male Migrant: “I cannot work legally here…It’s a small piece of paper that you get to be able to apply for jobs. A social security [card]. You just call the person, and he comes to your home and brings it.”
Frander says he was forced to pay “$150” to obtain a fake social security card.
Underage Female Migrant: “When I got here [to the United States], I began studying, and then working. I went to school for six months. From a year ago, I began working…I go in [to work] at 4PM and get out at 2AM.”
Underage Male Migrant: You go to work “wherever they take you.”
Tara Lee Rodas, Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity & Efficiency: “I think most people believe, and I originally thought, that sponsors were families because HHS says, ‘We’re reuniting children with their families.’ In fact, that’s not the case.”
Rodas: “This is a terrible thing, and then you look at some of these children who are teenagers, who’ve never been to school, can’t read, can’t write. It’s a very wicked thing to take advantage of these children.”
[WASHINGTON, D.C. – Nov. 30, 2022] Project Veritas released a new video today which shows several migrants detailing their experiences upon arriving in the United States.
These individuals said they were removed from school, put through forced labor, and even provided with fake social security cards — all of this to pay off debts to cartels.
“When I got here [to the United States], I began studying, and then working. I went to school for six months. From a year ago, I began working…I go in [to work] at 4PM and get out at 2AM,” an underage female migrant said.
Frander, who is a male migrant, said he “cannot work legally” in the United States, but since he was forced to pay “$150” for “a small piece of paper that you get to be able to apply for jobs – a social security [card],” he has been able to work.
“You just call the person, and he comes to your home and brings it [fake social security card],” Frander explained.
Another underage male migrant even stated that migrants go to work “wherever they take you,” referring to the cartels / traffickers.
Tara Lee Rodas, the whistleblower who approached Project Veritas from within the federal government to expose all of this, said she was horrified by what has been taking place.
“I think most people believe, and I originally thought, that sponsors were families because HHS says, ‘We’re reuniting children with their families.’ In fact, that’s not the case,” Rodas said.
“This is a terrible thing, and then you look at some of these children who are teenagers, who’ve never been to school, can’t read, can’t write. It’s a very wicked thing to take advantage of these children,” she said.
The Air Force improperly adjudicated requests for exemptions from its COVID-19 vaccine mandate and has illegally only handed out exemptions to members who are on their way out, an appeals court stated on Nov. 29 as it rejected the military branch’s bid to lift an injunction against punishing thousands of unvaccinated servicemembers.
Eighteen servicemembers brought the suit in February, alleging that the military was violating the Religious Freedom Restoration Act by denying exemptions for members despite the members holding sincere religious beliefs against COVID-19 vaccination.
A federal judge imposed a preliminary injunction in July, ordering the branch to not discipline any unvaccinated members who have sought religious accommodation.
The Air Force appealed the ruling. Its emergency request was shot down, and its appeal has now been rejected.
Circuit Judge Eric Murphy, in the 56-page opinion released on Nov. 29, said that the Air Force “wrongly relied on its ‘broadly formulated’ reasons for the vaccine mandate to deny specific exemptions to the Plaintiffs, especially since it has granted secular exemptions to their colleagues,” referring to how the military branch has granted thousands of medical exemptions but only 135 religious exemptions.
Further, as Air Force lawyers confirmed in a recent hearing, the branch has given zero exemptions to members who are planning to stay with the military.
Even the 135 exemptions “overstates things,” Murphy said. The Air Force “actually granted the ‘religious’ exemptions only to those who qualified (or nearly qualified) for an ‘administrative’ exemption because they’d soon retire. At argument, the Air Force agreed that it has granted zero religious exemptions to anyone who does not plan to leave the service within a year.”
Murphy and two other judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit heard the case. The panel consisted of Raymond Kethledge, a George W. Bush appointee; Murphy, a Trump appointee; and Judge John K. Bush, a Trump appointee. The ruling upholds the block on enforcing the mandate for an estimated 12,000 members.
“Big win today for religious liberty, and court finds systemic religious discrimination by Biden administration,” Chris Wiest, one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs, said in a statement.
Religious Freedom Restoration Act
The Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) states that the government may only “substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion” if it proves that the burden “is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest; and is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.”
The law requires weighing each case individually, as opposed to implementing a blanket policy, plaintiffs said. They presented evidence that the Air Force’s blanket policy was to deny religious exemption requests while granting many medical and administrative exemption requests.
U.S. District Court Judge Matthew McFarland, a Trump appointee, agreed and entered the injunction over the summer while certifying a class: servicemembers who had asked for religious accommodation and deemed by chaplains to have a sincerely held religious belief but either had their request rejected or were in limbo.
“The facts show Defendants have engaged in a pattern of denying religious accommodation requests,” McFarland said in one order, noting in another that he was acting “due to the systematic nature of what the Court views as violations of Airmen’s constitutional rights to practice their religions as they please.”
The Air Force appealed the matter to the appeals court, trying to get both the class certification and the injunction rescinded.
“The Air Force has a compelling interest in ensuring that these plaintiffs—who must be deployable on short notice—remain fit for duty and in protecting them against severe illness that could jeopardize missions and military readiness. And the Air Force has determined that vaccination of each of the plaintiffs is the least restrictive means of advancing that compelling interest. Those determinations are supported by sworn declarations from numerous high-ranking military officials, and plaintiffs have identified no valid basis to second-guess those expert judgments,” lawyers for the government said in one filing.
They also claimed that medical exemptions “serve the same purpose as the vaccination requirement: they ensure that service members are maximally fit to deploy” and that administrative exemptions “are generally limited to service members who are about to exit the military.”
The appeals court rejected the arguments.
“The Plaintiffs met their duty to prove that the vaccine mandate imposed a substantial burden on their sincerely held religious belief,” Murphy wrote.
That means the Air Force must make a showing that it isn’t violating the RFRA. But the Air Force didn’t prove it has a compelling interest in the vaccination of any one of the plaintiffs, the judge said.
“Most glaringly, the Air Force’s opening brief did not describe the duties of a single Plaintiff. From a review of that brief, we would have no idea that Lieutenant Doster was a student at the Air Force Institute of Technology at the start of this suit and later became a developmental engineer at the Air Force Research Lab,” Murphy said. “Nor would we know that Airman Colantonio serves as a fuel-systems technician, or that Airman Dills serves as a passenger representative helping passengers on and off flights. Even after the district court identified this legal error, the Air Force has doubled down on appeal by mistakenly relying on generalized interests.”
The Air Force’s assertion that vaccination relates to military readiness because it enables the quick deployment of members is suspect because some of the plaintiffs, including Doster, were designated as nondeployable, he noted.
“To accept the Air Force’s generalized ‘readiness’ argument, we would have to find that it has a compelling interest in ensuring the immediate deployability of someone who is not immediately deployable,” Murphy said. “Only ‘unquestioning deference’ could uphold such a claim.”
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried gave millions to various media outlets throughout 2022 via his family-run nonprofit, “Building a Stronger Future.” The major companies that received funding include Vox, ProPublica, Semafor, and The Intercept.
In some cases, donations appear to be crucial to the viability of the recipients.
In a leaked letter to staff members, Roger Hodge, editor-in-chief of The Intercept, acknowledged that there was now a “significant hole” in the company’s budget. According to Hodge, the company received $500,000 a few months ago.
“Another $250,000 was due in December, with $3.25 million to follow over the next two years.”
Downplaying the potential conflict of interest, Hodge heaped praise on his reporters in the letter: “I also knew our reporters would never pull their punches because of a donation—and they didn’t.” He adds that The Intercept disclosed Bankman-Fried’s donation in its reporting on the FTX story.
A co-founder of The Intercept took issue with these statements.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald, who co-founded the outlet in 2013, but resigned after editors refused to publish his reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop ahead of the 2020 presidential election, criticized his former colleague for deliberately obfuscating details about the funding and for failing to disclose it in past articles.
A representative for The Intercept told The Epoch Times that Bankman-Fried’s donations were received in September of this year.
“In keeping with our general practice, The Intercept disclosed the funding in subsequent reporting on Bankman-Fried’s political activities,” said Rodrigo Brandão, The Intercept’s director of communications, providing a link to an October article in which the financial ties are disclosed.
Greenwald points to several articles by The Intercept, including one published as recently as Nov. 11, in which the outlet doesn’t mention Bankman-Fried’s donations.
“Maybe there is some place that The Intercept mentioned this extremely deep and intricate relationship between it and Bankman-Fried and FTX—I can’t find it,” Greenwald stated.
Billionaire Twitter owner Elon Musk took aim at Bankman-Fried-funded media as well, calling out Semafor, a journalistic outfit founded by former Buzzfeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith, for what Musk claims to be false reporting on Bankman-Fried’s equity stake in Twitter. Musk also highlighted that Semafor received investments from the FTX founder this year in a $25 million fundraising round.
Semafor is owned by SBF. This is a massive conflict of interest in your reporting. Journalistic integrity is 🗑️. pic.twitter.com/1AB6KReJUj
Smith, also a former New York Times columnist, founded the outlet earlier this year, aiming for “a focus on global news for college-educated readers.” Semafor published an article suggesting that Bankman-Fried owned a $100 million stake in Twitter, presumably rolled over from his public equity holdings prior to Musk taking the company private.
“All public holders of Twitter were allowed to roll their stock into Twitter as a private company, but he [Bankman-Fried] did not do so,” Musk responded in a tweet reply to Smith last week.
The Tesla founder then asked Smith how much of Semafor is owned by Bankman-Fried but didn’t receive an answer.
The Semafor article noted that FTX listed Twitter shares as an “illiquid asset” on its balance sheet, according to a document reported to be circulating among FTX investors.
Smith didn’t respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.
“Is it perhaps the case that Bankman-Fried thought he was actually buying goodwill and favorable coverage?” Robby Soave asked in a recent article for Reason magazine.
While there are no reports of financial ties between FTX and The New York Times, the NY Times was widely criticized for its “puff piece” on the controversial crypto exchange’s founder. Soave, who’s also host of The Hill’s “Rising” show, criticized the outlet for using “soft, passive language” regarding alleged crimes and instead emphasizing Bankman-Fried’s altruistic ventures.
Soave highlighted the disproportionate outrage the NY Times seems to exhibit when covering companies such as Twitter, versus what’s potentially the largest financial fraud in history.
“One hopes they wouldn’t treat [Bankman-Fried] with kid gloves out of admiration for his philanthropy.”
The ubiquity of the former billionaire’s influence and financial ties has raised questions regarding the vulnerability of our institutions.
“The lesson to me is just exposing how corrupt the system really is,” Saagar Enjeti, a media personality, said on a recent episode of the news podcast Breaking Points. “If you’re a billionaire with the right ideology, the right amount of checks cut to the right people, you can make a hell of a lot happen in a short amount of time.”
“If it was this easy for [Bankman-Fried], imagine what the real titans of industry are doing behind the scenes.”
Musk, echoing the same sentiment with a more humorous tone, wrote in a tweet on Nov. 23, “If [Bankman-Fried] was as good at running a crypto exchange as he was at bribing media, FTX would still be solvent!”
Several attempts to reach Bankman-Fried for comment were unsuccessful.
In a rather alarming development, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has handed a major victory to a liberal group trying to buy out a conservative radio station.
On November 22, Fox News reported that the FCC cleared the Latino Media Network to purchase Miami’s Spanish-language conservative radio station, Radio Mambi, from Televisa Univision for $60 million.
Radio Mambi is associated with Miami’s large population of Cuban exiles and is known for bringing anti-communist and conservative viewpoints to Miami’s large Latino audience.
But now, it will be under the control of the Latino Media Network, a liberal group run by Jess Morales Rocketto and Stephenie Valencia, a former employee of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and a former President Barack Obama staffer respectively. Effectively, a conservative media outlet is being bought out by liberals and now Miami’s Latino population will be deprived of a prominent local conservative voice.
But here’s the kicker — Latino Media Network is in part financed by an investment group associated with financier George Soros!
Yes, this is the same Soros who famously donated millions in order to help Stacey Abrams in her 2018 and 2022 campaigns to become governor of Georgia.
Yes, this is the same Soros who this past summer used the Fourth of July as an occasion to talk about how American democracy was under attack by former President Donald Trump, the Republicans, and the judges he appointed to the Supreme Court.
Yes, this is the same Soros who has helped back extreme leftist candidates in key battleground elections.
Now, a conservative news network is under the control of a group associated with this radical leftist billionaire.
Unsurprisingly, many staffers at Radio Mambi are unhappy that their network is now being bought out by a Soros-affiliated group. According to Fox News, one host, Lourdes Ubieta, quit in July saying she would never accept any paycheck from Soros.
“America is a free country. Even an avowed global socialist with a clear radical political agenda can buy our media outlets to silence their opposition,” she said.
This is a development that should alarm conservatives for many reasons. First, there is the obvious fact that a radical leftist billionaire is buying media outlets seemingly with the intention of silencing any opposing voices.
But perhaps more importantly, this will make it harder for Republicans to win over one key demographic that could very well swing in their favor: Hispanics.
Hispanics, especially in Florida, have been trending right for the past few years. They played a major role in Gov. Ron De Santis’ landslide re-election victory a few weeks ago, in which he won many historically liberal counties thanks in no small part to the Hispanic vote.
Joe Biden’s approval rating among Hispanic voters has plummeted, with many Hispanics saying that they favored Trump’s border policy as opposed to the open-border policy of the current administration.
All this has been a sign of hope for the Republicans. Democrats, with their support for open borders, historically held a firm grasp on the Hispanic vote, but that all seems to be slipping away.
Yet the left will not give up so easily. They will go so far as to enlist the help of a radical leftist, foreign financier to use his deep pockets to crush Hispanic voices who dare dissent from the Democratic orthodoxy.
America is a free country where everyone has a right to voice their opinion without the fear of reprisal, but now it seems that the left is willing to use billionaire elites to crush the freedom of speech that we hold so dear.
Even as the Daily Mail was using the phrase “curse of the crypto whizz kids” to describe two sudden deaths in the cryptocurrency world, another crypto billionaire was reported dead under circumstances the lend themselves to mystery.
Vyacheslav Taran, 53, head of the Libertex Group crypto exchange died Friday after the helicopter in which he was a passenger crashed, according to the Daily Mail.
His death came two days after Tiantian Kullander, co-founder of the Amber Group, a Hong Kong-based digital asset company, died in his sleep at 30 years old, according to the New York Post.
As if that was not enough to shake up the crypto world reeling from the scandal surrounding the collage of the FTX crypto exchange, Kullander’s death came roughly a month after 29-year-old cryptocurrency success story Nikolai Mushegian was found drowned on a Puerto Rico beach. Mushegian had earlier claimed the CIA and Mossad were out to kill him, according to the Daily Mail.
Crypto millionaire Nikolai Mushegian, died mysteriously in a drowning after tweeting that he feared the CIA and Mossad were going to murder him. Now, two more crypto billionaires have died in mysterious circumstances.
The Mail said elements of mystery in Taran’s death include the sudden cancellation of another passenger on the flight and the fact that the crash happened in clear weather with an experienced pilot flying the helicopter.
Taran had taken off from Lausanne, Switzerland, and crashed near Villefranche-sur-Mer, France, en route to Monaco.
The deputy public prosecutor of Nice said he would not yet rule out that a third party had been involved in the crash.
All a coincidence, nothing to see here folks. Third crypto boss dies after Russian billionaire’s helicopter crashes https://t.co/Gn8pO2l4t2
“It is with great sadness that Libertex Group confirms the death of its co-founder and chairman of board of directors, Vyacheslav Taran, after a helicopter crash that took place en route to Monaco on Friday, 25 November 2022,” the company said in a statement.
“The board of directors of Libertex Group and company employees extend their most heartfelt condolences and sympathy to the Taran family,” the statement said.
The Mail noted that the Ukrainian news agency UNIAN offered a claim, unaccompanied by proof, that Taran was a “billionaire crypto businessman with likely ties to the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service.”
The $32 billion collapse of FTX has prompted calls for regulation of the crypto market after FTX filed for bankruptcy because it could not cover calls of investors to get their money back.
“Crypto finance, because it is no different than traditional finance in the risks that it exposes, needs to be under the regulatory perimeter,” Federal Reserve Vice Chair Lael Brainard said earlier this month, according to the Financial Post.
Elon Musk said Monday that Twitter’s internal files on the company’s “free speech suppression” will be revealed “soon,” raising expectations that light will be shed on the circumstances around Twitter’s censorship of the New York Post’s explosive story that exposed information on a laptop allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden.
“The Twitter Files on free speech suppression soon to be published on Twitter itself. The public deserves to know what really happened …” Musk said in a post late Monday.
Critics have long held that Twitter has used vague standards to censor or suspend accounts and that the ones targeted are predominantly those expressing conservative views.
Twitter has denied any bias in its actions, repeatedly insisting it is simply following its content moderation policies.
Weeks before the 2020 presidential election, the New York Post published an article that allegedly detailed meetings President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, had with a Ukrainian energy firm before then-Vice President Biden pressured Ukrainian government officials to fire a prosecutor probing the company.
Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, at the White House in Washington, on April 18, 2022. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
The story was seen by Biden’s political opponents as evidence of corruption and the news quickly spread across Twitter, prompting the social media firm to start removing links to the article and, for a period of time, suspending the New York Post’s Twitter account.
Conservatives saw Twitter’s actions in this regard as evidence of the company’s pro-Biden, anti-Trump bias.
Twitter said at the time that it was simply enforcing its rules on hacked materials, which prohibit distribution of information that is obtained through hacking.
‘Incredibly Inappropriate’
Musk in April spoke out in opposition to Twitter’s decision to temporarily suspend New York Post’s Twitter account.
“Suspending the Twitter account of a major news organization for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate,” Musk said in April, responding to a post about the Hunter Biden laptop story.
Musk, who took over Twitter in late October, has vowed to make the platform into a politically unbiased bastion of free speech.
He said in an open letter following his acquisition of Twitter that he bought it because “it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence.”
“There is currently great danger that social media will splinter into far right wing and far left wing echo chambers that generate more hate and divide our society,” Musk added.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks at a gaming convention in Los Angeles, Calif., on June 13, 2019. (Mike Blake/Reuters)
Part of Musk’s efforts to restore Twitter’s role as an unbiased “digital town square” include a pledge to disclose Twitter’s internal discussions around suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story.
“Raise your hand if you think [Musk] should make public all internal discussions about the decision to censor the [New York Post’s] story on Hunter Biden’s laptop before the 2020 Election in the interest of Transparency,” news personality Alex Lorusso said on Twitter on Nov. 24.
Musk’s post on Tuesday about an imminent publication of Twitter’s “free speech suppression” files suggests that disclosures around the company’s decision to censor Hunter Biden laptop content will also soon see the light of day.
The new Twitter owner’s efforts around free speech on the platform extend beyond the Hunter Biden laptop story.
He said in a follow-up post that he sees the forthcoming “free speech suppression” disclosures as part of a bigger battle against censorship.
“This is a battle for the future of civilization. If free speech is lost even in America, tyranny is all that lies ahead,” Musk wrote.
‘Unacceptable’
Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey told lawmakers in Washington in November 2020 that censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story was a mistake.
He told the Senate Judiciary Committee via video conference that Twitter employees made an enforcement decision based on a policy they created in 2018 in order to prevent the social media platform from being used to spread hacked materials.
Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and Square, speaks on stage at the Bitcoin 2021 Convention, a crypto-currency conference held at the Mana Convention Center in Wynwood, in Miami, Fla., on June 4, 2021. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Dorsey issued a public apology for suspending numerous accounts that shared the paper’s story, saying in a statement on Twitter that the company’s “communication” around censoring the report “was not great.”
“Our communication around our actions on the [New York Post] article was not great,” Dorsey said. “And blocking URL sharing via tweet or DM with zero context as to why we’re blocking: unacceptable.”
While Musk has vowed to dial back Twitter’s censorship policies that many conservatives have alleged are discriminatory and amount to suppression of free speech, he pledged in his open letter not to allow the platform to become a “free-for-all hellscape” where anything could be said “with no consequences.”
“In addition to adhering to the laws of the land, our platform must be warm and welcoming to all,” Musk wrote.
He also announced earlier in November that Twitter’s new policy is “freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach,” adding that Twitter would demonetize and not promote “hate/negative tweets.”
“You won’t find the tweet unless you specifically seek it out, which is no different from rest of Internet,” Musk said.
Boyden Gray & Associates filed a lawsuit in June on behalf of three doctors who allege that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) illegally interfered with their doctor–patient relationships, resulting in harm. They also claim that the FDA broke the law when the agency issued statements prohibiting the use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19.
In response to the lawsuit, lawyers for the FDA claimed that its guidance for people to “stop” taking ivermectin for COVID-19 was informal and just a recommendation; as such, they weren’t mandating against it.
However, in an interview that aired on NTD’s “Newsmakers” on Nov. 23, Dr. Scott Atlas, a senior fellow in health care policy at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, confirmed that the FDA did, indeed, take an “unprecedented” approach against ivermectin and said that their defense amounts to the FDA trying to rewrite COVID-19 history.
“This is unprecedented, frankly, in my 30 years as a doctor, where the use of an FDA-approved drug was somehow forbidden if you used it for off-label,” Atlas stated. “In the United States, that’s standard of care.”
The standard of care, Atlas explained, is that once the FDA approves a drug, doctors are allowed to use the drug to treat other conditions.
Atlas added that ivermectin was approved by the FDA and was found to be “so safe” that “billions of doses have been given.” He said that ivermectin is available over the counter in many countries without a doctor’s prescription.
“This was really a shocking interference of the ability of a doctor to do his job,” Atlas said.
Rewriting History
When asked why the FDA was attempting to rewrite history by stating that its guidance against ivermectin was a recommendation only, Atlas said that the rewrite on ivermectin is just the beginning.
“What we’re seeing is a complete Orwellian rewrite of all kinds of things during this pandemic,” Atlas told NTD. “Many colleagues of mine were always saying the truth will prevail. And once the truth comes out, that some of these drugs were either useful or safe … there’s a lot of ‘cover your behind.’”
Atlas then alleged that the FDA didn’t just forbid ivermectin. Instead, its language was such that pharmacists and pharmacies refused to fill prescriptions from doctors. Such a stance was “really unprecedented,” Atlas said.
Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci (L), response coordinator for the White House Coronavirus Task Force Deborah Birx (C), and CDC Director Robert Redfield (R) attend the daily briefing on the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, in the Brady Briefing Room at the White House in Washington on April 8, 2020. ( Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
Further, Atlas said, there’s an overall “Orwellian rewrite of what the advice was on a bigger picture.”
He pointed out that Dr. Deborah Birx, former White House COVID-19 response coordinator, claims that she opposed lockdowns, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, claims he opposed school closings.
Circling back to ivermectin, Atlas said the FDA’s prohibiting its off-label use to treat COVID-19 was “one of the bigger failures of the [National Institutes of Health (NIH)].”
“The NIH could have done definitive clinical trials in the Spring of 2020. Instead, they blocked those trials; they made people afraid of those drugs, so that even when trials were attempted, patients were not willing to enter into those trials,” he said.
Atlas then stated unequivocally that the position taken by the NIH and the FDA was an unethical abuse of public health.
Doctors File Suit; FDA Responds
Plaintiffs in the case against the FDA include Dr. Robert Apter, Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, and Dr. Paul Marik. Lawyers for the plaintiffs allege that the FDA violated the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and the Administrative Procedure Act.
The lawyers also noted that if the court doesn’t rule against the FDA violating its statutory lane and unlawful actions, the FDA will continue to interfere with the practice of medicine.
Atlas agreed:
“Depending on the outcome of these, there will either be a real chilling of what doctors can say and do for patients—complete interference, in a doctor’s ability to help a patient! Or, if the lawsuits go the other way, we will hopefully see a restoration of freedom of medical practice.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci, White House chief medical adviser on COVID-19, at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Md., on Feb. 11, 2021. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
Atlas said that doctors are afraid to be honest with their patients because of what the NIH and FDA have done over the past few years.
“The cited statements were not directives. They were not mandatory. They were recommendations,” Isaac Belfer, one of the lawyers for the FDA, said during a Nov. 1 hearing in federal court in Texas. “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.”
As further evidence that the FDA didn’t “prohibit” ivermectin’s use, Belfer added, “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.”
(Reuters)—Crypto exchange FTX and its affiliated companies, which have filed for U.S. bankruptcy court protection, said on Monday most subsidiaries would resume ordinary course payment of salary and benefits to employees worldwide.
The relief includes cash payments with respect to both pre-petition and post-petition periods, subject to limits established by the orders of the Bankruptcy Court.
“With the Court’s approval of our First Day motions and the work being done on global cash management, I am pleased that the FTX group is resuming ordinary course cash payments of salaries and benefits to our remaining employees around the world,” Chief Executive John Ray said in a statement.
Last week, at the troubled crypto exchange’s first bankruptcy hearing attorneys said FTX was run as a “personal fiefdom” of former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and detailed on going challenges such as hacks and substantial missing assets.
FTX on Nov. 11 filed for U.S. bankruptcy protection, along with its U.S. unit, crypto trading firm Alameda Research and nearly 130 other affiliates.
The collapse has fanned fears about the future of the crypto industry and several crypto firms have since been bracing for a fallout.
Earlier on Monday, BlockFi filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, after the crypto lender was hurt by exposure to FTX.
(Reporting by Manya Saini in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)
Yet another reason not to support freaks and criminals at the expense of those who live inside the bell curve.
A top Biden administration official made history as the first nonbinary federal official to face felony charges after swiping a women’s suitcase from an airport.
Sam Brinton was charged last month with swiping a suitcase of women’s clothes from the Minneapolis-Saint Paul Airport in September, less than five months after assuming the post of deputy assistant secretary of the Office of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition at the Department of Energy. The stolen Vera Bradley suitcase along with its contents were worth $2,325, according to a criminal complaint.
Brinton, who identifies as “genderfluid” and uses they/them pronouns, was charged with felony theft on Oct. 27 and faces up to five years in prison, Alpha News reported Monday. Prior to joining the Biden administration, Brinton was known for promoting sexual fetishes and tying his partners up like dogs. At the Energy Department, Brenton oversees the disposal of highly radioactive nuclear waste.
Video surveillance footage captured Brinton removing a woman’s luggage from the Minneapolis-Saint Paul Airport luggage carousel on Sept. 18 and swiftly concealing its bag tag in a handbag. The federal official did not check a bag when departing a Washington, D.C., airport earlier that day, the criminal complaint states. Brinton was later seen with the same Vera Bradley suitcase on Oct. 9 when arriving at Washington Dulles Airport on a return trip from Europe, according to the complaint.
It’s official. As of June 19th, I now serve my nation as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition in the Office of Nuclear Energy in the Department of Energy. pic.twitter.com/zLq3Bf97X2
Brinton concocted several conflicting stories when confronted by a Minnesota police officer on Oct. 9, the criminal complaint states. Brinton initially denied taking the suitcase when first contacted by the officer over the phone. The federal official then admitted to taking the suitcase, but said “my clothes” were in the bag.
Brinton changed stories again later that day, calling the officer back and apologizing for not being “completely honest.” The federal official then claimed to have accidentally taken the bag and left the clothes in a Minneapolis hotel room. Brinton claims to have kept the stolen luggage because it would have been “weirder” to leave a bag than the clothes, the criminal complaint states.
The officer then instructed Brinton to return the woman’s property to the airport. As of Oct. 27, when the criminal complaint was filed, Brinton had not returned the suitcase.
Brinton was placed on a leave of absence from the Department of Energy shortly after being charged with felony theft, according to Exchange Monitor. Brinton’s replacement, acting deputy assistant secretary for spent fuel Kim Petry, notified her colleagues on Nov. 18 that she would be leading the office “for the foreseeable future.”
“I should have another update for all of you in a month or so,” Petry said. The timeline matches with Brinton’s scheduled hearing in Minneapolis on Dec. 19.
The U.S. and Israeli Air Forces will hold military drills this week simulating strikes on Iran’s nuclear capabilities, according to a statement from the Israel Defense Forces.
“Fighter jets and refuelers from the IAF and the U.S. Air Force will take part in the exercise and simulate a number of scenarios in the face of regional threats,” the IDF said of the drills, which are set to begin Tuesday.
The drills will take place over Israel and the Mediterranean Sea and will include long-range flights, simulating maneuvers that Israeli pilots would need to take to reach nuclear facilities in Iran, the Jerusalem Postreported.
The preparation for conflict with Iran comes as the United States’ negotiations with the regime over a revamped version of the 2015 nuclear deal have reached an impasse. Last week, Tehran announced it has begun enriching uranium to 60 percent purity and constructing new centrifuges, boosting its capabilities to construct a nuclear weapon.
Israeli defense minister Benny Gantz this month emphasized that Israel has made preparations to conduct strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities but that such a decision would not be taken lightly.
“Israel has the ability to act in Iran,” Gantz said. “We have the readiness, development capabilities, and longterm plans we are managing. We need to prepare for this possibility, and we will also need to consider this issue very carefully before carrying it out.”
It’s unclear whether Tom Cruise, who led both training exercises and led point for a nearly identical mission in Top Gun: Maverick, will participate in the training.
Montana’s top law official is concerned that shipping giants UPS and FedEx are working with the Biden administration to bypass laws that bar the federal government from creating a national database of American gun owners, according to a copy of a letter sent to the companies on Tuesday and exclusively obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
Republican Montana attorney general Austin Knudsen alleges that new shipping guidelines allow UPS and FedEx “to track firearm sales with unprecedented specificity and bypass warrant requirements to share that information with federal agencies.” The letter, signed by Knudsen and 16 other state attorneys general, says the altered shipping guidelines force licensed firearm dealers into providing detailed information about purchasers who are receiving items through the mail. The letter does not have explicit proof that the shipping giants are sharing information with federal agencies but cites conversations between state officials and licensed firearm dealers who claim they were forced to comply with these regulations.
By requiring firearms dealers to provide an unprecedented level of information about their clients, the shipping companies may be giving “federal agencies a workaround to normal warrant requirements,” the letter states. This ultimately allows them “to provide information at will or upon request to federal agencies—information detailing which Americans are buying what guns.” The state officials are asking UPS and FedEx to provide them with information about any recent rule changes and disclose any role the federal government played in the matter.
Knudsen, in an interview with the Free Beacon, said he is concerned UPS and FedEx may be coordinating with the Biden administration to circumvent a ban on the creation of a federal gun owner database. Sources who spoke with Knudsen’s office, he said, indicated the Biden administration’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms “told [the companies] they have to do this.” The ATF is already facing scrutiny at the state level and on Capitol Hill for storing nearly one billion records detailing Americans’ firearm purchases, theFree Beacon first reported in January. The alleged rule change by FedEx and UPS, Knudsen said, could be part of an effort by the government to track American firearm owners amid a nationwide uptick in gun crimes.
“This to me looks like another back alley attempt to get around specific legislation and laws so ATF can say, ‘We’re not keeping track; it’s these companies keeping track,’” Knudsen said, adding that these guidelines could violate his state’s consumer protection laws. “We see this over and over again from this administration: When they can’t pass legislation, they turn around to their buddies in private business and try to get their agenda done that way.”
UPS and FedEx, the attorneys general allege, require federal licensed firearm dealers, known as FFLs, “to create three separate shipping accounts: one for firearms, one for firearm parts, and one for all other firearm-related products. Under this three-tier system, gun sellers cannot mix and match shipments, which reveals to your company whether they are shipping a gun, gun part, or a gun-related item.”
Sellers are also allegedly required to retain all documents related to specific items they shipped and to make that information available to the shipping company upon request.
“These demands, in tandem, allow [UPS and FedEx] to create a database of American gun purchasers and determine exactly what items they purchased,” the letter states.
Both shipping companies, the officials write, have agreed to comply with information requests from law enforcement and other government bodies, even when those requests are “inconsistent with applicable laws, rules, and regulations,” according to the letter.
A FedEx spokeswoman disputed the characterization of their new guidelines. In September 2021, the spokeswoman said, the company implemented a “firearms shipping compliance program” that requires licensed firearms dealers to “enter into a FedEx Firearms shipping Compliance Agreement.” This agreement requires packages containing firearms be sent from a specifically designated account and directed only to those with a Federal Firearm License. The guidelines are meant to ensure the company adheres “to applicable federal, state, and local laws and regulations.” When asked if this information could be shared with the federal government, the spokeswoman said that “FedEx will comply with any legal obligation that it has to provide information to law enforcement or other appropriate government officials.”
The state officials want UPS and FedEx to provide them with internal documents and communications about the alleged rule changes within 30 days, including any information about whether they enacted “these policies with the goal of information sharing with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) or any other federal agency.” This includes the names of any federal official who may have been in touch with the shipping companies.
The letter also recommends the two shipping firms undertake efforts “to limit potential liability moving forward, including the immediate cessation of any existing warrantless information sharing with federal agencies about gun shipments.”
Knudsen said the preliminary reports he is getting from firearms dealers in his state create the impression that UPS and FedEx are creating “their own private tracking system so that these two companies can keep track of what’s being shipped to whom.” That, he said, “sure looks and smells to me like they’re trying to get around the Fourth Amendment,” which prohibits unlawful searches and seizures.
“You’re giving away citizens’ private information on what kinds of products, what firearms they’re buying specifically,” Knudsen said. “We know what they’re going to do with it: They’re going to hand it over to the ATF the first chance they get.”
UPS and the ATF did not respond to requests for comment.
China is attacking America’s international credibility by pointing to the Biden administration’s failed withdrawal from Afghanistan, a Department of Defense report published Tuesday found.
“The PRC employed multiple diplomatic tools in an attempt to erode U.S. and partner influence, such as highlighting the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan,” according to the annual report, which details military developments relating to China.
State media and Communist Party officials in China push claims of decreasing American power evidenced by the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 after 20 years of war. The rushed evacuation resulted in 13 U.S. servicemembers dying in an ISIS suicide bombing and American families left behind under Taliban control.
“State media outlets also recently condemned the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan,” the report said.
It added that the media and officials “cited the withdrawal as evidence that the U.S. is an unreliable partner and declining power.”
The report comes after the State Department refused to say how it spent $1 billion in Afghanistan since the Taliban took over.
The University of Florida College of Medicine is scrubbing “anti-racism” pages from its website in the wake of a report detailing the influence of leftwing ideology on the school’s curriculum.
The report from Do No Harm, a group opposed to identity politics in medical education, was released November 22 and highlighted a slew of activist statements by the public medical school, many of them posted to its official website. A week later—after a flurry of unflattering media coverage—the College of Medicine had taken down at least three of those posts, including a statement on the admissions office homepage declaring that “BLACK LIVES MATTER.”
That statement also condemned “systemic oppression” and touted the admissions office’s commitment to “equity in healthcare.” In addition, the school removed a webpage that offered a list of “resources for combating systemic racism,” including a set of guidelines instructing “white allies” to “assume racism is everywhere, every day,” and a page that described the school’s learning objectives related to “health equity.”
Though the College of Medicine declined to comment on the removal, it did offer an unsolicited defense of its admissions policies.
“We have a holistic admissions process that welcomes students from all backgrounds, including those from underrepresented backgrounds,” the medical school’s director of communications, Cody Hawley, said. “In accordance with state law, our admissions policy does not favor or give priority to any group.”
This is not the first time the medical establishment has backpedaled in the face of public scrutiny. Brigham and Women’s Hospital distanced itself last year from a proposal by two of its doctors, Bram Wispelwey and Michelle Morse, to offer “preferential care” to minority patients through the hospital’s cardiology service. And in January, Minnesota and Utah stopped rationing COVID drugs based on race after a Washington Free Beacon exposé drew attention to the practice.
Such initiatives nonetheless reflect a worldview that is being inculcated at medical schools across the country. Forty-four percent of medical schools now reward scholarship on “diversity, inclusion, and equity” through their promotion policies, according to a report this month by the Association of American Medical Colleges, while 70 percent mandate courses on “diversity, inclusion, or cultural competence.” The report also found that over a third of medical schools offer extra funding to departments that hit diversity goals, with half requiring diversity statements for job applicants.
The University of Florida College of Medicine is a microcosm of these trends. The school’s now-deleted list of anti-racism resources included How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi, who says that the “only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination”—a view that would appear to license the sort of discriminatory policies that Utah and Minnesota eventually scrapped.
In addition, the school expects all students to follow a “Code of Ethics” that includes “speaking out against social injustice, racism, prejudice, and inequity,” and requires hiring committees to complete diversity trainings created by the Racial Equity Institute, which states that “all of our systems, institutions and outcomes emanate from the racial hierarchy on which the United States was built.”
The school’s progressive apparatchiks have gotten it in trouble before: The university library had to rename its largest study space, named “The Karl Marx Study Room” since 2014, in March 2022 amid public outcry.
Do No Harm is chaired by Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, a Washington Free Beacon enthusiast and the father of Free Beacon chairman Michael Goldfarb.
Two Jewish professors at the City University of New York who have sounded the alarm about anti-Semitism on campus say their employer has launched a retaliatory investigation against them.
Kingsborough Community College last week informed professors Jeffrey Lax and Michael Goldstein that they are under investigation after an anti-Israel professor made unspecified accusations they believe involve them. The pair say that the professor, Lili Shi, made the complaint because they objected to her appointment to a hiring committee for the school’s diversity office. Lax and Goldstein worry the investigation could threaten their employment.
“They are literally going after us because we’re the ones who call out anti-Semitism at the college,” Goldstein told the Washington Free Beacon, adding that Shi “obviously was upset” that he and Lax objected to her appointment.
CUNY has not informed Lax or Goldstein about the substance of Shi’s complaint. But Lax and Goldstein believe it concerns them because they firmly opposed her appointment, and it was filed shortly after Lax filed a complaint against her. They were also the only other professors copied on the letter besides Shi.
The apparent reprisal against the Jewish professors is the latest instance of anti-Semitism at CUNY. Last year, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found evidence of discrimination against Jewish faculty, following an investigation launched by another of Lax’s complaints.
The university in August tapped diversity officer and Israel critic Saly Abd Alla to field Lax’s anti-Semitism complaints. Abd Alla formerly worked as a civil rights director at the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which has defended anti-Israel terror groups including Hamas. Lax said the move was like assigning “David Duke to investigate discrimination against black people.”
The university in August appointed Shi to a seven-member search committee tasked with hiring a new assistant dean for CUNY’s diversity, equity, and inclusion office, which handles race-related matters.
Lax in August filed a complaint against Shi’s appointment, which was tabled after he objected to it being handled by another anti-Israel university official. He said an outside investigative group took up the complaint only after he objected, while Shi’s complaint was immediately referred to an outside firm.
Lax and Goldstein told the Free Beacon that Shi should not be overseeing the search, whose hire will handle complaints of anti-Semitism, given her opposition to Zionists and the Jewish state.
Shi signed a statement following Hamas’s May 2021 attacks on Israel urging CUNY to adopt demands made by the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. While she is the only pro-BDS member of the search committee, none of the members is Jewish, the Jewish News Syndicatereported.
Lax said CUNY’s decision to pursue Shi’s investigation was “blatantly retaliatory.” Goldstein called it “black-letter retaliation.”
A Kingsborough Community College spokeswoman told the Free Beacon the college has “zero tolerance for discrimination of any kind, and allegations of this kind are taken very seriously,” but would not comment on the investigation. Shi did not respond to a request for comment.
Lax resigned from his position on CUNY’s Personnel and Budget Committee when he filed his August complaint. He also resigned from his teachers’ union in 2021 after it passed a resolution condemning the state of Israel.
Another complaint from 2018, Goldstein said, was handled by a university official who “didn’t even know what the word anti-Semitism meant.”
Lax told Newsmax on Monday the investigation initiated by Shi will conclude the day before the spring semester, which raises questions about his future at CUNY.
“Are they trying to terminate me? I don’t know,” Lax said. “Does it worry me? Yes.”
The New Georgia Project had $11 million in its investment account in August when it set out to pay $2.45 million in cash for a sprawling Atlanta compound. Less than two months later, the organization dismissed half its leadership staff, citing a lack of funds.
A series of internal documents and correspondences obtained by the Washington Free Beacon reveals the bizarre circumstances surrounding the real estate deal, which several parties close to the matter say are indicative of a leadership crisis within the Stacey Abrams-founded group. The deal was spearheaded by Erin Ferguson, a junior New Georgia Project staffer who in a group text urged senior leadership in late August to sign a letter of intent to purchase the two adjacent properties and swiftly pay a $30,000 non-refundable deposit.
But a former New Georgia Project senior executive told the Free Beacon that the rush to purchase the properties was strange, noting that the buildings needed at least $288,000 in repairs to be compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. The group was already locked into a $15,000-per-month lease at its current office through 2025, the former senior executive said.
The real estate deal is the latest murky financial situation involving the New Georgia Project. The group, which was founded to register non-white voters and once helmed by Sen. Raphael Warnock (D., Ga.), missed the deadline to file required financial disclosures to the IRS. The Free Beacon reported this month that the group’s top accountant was fired after claiming he was unable to work there out of fear of breaking the law.
According to an Aug. 26 letter of intent obtained by the Free Beacon, the New Georgia Project sought to purchase the properties from Global Resource Partners, LLC. But Global Resource Partners never owned the properties. A real estate agent representing the Sheet Metal Workers Building Association, which owns the compound, told the Free Beacon that Global Resource Partners went under contract to buy the properties for around $1.92 million during the same timeframe the LLC was ostensibly trying to sell the properties to the New Georgia Project.
The real estate agent was surprised to learn that Global Resource Partners was simultaneously trying to flip the properties for at least $530,000. He added that he couldn’t recall hearing about the New Georgia Project until contacted by the Free Beacon on Nov. 21.
“It makes you wonder why someone would go so far, put something under contract, not close on it, and not tell you any good reason why they didn’t do it,” the real estate agent said. “They kept saying they had to go out of town. Well, a bank wire can be sent anywhere in the country.”
The attempted purchase of two adjacent industrial properties, totaling over 22,000 square feet, collapsed in the final days of negotiations. Global Resource Partners, the real estate agent said, dropped out of the sale at the very last minute. The properties remain on the market with an asking price of $1.92 million.
While Abrams and Warnock are no longer affiliated with the New Georgia Project, the group and its affiliated New Georgia Project Action Fund worked to get the Democrats elected this cycle, with mixed results. Abrams lost her second gubernatorial bid by nearly 8 points, and Warnock is in a runoff battle with Republican challenger Herschel Walker after failing to earn 50 percent of the vote on Election Day.
An attorney for Global Resource Partners manager Haywood Smith, who is named in the Aug. 26 letter of intent, declined to arrange an interview between Smith and the Free Beacon.
“It’s a lose, lose situation,” Smith’s attorney, Darryl Cohen, told the Free Beacon. “As much as I would love for him to speak with you, I can’t because of perception or lack thereof.”
Anthony Smith, a real estate agent based out of Columbus, Ga., confirmed to the Free Beacon that he represented Haywood Smith in the deal, which he said fell through. He declined to comment further.
Ferguson claimed in an Aug. 31 text to leadership that it took “some serious lobbying” to get Global Resource Partners to entertain the charity’s offer. The seller, Ferguson added, had another offer for $2.8 million that they would move on if the New Georgia Project weren’t “reasonably expedient.”
Prior to his role in facilitating the property purchase, Ferguson was a canvasser for the New Georgia Project, making $23 per hour, the former executive said. Ferguson is not identified on the New Georgia Project’s website as a member of the charity’s senior leadership team.
Ferguson declined to comment.
Ferguson had support from other members of the New Georgia Project’s leadership team, including CEO Kendra Cotton. On Aug. 3, Cotton said it would be wise to “borrow” from the charity’s reserves to buy the properties in cash and then for the leadership team to immediately refinance the property and pay itself back.
Ferguson insisted that the New Georgia Project was taking an unnecessary risk by having its $11 million reserve account so heavily invested in stocks, the communications show. He urged his colleagues to liquidate a significant portion of the charity’s stock holdings to purchase the properties, claiming it was a “very safe” investment that would protect the group against inflation and allow it to secure lines of credit.
“The numbers are compelling… every morning the market opens at 9Am we spend 11Million,” Ferguson wrote in an Aug. 9 text. “Also we will have offers on this building for 3-4 Million the day we close.”
Ferguson won his superiors over by Sept. 6, when he claimed the deal needed to be closed by the following day. New Georgia Project chairman Francys Johnson asked for the letter of intent to be sent over for review.
“This is all good news,” Johnson said.
It’s not clear if New Georgia Partners ever signed the letter of intent or submitted the $30,000 earnest money deposit to purchase the properties from Global Resource Partners. It’s also not clear why Global Resource Partners dropped out of purchasing the properties at the last minute.
On Oct. 7, the New Georgia Project’s director of human resources during a video conference fired its chief operations officer as well as its directors of design and digital marketing. The reason given was that the organization could no longer afford their salaries.
A spokeswoman for the New Georgia Project did not respond to a request for comment.
Walmart CEO warns locations may close and ‘prices will be higher’
An increasing number of current and former CEOs have issued warnings about an increase in retail thefts across the United States, which could trigger higher prices and cause locations to close.
“Today, this thing is an epidemic. It’s spreading faster than COVID,” former Home Depot CEO Bob Nardelli told Fox News on Dec. 8. “The degree of severity now, it’s not just theft, it’s smash and grab. There’s an entitlement out there that if you have it, you’ve worked hard to earn it, I want it. I’m just going to take it.”
Last week, an 83-year-old Home Depot worker was killed after being shoved by a thief at a North Carolina location, officials said. Gary Rasor, the worker, attempted to confront a suspect who was making off with three power washers before he was pushed to the ground; he later died because of complications from his injuries.
While appearing on CNBC on Dec. 6, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said retail theft is “higher than what it has historically been” and suggested that it will create widespread problems in some areas.
“If that’s not corrected over time, prices will be higher, and/or stores will close,” McMillon said.
“I think local law enforcement being staffed and being a good partner is part of that equation, and that’s normally how we approach it.”
He didn’t indicate what locations could be closed due to theft incidents.
Doug McMillon, Walmart president and CEO, speaks at the company’s annual meeting on May 30, 2018. (Rick T. Wilking/Getty Images)
In September, the National Retail Federation reported that retail theft and other inventory loss—known as shrink—reached $94.5 billion in 2021, while reports indicate that retail theft incidents increased by about 26 percent last year.
“Violence is an increasingly important concern among retailers,” including shootings and assault, the report reads. “As has been detailed throughout this report, external theft and [organized retail crime] in particular, is a significant and growing area of concern for retailers.”
‘Industry-Wide’
In an investor call, Target Chief Financial Officer Michael Fiddelke said, “This is an industry-wide problem that is often driven by criminal networks, and we are collaborating with multiple stakeholders to find industry-wide solutions.”
The amount Target has shrunk over the past year, “has already reduced our gross margin by more than $400 million versus last year, and we expect to reduce our gross margin by more than $600 million for the full year,” he said.
In the call, Fiddelke said shoplifting has increased by about 50 percent year-over-year. Most of those shoplifting incidents are due to organized retail theft, not individual shoplifters, he said.
Organized looting and retail theft gangs have caused shortfalls for the retail industry amid supply chain problems and years of COVID-19-related disturbances, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
“Retail theft is becoming a national crisis, hurting businesses in every state and the communities they serve. We call on policymakers to tackle this problem head-on before it gets further out of control. No store should have to close because of theft,” the organization stated. “These crimes are not victimless.
“In addition to the growing number of thefts that turn violent, innocent consumers, employees, local communities, and business owners and shareholders bear the costs of rising retail theft. Twenty-five percent of small businesses report raising prices as a result of shoplifting. Some retailers have been forced to shutter locations in response to rampant theft.”
Notably, drugstore Walgreens has closed several locations in San Francisco amid a rise of thefts and shoplifting that had been blamed on policies implemented under District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who was recalled earlier this year.
Incidents
18 people were arrested in Los Angeles when police busted an organized crime ring that targeted clothing and shoe stores, authorities said.
The suspects ranged in age from 15 to 20 and were linked to retail thefts at chain stores on Dec. 1 and 2 in which about $23,000 worth of goods were stolen, according to the Los Angeles Police Department. They were likely involved in at least 14 earlier incidents, with stolen goods valued at $90,000, police stated on Dec. 3.
The department didn’t identify the suspects or the retailers that were hit. The stolen merchandise was recovered and returned to the retailers, the Los Angeles Times reported. The investigation included the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
WNBA basketball player Brittney Griner has been released by Russian authorities in a prisoner swap for convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout.
“She’s safe. She’s on a plane. She’s on her way home,” President Joe Biden told reporters at a Dec. 8 briefing at the White House.
“This is a day we have worked toward for a long time. We never stopped pushing for her release. It took painstaking and intense negotiations, and I want to thank all the hardworking public servants across my administration who worked tirelessly to secure her release.”
The 32-year-old Griner, who plays for the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury team and had been playing in Russia during the league’s offseason, was arrested in February after customs officials found her in possession of vaping cartridges containing less than an ounce of cannabis oil, an illegal substance in Russia.
Griner pleaded guilty while explaining that she had been prescribed cannabis for chronic pain and inadvertently packed it. She was sentenced to nine years in prison, and after an appeal was rejected, she began serving time at a penal colony in Mordovia in November, her lawyers told media outlets.
Bout, 55, was serving a 25-year sentence. He was convicted in 2011.
Bout, known as the “Merchant of Death,” was working to sell millions of dollars worth of weapons, including 800 surface-to-air missiles and 30,000 AK-47s, to Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, a designated foreign terrorist group based in Colombia, to kill Americans there, according to prosecutors.
“As the evidence at trial showed, Viktor Bout was ready to sell a weapons arsenal that would be the envy of some small countries,” Preet Bharara, then-U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement at the time. “He aimed to sell those weapons to terrorists for the purpose of killing Americans. With today’s swift verdict, justice has been done and a very dangerous man will be behind bars.”
Former Soviet military officer and arms trafficking suspect Viktor Bout deplanes after arriving at the Westchester County Airport in White Plains, N.Y., on Nov. 16, 2010. (U.S. Department of Justice via Getty Images)Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine who was arrested for alleged spying by Russia on Dec. 28, 2018, stands in a cage as he waits for a hearing in a courtroom in Moscow on Aug. 23, 2019. (Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP Photo)
Paul Whelan
The Biden administration over the summer said it pitched a prisoner swap involving both Griner and businessman Paul Whelan, who was sentenced to 16 years in prison on espionage charges despite his claims of innocence; officials declined to say who would be freed if an agreement was reached.
Biden said on Dec. 8 that it was “not a choice of which American to bring home” and that Russia is treating Whelan, a Marine Corps veteran, differently for “totally illegitimate reasons.”
Biden said his administration would keep trying to secure Whelan’s release.
U.S. authorities said both Griner and Whelan were wrongfully detained.
Paul Whelen’s brother, David Whelan, told media outlets in a statement that government officials informed the family on Dec. 7 that Paul Whelan wouldn’t be released.
“That early warning meant that our family has been able to mentally prepare for what is now a public disappointment for us. And a catastrophe for Paul,” he said.
In a separate statement, the Whelan family said: “There is no greater success than for a wrongful detainee to be freed and for them to go home. The Biden Admin made the right decision to bring Ms. Griner home and to make the deal that was possible.”
Other U.S. citizens imprisoned in Russia include Marc Fogel, who, like Griner, was caught with cannabis in his luggage. Trevor Reed, another American, was swapped for Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko earlier this year.
U.S. President Joe Biden (R) speaks on the release of Olympian and WNBA player Brittney Griner from Russian custody, at the White House on Dec. 8, 2022. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)Cherelle Griner (L), wife of Brittney Griner, speaks at the White House on Dec. 8, 2022. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
‘Gratitude’
Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Griner’s wife, Cherelle Griner, spoke by phone with Griner as the basketball player traveled back to the United States.
Griner initially landed in the United Arab Emirates, with Biden thanking officials there for assisting in the transit.
Griner told Biden in a handwritten letter in July that she was “terrified I might be here forever.”
“I realize you are dealing with so much, but please don’t forget about me and the other American Detainees,” she wrote.
Biden and Harris spoke with Cherelle Griner during the ordeal.
“I was grateful for the call, he says she’s top priority, but I want to see it,” Cherelle Griner said at the time. “At this point, I don’t even know who I’d be getting back.”
Cherelle Griner said after the release that she was overwhelmed with emotion.
Primarily, she said that she was feeling “sincere gratitude for President Biden and his entire administration.”
Several senators revealed this week that there aren’t enough votes for a new gun control bill amid calls from President Joe Biden to pass it during the lame-duck Congress.
“I don’t think that’s on the table,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told Fox News on Dec. 7 when he was asked about whether Democrats in the upper chamber could pass a ban. Notably, Cornyn had helped negotiate the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which Congress passed earlier this year, although he drew considerable criticism from his own party.
Meanwhile, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) told reporters this week that there are “probably not 60 votes” on a new gun control measure. At least 10 Republican senators would need to join Democrats in passing the bill in order to overcome the Senate filibuster.
On Dec. 7, Biden called on senators to pass a ban on so-called assault weapons, a nebulous term often used to describe a range of semiautomatic rifles including the most popular rifle in the United States, the AR-15.
“We did it before,” Biden said at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Washington on Dec. 7, referring to the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban that expired in 2004. “We did it, and guess what? It worked … we can do it again.”
Biden has made banning such weapons part of his agenda after pushing a gun control law in Congress in June that includes provisions intended to help states keep guns out of the hands of those deemed to be a danger to themselves or others. In November, Biden said that he was “going to try to get rid of assault weapons” and that he would “start counting the votes” on whether doing so was possible before the end of the current Congress on Jan. 3, 2023.
Pressed by reporters on Dec. 7 on where that pledge stands, White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said, “I don’t have any determination to share with you at this time.”
A California-legal AR-15-style rifle is displayed for sale at the Crossroads of the West Gun Show at the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa, Calif., on June 5, 2021. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) had indicated to reporters last week that he wanted a new “assault weapons ban” to be passed during the current Congress.
“The bottom line is that I am the author of the assault weapons ban. I believe in it strongly,” he told reporters. “And we’re continuing to work to see the best way we can try to get this done.”
The Democrats currently have control of the House of Representatives for a few more weeks before the Republicans become the majority party. When the GOP takes over, it will be much more difficult for the Democrats to pass any new gun control bills in Congress.
The renewed push to pass a gun control measure comes in the wake of a November mass shooting at a gay bar in Colorado that left at least five dead. The FBI on Dec. 7 confirmed that it received a tip about the alleged shooter, Anderson Lee Aldrich, about a day before he threatened members of his family during a June 2021 incident.
“The FBI received information on June 17, 2021, concerning Anderson Aldrich. As part of the assessment, the FBI coordinated with the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office, which arrested Aldrich on June 18, 2021,” the FBI’s press office told The Epoch Times on Dec. 7. “With state charges pending, the FBI closed its assessment on July 15, 2021.”
Aldrich, 22, has since been charged with 305 counts, including hate crimes and murder, in connection to the incident.
Democrats and Biden have argued that more gun control measures would prevent similar mass shootings from occurring in the future. “If you passed an assault weapons ban you would see less mass shootings in this country,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said last month.
Report
A Department of Justice report issued in 2004 found that the 1994 ban that targeted larger magazines and certain semi-automatic weapons didn’t lead to a significant drop in murders and shootings. The study has often been cited by pro-Second Amendment groups such as Gun Owners of America and the National Rifle Association (NRA) in arguing against such a measure.
“We cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence,” the DOJ’s report said (pdf). “Should it be renewed, the ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement.”
It noted that so-called assault weapons weren’t often “used in gun crimes even before the ban,” and it noted that while large-capacity magazines “are involved in a more substantial share of gun crimes,” it was then unclear “how often the outcomes of gun attacks depend on the ability of offenders to fire more than ten shots (the current magazine capacity limit) without reloading.”
Republican Arizona candidate Kari Lake indicated that she will attempt to take her election-related lawsuit to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary after Arizona officials certified the election for her Democrat opponent, Katie Hobbs.
In a Twitter post on Wednesday night, Lake indicated that she will file a challenge on Friday, again claiming that voters were disenfranchised amid Election Day problems. “This isn’t just about Republicans [and] Democrats—it’s about everyone’s Right to Vote on Election Day,” she wrote.
In another interview this week with Salem News, Lake indicated that she could not file a lawsuit to contest the Arizona gubernatorial election because “it has to be certified” first. The former television anchor issued that statement in response to complaints about why she hadn’t filed the challenge yet.
“We’re ready to go with what we believe to be an exceptional lawsuit. And we believe we will be victorious in that lawsuit,” Lake, who has not conceded the Arizona gubernatorial race, also told Steve Bannon on his WarRoom show this week. “We’ll take it all the way to the Supreme Court if we have to. We will not stop fighting,”
During a court hearing on Dec. 3, a Maricopa County official told a judge that a previous lawsuit filed by Lake requesting records from Maricopa County should be thrown out. Deputy County Attorney Joseph Branco told Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Scott Blaney that while Lake is entitled to see those records, she has to wait.
“County agencies receive requests from inmates who believe that the records they are going to receive will lead to their liberty,” he said, according to local media reports.
Maricopa
Lake has frequently criticized officials in Maricopa County after they revealed on Nov. 8 that there were vote-tabulator problems in dozens of polling locations and blamed the issue on a printer error. Arizona’s Attorney General’s office later sent a letter to Maricopa and demanded information after voters complained to the office’s election integrity subdivision.
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. The issue with the tabulator printer was resolved later on Nov. 8, officials said, denying claims that Election Day voters were disenfranchised.
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.
Lawsuit
But when Lake files her election lawsuit later this week, it may be too late to overturn the results. On Monday, Arizona officials certified the Nov. 8 election results that cemented the win for Hobbs, the secretary of state.
Candidate for governor of Arizona Katie Hobbs attends a roundtable in Phoenix, Arizona, on Oct. 27, 2022. (Olivier Touron/AFP via Getty Images)
“Arizona had a successful election, but too often throughout the process, powerful voices proliferated misinformation that threatened to disenfranchise voters,” Hobbs said during the event.
“Democracy prevailed, but it’s not out of the woods. … 2024 will bring a host of challenges from the election denial community that we must prepare for, but for now, Arizonans stand proud knowing that this election was conducted with transparency, accuracy, and fairness in accordance with Arizona’s election laws and procedures,” added Hobbs.
Before the midterms, Hobbs faced calls to recuse herself from duties as Arizona’s secretary of state, which doubles as the top election official. During Monday’s ceremony, she certified the election for herself.
Last month, Hobbs sued Republican-controlled Cochise County for not certifying election results in the county after several supervisors said they wanted to review testimony. Ultimately, the Cochise supervisors voted to certify the results last week amid concerns that by not doing so, it could jeopardize a newly Republican-controlled House seat.
All of Arizona’s counties, meanwhile, started an automatic recount of the General Election races on Wednesday for Arizona’s attorney general’s race and the Arizona superintendent of public instruction.
Hobbs had petitioned the Maricopa County Superior Court to begin an automatic statewide recount required by law in three races decided by less than half a percentage point. The race for attorney general was one of the closest contests in state history, with Democrat Kris Mayes leading Republican Abe Hamadeh by just 510 votes out of 2.5 million cast.
The Associated Press and Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.
A group of Republicans is seeking information from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) over allegations that the department “knowingly” places some unaccompanied illegal immigrant minors in the hands of criminals, according to a letter released on Tuesday.
“We write concerning an alarming report by a federal employee whistleblower that the [HHS] is knowingly transferring unaccompanied migrant children in the custody of criminals, including sex traffickers,” five GOP lawmakers wrote in a Dec. 5 joint letter to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra. The group cited testimony that the government failed to settle minors, who were caught while crossing the U.S. borders, into homes of “safe, non-criminal sponsors.”
“If these claims are true, this is pure evil being committed by your agency,” they wrote.
HHS officially acknowledges that unaccompanied border crossers under the age of 18 are “especially vulnerable” to human trafficking, exploitation, and abuse, but states that the “majority” are looked after by state-licensed providers operating under cooperative agreements and contract to deliver high-quality care.
Whistleblower Testimony
The letter comes after non-profit investigative journalism watchdog Project Veritas spoke with Tara Lee Rodas, who formerly assisted the HHS with the processing of unaccompanied immigrant children at an Emergency Intake Site in Pomona, California, as an employee of the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE). She told the outlet that she believes the current child sponsorship program funded by the department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement is precarious for these minors.
“The tax dollars of people who are listening are paying to put children in the hands of criminals,” Rodas said of what she has witnessed. “[Most people] have no idea that children are going to unrelated people. That children are definitely—we have proof, evidence—that they are being recruited and transported. They are then in debt bondage.”
A Veritas journalist found one illegal immigrant female minor who corroborated Rodas’s concerns at an address Rodas provided. The minor told the journalist that her sponsor, who claims to be her aunt, had forced her into situations of sexual abuse: “She was pimping me and I didn’t like that. She would pimp me to men.”
The Epoch Times has been unable to independently verify the claims.
Rodas said she has expressed her concerns to department officials. However, this usually led to dismissals of her concerns and sometimes retaliation at work.
During a previous talk to the command center executives, the whistleblower alleged she was told, “Tara, I think you need to understand that we only get sued if we keep kids in care too long. We don’t get sued by traffickers. Are you clear? We don’t get sued by traffickers.”
“[The Biden administration] relaxed a lot of the stringent vetting by creating these additional field guidances, and there’s a focus on ‘move the children’ as opposed to ‘place children in safe homes.’ Right now, it is speed over safety,” she added.
Investigation
Sen. Ron Johnson, chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, speaks during a hearing in Washington on Dec. 3, 2020. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Now, leading four of his fellow GOP lawmakers, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), a member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC), is demanding that Becerra release information regarding Rodas’s complaint on how the HHS vets sponsors of unaccompanied children who cross borders alone.
“This cannot be swept under the rug,” the senators said in the letter.
“We have long known that the Biden Administration’s open border policies are fueling human trafficking and child sex trafficking, as migrants repay debts to the cartels who transport them to illegally cross the border. We have repeatedly pressed HHS and the Department of Homeland Security for information on what the federal government is doing to ensure we are not facilitating the cartels’ trafficking operations. It is infuriating that, according to Ms. Rodas, HHS is doing nothing to protect these vulnerable individuals and shows indifference in its knowledge that it hands children over to criminals for exploitation,” the senators wrote.
HHS didn’t respond to a request for comment on the Monday letter. Joining Johnson on the letter are Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), and Mike Braun (R-Ind.).
Johnson, Scott, and Hawley penned another letter the same day to HSGAC Chairman Gary Peters (D-Mich.), calling on the Senate committee to run a hearing into the allegations that Rodas has raised.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says a drug called ivermectin does not work against COVID-19 but links to studies that show it does, an Epoch Times review has found.
The FDA’s website states, “Currently available data do not show ivermectin is effective against COVID-19.”
But half of the studies to which the FDA points support using ivermectin against COVID-19, according to the review.
The papers cut against the drug agency’s repeated exhortations for people not to take ivermectin for COVID-19. In Twitter posts, public statements, and emails, FDA officials have repeatedly warned against ivermectin. Some of those statements triggered a lawsuit from doctors who say the agency’s role is to approve drugs, not to issue recommendations. The suit was dismissed this week.
Dr. Pierre Kory, who frequently prescribes ivermectin for COVID-19 and co-authored a meta-analysis that concluded the drug is effective against the illness, told The Epoch Times that the government’s position on ivermectin “is one of the most glaring examples of the corruption of modern evidence based medicine.”
“There’s one message they want everyone to understand. And that message is that ivermectin doesn’t work,” Kory said. “That’s not a scientific conclusion, that’s theirs. That’s their perverted and distorted interpretation of the data.”
The FDA’s media office did not respond to a request for comment.
Dr. Janet Woodcock, a top official at the agency who was its commissioner from January 2021 to February 2022, told The Epoch Times via email that “ivermectin has been shown to be ineffective against COVID in large randomized trials.”
A sign for the Food And Drug Administration outside its headquarters in White Oak, Md., on July 20, 2020. (Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images)
Studies
The FDA’s website points to a U.S. National Library of Medicine database of studies analyzing ivermectin against COVID-19. There are 88 studies listed in the database.
Out of studies that are listed, have been completed, and have results reported, half show or indicate ivermectin effectively combats or prevents COVID-19, according to the review by The Epoch Times.
They include papers reporting on results from randomized, controlled trials, which are often offered as the highest level of evidence by U.S. government officials. Such trials feature a group that receives a placebo and a group that receives the drug, randomization into groups, and blinding, or shielding operators and/or patients from the knowledge of which participants are receiving ivermectin.
Among the papers is a randomized, blinded, controlled trial that found people who received ivermectin and doxycycline, an antibiotic, recovered faster from COVID-19 than those who received a placebo.
“Patients with mild-to-moderate COVID-19 infection treated with ivermectin plus doxycycline recovered earlier, were less likely to progress to more serious disease, and were more likely to be COVID-19 negative by RT-PCR on day 14,” they said. PCR has been used to test for COVID-19.
Another paper, published on July 7, 2022, in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases, found that that ivermectin decreased the level of COVID-19 and its viability. Israeli researchers in the randomized, controlled, open label trial compared 47 patients who received ivermectin against 42 who received placebos and said that “ivermectin significantly reduced the time of viral shedding and affected viral viability when initiated in the first week after evidence of infection.”
“There were lower viral loads and less viable cultures in the ivermectin group, which shows its anti-SARS-CoV-2 activity,” the researchers said. SARS-CoV-2 is a name for the virus that causes COVID-19.
A third paper concluded that a regimen of ivermectin and carrageenan works as a prophylaxis, or preventative medicine. Argentinian researchers found in the observational trial involving 229 health care workers that ivermectin helped prevent COVID-19 infection. A followup study involving nearly 1,200 workers confirmed the results. Both sets were reported in the Journal of Clinical and Biomedical Investigation on Nov. 17, 2020.
Ivermectin “could have saved so many lives,” Héctor Carvallo, one of the researchers, told The Epoch Times via email, adding that “it’s been a crime against mankind to prevent its prescription.”
Some other studies, including the largest ones, either found indications that ivermectin works against COVID-19 but did not achieve statistical significance or found no evidence that ivermectin is effective.
That includes a randomized, controlled, double-blind 2021 study by Mexican researchers that found ivermectin did not significantly impact hospitalization duration or mortality, and a randomized, controlled, double-blind 2022 trial by U.S. researchers that concluded ivermectin did not prevent hypoxemia, hospitalization, or death.
Scientists in Australia in April 2020 found that ivermectin worked well against the COVID-19 virus in cell culture, prompting doctors in multiple countries, including Peru and the United States, to start using it against the new illness.
Ivermectin is approved by the FDA to treat parasites. One version is used on horses and other animals.
The FDA quickly warned against using the animal form and said that people should “not take any form of ivermectin unless it has been prescribed to them by a licensed health care provider and is obtained through a legitimate source.”
Studies later in the year suggested ivermectin worked well in humans who had COVID-19, including halting the progression of disease (pdf), helping patients improve faster, and preventing COVID-19 infection, though other studies returned results that did not support ivermectin as a treatment.
The FDA maintained its stance against COVID-19, and created a new web page on March 5, 2021. It initially said, “The FDA has not reviewed data to support use of ivermectin in COVID-19 patients to treat or to prevent COVID-19; however, some initial research is underway.”
In August 2021, the FDA urged people against using ivermectin by telling them that “you are not a horse.” It linked to the page, which was updated the following month with the language it now contains about data not showing ivermectin is effective.
American doctors are allowed to prescribe drugs approved for one use for a different use, a practice known as off-label. But doctors who prescribed ivermectin soon found that many pharmacies stopped filling prescriptions, citing advice from the FDA and other U.S. government bodies.
Note: Only studies from the database linked to by the FDA that have been completed and have had results released are included
Half of Studies Supportive
The FDA does not cite studies on its website to support its statement that data “do not show ivermectin is effective against COVID-19.”
“Clinical trials assessing ivermectin tablets for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19 in people are ongoing,” the agency adds, providing a link to the U.S. National Library of Medicine’s database.
Of the 88 studies listed there, 56 fall under one of three categories: have not been completed, were completed but results have not been reported, or were completed and have since been retracted or otherwise withdrawn.
Of the remaining 32, 16 found or indicate ivermectin is effective as a COVID-19 treatment or prophylactic, according to the Epoch Times review.
Two of the trials were randomized, controlled, and blinded. Nine others were randomized and controlled but were not blinded at all. Most of the rest were observational, meaning they analyzed data from real-world settings like hospitals, or used observational data to create what’s known as a synthetic control group.
The set of papers includes results of a randomized, controlled, open label observational trial (pdf) that found ivermectin combined with doxycycline, an antibiotic, reduced the time to recovery and the mortality rate, and a randomized, controlled, double-blinded trial that found ivermectin and doxycycline quickened recovery and patients were less likely to see their disease progress.
Of the 16 other studies, six reported mixed results. For instance, Spanish researchers reported in The Lancet in February 2021 that ivermectin did not have an impact on testing results, but that there was “a marked reduction” of self-reported symptoms such as loss of smell and cough, and lower levels of viral loads. The result “warrants assessment in larger trials,” the researchers said.
The remaining 10 studies returned results that did not favor ivermectin or did not achieve statistical significance.
U.S. researchers, for example, found that ivermectin probably worked better than a placebo, but that the results did not achieve statistical significance, prompting them to say in October that “this study adds to the growing evidence that there is not a clinically relevant treatment effect of ivermectin at this dose and duration.”
The FDA did not respond to a request for comment on the revelation that half of the studies it points to support using ivermectin (IVM) against COVID-19.
Woodcock, the FDA’s principal deputy commissioner, reviewed the studies. She was unimpressed.
The Bangladeshi trial, for instance, was criticized for primarily including young persons, and having a higher number of dropouts in the placebo arm. Woodcock said the Israeli study did not report “clinical outcomes” and noted many of the other papers had small numbers of participants.
“There are only a couple studies here that really look at the effects of IVM and see a positive clinical effect and they are much smaller than the negative studies,” Woodcock told The Epoch Times in an email.
The trials in favor of ivermectin are on the smaller side, and more likely to be observational. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they are inferior, Kory said. He cited research that found there was little difference between observational studies and randomized-controlled trials, as well as a paper that said “study design is only one factor that determines study quality.”
The FDA isn’t the only government group opposed to using ivermectin to treat COVID-19. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines Panel recommends against it, citing several of the larger trials that found little or no benefit for ivermectin. The panel cites none of the papers that found a positive effect.
A health care worker holds a bottle of ivermectin in Colombia on July 21, 2020. (Luis Robayo/AFP via Getty Images)
Criticism of Design
Many of those studies have been criticized over their design. One major factor, critics say, is participants not receiving ivermectin soon after a positive test or the start of symptoms.
In one trial, researchers acknowledged that more than 4 out of 10 participants did not receive the dosage level that was listed as the “goal dose.” Further, the median time from the start of symptoms to treatment was six days, and the treatment duration was just three days. The trial, called ACTIV-6, was backed by the NIH.
The corresponding author for the trial did not return a request for comment. The authors said that “there was no evidence of a differential treatment effect based on the median time of symptom onset to receipt of study drug.”
In another trial that reported little difference between the treatment and control groups, the treatment group received ivermectin days after starting to show symptoms.
Ivermectin works best when applied within 24 hours of symptom manifestation, according to a meta regression of ivermectin studies performed by by an unnamed group of researchers.
“They literally try to treat as late into the disease as they can, for a short duration as they can, at the lowest dose that they can. And they also try to find as healthy and mild patients as you can,” Kory said.
“And yet, when they conduct those kinds of trials, it’s on the front page of a high-impact journal and the conclusion states, ‘this shows there’s no role for ivermectin in treatments.’ Absolutely absurd. And so it’s it’s really just corruption of these trials.”
Bari Weiss, founder and editor of The Free Press, released the second volume of the so-called “Twitter files” on Thursday, revealing the social media platform’s “secret blacklists.”
Weiss has been working with Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk and independent journalist Matt Taibbi to disclose internal Twitter information regarding censorship.
Twitter’s censorship methods, according to Weiss, included placing specific users on a “Trends Blacklist” or a “Search Blacklist.”
The popular Libs of TikTok account, as well as Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor of medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine, are among the users who were secretly added to the “Trends Blacklist” by the company.
Bhattacharya was put on the list because he stated that children would be harmed by COVID-19 lockdowns. This action stopped his tweets from trending, Weiss said.
Conservative talk-show presenter Dan Bongino was also put on a so-called “Search Blacklist,” Weiss disclosed.
Weiss also noted that conservative activist Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, was put on a “Do Not Amplify” list.
4. Or consider the popular right-wing talk show host, Dan Bongino (@dbongino), who at one point was slapped with a “Search Blacklist.” pic.twitter.com/AdOK8xLu9v
The second installment comes just a week after Taibbi published, with Musk’s endorsement, details about the social media platform’s decision to suppress and censor the New York Post’s report on the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop in October 2020.
“A new #TwitterFiles investigation reveals that teams of Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics—all in secret, without informing users,” Weiss said on Twitter.
“Twitter once had a mission ‘to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.’ Along the way, barriers nevertheless were erected,” she added.
1. A new #TwitterFiles investigation reveals that teams of Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics—all in secret, without informing users.
Rank-and-file employees and executives at Twitter referred to so-called “shadow banning” as “visibility filtering” or “VF,” according to Weiss, who said multiple “high-level” sources confirmed this at Twitter.
Weiss’ report, published on Twitter, confirmed that the social media company deployed its so-called visibility filtering to make it hard for users to search for specific individuals—in other words, to blacklist their accounts.
The visibility filtering tool also limited the scope of a specific tweet’s discoverability, prevented certain users’ tweets from ever appearing on the “trending” section, and blocked them from appearing in hashtag searches, according to Weiss.
“All without users’ knowledge,” she wrote.
One senior Twitter employee told Weiss to think about visibility filtering as a way for the company to “suppress what people see to different levels. It’s a very powerful tool.”
8. “Think about visibility filtering as being a way for us to suppress what people see to different levels. It’s a very powerful tool,” one senior Twitter employee told us.
Twitter shadow bans users “quite a bit,” one Twitter engineer reportedly told Weiss.
“We control visibility quite a bit. And we control the amplification of your content quite a bit. And normal people do not know how much we do,” the Twitter engineer reportedly said.
Weiss said that this was confirmed by two additional Twitter employees.
11. “We control visibility quite a bit. And we control the amplification of your content quite a bit. And normal people do not know how much we do,” one Twitter engineer told us. Two additional Twitter employees confirmed.
Twitter had a “secret group” who were above and beyond the everyday content moderators from the Strategic Response Team-Global Escalation Team (SRT-GET) that blacklisted users, according to Weiss.
The secret group was known as the “SIP-PES,” which stands for “Site Integrity Policy, Policy Escalation Support.”
The committee reportedly consisted of Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s former head of legal policy and trust; Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of global trust and safety; and former CEOs Jack Dorsey and Parag Agrawal; and others.
While the SRT-GET “handled up to 200 ‘cases’ a day” following the company’s policy on paper, the SIP-PES group existed at a level “beyond official ticketing, beyond the rank-and-file moderators,” Weiss reported.
“This is where the biggest, most politically sensitive decisions got made. ‘Think high follower account, controversial,’ another Twitter employee told us. For these ‘there would be no ticket or anything,’” Weiss added.
15. This is where the biggest, most politically sensitive decisions got made. “Think high follower account, controversial,” another Twitter employee told us. For these “there would be no ticket or anything.”
Weiss noted in her report the former Twitter executives had previously asserted in 2018 that the company did not target accounts with shadow bans based on their political views.
“Twitter denied that it does such things,” Weiss wrote, citing Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s former head of legal policy and trust, as well as Kayvon Beykpour, Twitter’s former head of product.
“We don’t ‘shadow ban,’” Beykpour wrote on Twitter on July 26, 2018.
Gadde used Twitter’s “Quote Tweet” function to add to Beykpour’s assertion.
“Favoring one specific ideology or belief goes against everything we stand for,” she wrote.
In a joint blog post, Gadde and Beykpour wrote: “We do not shadow ban. You are always able to see the tweets from accounts you follow (although you may have to do more work to find them, like go directly to their profile). And we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology.”
The SIP-PES group was tied to the decision to ban the popular Libs of TikTok account, which had been placed on the “Trend Blacklist” and was designated as “Do Not Take Action on User Without Consulting With SIP-PES,” according to Weiss.
The Libs of TikTok account, which was still blacklisted as of Dec. 7, was created by Chaya Raichik in November 2020 and grew to have 1.4 million followers.
Raichik’s account was suspended by Twitter seven times in 2022 alone and blocked from posting for as long as one week, Weiss reported.
Twitter repeatedly informed Raichik that she had been suspended for violating Twitter’s policy against “hateful conduct,” but an internal SIP-PES memo from October 2022 revealed that the secret group noted that her account had “not directly engaged in behavior violative of the Hateful Conduct policy.”
19. But in an internal SIP-PES memo from October 2022, after her seventh suspension, the committee acknowledged that “LTT has not directly engaged in behavior violative of the Hateful Conduct policy.” See here: pic.twitter.com/d9FGhrnQFE
Weiss reported that the committee internally justified Raichik’s suspension by claiming her account encouraged online harassment of “hospitals and medical providers” by insinuating “that gender-affirming healthcare is equivalent to child abuse or grooming.”
“Compare this to what happened when Raichik herself was doxxed on November 21, 2022. A photo of her home with her address was posted in a tweet that has garnered more than 10,000 likes,” Weiss wrote.
“When Raichik told Twitter that her address had been disseminated, she says Twitter Support responded with this message: ‘We reviewed the reported content, and didn’t find it to be in violation of the Twitter rules.’ No action was taken. The doxxing tweet is still up,” Weiss added.
Following Weiss’ report, Raichik noted that a screenshot shared by Weiss revealed her Libs of TikTok account was still blacklisted as of Dec. 7. She raised the issue with Musk, who replied that he’s “looking into it.”
The Epoch Times has contacted Raichik for further comment.
Weiss noted that there is “more to come on this story” that would be published on her website for The Free Press. Weiss said that part of her agreement with Musk to get access to Twitter’s files was that the material would first be published on Twitter.
“We’re just getting started on our reporting. Documents cannot tell the whole story here,” she said.
A third report on the so-called “Twitter files” will be published by Taibbi, Weiss said.
More than two years have passed since Big Tech controversially suppressed the New York Post’s infamous exposé on Hunter Biden’s laptop, yet despite those efforts, the story continues to make waves.
“I guess the chickens are coming home to roost,” noted Miranda Devine, New York Post reporter and author of “Laptop From Hell: Hunter Biden, Big Tech, and the Dirty Secrets the President Tried to Hide.”
On Dec. 1, as Twitter owner Elon Musk was preparing to release internal documents revealing the true motivations behind the social media platform’s decision to censor the story, Devine delved into the details of the story, the cover-up, and more for Epoch TV’s “American Thought Leaders” program. The episode is due to air on Dec. 8 at 7:30 p.m. ET.
New York Post journalist Miranda Devine, author of “Laptop from Hell,” in New York, on Dec. 1, 2022. (Otabius Williams/The Epoch Times)
The Scoop
On Oct. 14, 2020, just weeks before the presidential election, the Post published its bombshell report that then-presidential candidate Joe Biden had met in 2015 with an executive from Burisma, a Ukrainian energy firm that had been paying his son, Hunter, a salary of up to $50,000 a month.
The report cited emails sourced from a laptop that had been abandoned at a Delaware repair shop in April 2019 and had since been seized by the FBI.
In one email, Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board of Burisma, contacted the younger Biden seeking “advice on how you could use your influence” to benefit Burisma.
In a subsequent email, Pozharskyi thanked the then-vice president’s son for “giving an opportunity to meet your father” in Washington.
Throughout his campaign, Joe Biden had repeatedly denied any knowledge or participation in his son’s business dealings. And as the other contents of the laptop included what appeared to be a pornographic video of Hunter in which he was also smoking crack, the Post knew it had a big story on its hands.
“Because it was so close to the election, it was going to have an impact—it was detrimental to one of the two candidates for president,” Devine noted. “So, very high stakes; we expected that there would be pushback because of that. What we didn’t expect was that Big Tech would weigh in—would, you know, unsheathe their claws, show the world their power, and step in and censor the oldest newspaper in the country, the fourth largest by circulation.”
The Cover-up
Holding that the “egregious” censorship of the story essentially amounted to election interference, Devine recounted how, mere hours after the article was published, Facebook announced that it would limit the story’s reach pending a fact check.
“And by the way, that fact-checking never happened, as far as we can ascertain,” she added, “because the most obvious way you would do it is you would contact the other recipients of the emails that we were publishing and ask them, ‘Did you get this email?’ And I know, having talked to recipients, that none of them got any question or phone call from Facebook.”
In August, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook’s parent company, Meta, divulged that the platform’s decision to limit the story was largely based on warnings Facebook had received from the FBI about a potential forthcoming “dump” of “Russian propaganda” to influence the election.
And according to recent testimony from Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former Trust and Safety Department head, Twitter also received those warnings of a “hack-and-leak operation” involving Hunter.
“Obviously, whatever the FBI had warned Twitter and Facebook about was so similar to our story that they censored it within hours of publication,” Devine said.
Although Musk’s so-called Twitter Files did not reveal the details of those warnings, the released documents provided insight into some employees’ confusion over the decision to censor the article under Twitter’s “Hacked Materials” policy.
“I’m struggling to understand the policy basis for marking this as unsafe,” senior communications manager Trenton Kennedy wrote in one exchange, “and I think the best explanation for this externally would be that we’re waiting to understand if this story is the result of hacked materials. We’ll face hard questions on this if we don’t have some kind of solid reasoning for marking the link unsafe.”
But while being locked out of its Twitter account for two weeks was certainly difficult for the Post, Devine noted that it was particularly shocking and disheartening for staff when the media and former intelligence officials also adopted the “Russian disinformation” narrative.
And while the White House recently described the new revelations about Big Tech’s censorship of the story as a “distraction,” Devine also noted that FBI whistleblowers had come forward to allege that efforts to suppress the story extended beyond social media and into the bureau itself.
A man walks past “The Mac Shop” in Wilmington, Del., on Oct. 21, 2020. (Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images)
Furthermore, Devine said that when FBI agents retrieved the laptop from John Paul Mac Isaac, owner of the repair shop where it was abandoned, they left him with the impression that they might be threatening him.
“One of them turned and said to him, ‘In our experience, nothing happens to people who basically keep their mouth shut,’” she said. “And he wasn’t quite sure whether that was a warning, but he was discomforted by it.”
Admitting that she had initially dismissed Mac Isaac’s concerns as paranoia, she added, “Now, I’m more inclined to believe John Paul Mac Isaac’s instinct, which was that he was being warned to keep his mouth shut.”
Peddling Power
While noting that the coverup of the laptop’s contents is certainly a big story in and of itself, Devine said that the bigger picture needs to be acknowledged.
“You can’t lose sight of the fact that this is a story about Joe Biden,” she said. “And that is why the cover-up was so concerted.”
Where much of the attention surrounding the laptop’s contents has focused on Hunter and his wayward lifestyle, Devine stressed that his role was just to be the “bagman” for his father.
“It’s not about Hunter Biden—it’s about Joe Biden,” she said. “And it’s about an influence-peddling operation that he set up early on with his brother, Jim Biden, back in his first days in Delaware.”
And Hunter’s laptop, she added, provided key evidence that those schemes continued through his father’s time as vice president.
“Joe Biden told the American people during the campaign and ever since that he knew nothing about his son Hunter’s overseas business dealings,” Devine noted, “but there is just copious evidence on the laptop that he met with numerous, you know, at least a dozen of Hunter Biden’s overseas business partners from China, from Kazakhstan, from Russia, from Ukraine.”
Even without the laptop’s materials, however, she contended that the signs of influence-peddling were there for all to see.
“Particularly in China, it was very obvious to Chinese eyes what was going on when Joe Biden, as vice president, flew into Beijing on Air Force Two with his son, Hunter Biden, in tow,” she said. “This was American power, come to do private business.”
Emphasizing the Biden family’s relationship with China as especially troubling, Devine said she felt it served as an example of how China “plays the long game to infiltrate into the highest reaches of American power elites.”
Devine traces Biden’s “love affair” with China back to his 1979 trip to the country as a young senator, holding that ever since, Biden has been all too eager to advance the goals of the Chinese Communist Party in the United States.
“And it’s, I think, a great tragedy for America that a man like Joe Biden … should have been targeted so early by the Chinese Communist Party, and have been such a useful tool to them in his entire career.”
The Epoch Times has reached out to the White House for comment.
A federal judge on Dec. 7 ruled that three high-ranking officials within the Biden administration will not be required to testify under oath at depositions in a lawsuit that alleges federal government collusion with Big Tech companies to censor users.
U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty in October ordered the depositions of Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Jen Easterly, and Rob Flaherty, a deputy assistant to President Joe Biden, as part of a lawsuit brought in May by Republican Attorneys General Eric Schmitt of Missouri and Jeff Landry of Louisiana.
The attorneys general claim that high-ranking members of the government colluded and coerced social media companies to “suppress disfavored speakers, viewpoints, and content” or what they claimed was “misinformation” regarding COVID-19.
In November, Doughty, a Trump appointee, also said that Jen Psaki, a former White House press secretary who now works for MSNBC, must also sit for a deposition as part of the case.
However on Thursday, Doughty ruled that three of the individuals—Murthy, Easterly, and Flaherty—will no longer be required to appear for a deposition after a federal appeals court blocked the move last month, stating that the judge had failed to consider whether alternative and less “intrusive” means could be used to obtain the information being sought.
Jen Psaki, who was then-White House press secretary, speaks during her final daily press briefing at the White House in Washington, on May 13, 2022. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Biden Officials Won’t Need to Testify
As a result, Doughty said on Thursday that Murthy will no longer be required to appear for a deposition.
The decision came after lawyers for Murthy, who the attorneys general say ran a “public campaign to censor individuals who spread ‘misinformation’ about COVID-19,” had stated there was no need for his deposition.
Instead, lawyers said that written materials provided by Murthy in response to discovery requests would serve as an adequate alternative. Doughty, however, ruled that Murthy’s chief of staff, Eric Waldo, can take the deposition as an alternative.
The depositions were scheduled for early December but Doughty noted on Thursday that this has been extended to Jan. 13, 2023.
Easterly, meanwhile, will also no longer be required to do a deposition after the attorneys general claimed she supervises the “nerve center” of federally directed censorship.
While the court found that Easterly has personal knowledge to be deposed, Doughty said on Thursday that plaintiffs can instead depose their suggested alternative, Brian Scully, an official at CISA.
“Scully is the most suitable alternative for Easterly based on both Federal Defendants’ and Plaintiffs’ arguments,” the judge wrote.
Doughty also said that Flaherty will not need to do a deposition and can instead provide written discovery and “interrogatories.”
Schmitt, who recently won his bid for U.S. Senate, and Landry, who recently announced he’s running for governor in 2023, claim that Flaherty “allegedly holds ongoing meetings about censorship and content modulation with representatives of social media companies.”
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Jen Easterly testifies before Congress in Washington on April 28, 2022. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Flaherty’s Answers Cannot Be ‘Vague, Evasive’
“After considering the arguments of Plaintiffs and Federal Defendants, this Court finds that there is no suitable alternative for Flaherty,” Doughty wrote. “However, because written discovery would be less intrusive than a deposition, it is authorized that written discovery be served on Flaherty, such as interrogatories and requests for production of documents, rather than a deposition.”
Plaintiffs can serve Flaherty interrogatories and requests for the production of documents within five days of Doughty’s order and the Biden deputy assistant must provide them with his answers by no later than Jan. 5, 2023.
Doughty noted, however, that if Flaherty’s answers are “vague, evasive, or non-responsive,” Schmitt and Landry will be allowed to resubmit a request for his oral deposition.
Finally, Doughty noted that the court found Psaki had indicated that she had “personal knowledge of high-level White House Officials pressuring social media companies and statements that reinforced threats of adverse legal consequences to social-media platforms if they did not increase censorship of views disfavored by federal officials.”
Psaki has attempted to quash her deposition, claiming that she shouldn’t be “unduly” burdened by having to sit for a deposition, which her lawyers called a “fishing expedition to try to identify additional members of a conspiracy that Plaintiffs have merely alleged to exist.”
Yet Doughty on Thursday ruled that Psaki’s testimony is “crucial for Plaintiffs to identify federal officials who did what Psaki publicly stated they did” and that she must appear for a deposition within the extended expedited preliminary injunction-related discovery period.
The White House has denied claims that it colluded with social media companies to censor free speech on multiple topics, including COVID-19.
Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema announced Friday that she has left the Democratic Party and has registered as an independent, saying she’s turning her back on the “broken partisan system in Washington” that prioritizes denying the opposition party a win rather than “delivering for all Americans.”
Sinema made the announcement in a Dec. 9 thread on Twitter and elaborated on her decision in a lengthy op-ed in the Arizona Republic.
“I have joined the growing numbers of Arizonans who reject party politics by declaring my independence from the broken partisan system in Washington and formally registering as an Arizona Independent,” Sinema stated in a post on Twitter.
The lawmaker blamed growing political partisanship for dividing American families.
“Everyday Americans are increasingly left behind by national parties’ rigid partisanship, which has hardened in recent years,” she wrote in the Arizona Republic.
“Pressures in both parties pull leaders to the edges, allowing the loudest, most extreme voices to determine their respective parties’ priorities and expecting the rest of us to fall in line,” she added.
The former Democrat suggested in an interview with Politico that, after registering as an independent, she would continue to vote in the same way she has for her first four years serving as a senator from Arizona.
“Nothing will change about my values or my behavior,” she told the outlet, adding that she won’t caucus with Republicans.
She added that she won’t attend weekly Democrat caucus meetings, though it’s unclear whether she’ll continue to caucus with them.
It is also unclear whether Sinema will maintain her committee assignments from the Democrats. Two other senators—Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine—are registered independents but caucus with Democrats.
Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, then a Democrat and now an Independent, speaks at a hearing on Capitol Hill, in Washington, on May 14, 2019. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
White House Hopes to ‘Continue to Work Successfully’ With Sinema
Sinema’s surprise announcement comes just days after the Democrats secured an absolute majority in the Senate following Raphael Warnock’s Georgia runoff win.
Warnock’s victory over Senate candidate Herschel Walker gave the Democrats a 51–49 margin in the upper chamber, which Sinema’s defection slims to 50–49–1.
That’s not enough for Democrats to lose control of the Senate, even if Sinema votes with Republicans for a 50–50 split, since Vice President Kamala Harris can cast a tie-breaking vote.
Asked about how her defection affects the distribution of votes, Sinema told Politico it’s not a question she’s “interested in,” preferring to focus instead on working across the aisle.
“I want people to see that it is possible to do good work with folks from all different political persuasions, and to do it without the pressures or the poles of a party structure,” she told the outlet.
The White House reacted to Sinema’s announcement by calling her a “key partner” in efforts to pass “historic legislation” under President Joe Biden’s watch while expressing hope she’d continue to work with the current administration.
“We understand that her decision to register as an independent in Arizona does not change the new Democratic majority control of the Senate, and we have every reason to expect that we will continue to work successfully with her,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.
Sinema’s defection represents the first party switch in the Senate for over a decade. The last switch was when Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter left the Republican party and joined the Democrats in 2009.
‘Something Different’
With her new status as an independent, Sinema has cemented her role in the Senate as a maverick, alongside Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.).
Sinema and Manchin have kept Washington in suspense over the last two years as they have repeatedly withheld their needed votes for legislative initiatives spearheaded by President Joe Biden.
Both lawmakers have worked in a bipartisan way on high-profile bills that have since become law, including pushing for changes to Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act before the pair agreed to get on board with their votes.
In a statement announcing he had reached a deal with Senate Majority Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to vote in favor of the Inflation Reduction Act, Manchin said he had secured some concessions including ones that would reduce the bill’s impact on public debt.
“I have worked diligently to get input from all sides on the legislation my Democratic colleagues have proposed and listened to the views of my Republican friends to find a path forward that removes inflationary policies so that Congress can respond to Americans’ suffering from high prices,” Manchin said in a statement in July that indicated his willingness to work across the aisle.
Sinema, who also held out on the deal, said in August that she had agreed to move ahead with the bill after securing a concession to remove the carried interest tax provision and include protections for advanced manufacturing.
“Following this effort, I look forward to working with [Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.)] to enact carried interest tax reforms, protecting investments in America’s economy and encouraging continued growth while closing the most egregious loopholes that some abuse to avoid paying taxes,” Sinema said in a statement at the time.
Asked whether she’s thinking about a second term in the upper chamber, Sinema told Politico that it’s not something she’s considering at the moment.
“I’m keeping my eye focused on what I’m doing right now,” she told the outlet while dismissing suggestions she might be considering a run for the White House.
“I am not running for president,” she insisted.
In her op-ed in the Arizona Republic, Sinema said she’s offering Arizonians “something different” with her decision to leave the Democrat party.
“Some partisans believe they own this Senate seat. They don’t. This Senate seat doesn’t belong to Democratic or Republican bosses in Washington,” she wrote.
“It belongs to Arizona, which is far too special a place to be defined by extreme partisans and ideologues.”
Influenza vaccines have been in use for more than 60 years. One of the earliest clinical trials of influenza vaccine efficacy was conducted in United States Army personnel in 1943. Approximately 11,000 unvaccinated young men received a flu shot that had one strain of both influenza type A and type B. The study’s endpoint – the development of a febrile illness – showed that 7.1% of unvaccianted recruits developed a fever vs. only 2.2% of the vaccinated became sick. This early study assumed the fever was caused by influenza viruses and if they didn’t get sick, the success could be attributed to a flu shot.
The problem with this ‘end point’ is that many different viruses and bacteria can cause febrile illness, often referred to as influenza-like illness (ILI). For example, there are at least 52 immunologically distinct adenoviruses (different types) that can cause human illness. According to the Centers for Disease (CDC), there are about 30 strains of coronaviruses. Seven strains are known to infect humans and most commonly cause upper respiratory tract illness (a cold) or flu-like illness.
After a few more military trials, the assumption for the success of influenza vaccines lead to widespread influenza vaccine use in civilian populations in 1960. The U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) recommended annual vaccination of adults aged ≥65 yr, pregnant women(no safety studies then either!!), and those with chronic illness.
The impact was disappointing. Four years later (1964), a review of the program by USPHS leaders concluded:
“An appraisal of experience for the past three and a half years indicates little progress in control of influenza. The basic assumptions of the control program must be reassessed. There is little evidence that recent vaccines have significantly prevented clinical illness, as well as equally little evidence to evaluate effects on mortality. How long such a program should be continued without better scientific evidence is problematic. Sounder bases are needed for an influenza control program.”
Fast Forward: 2005
On September 21, 2005, The New York Times published a ground-breaking story reporting on a study with strong evidence that flu shots are ineffective and possibly even harmful in the most highly targeted group, the elderly. Published in The Lancet Online (September, 2005), the study provided no new data but reviewed 64 existing studies that evaluated the effectiveness of the flu vaccine over 96 flu seasons. The authors concluded that the effectiveness of flu shot—particularly in the elderly—was “wildly overstated.”
“The runaway 100 percent effectiveness that’s touted by proponents [of the flu shot] was nowhere to be seen,” said Dr. Thomas Jefferson, a Rome-based researcher with the Cochrane Vaccine Fields project, an international consortium of scientists who perform systematic reviews of research data. “What you see is that marketing rules the response to influenza vaccines, and scientific evidence comes fourth or fifth. Vaccines may have a role, but they appear to have a modest effect. The best strategy to prevent the illness is to wash your hands.”
Not much has changed in the last 15+ years in terms of identifying the efficacy of flu shots. Unlike other vaccines, influenza vaccine efficacy is a moving target due to all the annual mutations, including changes that occur on the surface proteins even while they are replicating in their egg incubators.
A paper published in 2020 by Leigh Krietsch Boerner as much as admits that the chance of the viruses grown in eggs, extracted and the put into the annual flu shot are not going to ‘match’ the viruses in circulation.
Recent evidence has emerged that the efficacy of flu shots can also be affected by how the pharmaceutical industry makes its vaccines. Most flu shots are currently produced from viruses grown in chicken eggs containing an embryo. Scientists have observed that mutations can occur in influenza viruses grown inside such avian cells, potentially leading to vaccines that are less effective because they are aimed at a slightly different version of the virus than the one we’re exposed to.
The truth is, flu shots are mostlyineffective. It has long been known that when circulating viruses do not match the vaccine strains, vaccination provides little to no protection. In the best years, flu shots show can show an efficacy rate of up to 60%; some years, effectiveness plunges to as low as 10%. This discrepancy is based on how well manufacturer’s have ‘guessed’ which strain to include in the current year’s slurry.
Looking at Current ‘Efficacy’ Data
A few years back, I did an evaluation of the data gathered and collated each week by the CDC during influenza season. Weekly flu activity and surveillance reports are generated from October (wk 40) to May (wk 20) of the following year. Hundreds of thousands of swabs are tested each season. The first step determines if the sample, taken from a person with flu-like symptoms, is positive or negative for influenza viruses. If the sample IS positive, the viruses are then sub-typed; this is how the CDC determines if the viral strains in the flu shots are ‘a match’ to the viruses causing community illness.
Remember: If they don’t match, the flu shot you took was all risk and no benefit; it was essentially worthless in preventing you from getting sick.
The same 2020 paper by Boerner (mentioned above) also states this:
Flu viruses that develop mutations in their surface proteins during vaccine manufacture may no longer match the ones circulating in the wild, and therefore the vaccines can’t protect people who receive shots as well.
Hmmm.
I analyzed the data from the 1997/98 flu season up through the 2015/16 flu seasons. Here’s the table I created, showing that in any given flu season, only 15.34% of illness was caused by influenza viruses. That means the flu shot was worthless almost 85% of the time in preventing the flu; it’s even MORE worthless if the viruses in the positive samples don’t match the serotypes that are in that year’s flu shot!
To be more current, I looked at the most recent available data for the current 2022 influenza season.
Cumulative data through October 2, 2022 (wk 40)
575,479 specimens tested
49,726 specimens were *positive* for influenza A or B (8.6%)
In Week 45 alone (Oct. 30 to Nov. 5, 2022) ==> The Beginning of ‘Sugar Season’!
103,830 specimens tested
15,308 specimens were *positive* for influenza A or B (14.7%)
So, not much has changed since 2016, and I’m sure the data in the intervening years is similar. You can see the numbers for yourself by going here. (scroll down).
For Flu Shot Devotees
I know that most who are reading this column avoid flu shots like the plague. But I’m sure you have many friends and family members who rush out to get their flu shot each season like it was as good for them – and as harmless – as a B-12 shot.
If they listen to you at all, learning that flu shots, similar to the Covid shots offer risk but no benefit is disturbing, The reaction to this information is predictable. Many people will deny it. Then many more will become angry and call it ‘misinformation.’ Denial is most pervasive among doctors and public health officials who encourage everyone to “get your flu shot NOW!” despite convincing evidence that they don’t protect you from getting the flu.
Denials from friends and family may sound something like this:
“Well, the flu shot always protects me.”
“Shouldn’t some people get the flu shot?”
“My doctor would never recommend something that wasn’t beneficial or could be harmful. I really LIKE my doctor!”
Reversing the ingrained beliefs about the effectiveness of flu shots is difficult, even in light of solid evidence. Many will never give up their long-held belief that a flu shot protects them from the flu.
I’ll close today with two of my favorite quotes:
The first, by Dresden James, a pen name of the writer Donald James Wheal, said: ‘It wasn’t the world being round that agitated people, but that the world wasn’t flat.’
James is also noted for saying one of my other long time favorite quotes:
“A truth’s initial commotion is directly proportional to how deeply the lie was believed. When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic.”
A spokesperson for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s office is standing by his statement that “Disney will pay its debts.”
“My statement stands,” executive press secretary to DeSantis Bryan Griffin told The Epoch Times by email. “Yes, it is our position that Disney will pay its debts.” The reiteration was in response to an inquiry by The Epoch Times regarding his previous statement that “the governor was right to champion removing the extraordinary benefit given to one company through the Reedy Creek Improvement District.”
The statement comes after reports suggest that Florida lawmakers are reviewing ways to restore some of the privileges stripped from Walt Disney Co. with the signing of new legislation to repeal a long-standing measure that provided Disney with special perks not enjoyed by any other business in the Sunshine State.
The 1967 Reedy Creek Improvement District (RCID)—drafted by the Florida Legislature in cooperation with Walt Disney World and signed into law by Republican Gov. Claude Kirk—effectively created two municipal-style governments (Bay Creek and Reedy Creek), to regulate the Lake Buena Vista land where the Walt Disney World Resort operates.
Through the RCID, Disney is allowed to operate its own fire protection, security services, utilities, and planning. Its Board of Supervisors is selected by landowners surrounding the 38.5-square-mile property, effectively allowing Disney to operate as its own government. If the RCID is repealed, Disney’s property would suddenly be under the complete authority of Orange and Osceola counties.
After facing pressure from LGBTQ communities and staff for his silence on the issue, former Disney CEO Bob Chapek issued a March 11 statement to his employees, apologizing for not being a “stronger ally” to them, saying the governor’s “Parental Rights in Education” proposal would represent “yet another challenge to basic human rights.” Chapek also vowed that Disney would immediately halt all political donations in Florida.
On March 30, State Rep. Spencer Roach, a Republican, revealed through social media that lawmakers had already met twice to discuss that “if Disney wants to embrace woke ideology, it seems fitting that they should be regulated by Orange County.”
In a subsequent demonstration of solidarity, Disney Corporation issued a March 28 statement vowing that its new goal was “for this law to be repealed by the legislature or struck down in the courts,” promising to support organizations working to make such a thing happen.
In a March 29 post on social media, DeSantis quickly reminded Disney that Florida “is governed by the interests of the people of the state of Florida—it is not based on the demands of California corporate executives.”
In a subsequent April report by The Epoch Times, polling at the time showed that the overwhelming majority of Florida’s primary voters, including a significant majority of Democrats, strongly supported the legislation. The hashtag, “BoycottDisney” was trending on social media, and one of the largest mothers’ advocacy organizations in the United States, Moms for Liberty, warned Disney of the pushback it would face if it did not stop lobbying against parental rights protected by Florida’s laws.
Disney “cast members” in support of parental rights were speaking out, saying they were “ashamed” to work for the company, and guests wore homemade T-shirts saying “Walt Not Woke” in protest of the announcement in March by Disney Parks’ diversity and inclusion manager, Vivian Ware, that Disney had “removed all of the gendered greetings” like “ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls.”
Dan Geffers poses for a photo with daughters Lila (Left, aged 13) and Bryn (age 11, on the right) in front of Cinderella’s Castle at Disney’s Magic Kingdom in Orlando, Florida, wearing a handmade t-shirt to express his feelings on the direction the company has decided to go in. (Courtesy of Dan Geffers)
“CEO Bob Chapek needs to be removed,” Roach asserted on social media on April 3. “A man obsessed with sexualizing 4-year-olds should not run a company that built its brand on preserving the innocence & magic of childhood.”
“I think Disney leadership is well aware they have stepped in quicksand and made a drastic unforced error,” Roach told The Epoch Times in April. “I think they are aware of how badly they’ve messed up here and the only way they can get to détente on this is Bob Chapek is going to have to go. I think his days are numbered and he’s going to be out as CEO in very short order.
“Whoever comes in is going to have to publicly acknowledge to some extent that Disney is not going to be held hostage by a small number of employees who think they can dictate Disney’s political stance and if some employees don’t like that they are going to have to leave.”
The bill, Senate 4C, was introduced in both the Florida House and Senate on April 19. The Senate passed the bill on April 20, followed by the Florida House on April 21. DeSantis signed the measure into law during an April 22 news conference at a school in Hialeah Gardens.
In a Nov. 11 staff memo, Chapek prepared Disney staff for severe consequences after the entertainment giant admitted that it lost a $1.5 billion loss in the last quarter. “I’m fully aware this will be a difficult process for many of you and your teams. We are going to have to make tough and uncomfortable decisions.”
Those decisions would include a “hiring freeze” and “some staff reductions.”
In a Nov. 20 press release, the Walt Disney Company Board of Directors announced that Robert A. Iger would be returning “to lead Disney as Chief Executive Officer, effective immediately.” The announcement was made after Disney stock dove 38 percent for the year.
The decision triggers a clause in Chapek’s contract called “terminate without cause,” valued at $44 million.
“In connection with his termination, Mr. Chapek will receive the separation benefits payable in accordance with the terms of his previously disclosed employment agreement,” Disney stated in a regulatory filing. The payout is said to be in cash, stock options, and equity in the company.
The sponsor of the law eliminating Disney’s Florida perks, State Rep. Randy Fine, said he’s encouraged by Chapek’s removal.
Disney Executive Chairman Bob Iger attends the Exclusive 100-Minute Sneak Peek of Peter Jackson’s The Beatles: Get Back at El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, Calif., on Nov. 18, 2021. (Charley Gallay/Getty Images for Disney)
“I think Mr. Iger has already said it probably was a misstep on the company’s part and how they handled it,” Fine said in an interview. “I don’t think we’d be in this situation if Bob Iger had been CEO.”
It is the return of Iger that has inspired Florida legislators to consider reducing the restrictions imposed by the legislation enacted in retaliation for Chapek’s opposition to Florida’s laws without going as far as ending them all.
“We will have an even playing field for businesses in Florida, and the state certainly owes no special favors to one company,” DeSantis Press Secretary Griffin said further in his statement. “Disney’s debts will not fall on the taxpayers of Florida. A plan is in the works and will be released soon.”
While Griffin said he was “not inclined to go further into details of ongoing negotiations or legislation as it is being formulated” and does not “want to box anybody in,” he said he “will make sure The Epoch Times will receive ‘any future statements’ they have to offer on the matter.
Zachkey James, 27, was charged with impersonation of a U.S. Postal Service (USPS) Mail Carrier, unlawful possession of three USPS arrow keys, mail theft, and possession of stolen mail, U.S. Attorney Jacqueline C. Romero said in a statement.
The arrow key is a universal master key that opens USPS mail boxes and the master door panel for clusters of mail boxes such as those found in apartments.
A July 2022 indictment alleges that while pretending to be a USPS mail carrier, James stole undelivered mail from a collection box near the Kingsessing Post Office in Philadelphia.
In October 2022, while again allegedly pretending to be a mail carrier, James is accused of stealing undelivered mail from a collection box near the East Germantown Post Office in Philadelphia. And in November 2022, James possessed three arrow keys and approximately 15 mail-in ballots that had been taken from USPS collection boxes, the indictment said.
If convicted, James faces a maximum of 31 years in prison and a $1.5 million fine.
The case was investigated by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Brown.
Arrow Key Theft
In October, Romero reported the indictment of three men who allegedly robbed a USPS letter carrier of his arrow key on Dec. 22, 2021, and used the key repeatedly to steal mail from collection boxes in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania.
The indictment said they found and altered checks in the mail to make them payable to third parties, often in amounts greater than the checks’ original value, then deposited the washed and altered checks into third-party accounts.
Money orders, gift cards, and cash are other possible finds in the mail.
Across the internet there are multiple examples of arrow key thefts—so called because they are imprinted with an arrow.
Over the summer at least 13 arrow keys were stolen during assaults on letter carriers in the Washington D.C. area, according to news reports.
“In recent months, there has been a rise in crimes involving the mail, including mail theft, check washing and robberies of postal carriers,” Romero said in a Twitter video. “Make no mistake, mail theft is a serious federal offense. If you steal mail, you are going to prison.”
John Walker, assistant inspector in charge for the Philadelphia Division of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, spoke in the same video and advised mail consumers to notice the last pickup time posted on every blue collection box. If consumers are there after that time, they should consider holding their items until the following day.
Customers can also mail their items inside any post office.
Standing for Americans who feel government has left them behind
Some 23 Republican members of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives have formed a state freedom caucus, aiming to be the conservative voice in an increasingly Democrat-leaning state. The caucus was announced Monday in Harrisburg with an introduction by Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) who chairs the U.S. congressional House Freedom Caucus.
“We stand for the millions of Americans who feel that government [has] left them behind and they don’t have a voice. We’re bringing that voice,” Perry said in front of a small gathering of representatives who will be members of the Pennsylvania caucus.
“People don’t vote for Republicans to come to their state capitol and work out deals in the back room with leftist Democrats,” Perry added. “People say, ‘Well, these are a bunch of radical extremists.’ That’s what the press likes to say: ‘radical extremists.’ I will remind everybody here … the Republican party isn’t the one that [has] offered socialists up to run for office and hold office and promote their policies. These are folks that believe in the Constitution, take an oath for a reason, and want to abide by it, want to stand by the principles that they go out and talk to people about.”
Legislators: Fulfill Your Promises
The caucus will be a bloc of representatives who stand together against the pressures of state government and legislative leadership, Perry said, and who will pressure the rest of the state legislature’s Republicans to do what they told voters they were going to do.
Without inspired Republican leadership, Perry said, Pennsylvania has elected “the most radical, the [most] leftist and the most partisan governor, probably of our lifetime, getting ready to take office right now. We certainly can’t have a legislature that’s going to agree with every single thing that is destroying the commonwealth and destroying our country.”
Perry was referring to Democrat Josh Shapiro, who will take office as Pennsylvania governor in January, after eight years of leadership by Democrat Tom Wolf.
Pennsylvania could be leading the energy revolution in the United States, Perry said.
“People that are at the bottom of the economic spectrum oftentimes have to heat their homes with kerosene, because they can’t afford anymore. Kerosene is now over $7 a gallon. Pennsylvania could be leading it. But we just elected a governor who stands against all of those things,” Perry said. “We can’t have a legislature that is unwilling to push back on that agenda that is destroying our commonwealth.”
By Invitation Only
Pennsylvania Republican state Rep. Dawn Keefer will chair the newly established freedom caucus, which is a state version of the federal caucus established in 2015. Vice-chair is Republican state Rep. David Rowe.
Pennsylvania Freedom Caucus members must be invited to join. The caucus will not make its list of members public; members may choose whether to identify themselves as members.
Standing in the Gap
“We have a defined, clear, ideological stand that we’re taking,” Keefer said of the group’s agenda. Keefer said the caucus will address issues such as “reigning in regulations, anything that would increase the scope and power of government. We plan to protect Pennsylvanians from that overreach of government.”
Keefer envisions the caucus as “standing in the gap and making sure that government is working for the people, not the other way around.”
Regarding state Republicans as a whole, “We need a clearly defined plan that gets buy-in from all members,” Keefer said. “We haven’t had that this past session. We’ve been lacking it for a couple of years, for sure. So, let’s get a plan. Let’s get everybody at the table and come up with an agreement. This isn’t about running roughshod and everybody getting their way. This is about coming up with a plan that can move the commonwealth forward.”
Caucus vice-chair Rowe called out “an unelected and unaccountable bureaucracy” as a threat to constitutional freedoms. “We are here to be the defenders of the freedoms we have and the fighters to reclaim the freedoms we have lost,” he said. “Freedom will not be lost on our watch.”
‘I Fear for my Grandchildren’
Pennsylvania state Rep. Frank Ryan (R-Lebanon) has decided not to run for a fourth term, but to work for property tax relief and election integrity as a private citizen, in which capacity he believes he can accomplish more. Ryan will be involved with the freedom caucus, however, and with two days left in his term, he offered some reasons why an organized conservative voice is needed in the Pennsylvania legislature.
“We saw during the pandemic, things that I never thought I would see in a free world,” Ryan said. “As a grandparent, I fear for my grandchildren who are being subjected to decisions over which they have no control, because of protectionism that’s been granted to bureaucracies outside of their controls and parental influence.”
Ryan added, “I am extraordinarily concerned that our freedom of assembly becomes chastised, challenged, and ridiculed because of certain groups … but I can assure you, [we’ll ] make absolutely certain that we will reestablish the flag of the United States of America and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania from the highest mountaintop, and we will shout out in one voice that we are one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
A Nationwide Movement
Andy Roth, president of the State Freedom Caucus Network, said Pennsylvania is the eighth state to form a freedom caucus in the year since the network launched.
“We create [freedom caucuses] to help conservative lawmakers come together, organize and fight for the principles we believe in: family, faith, and freedom,” Roth said. “Setting up state freedom caucuses creates a direct link with the House Freedom Caucus in the U.S. Congress.” Roth called the federal freedom caucus a “conservative north star” in Congress.
The first state freedom caucus was formed in Georgia in December 2021, followed by Mississippi, South Carolina, Nevada, Illinois, South Dakota, and Arizona.
Republican Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake did not concede on Monday after Maricopa County certified its election results in favor of Democrat Katie Hobbs and said she is “firmly in this fight.”
“I want you to know that I am firmly in this fight with you,” Lake said in a video released on Twitter shortly after the election results were certified in Arizona’s most populous county. “Maricopa County just couldn’t wait to certify their botched election,” she said.
Citing issues reported by Maricopa County officials and voters on Nov. 8, Lake then said that “Election Day voting centers were inoperable” and said that “Arizonans were expected to wait in line two, three, four, even five hours” to cast a ballot.
Lake, a former television news anchor backed by former President Donald Trump, said that she is currently working with lawyers on a legal case to challenge the election in Maricopa County. It came after her team filed a lawsuit last week against officials there.
“State statute requires certification before our case can move forward,” Lake asserted. “You know how hard I worked on the campaign trail leading our movement to bring common sense solutions to our problems. I am taking that same work ethic and using it behind the scenes right now, building a strong legal case.”
In the Twitter video, Lake did not elaborate on the nature of her next lawsuit. The one her team filed last week (pdf) demanded the release of Maricopa’s election records, which Lake later said would be the basis of a larger legal challenge.
Certification
During the public comment period on Monday, a number of voters told Maricopa County supervisors that thousands of voters were disenfranchised at polling locations on Nov. 8. They made reference to problems at some voting centers such as being forced to drop off ballots in dropboxes, also accusing Maricopa officials of being corrupt.
County officials, however, pushed back on claims that voters were disenfranchised and said that tabulator machines were fixed later on Election Day. The five supervisors unanimously voted to certify the results of the election.
The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors in Arizona met on Nov. 28 to canvass the results of the November election before voting to certify on Nov. 28, 2022. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)
“Every voter had that opportunity to put their vote in that ballot box.” Scott Jarrett, an elections official, told the hearing on Monday.
And Maricopa County Supervisor Bill Gates told the audience that they had no choice but to certify the result of the election. The last day under state law to certify is Nov. 28.
“Certification is not an optional act for boards of supervisors,” he said. “We’ve had this date circled on our calendars for quite a while now.”
Gail Golec, a Republican candidate for supervisors, said that Gates’ claims are inaccurate, according to local media. The county’s elections manual said a certification, or canvass, shouldn’t be conducted “until all necessary audits have been completed to verify the accuracy and the integrity of the election results.”
“We do not have accuracy, we do not have integrity in these election results,” Golec told the board, adding that more audits are needed.
Hobbs Files Lawsuit
In another county, Hobbs, the secretary of state, asked a judge to order Cochise County officials to canvass the election, which she said is an obligation under Arizona law. Lawyers representing a Cochise County voter and a group of retirees filed a similar lawsuit Monday, the deadline for counties to approve the official tally of votes, known as the canvass.
The two Republican county supervisors delayed the canvass vote until Friday, when they want to hear once more about concerns over the certification of ballot tabulators, though election officials have repeatedly said the equipment is properly approved.
State Elections Director Kori Lorick wrote in a letter last week that Hobbs is required by law to approve the statewide canvass by next week and will have to exclude Cochise County’s votes if they aren’t received in time.
That would threaten to flip the victor in at least two close races—a U.S. House seat and state schools chief—from a Republican to a Democrat.
“The Board of Supervisors had all of the information they needed to certify this election and failed to uphold their responsibility for Cochise voters,” Sophia Solis, a spokeswoman for Hobbs, told news outlets.
MICROPLASTICS, BPAS, OBESITY, AND MUCH MORE APPEAR TO BE FAR MORE OF AN EXISTENTIAL THREAT THAN “CLIMATE CHANGE.”
Massively declining sperm counts are a global problem, according to new research that has evident implications for the survival of the natural human race. Current trends in sperm counts, if extrapolated, suggest that, as early as 2050, the species may have trouble reproducing. The median man will have a sperm count of zero, meaning that one half of all men will produce no sperm at all, and the other half will produce so few as to be functionally infertile.
Researchers have further corroborated prior information gained on sperm counts in North America, Europe, and Australia, revealing the decline in sperm counts is mirrored in South and Central America, Asia, and Africa too.
Declining fertility and the resulting “crisis of masculinity” have become a political issue in the U.S. recently, aided by Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s documentary, The End of Men. The film drew furious responses from the liberal media, who accused Carlson of “ramping fears” and “push[ing] pseudoscience onto impressionable men.”
Worrying Trends Get Worse.
Now, Carlson’s claims look more prescient than pseudoscientific, with a team of researchers from Israel, the US, Denmark, Brazil and Spain analyzing sperm count data from 53 countries, in regions that had not previously been considered in such studies.
While sperm count data for North America, Europe, and Oceania had already been subjected to rigorous analysis and discussion, the same was not true for data from Latin America, Asia and Africa.
The researchers have been able to show, for the first time, that men in Latin America, Asia, and Africa are also suffering from exactly the same “significant decline” in total sperm counts (TSC) and sperm concentration (SC) as their counterparts in the West. What’s more, the researchers have also shown that the decline in TSC and SC has been accelerating globally since 2000.
“Overall, we’re seeing a significant worldwide decline in sperm counts of over 50 percent in the past 46 years, a decline that has accelerated in recent years,” said Prof. Hagai Levine in a media release to accompany the study.
“Our findings serve as a canary in a coal mine. We have a serious problem on our hands that, if not mitigated, could threaten mankind’s survival. We urgently call for global action to promote healthier environments for all species and reduce exposures and behaviors that threaten our reproductive health,” Levine adds.
Professor Shanna Swan, one of the co-authors of the research, has made headlines in the last year with her new book Count Down, in which she predicts an imminent “spermageddon” scenario, wherein by 2050, almost zer0-level sperm counts will lead to existential issues for humankind. The median man could have a sperm count of zero, meaning that one half of all men will produce no sperm at all, and the other half will produce so few as to be functionally infertile.
Although the study does not specifically investigate the causes of this decline in sperm counts outside the Western world, the authors are in no doubt that “lifestyle choices and chemicals in the environment” are playing an important role. These are precisely the causes Professor Swan identifies in her new book.
Obesity and inactivity are powerfully implicated in male fertility decline, and so is exposure to so-called endocrine-disrupting chemicals, like BPA and phthalates. People around the world are getting fatter and doing less exercise, and the full extent of human exposure to endocrine disruptors, which are often essential to industrial processes like the manufacture of plastics, is now being revealed. Microplastics – tiny pieces of plastic that act as vectors for endocrine disruptors – have been found in arctic ice, circulating on wind currents, and at the bottom of the oceans, as well as in the lungs, brains and placentas of mammals, including humans.
Exposure to endocrine disruptors during gestation is a particular problem, and can adversely affect fetal development. Prof. Levine notes that recent research shows how disturbances in the development of the reproductive tract during fetal development display a link to lifetime impairment of fertility and other forms of reproductive dysfunction.
As well as serving as a measure of reproductive fitness, sperm counts are a more general index for male health. Low counts are tied to lower testosterone levels and an increased risk of chronic diseases, depression, testicular cancer and reduced lifespan.
“The troubling declines in men’s sperm concentration and total sperm counts at over 1 percent each year as reported in our paper are consistent with adverse trends in other men’s health outcomes, such as testicular cancer, hormonal disruption, and genital birth defects, as well as declines in female reproductive health. This clearly cannot continue unchecked,” explains Swan.
The Importance of The End of Men.
These concerning trends have been given a new political importance by the recent Tucker Carlson Original, “The End of Men”, which explores the decline in male fertility, as reflected in sperm counts and testosterone levels, and its implications for the broader health and success of the nation. The documentary features interviews with an array of experts, including Robert Kennedy Jr., as well as features on attempts by “broscientists” to reclaim their masculinity through exercise, clean eating and, most memorably, “testicle tanning”.
The documentary was hit with a furious backlash from commentators on the left, who accused Tucker Carlson of exaggeration, promoting “pseudoscience” and flirting with “fascist” rhetoric and imagery, by glorifying healthy, fit bodies or “hyper-militant masculinity”. Some commentators noted the absence of “persons of color” from the documentary, while others were content simply to point their fingers and laugh. “Tucker Carlson’s documentary is a bizarre, homoerotic fever dream”, ran a headline from pedophile publisher Pink News.
It’s hard not to suspect that Tucker’s predominant focus on young white men, a demographic liberal commentators could hardly be accused of taking a positive interest in, let alone caring for, is one of the major reasons for their visceral response. But this new research is a serious spanner in the works for those who want to claim Tucker is simply playing on fears about a lost American past where men were men. The truth is, the masculinity crisis is real, regardless of skin color or place of birth. It’s a global problem we all must taken an interest in solving – before it’s too late.
Twitter has stopped enforcing its COVID-19 “misleading information” policy that had resulted in nearly 100,000 pieces of content being cut from the platform and led to more than 11,000 account suspensions.
The social media giant, which was taken over by industrialist Elon Musk at the end of October, said in a report that, effective Nov. 23, Twitter is “no longer enforcing the COVID-19 misleading information policy.”
The report included information about Twitter’s enforcement actions related to its COVID-19 content policies. Between January 2020 and September 2022, there were 11.72 million accounts challenged, 11,230 accounts were suspended, and 97,674 pieces of content removed.
The policy, which was introduced to curb the spread of “harmful misinformation” related to COVID-19, was praised by some, including U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, who in an advisory (pdf) on “building a healthy information environment” cited Twitter’s rules as a model for companies to fight misinformation.
But heavy-handed enforcement of the policy garnered criticism, such as when earlier this year Twitter flagged numerous tweets with factual information about COVID-19 as misinformation and suspended accounts of scientists and doctors.
The Crackdown
In one case, Twitter blocked a post from Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo that promoted an analysis that asserts there were a high number of cardiac-related deaths among men who took an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine.
The post, which was unblocked hours later, reads: “Today, we released an analysis on COVID-19 mRNA vaccines the public needs to be aware of. This analysis showed an increased risk of cardiac-related death among men 18–39. FL will not be silent on the truth.” It also linked to guidance and a news release regarding the analysis.
Several members of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s administration criticized Twitter for blocking Ladapo’s post.
“Twitter has not explained WHY the study findings constitute ‘misinformation’ nor proven them wrong,” wrote DeSantis spokeswoman Christina Pushaw on Twitter.
“This is an unacceptable and Orwellian move for narrative over fact,” Bryan Griffin, the governor’s press secretary, wrote on Twitter.
Ladapo commented on the incident after his post was restored: “I love the discussion that we’ve stimulated. Isn’t it great when we discuss science transparently instead of trying to cancel one another?” he wrote.
In another case, Dr. Peter McCullough, a renowned Texas-based internist and cardiologist who has raised questions about the efficacy and safety of COVID-19 vaccines, was suspended from Twitter and his account remains blocked.
McCullough is one of several individuals who have sued Twitter for suspending their accounts over COVID-19 related information.
‘Mistakes Made’
In August, after Twitter received a number of complaints and queries over its heavy-handed enforcement of the COVID-19 content policy, the company removed a number of warning labels from tweets and restored accounts.
Twitter also acknowledged the problem in an interview with The Washington Post.
“We’re always working to improve the safety of our service and ensuring we provide avenues of recourse when we get it wrong through our appeals processes,” then Twitter spokesperson Celeste Carswell told the outlet. “We acknowledge the mistakes made in these cases, and we are reviewing our team’s protocol to safeguard against such mistakes in the future.”
Carswell is no longer employed at Twitter, according to her profile bio, presumably as part of the large-scale layoffs at the company since Musk took over. Twitter’s official communications account has been dormant since Oct. 30.
Musk to Reveal Details of Twitter’s ‘Free Speech Suppression’
Musk has vowed to dial back Twitter’s censorship policies that many conservatives have alleged are discriminatory and amount to suppression of free speech.
At the same time, he pledged in an open letter that he would not to allow the platform to become a “free-for-all hellscape” where anything could be said “with no consequences.”
“In addition to adhering to the laws of the land, our platform must be warm and welcoming to all,” Musk wrote.
He also announced earlier in November that Twitter’s new policy is “freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach,” adding that Twitter would demonetize and not promote “hate/negative tweets.”
“You won’t find the tweet unless you specifically seek it out, which is no different from rest of Internet,” Musk said.
Musk said on Nov. 29 that Twitter’s internal files on the company’s “free speech suppression” will be revealed “soon,” raising expectations that light will be shed on the firm’s opaque actions in blocking content and banning accounts.
“The Twitter Files on free speech suppression soon to be published on Twitter itself. The public deserves to know what really happened,” Musk said in a post late Monday.
Critics have long held that Twitter has used vague standards to censor or suspend accounts and that the ones targeted are predominantly those expressing conservative views.
Twitter has denied any bias in its actions, repeatedly insisting it is simply following its content moderation policies.
Ranked-choice voting (RCV) continues to gain momentum nationwide, as voters in several cities approved referendums during the midterm elections to implement the nonpartisan multiple-choice ballot system in future elections.
In addition to voters in Seattle; Portland, Oregon; and Fort Collins, Colorado, endorsing RCV electoral systems, Nevadans also adopted, by a 52.9-to-47.1 percent margin, a proposed Top-Five Ranked Choice Voting Initiative on Nov. 8.
If Nevada voters approve the ballot measure again in 2024—state law requires that proposed constitutional amendments be approved twice to be implemented—the Silver State would join Alaska and Maine as states that use some version of RCV for all elections.
“Ranked-choice voting is the fastest-growing election reform movement in the country,” Deb Otis, director of research for Maryland-based FairVote, told The Epoch Times. “We see a lot of opportunities moving forward.”
Since the Nov. 8 elections, the Arlington County Board of Supervisors voted to “test out” RCV in the Virginia county’s June primaries for 2023 local elections, and the Redondo Beach, California, City Council agreed to place an RCV referendum before local voters on March 5, Otis said.
As of late November 2022, 62 U.S. jurisdictions have ranked-choice voting (RCV) in place, reaching approximately 13 million voters, including two states, two counties, and 58 cities. Military and overseas voters cast RCV ballots in federal runoff elections in six states. (Courtesy FairVote)
On an RCV ballot, voters aren’t limited to picking one candidate and a winner isn’t declared until one candidate receives more than 50 percent of the votes.
If no candidate receives “50 percent plus one,” the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and the votes are counted again. If a voter’s top choice was eliminated, that vote is given to that voter’s second-choice candidate. The process is repeated until one candidate tops 50 percent.
Supporters, such as FairVote and the Ranked Choice Voting Resource Center in Goldsboro, North Carolina, maintain election winners should have more than 50 percent support of the electorate, and that RCV limits the “spoiler” effect of minor-party candidates chipping away at incumbents’ advantages.
Opponents include both major political parties and several conservative organizations that say the process is too cumbersome, leads to more electoral stalemates, and would require a significant investment in technology to upgrade voting systems to allocate and reallocate votes.
Virginia-based Honest Elections Project (HEP), which is spearheading election integrity initiatives across numerous states, maintains that RCV is “an unwise policy that complicates voting and risks disenfranchising voters.”
HEP Executive Director Jason Snead told The Epoch Times that his organization is “gearing up” to oppose a growing number of “state initiatives in the works,” calling RCV a “new challenge” that is “raising a lot of problems,” including the extended time it can take to determine winning and losers.
RCV wouldn’t “do anything to improve voter turnout or bolster voter confidence in the elections,” he said, calling it “an unnecessary reform” being primarily pushed by progressives.
RCV was first adopted on a statewide basis in the United States in 2016 by voters in Maine for state Legislature and governor elections. In June 2018, voters agreed to expand RCV to all state and congressional primary and general elections for Congress.
In 2019, Maine lawmakers extended RCV to presidential elections, starting with the 2020 general election and continuing in 2024 for both primary and general elections for president.
In November 2020, voters in Alaska adopted Ballot Measure No. 2 (pdf), a constitutional amendment sponsored by Alaskans for Better Elections, to implement RCV for all elections, beginning with 2022 elections.
Voters also have rejected several RCV measures, including in Massachusetts in 2020. Citizen petition efforts to get RCV proposals on the ballot failed to collect the required number of signatures in North Dakota in 2020 and Missouri in 2022.
More than 50 municipalities across 10 states, however, have adopted the process, including New York City, San Francisco, and Minneapolis.
In Utah, state lawmakers in 2018 passed a local option bill to allow municipalities to use RCV in local elections. Salt Lake City is among the 23 cities and counties that have adopted the system as part of a six-year pilot program to test the voting system.
That lawmakers in Alaska, Virginia, and Utah—where Republicans hold majorities in at least one if not both state legislative chambers—have adopted RCV legislation refutes opponents’ claims that the voting system is exclusively supported by progressives, Otis said.
”The Virginia Republican Party uses ranked-choice voting,” she said, noting that is how current Gov. Glenn Youngkin emerged from a crowded GOP primary in 2021 to win the party’s nod and ensuing general election.
“We’re also seeing the Utah Republican Party embrace raced-choice voting,” Otis said. “In Alaska, Republicans are doing well statewide” in RCV elections with voters in November “electing a moderate Republican for the Senate, a conservative governor, and a moderate Democrat for the House.”
In the Alaska U.S. Senate race, incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) defeated fellow Republican Kelly Tshibaka in the Nov. 8 general election by nearly 7.5 percent.
Incumbent Gov. Mike Dunleavy, a Republican, cruised to victory in a crowded field with 50.3 percent of the vote, while in the race for Alaska’s lone seat in the U.S. House, Democrat Mary Peltola defeated a crowded field that included two high-profile Republicans, eventually dispatching former Gov. Sarah Palin in a runoff by 54.9-to-45.1 percent.
“Both parties can, and do, succeed in ranked-choice voting,” Otis said. “We’re seeing Republicans and Democrats embrace this.”
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, more than 50 RCV proposals have been introduced in 22 state legislatures since 2018.
“The biggest obstacle we face is just that this is new. Some voters have not heard of it,” Otis said, but something most voters recognize is “something is wrong in our elections” and have proven to be amenable to RCV.
Otis said Maine and Alaska will both use ranked-choice voting in the 2024 presidential general election. Maine will use RCV in its 2024 primaries, as well, she said. “We hope (Alaska Republicans) consider using ranked-choice voting as the Alaska Democrats did in 2020.”
FairVote and other RCV proponents will lobby state lawmakers in 2023 sessions to allow RCV to be more widely used in the 2024 presidential primaries.
She said Democrats in four states—Kansas, Wyoming, Hawaii, and Alaska—used RCV in 2020 presidential primaries and garnered positive responses from voters.
Using RCV for primaries will “ensure there are no wasted votes,” she said, noting that often in primaries, especially in states that stage qualifying elections late in the cycle, some candidates remain on the ballot even after they’ve dropped out.
Residents cast their ballots during in-person absentee voting at City Hall in Green Bay, Wis., on Nov. 4, 2022. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
“In 2024, we’re hoping to expand” RCV in presidential primaries, Otis said. “Time for states to move ahead and adopt it (during 2023 sessions) so they have it in place for 2024.”
The system has been adopted at local levels but not implemented in seven states, including Florida and Tennessee. Lawmakers in both states during their 2022 sessions adopted bills precluding RCV in state-level and local elections.
A recent study suggests that smoking marijuana might cause more harm to the lungs than smoking tobacco.
The Canadian study was published in mid-November in the peer-reviewed journal Radiology.
The research looked at CT examinations that were taken between October 2005 and July 2020 at The Ottawa Hospital and its affiliate hospitals to investigate the effects of smoking marijuana on the lungs.
The researchers grouped chest CT examinations according to marijuana smokers, tobacco-only smokers, and nonsmokers.
The “study suggests that distinct radiologic findings in the lung may be seen in marijuana smokers, including higher rates of paraseptal emphysema and airway inflammatory changes … when compared with nonsmoker control patients and those who only smoke tobacco,” said the authors.
Higher Rates of Emphysema
The study found higher rates of emphysema among marijuana smokers (42 out of 56, 75 percent) than nonsmokers (three out of 57, five percent). Emphysema is a serious lung disease, caused in most cases by smoking damage leading to shortness of breath.
Emphysema was found to be more common among the marijuana smokers (28 out of 30, 93 percent) who were 50 and older than the tobacco-only smokers (22 out of 33, 67 percent ) in the age-matched groups. The tobacco smokers were older, so the researchers created age-matched subgroups.
The researchers included tobacco-smokers 50 and older who smoked one pack a day for 25 years at a minimum. For the marijuana smokers the average quantity they smoked was 0.065 ounces (1.85 grams) per day. However, less than half of this group specified the amount they used.
A subtype of emphysema, called paraseptal emphysema, which affects the outermost parts of the lung, was found to be more common among marijuana smokers than tobacco-only smokers regardless of their age, the study said.
Workers produce medical marijuana at Canopy Growth Corporation’s Tweed facility in Smiths Falls, Ont., Canada, on Feb. 12, 2018. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)
Higher Rates of Airway Inflammation
Markers of airway inflammation were found to be higher in the marijuana smokers group versus nonsmokers and tobacco-only smokers.
For marijuana smokers compared to nonsmokers the rates of airway inflammation were: bronchial thickening (64 percent versus 11 percent), bronchiectasis (23 percent versus four percent), and mucoid impaction (46 percent versus two percent).
Bronchiectasis is a condition where the lung airways become widened, leading to a build-up of mucus that may make the lungs vulnerable to infection.
Mucoid impaction is a condition where the airways become filled with mucous.
For marijuana smokers versus tobacco smokers, the rates of airway inflammation were: bronchial thickening (64 percent versus 42 percent), bronchiectasis (23 percent versus six percent), and mucoid impaction (46 percent versus 15 percent).
Analysis of the age-matched subgroups showed an even more significant difference between the rates of bronchial thickening (83 percent versus 42 percent), bronchiectasis (33 percent versus six percent), and mucoid impaction (67 percent versus 15 percent) in marijuana smokers compared to the tobacco-smokers.
The researchers also looked at non-lung-related parameters one of which was Gynecomastia, a condition that causes enlarged breast tissue in boys and men.
They found it to be significantly more common among marijuana smokers (13 out of 34, 38 percent) than in nonsmokers (five out of 32, 16 percent).
The researchers noted that the small sample size in the study limited their ability to draw strong conclusions.
They also noted that most of the marijuana smokers also smoked tobacco (50 out of 56) and said that the participants’ other health conditions were not accounted for.
The study comes as more states are legalizing the drug.
“There’s a public perception that marijuana is safer than tobacco, and this study raises concern this may not be true,” said study author Giselle Revah, assistant professor in the department of radiology at the University of Ottawa in Ontario, according to CNN.
Elon Musk said Monday that Twitter’s internal files on the company’s “free speech suppression” will be revealed “soon,” raising expectations that light will be shed on the circumstances around Twitter’s censorship of the New York Post’s explosive story that exposed information on a laptop allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden.
“The Twitter Files on free speech suppression soon to be published on Twitter itself. The public deserves to know what really happened …” Musk said in a post late Monday.
Critics have long held that Twitter has used vague standards to censor or suspend accounts and that the ones targeted are predominantly those expressing conservative views.
Twitter has denied any bias in its actions, repeatedly insisting it is simply following its content moderation policies.
Weeks before the 2020 presidential election, the New York Post published an article that allegedly detailed meetings President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, had with a Ukrainian energy firm before then-Vice President Biden pressured Ukrainian government officials to fire a prosecutor probing the company.
Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, at the White House in Washington, on April 18, 2022. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
The story was seen by Biden’s political opponents as evidence of corruption and the news quickly spread across Twitter, prompting the social media firm to start removing links to the article and, for a period of time, suspending the New York Post’s Twitter account.
Conservatives saw Twitter’s actions in this regard as evidence of the company’s pro-Biden, anti-Trump bias.
Twitter said at the time that it was simply enforcing its rules on hacked materials, which prohibit distribution of information that is obtained through hacking.
‘Incredibly Inappropriate’
Musk in April spoke out in opposition to Twitter’s decision to temporarily suspend New York Post’s Twitter account.
“Suspending the Twitter account of a major news organization for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate,” Musk said in April, responding to a post about the Hunter Biden laptop story.
Musk, who took over Twitter in late October, has vowed to make the platform into a politically unbiased bastion of free speech.
He said in an open letter following his acquisition of Twitter that he bought it because “it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence.”
“There is currently great danger that social media will splinter into far right wing and far left wing echo chambers that generate more hate and divide our society,” Musk added.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks at a gaming convention in Los Angeles, Calif., on June 13, 2019. (Mike Blake/Reuters)
Part of Musk’s efforts to restore Twitter’s role as an unbiased “digital town square” include a pledge to disclose Twitter’s internal discussions around suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story.
“Raise your hand if you think [Musk] should make public all internal discussions about the decision to censor the [New York Post’s] story on Hunter Biden’s laptop before the 2020 Election in the interest of Transparency,” news personality Alex Lorusso said on Twitter on Nov. 24.
Musk’s post on Tuesday about an imminent publication of Twitter’s “free speech suppression” files suggests that disclosures around the company’s decision to censor Hunter Biden laptop content will also soon see the light of day.
The new Twitter owner’s efforts around free speech on the platform extend beyond the Hunter Biden laptop story.
He said in a follow-up post that he sees the forthcoming “free speech suppression” disclosures as part of a bigger battle against censorship.
“This is a battle for the future of civilization. If free speech is lost even in America, tyranny is all that lies ahead,” Musk wrote.
‘Unacceptable’
Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey told lawmakers in Washington in November 2020 that censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story was a mistake.
He told the Senate Judiciary Committee via video conference that Twitter employees made an enforcement decision based on a policy they created in 2018 in order to prevent the social media platform from being used to spread hacked materials.
Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and Square, speaks on stage at the Bitcoin 2021 Convention, a crypto-currency conference held at the Mana Convention Center in Wynwood, in Miami, Fla., on June 4, 2021. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Dorsey issued a public apology for suspending numerous accounts that shared the paper’s story, saying in a statement on Twitter that the company’s “communication” around censoring the report “was not great.”
“Our communication around our actions on the [New York Post] article was not great,” Dorsey said. “And blocking URL sharing via tweet or DM with zero context as to why we’re blocking: unacceptable.”
While Musk has vowed to dial back Twitter’s censorship policies that many conservatives have alleged are discriminatory and amount to suppression of free speech, he pledged in his open letter not to allow the platform to become a “free-for-all hellscape” where anything could be said “with no consequences.”
“In addition to adhering to the laws of the land, our platform must be warm and welcoming to all,” Musk wrote.
He also announced earlier in November that Twitter’s new policy is “freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach,” adding that Twitter would demonetize and not promote “hate/negative tweets.”
“You won’t find the tweet unless you specifically seek it out, which is no different from rest of Internet,” Musk said.
LOUDOUN COUNTY, Va.—To say the Smith family has had a tough year-and-a-half would be an understatement.
In May 2021, Scott and Jessica Smith’s then-ninth-grade daughter was raped in a school bathroom by a teenage boy wearing a skirt.
The family’s ensuing quest for justice has seen them pitched against the school district, county prosecutors, and those supportive of pro-transgender school policies.
Along the way, Scott was arrested after getting into an argument about his daughter’s sexual assault at a school board meeting. The incident was later cited as an example of alleged “domestic terrorism” committed by parents targeting school boards.
The psychological and financial toll on the family has been huge, and they’re still grappling with the aftermath.
“We live this every day. I do, at least,” Jessica, the mother, told The Epoch Times.
May 28, 2021
“My daughter was beaten up by a boy in the girl’s bathroom. That’s what I was told,” Jessica said, recalling how she was notified by the school about her daughter’s rape.
She remembers the exact time of the call: “At 1:27 p.m. on May 28, 2021.” The Friday before the Memorial Day long weekend.
Unable to reach her husband, she called an employee at their plumbing business to relay the message before heading to the school, Stone Bridge High School in Ashburn, Virginia.
“Why? What really happened?” her thoughts were racing during the 15-minute drive.
When she reached the school, an administrator received Jessica and led her to join her daughter in the vice principal’s office. The administrator told Jessica not to ask any questions. So Jessica asked her daughter a few short questions and learned that her daughter had been raped.
About half an hour later, Scott arrived at the school but didn’t have an ID on him. The school security didn’t allow him in. So he called Jessica and asked her to help him gain access.
“Scott, this is not a physical [assault]. This is a sexual assault,” Jessica recalled telling him.
“Okay, I’m coming through the door,” Scott immediately said to himself, he recalled. He kicked the building door a few times, he said.
Then he told the officer: “You need to make a decision right now. You’re either going to tackle me, or you’re going to have to peacefully escort me to my wife and child.”
“I was coming through the door one way or the other,” said Scott.
“When your wife and child are behind the door, it gets to a point real quick. I’m not that kind of guy. I’m not going to just turn around and go home,” said Scott. “Nor am I going to just turn around and go call my lawyer. I’m coming through the door to get my wife and child. And that’s what I did.”
Scott Smith, father of the rape victim, during a media interview in front of the Loudoun County District Courthouse in Leesburg, Va., on Jan. 12, 2022. (Terri Wu/The Epoch Times)
He barged through the building doors and arrived at the reception area outside the vice principal’s office. Jessica was expecting his arrival. Through the glass on the office door, she could see school security, the School Resource Officer (SRO), and the principal surrounding Scott.
“Oh my God, no, no, no. This is not happening. This right here is not happening,” Jessica remembered saying to herself.
Meanwhile, the school staff were dealing with Scott, who was getting more frustrated at how he was treated. Jessica recalled that the SRO, who was supposed to be the Sheriff’s deputy, held Scott at the door, protected the principal, and didn’t answer Scott’s questions.
“Oh yeah, I’m yelling. Yeah, you’re damn right,” said Scott. The father said he told them how he felt about them. The staff then called 911.
Scott was then escorted outside the school building. When the police arrived, the officers convened with the SRO and principal, while Scott watched from a distance. They told him they would let him know things he would need to know. At this point, his wife and daughter were still inside the vice principal’s office.
Two hours after Jessica’s arrival at the school, the family finally got a police escort to the sheriff’s office, where they met the special victim’s unit. Tensions eased up a little when they got to talk to the police.
The detective at the unit was “awesome,” said Scott, who said that once they were off the school property, the sheriff’s office took care of them.
That Memorial Day weekend went by as a blur. “That weekend… I don’t even remember the weekend,” said Scott.
It took months for the rape kit to come back in September 2021. Finally, in July, the teenage boy was arrested and charged with two felonies: forcible sodomy and forcible fellatio.
Scott Smith speaks to Loudoun County School Board members in Ashburn, Va., on Sept. 13, 2022. (Terri Wu/The Epoch Times)
School Board Meeting Arrest
Before the teenage boy faced charges, it was Scott who found himself on the other side of the law—over what happened during a contentious Loudoun County school board meeting on June 22, 2021.
Scott had just finished up a plumbing job in the area and made a last-minute decision to attend the gathering. It was his first-ever school board meeting. He wanted to check out the debate on a proposed policy, an issue that had now become too close to home. On the agenda was a proposed pro-transgender student policy that would allow students to use school bathrooms in accordance with their self-defined gender identity. It was a hot-button issue and the board room was packed with hundreds of concerned parents, residents, and LGBTI groups. Over 250 people had registered to speak during the public comment session.
When former state Sen. Richard Black criticized the board for the draft policy, the crowd burst into cheers. The school board immediately ended the public comment session, citing a disruptive crowd. The meeting then entered into a recess, during which the remaining 200 registered speakers continued their public comment through self-organization.
Soon after, Loudoun County Public Schools superintendent Scott Ziegler declared the meeting an “unlawful assembly” and called for everyone to leave the premises.
Around this time, Scott got into an argument with a woman whose daughter and Scott’s daughter used to be in the same Girl Scouts group. The woman said that the rape of Scott’s daughter didn’t happen and threatened to ruin his plumbing business on social media, according to Scott.
When another person tried to grab Scott, he didn’t realize it was a police officer.
“I turn around, the police are grabbing me, and next thing I know, I’m tackled to the ground,” Scott told Fox News in October 2021. “I’m just shocked and horrified.”
He was arrested for disorderly conduct and obstructing or resisting a police officer without force.
Scott Smith points to the blood stain on the T-shirt he wore at the night of arrest at his residence in Leesburg, Va., on Dec. 10, 2021. He has not washed the T-shirt since his arrest at a Loudoun County school board meeting on June 22, 2021. (Terri Wu/The Epoch Times)
Scott saved the T-shirt he wore that evening. “Never been washed,” he said as he pointed to various parts of the shirt. “Blood over my heart. Blood on my back. This hangs next to my bed.”
Jessica added: “We feel injustice throughout the process. It’s been a fight.”
After the public was cleared out of the room, the school board meeting resumed, during which board member Beth Barts asked the superintendent if assaults were happening regularly in bathrooms or locker rooms—a key concern for opponents of the policy.
“To my knowledge, we don’t have any record of assaults occurring in our restrooms,” Ziegler responded, adding later that “the predator transgender student or person simply does not exist.”
But emails made public in October showed that Ziegler knew about the sexual assault of Scott’s daughter on May 28 and informed the school board on the same day. Ziegler also knew about the 15-year-old’s arrest in early July but decided to send him to another high school, where another girl became his victim on Oct. 6, 2021.
After the disclosure of the emails, Ziegler acknowledged on Oct. 15, 2021, that his June statement before the school board meeting was false but said that he had misunderstood the question.
Scott and Jessica Smith at their residence in Leesburg, Va., on Sept. 25, 2022. (Terri Wu/The Epoch Times)
Injustice in the Justice System
As the cases of his daughter’s rape and his arrest proceeded, Scott’s frustration with the county justice system grew.
“Do you know that guy tried to steal my daughter’s justice?” he said, referring to Barry Zweig, deputy commonwealth’s attorney at Loudoun County.
According to Scott, Zweig told his daughter that her case wasn’t strong enough because she knew the teenage boy and had consensual sex with him before the rape.
“Our daughter was pissed at Barry and came home angry that she wasn’t gonna get to go on the stand and fight for her justice, that they were going to make this plea deal and take the word sodomy away, so the charges were completely lesser,” Scott recalled.
“Barry made it very clear it was his case. The crime was committed against the Commonwealth … and our daughter just happened to be the victim. And it was going to go his way. So, we were kind of hamstrung on that. Well, what are we going to do?” he added.
“Well, next thing we know, we get a phone call that the boy did it again.”
On Oct. 6, 2021, a parent called Jessica and told her about the second incident that happened earlier that day.
But Scott didn’t believe it. As per the court order in late July, the couple had expected the boy to be under house arrest with an ankle monitor until the next court hearing on Oct. 14.
“That particular boy is at his home on an ankle monitor. This must be something else; we don’t have time for that problem right now,” Scott recalled thinking.
A few hours later, their attorney confirmed it was the same boy. The boy had been transferred to Broad Run, a different high school in Loudoun.
The plea deal was now off the table.
The Epoch Times has reached out to Zweig for comment.
In late October 2021, the 15-year-old boy was found guilty on counts of forcible sodomy and forcible fellatio for raping Scott’s daughter. In November, he pleaded no contest to his sexual assault of a fellow student at Broad Run High School
On Jan. 12, Judge Pamela L. Brooks of the Loudoun County Juvenile Court sentenced the teenage boy to probation at a residential treatment facility until his 18th birthday in July 2024, and ordered him to be placed on the sex offender registry.
Before announcing her ruling, Brooks said that she had dealt with many juvenile sex offenses, crimes more common than the public realized. She added that she had read many psychosexual and psychological evaluations, but the defendant’s report “scared” her.
“Yours scared me for yourself, your family, and society in general,” Brooks spoke to the boy, adding, “Young man, you need a lot of help.” She said even though his attorney argued that the May 28 incident was “consensual,” the court had ruled otherwise.
She told him: “When someone says ‘yes’ one day, it doesn’t mean they say ‘yes’ every day. ‘No’ means no. You exhibited predatory behavior.” She said she had never put any juvenile on the sex offender registry, but would rule so in this case.
The victim impact statements at the beginning of the sentencing hearing noticeably impacted the teenage boy. He cried, shoulders shaking, when Scott spoke directly to him: “You could change. You are young. I don’t believe you are a monster. I thought you looked like a monster, but you really don’t.”
Later, the boy said he didn’t know how much hurt he had caused until he heard the victim’s testimonies. “I sincerely apologize to the court, families, victims, you, and you,” he said while turning to the two victim families in the room.
For Scott’s daughter, the first victim to give her impact statement at the hearing, the moment the boy started crying was impactful. “I felt like he finally understood what the other victim and I went through,” she told The Epoch Times afterward.
But two weeks later, Brooks reversed her sex offender registry placement decision, saying she had mistakenly accepted an oral motion from prosecutors asking for the registration and that the prosecutor’s office hadn’t submitted a written motion. She also revealed she was aware of a third victim, but that girl hasn’t come forward yet.
“My wife and I are not just heartbroken about today’s ruling, we are quite frankly mad at how the justice system and the Loudoun Commonwealth’s attorney have let down both our daughter, as well as the other victims of his predatory actions,” Scott told The Epoch Times on the day of the reversal decision.
He added, “We are now concerned more than ever that this change in his legal status [not having to register as a sex offender] may put other parents’ daughters at risk of harm in the future.”
Meanwhile, in his own case Scott was found guilty on both charges in mid-August 2021. He felt the county’s prosecutors were very strict with him yet lenient with the rapist. During his appeal, he insisted on seeking to remove Loudoun County Commonwealth’s Attorney Buta Biberaj from his case, even though it meant an extra cost of a few thousand dollars in legal fees. Scott didn’t think he’d get a fair case with Biberaj on the other side.
Scott was relieved that Virginia Circuit Court Judge James Plowman dismissed Biberaj from his case in mid-September this year, citing “concerns” over Biberja’s “impartiality.”
Scott Smith speaks at an event in Hamilton, Va., on Mar. 5, 2022. (Terri Wu/The Epoch Times)
‘Domestic Terrorist’
After the teenage boy harmed another victim, Scott, in mid-October, decided to come out to speak to the media. Previously, he didn’t see the point of “exposing himself” to publicly stand against the pro-transgender policy because he thought the measure was a done deal already. However, the second incident changed everything for him.
Since coming forward, he was thrust into the national spotlight. And, around the same time, his arrest in June 2021 was included in a National School Boards Association (NSBA) letter as an example of “domestic terrorism” in Virginia school board meetings.
On Sept. 29, 2021, the NSBA sent a controversial letter to President Joe Biden requesting “federal assistance to stop threats and acts of violence” against public school board members, administrators, teachers, and staff.
The letter, for which the NSBA later apologized, said that “acts of malice, violence, and threats” against school board members over issues such as masking and equity policies could be equivalent to “a form of domestic terrorism.”
Within days of the letter, Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memo to the Federal Bureau of Investigations to direct resources to address an alleged “spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence” against school board officials.
On Oct. 12, 2021, Scott appeared on Fox News and criticized the Department of Justice: “You know, that our government is going to weaponize itself against parents and they’re using my video [of arrest] across the nation to spread fear? That’s wrong.”
At around 6 p.m. the next day, two military Black Hawk helicopters flew directly above his house. That had never happened before since they moved to their current residence in January 2004, said the couple.
Scott described the state of national politics as like watching a bad movie.
“Then all of a sudden, I’m starring in it,” he said.
“A lot of people get frustrated with me because they’re like, ‘Scott, you’re just all over the place.’ But I’m like, ‘Okay, guys, sit in my [expletive] shoes for a second.’
“I’ve been arrested; my daughter’s been raped, beaten up, the prosecutors clearly got a vendetta against us, and we can show you a whole list of things.”
“And then next thing I know, I’m a domestic [expletive] terrorist by the Biden administration in the lying DOJ!” he added.
“I’m pretty sad that we have to pay money for justice,” Scott said that the lawyer fees were “bankrupting” him, and it was a full-time job for the family to do their own crime fighting
At the sentencing hearing of the rape case on Jan. 12, the Smiths said the economic and emotional toll on the family was “immeasurable.” Their daughter is “managing her days day by day, hour by hour,” according to the mother. In addition, the couple had to spend so much time on legal matters that they didn’t have time to do their family plumbing business.
Scott also said their business lost customers because his family was accused of lying about the rape, and these customers “chose not to call us.” In addition, he told The Epoch Times that he spent over $20,000 on fences and security cameras to protect his home.
“Anytime my wife, my daughter, and myself walk out of those fences, we are in a jungle, and we are unprotected. The only time I feel safe is when all three of us are sitting here [home],” Scott told The Epoch Times in December 2021.
“I can tell you that every time a helicopter flies over the top of the house, I’m afraid that the ATF [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives] is coming in because of lies.
“I can’t find peace. I can find peace for an hour here and an hour there because I’ve got a great wife. I’ve got a great daughter.
“But the problem is that [the anger and frustration] just keeps coming in waves—the people who are supposed to be doing their jobs and protecting us are not, and they just continue to bully us, fail us, and lie.”
A Turning Point
When speaking with The Epoch Times in late September, Scott was calmer. He described his commitment to protecting his family as “a personal war.”
“This wasn’t about getting somebody elected to a school board or getting somebody fired. This was war,” he said.
He said he was “still very angry at the justice system,” but time had calmed him down, along with a few victories, including the dismissal of Biberaj from his appeal case.
Attorney General’s special grand jury investigation on her daughter’s rape case, announced on the first day Gov. Glenn Youngkin took office.
On Sept. 2, the Supreme Court of Virginia denied the school district’s appeal to block the investigation.
But it was a cross-country trip over the summer with his friend Jon Tigges that helped bring some spiritual healing. Scott called the journey “my spiritual pilgrimage.”
During the pandemic, Scott had wanted to “renew my relationship with God” but didn’t want to do that over Zoom. “I remember thinking to myself, ‘Whether God’s real or not, whether these people are crazy or not, I haven’t seen a better gathering of like minds than the Christian faith. So why doubt it?’”
He didn’t know Tigges before June 22, 2021. They were arrested at the same school board meeting; Tigges, for refusing to leave the boardroom. After their arrests, they rode on two different sides of the same police van. Scott remembered Tigges’ loud protests of his arrest. Scott thought, “I’m going to repeat what he said when they came to me.” But he was sent to jail that night, while Tigges was released on a summons.
He later learned Tigges’s name via the national news. Then both of them were referenced in the NSBA letter.
Tigges later hired Scott to build bathrooms at his agribusiness venue during the first quarter of 2022. While Scott had a repair business before, he didn’t do any building anymore. But he accepted the contract.
“It gave me somewhere to hide out, feel safe, and be part of his family. Eating lunch and dinner with him and praying before meals… I just picked up on it from him and his family,” said Scott. Tigges also started a GoFundMe campaign to help the Smith family cover some legal expenses.
He managed to get some respite for a few months after the perpetrator’s sentence. But the peace didn’t last long.
In May, Loudoun County Public Schools shared its Title IX investigation results with the Smith family. The couple received screenshots from the hallway security camera footage of all parties entering and exiting the bathroom where the rape happened, videos of the detective speaking to the perpetrator and his mother, and other information.
“Almost a year later, it was devastating because we had to go through all of these again, testimonies, and listen to all these and go, ‘what?’” said Jessica.
Scott echoed, “That’s when I started falling apart again.” “I have drawn a horrific picture on my own of the crime scene through all the information we have seen,” he added.
Determined to get all the facts, Jessica made FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests to the county Sheriff’s office and paid for the documents. As a result, the family got a stream of new information from May through July that only made Scott angrier.
Finally, on July 31, Scott felt like he couldn’t take it anymore. He reached out to Tigges and asked to join him. Tigges had departed on July 20 on a cross-country tour to share with others the benefit of creating in-person meetings for conservatives to defend citizens’ constitutional rights. Scott flew to Arizona and joined the tour on Aug. 19.
Scott Smith in Whiteriver, Ariz., during his cross-country road trip in August 2022. (Courtesy of Scott Smith)
At his first stop in Scottsdale, Arizona, Scott remembered telling a table of 10 after hearing them say, “we will run this by God,” “What does God have to do with this? I need all 10 of you to act!”
Afterward, one of the group spoke to Scott, “You might be frustrated with us, but don’t give up on us.” Scott remembered him as very genuine and was impressed by his “non-confrontational way of de-escalating the situation that made me walk away feeling okay about it.”
Scott had wanted to tell everyone about the wrongs done to his family. But, to Scott’s surprise, people he met on tour were already aware. On the trip, different groups that didn’t know each other would say the same prayer—Ephesians 6:10-13—for Scott.
“It was crazy,” Scott said. He asked Tigges if the prayer was popular and that all Christians would have a copy in their wallets, and Tigges said no.
At their stop in Tulsa, Oklahoma, they met another Christian who told them that as she was cooking and cleaning to prepare for their visit, she had the urge to read some scriptures. Then, the following verse came to her, “Who are you, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel you shall become a plain. And he shall bring forward the top stone amid shouts of ‘Grace, grace to it!’”
She thought it was dark and didn’t understand the purpose until Scott walked into her house. It was then she realized that the prayer was for Scott.
Tigges said the messages from the prayers throughout the journey were, “Your efforts will be glorified, and God will be glorified by you standing firm for your daughter in this fight.”
“And that gave him tremendous peace,” Tigges told The Epoch Times. “I think it’s the first time he’s heard someone affirming that this is going to be dealt with.”
Scott said that the pure anger had become more manageable over time, and that the family was “more laser-focused and more determined to get them [Loudoun County officials] to tell the truth.”
The father said he was lucky that his daughter had responded to equine therapy that she started in August 2021 and came around. And the family became closer during the a-year-and-a-half ordeal.
Scott and Jessica Smith in Leesburg, Va., on Sept. 25, 2022. (Terri Wu/The Epoch Times)
The cross-country trip was a gift to Scott. He embarked on the journey without a clear purpose other than sharing his grievances.
“After a couple of stops, spending time with strong Christian believers, my purpose became clear. It was not to spread my message but to hear theirs,” he said.
“The message I received was that God’s door was already open to me, he has a purpose for me. I just had to believe in him, learn to trust him, and he would take care of the rest.
“Once I put my troubles in his hands and let go, a peace came over me, one I hadn’t experienced before.
“And just like that, my questions were answered, my doubts gone. I decided to walk with the Lord, a greater power than myself, something I had been missing all along.”
Illinois is one of the most challenging states for residents to own firearms, given restrictions such as requiring law-abiding residents to possess a Firearm Owner’s Identification card. The requirements are even more cumbersome when one attempts to obtain a concealed-carry license.
Illinois is also one of the states where a concealed-carry license is often the difference between life and death.
That was evidenced last week on the southside of Chicago after a carjacker got a nasty dose of Second Amendment justice from a woman who decided that she wouldn’t become another statistic on that day.
According to WBBM-TV, a 23-year-old Chicago woman was minding her business while sitting in her car in the Calumet Heights neighborhood around 2 a.m. Wednesday when a gang of four armed thugs approached her in an attempt to steal her vehicle, police said.
One of the men made the foolish decision of trying to force open the door of the woman’s car while flashing a gun.
The next sound he heard was her firearm. The woman, who has a concealed-carry license, shot him in the head and then fled on foot.
Though one of the other men opened fire and struck her in the arm, she was able to flee the scene to safety, police said. The woman was later transported to a local hospital for treatment.
She remains unidentified, WBBM and Fox News reported.
Three of the carjackers managed to escape after she displayed exactly why concealed-carry permits are so critically necessary in one of the most dangerous U.S. cities on the map.
The one shot in the head was taken to a local hospital in critical condition, police said.
I love a story with a happy ending..
😎👍
➖ 23-year-old woman with a concealed-carry permit defended herself against 4 armed savages who attempted to carjack her on the South Side of Chicago
Whoever taught the woman’s concealed-carry class should be commended. Practice and theory are one thing, but deploying those learned skills in such a dangerous, adrenaline-filled situation — and making it out alive — is an entirely different ballgame.
One unarmed woman versus four armed criminals would have been a tragic, entirely different ending for this scenario. The ability to carry and use a firearm when needed is an invaluable equalizer, especially for women, who are generally more susceptible to violent crimes because their attackers assume they’re defenseless.
Chicago has been among the most dangerous cities for quite some time now, and it appears to be worsening under Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who believes she deserves a raise.
Fox News noted that seven carjackings were reported in the span of under one hour on Friday night.
Some of those carjacking victims were held at gunpoint, and it’s not a stretch to presume that many of those people, who were helpless victims, probably wished they had a concealed-carry permit and the ability to defend themselves and their families from Chicago’s roving gangs of thugs who prey on the innocent.
Democrats continue to push for stricter gun laws across the country, even in Illinois, which has some of the strictest gun laws on the books.
But Chicago’s gun violence isn’t because of a lack of gun laws; instead, it’s a lack of the enforcement of existing criminal laws.
What’s more, strict gun laws tend to negatively affect law-abiding gun owners, not the types of criminals who carjacked the 23-year-old woman. Criminals generally do not buy firearms at the local Bass Pro Shops.
It’s essential to tell the stories of survivors who used their Second Amendment rights to defend others, themselves and their property. Thank God this woman had what it took, when it counted most, to do what needed to be done.
Ever since Elon Musk acquired the social media giant Twitter, the controversial billionaire has garnered countless headlines.
The instant he arrived he began cleaning house, which kicked off a firestorm of criticism from left-leaning media sources. And unsurprisingly, far-left Hollywood went into meltdown mode.
And the anti-Musk reactions just keep coming — though Elon himself apparently isn’t fazed in the slightest.
A few days ago, left-wing actress Alyssa Milano tweeted that she was ditching her Tesla and buying a Volkswagen instead. She based her decision on the “hate and white supremacy” of Tesla:
I gave back my Tesla.
I bought the VW ev.
I love it.
I’m not sure how advertisers can buy space on Twitter. Publicly traded company’s products being pushed in alignment with hate and white supremacy doesn’t seem to be a winning business model.
Despite not providing any evidence as to how Tesla practices “hate and white supremacy,” she now has a Volkswagen.
But it didn’t take long for critics to point out that the Volkswagen company was founded by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany, a point of fact that thousands of others quickly seized upon.
This included new Twitter CEO Musk, who offered his two cents with a pair of emojis:
Milano doubled down, saying Volkswagen only became a “global brand after WW2 when its new leader REJECTED Nazism.”
Then she claimed – again without evidence – that Musk wants to “ENABLE Nazism.” So far, most will say that Musk has only announced that Twitter rules will apply equally to all users.
But not a lot has changed on the social media platform.
For example, people will point out that liberal points of view aren’t suddenly being suppressed or banned; the only difference might be that the other point of view isn’t actively being silenced.
Musk has come under fire for how he’s handling his new company, which includes immediately firing most contract workers.
The vocal billionaire has said multiple times that the amount of bloat inside Twitter was monumental, and reports are that he’s already taken out 90 percent of the workforce that existed before he came on.
And right now, it looks like the war of words between frustrated high-profile leftists and Elon Musk is just beginning.
Key Takeaways:
Left-wing actress Alyssa Milano traded her Tesla for a Volkswagen because she said Tesla stands for “hate and white supremacy.”
After a user reminded her that Volkswagen was founded in Nazi Germany, Elon Musk responded with a laugh and “100%” emojis.
Milano and others have now accused Musk and his companies with little or no evidence.
Well, it’s not necessarily an AK, but the sentiment is still the same.
Elon Musk, the tech billionaire — of Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter fame — revealed in a tweet shared this morning that on his nightstand he keeps two non-firing firearms, a reprint of George Washington crossing the Delaware, as well as a handful of cans of caffeine-free Diet Coke. The chaotic mix has left water rings across the top of his nightstand due to Musk’s lack of coasters, for which he has “no excuse.”
There is no excuse for my lack of coasters— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 28, 2022
Given Musk’s net worth, he’s a prime candidate for having the most state-of-the-art security system available in the world today. He could also afford to hire a small army to protect himself and each one of his eight children non-stop.
Still, he seems to be showing that the most reliable home defense option that an American can have is a bedside firearm.
Liberal anti-gunners came out in droves to respond to Musk’s tweet.
Anti-gunners are currently having a meltdown over a picture of a toy gun and a replica of a flintlock pistol: pic.twitter.com/N6hXrtp9o5— Rob Romano (@2Aupdates) November 28, 2022
“The 51-year-old has a long history of posting provocative tweets – a habit that has drawn increased scrutiny since Musk acquired the platform for $44 billion in October.
Musk has also been open about his views regarding gun ownership. Last May, the tech executive revealed to CNBC that he supports the Second Amendment, though “tight background checks” should be required for all purchases.
“I strongly believe that the right to bear arms is an important safeguard against potential tyranny of government. Historically, maintaining their power over the people is why those in power did not allow public ownership of guns,” Musk told the outlet.”
Elon’s recent public showcases of his red pilling — including sharing that he voted for Republican Congresswoman Mayra Flores, recommending that people vote GOP in the midterms and sharing that he likes Ron DeSantis for 2024 — may be costing him a few bucks, but it doesn’t seem like it’s affecting him that much. (RELATED: Elon Musk Endorses Ron DeSantis for President)
A tweet shared today by prominent financial YouTuber Graham Stephan showed that despite the substantial drop in net worth he has seen in 2022, Musk is still the richest man on planet Earth.
Elon Musk has now lost more money than the entire market cap of General Electric.
When it comes to lying about a man’s record, Rep. Adam Schiff should know.
The California Democrat spent the last years of the last decade telling a story with a straight face about there being evidence “in plain sight” about then-President Donald Trump engaging in “collusion” with Russia — a hoax that came up empty, despite special counsel Robert Mueller’s best efforts.
Now, after amassing a personal record as contemptible as any that’s been compiled on Capitol Hill, and facing imminent removal from the House committee he currently chairs, Schiff is complaining to a compliant media that he’s the one who’s being victimized.
Schiff’s comments came during an interview Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Nation” when host Dana Bash asked about plans by California Republican Kevin McCarthy to remove Schiff from the House Intelligence Committee.
McCarthy, who is rounding up support to be speaker of the House when the new Republican majority takes over in January, has pledged to oust Schiff and fellow California Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell from the intelligence panel.
He also plans to strip the demonstrably anti-Semitic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota of her seat on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
Speaking to Bash on Sunday, Schiff played the victim card. He claimed that McCarthy is using him and his fellow Democrats as bait for support from Republicans such as Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona.
With only a slight GOP majority, McCarthy doesn’t have much wiggle room to get to the 218 votes needed to be elected House speaker.
Check out the interview here:
“McCarthy’s problem is not with what I have said about Russia,” Schiff said, with his usual disregard for the truth.
“McCarthy’s problem is, he can’t get to 218 without Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar and Matt Gaetz,” the congressman continued. “And so he will do whatever they ask. And, right now, they’re asking for me to be removed from my committees. And he’s willing to do it. He’s willing to do anything they ask.
“And that’s the problem. Kevin McCarthy has no ideology. He has no core set of beliefs. It’s very hard not only to get to 218 that way, it’s even more difficult to keep 218. That’s his problem. So, he will misrepresent my record. He’ll misrepresent Eric Swalwell or Ilhan Omar, whatever he needs to do to get the votes of the QAnon caucus within his conference.”
The “QAnon caucus” is cute, and will probably go over big with Schiff’s lefty base, but the entire quote is as deceptive as Schiff always is.
McCarthy will “misrepresent” Schiff’s record? This is the Adam Schiff who’s spent four years “misrepresenting” – meaning “lying about” – Donald Trump’s record, “misrepresenting” the reality of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol incursion, and just about anything else that would promote his party’s lust for power. And he’s accusing Kevin McCarthy of lying about his record?
It’s entirely possible Schiff actually believes what he was saying on Sunday. There’s no way of knowing what’s in another man’s heart, after all, even one that’s obviously a black pit bubbling with mendacity and malice.
But it’s also much more likely that Schiff is lying, deliberately and on national television, because he knows that a lefty outfit like CNN won’t seriously question him about anything, much less anything about his own dishonesty or the dishonesty of Democrats like Swalwell, the guy who got way too close to the suspected communist Chinese spy known as Fang Fang, or Omar, the unapologetic anti-Semite who laughed as an “anti-hate” resolution was crafted in the House specifically to deal with her public statements.
(In Omar’s weak defense, the resolution turned out to be laughable itself, thanks to Democratic cowardice.)
Schiff, being as shameless as ever, even tweeted out a version of his quote to Bash after Sunday’s interview.
And while he had plenty of supporters on Twitter – even in the Elon Musk era, the platform crawls with them like vituperative cockroaches — there was plenty of roasting, too.
Schiff has lied too many times and to too many Americans in his loathsome career to be taken at face value by any sentient human. The Twitter response showed it.
You’ve been on your way out the door of @HouseIntel since you started lying about the Russia collusion hoax in 2017. You continue to lie about it today. Your committee removal is the very least that should be done to you.
(The “Traficant” reference is to the late Ohio Democratic Rep. James Traficant, who led a scandal-ridden career that eventually put him in prison. Comparing Schiff to Traficant is an insult to Traficant’s memory.)
What ever happened to the evidence you claimed you had about Trump colluding with Russia?
You should never be allowed on committee’s. Any committees. You’re a proven liar. Now get lost…
— Charles Weber – AKA “THE Jew from Boca” (@CWBOCA) November 28, 2022
No, he’s removing you from The committees because you’re a proven dangerous liar extremist. And it’s long overdue.
No honest person can argue the truth of those tweets – and many more like them. The fact that a proven fraud like Schiff remains chairman of the House Intelligence Committee is an enduring disgrace to the country.
The fact that a man like Swalwell, with suspiciously close ties to a suspected Chinese spy, is on that same committee, where all kinds of national security secretsare discussed, borders on the insane.
The fact that a woman like Ilhan Omar, with an obvious and indefensible enmity toward Jews, is on the Foreign Affairs Committee — which helps makes decisions that could mean the life or death of the state of Israel — is close to criminal.
Of course, there’s also an element of political payback involved, since the Democratic House majority under Speaker Nancy Pelosi has kicked Greene and Gosar off their committees. Republican retaliation will show Democrats that every action has consequences.
But that doesn’t change the fact removing Swalwell and Omar from positions of greater influence is simply good sense.
And removing Schiff from a committee he has abused for four years, and done great harm to the country while he was at it, is simply a moral imperative.
And that’s the truth – whether a liar like Schiff knows it or not.
CORRECTION, Dec. 4, 2022:An earlier version of this article misstated the number of votes needed to become speaker of the House of Representatives.
In a meme that clearly was a joke for anyone with a sense of humor (but honestly, look at the grainy quality, lack of symmetry and bizarre font in the meme. How can you not tell that it’s fake?), the meme boldly proclaimed, “CNN: Elon Musk could threaten free speech on Twitter by literally allowing people to speak freely.”
Underneath that headline, it showed a fake Don Lemon segment with the chyron repeating, “Elon Musk could threaten free speech on Twitter by allowing people to speak freely.”
Again, this is clearly a joke. There’s ample evidence suggesting it is.
Well, CNN certainly couldn’t, or wouldn’t, discern the difference. Notice how its aforementioned response included that they were flagging the tweet for violating “the Twitter rules on sharing false, fabricated and misleading information.”
Musk responded to the thinly veiled threat with a literal laugh:
There’s quite a bit to unpack when it comes to CNN’s mirthless response.
First, does CNN truly think so little of its audience that it truly doesn’t think they could discern the difference between a fake meme and an actual screenshot? We know the left has an appetite for treating common people as the dumbest breed of animal since the dodo. But to see it play out in real-time on Twitter?
That’s not the best look for CNN.
Second, CNN found little solace on Twitter. Users on Twitter were quick to mock the news network for its treatment of a meme as literal fact.
Detransitioner Chloe Cole pointed out that CNN finally learned what a meme was… in 2022.
Lastly, perhaps CNN should look in the memory as to why the meme Musk posted was so effective — CNN appears to have a schoolyard crush on all things Musk.
A quick search for “free speech” on CNN yielded the above results for November 2022. Here’s the catch: There are at least 10 other stories that specifically mention Musk or Twitter… in November alone.
It’s not like November was a slow news month either. Midterm elections, for one, dominated headlines for a stretch of November. And yet, CNN still had time to pump out at least 10 articles discussing Musk and/or Twitter in November.
Honestly, CNN’s schoolgirl crush on Musk is getting a little embarrassing.
Defense Department hit with more than 12,000 attempted hacks since 2015
The Pentagon has failed to put in place policies to track attempted cyberattacks by Russia, China, Iran, and other malicious hackers leaving the U.S. government with incomplete information on the more than 12,000 attempted hacks from enemies since 2015, according to findings by a federal watchdog.
Hackers have attempted to penetrate computer systems belonging to the Defense Department with more than 1,500 cyberattacks per year, according to data from 2015 to 2021 published by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a federal investigatory group that recently determined the Pentagon is often not properly logging these attacks or reporting them to leadership. China, Iran, and Russia conducted many of the most high-profile attacks.
“DOD’s system for reporting all incidents often contained incomplete information and DOD could not always demonstrate that they had notified appropriate leadership of relevant critical incidents,” according to the GAO. “Until DOD assigns such responsibility, DOD does not have assurance that its leadership has an accurate picture of the department’s cybersecurity posture.” These failures are primarily due to the Defense Department’s failure to assign an organization the task of tracking these incidents, even though the agency itself and Congress have mandated officials do so.
Though the number of reported cyber incidents have dropped during the past several years—from 3,880 in 2015 to 948 in 2021—without the ability to fully detail and report these incidents, Pentagon leaders and those who have their personal information breached may not know an attack took place, according to the report. The failure to put safeguards in place serves as a boon to malicious cyber hackers, including foreign nations that are trying daily to penetrate these networks.
The DOD still “lacks an accountable organization and consistent guidance to ensure complete and updated reporting of all cyber incidents,” according to the GAO. Reports that were submitted “were often incomplete and not always updated.”
Ninety-one percent of the reports reviewed by government investigators “did not include information on the discovery date of the incident, hindering DOD’s ability to determine whether incidents were reported … in a timely manner,” according to the report. Nearly 70 percent of the reports did not include information about the specific type of cyberattack, “limiting DOD’s ability to identify trends in the prevalence of various threats affecting its networks.”
Those in charge of monitoring and reporting hack attacks “also did not consistently notify DOD leadership of incidents that had a detrimental impact on DOD’s ability to perform its mission or availability of its networks,” according to the report, which found little evidence that leadership knew about an estimated 47 percent of cyber incidents logged from 2015 to 2020.
“Until DOD assigns responsibility for ensuring complete and updated incident reporting and proper leadership notification, the department will not have assurance that its leadership has an accurate picture of its posture,” the report warns. “As a result, the department may miss opportunities to assess threats and weaknesses, gather intelligence, support commanders, and share information.”
The “vast majority” of cyberattacks logged during the reporting period were “malicious logic” penetrations, a hacking technique in which malicious software is unwittingly downloaded onto a computer and then used by an adversary to gain access and information without the user’s knowledge. These accounted for more than 11,500 of the incidents logged from 2015 to 2021.
Other incidents included “unauthorized privileged access to an information system” and denial-of-service attacks, a crude form of hacking that disrupts a computer system.
While the DOD established two mechanisms to track and report cyberattacks, the GAO found that it “has not fully implemented either process.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci couldn’t cite any studies that changed his mind about masking against COVID-19 during a recent deposition, according to lawyers who were in the room.
Fauci, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director, was among the U.S. officials repeatedly urging people to not wear a mask early in the COVID-19 pandemic unless they were showing symptoms. Among his many public and private statements, he wrote in a Feb. 5, 2020, email that “the typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through the material.”
About two months later, Fauci and other top officials reversed course and issued widespread masking recommendations, regardless of symptoms.
Asked about the change while under oath on Nov. 23, Fauci couldn’t provide any studies, according to lawyers representing plaintiffs in a case against the federal government.
“He was asked what studies or study changed his mind in that interim, which is what he claimed—he claimed that it was studied. He couldn’t name any,” Jenin Younes, one of the lawyers, told The Epoch Times.
Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, a Republican who was also present during the deposition in Maryland, said on social media that Fauci “couldn’t cite a single study” to back up his claim that masks were effective against COVID-19.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) made the change in masking advice on April 3, 2020, leading to widespread mask mandates. Officials, including then-CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield, said studies indicating asymptomatic transmission of COVID-19 led to the change. They cited zero studies on mask effectiveness. The CDC later listed studies it says support mask usage, but many of the papers provide little evidence, including a CDC study widely cited by top officials, researchers have found.
During an appearance that day on PBS, Fauci promoted the change, saying it was based on data regarding asymptomatic transmission.
Fauci hasn’t appeared to cite any studies since in his repeated calls for people to wear a mask.
The founder and CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, speaks during the 56th Munich Security Conference (MSC) in Munich on Feb. 15, 2020. (Christof Stache/AFP)
Zuckerberg Interview
Fauci told Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in an interview in mid-2020 that the original recommendation to not wear a mask was because of mask shortages.
“Two things happened. One, it became clear that we had enough of the equipment, so there was no shortage. It became clear that cloth coverings—that you didn’t have to buy in a store, that you could make yourself—were adequate. And third—and probably the most compelling thing—is when it became very clear that anywhere from 20 to 45 percent of people who were infected, didn’t have any symptoms,” he said.
“So the risk of your being in contact with someone who said, ‘Well, you look good, I look good, we’re not infected’ was not the case, that you could be spreading it asymptomatically. You put all of those things together, which had us evolve from saying maybe we should hold off on masks because we needed them for the health care workers to saying now everybody should be wearing a mask when they’re outside and should be trying to distance. That’s one example of evolving as you get more data and you get more information.”
Fauci and NIAID didn’t respond to requests by The Epoch Times for comment on the deposition.
The questioning took place on orders from the U.S. judge overseeing the case, which Schmitt and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, another Republican, brought against the federal government and a slew of officials for allegedly colluding with Big Tech firms to illegally censor users.
Fauci wasn’t asked about the deposition during interviews that aired on CBS’s “Face the Nation” and NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Nov. 27.
A transcript of the deposition is expected to be made public at a later date.
FBI official Elvis Chan and former White House press secretary Jen Psaki are scheduled to be deposed next in the case.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, lowers his mask before testifying before a Senate committee in Washington on June 30, 2020. (Kevin Dietsch/Pool/Getty Images)
Made Court Reporter Wear Mask
Fauci sat for the deposition at the headquarters of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland. NIH is the parent agency of NIAID, which Fauci is preparing to leave by the end of the year. The questioning lasted for about seven hours.
Fauci didn’t wear a mask and neither did anybody else when the deposition started, Younes, a lawyer with the New Civil Liberties Alliance, told The Epoch Times.
The woman transcribing the questioning, the court reporter, was sniffling. Fauci asked the woman if she had a cold. She responded that she had allergies.
“About 15 minutes later, he asked her to put on a mask and said that he was uncomfortable, ‘and the last thing in the world I want right now is to get COVID,’” Younes said. “So she had to wear a mask the whole time, the whole rest of the time.”
Schmitt, who’s headed to the U.S. Senate soon, wrote on Twitter, “This is the mentality in Nov 2022 of the guy who locked down our country & ruined countless lives & livelihoods.”
Twitter owner Elon Musk said Monday that the platform suffers from a “ridiculous” number of professional psychological operations (or, “psy ops”), a concept that typically refers to the dissemination of propaganda or, when used by state actors like the military, psychological warfare tactics meant to manipulate one’s enemies.
“The amount of pro psy ops on Twitter is ridiculous!” Musk wrote in a post on Twitter.
He added jokingly that “at least with new Verified, they will pay $8 for the privilege—haha.”
Musk later qualified his statement, responding to a Twitter user’s comment that the psychological operations are “mid”-level rather than professional. Musk conceded that “it’s mostly basic.”
While it’s not clear what, specifically, Musk was referring to in his post on the prevalence of “pro psy ops,” Twitter has, in the past, struggled to deal with foreign state-linked information operations on the platform, including activity it has deemed malicious.
‘Foreign Interference in Political Conversations’
In 2018, Twitter stated in a blog post that it had identified thousands of accounts that made more than 10 million tweets associated with “foreign interference in political conversations” on the platform.
“It is clear that information operations and coordinated inauthentic behavior will not cease. These types of tactics have been around for far longer than Twitter has existed—they will adapt and change as the geopolitical terrain evolves worldwide and as new technologies emerge,” the company said at the time.
Later, in December 2021, Twitter announced it had removed more than 3,000 accounts that were operating as foreign state-linked information operations, including from China, Russia, and Venezuela.
Twitter said that, in most cases, the accounts were suspended for various violations of its platform manipulation and spam policies, which include prohibitions against using Twitter in ways that “artificially amplify or suppress information or engage in behavior that manipulates or disrupts people’s experience” on the platform.
Prohibited actions include artificially inflating followers or engagement by, for instance, buying “likes” or coordinating to exchange “follows,” in what’s known as “reciprocal inflation.”
‘Widely Diverse Viewpoints’
The company also said it would launch the Twitter Moderation Research Consortium (TMRC), a program that lets outside researchers tap into Twitter data to study trends and study platform governance issues.
While there have been questions about the fate of the research consortium since Musk took over Twitter in late October, he later announced he was ordering the establishment of a “content moderation council” that would represent “widely diverse viewpoints.”
Musk, who has labeled himself as a “free-speech absolutist,” has vowed to make the platform more welcoming to various viewpoints while insisting he wouldn’t allow it to become a “free-for-all hellscape.”
At the time, former President Donald Trump praised Musk for succeeding with his takeover bid of Twitter and praised the tech mogul’s moves to open Twitter up to diverse views.
“I am very happy that Twitter is now in sane hands, and will no longer be run by Radical Left Lunatics and Maniacs that truly hate our country,” Trump said in post on Truth Social, though he indicated that he might not return to Twitter even if Musk were to reinstate his account, which at the time was suspended.
Musk has since restored Trump’s account on Twitter, along with a series of other banned accounts, including that of satirical site Babylon Bee and Jordan Peterson, a prominent professor of psychology.
Trump hasn’t posted anything on Twitter since his account was reinstated, with his last post being from Jan. 8, 2021, when the former president said he wouldn’t be going to the presidential inauguration of Joe Biden.
Musk said recently he’s “fine” with Trump not posting on Twitter, adding that the social media giant had made a “grave mistake” when it banned the former president from the platform.
“Deplatforming a sitting president undermined public trust in Twitter for half of America,” Musk said.
Since Musk took over Twitter, he has vowed to reduce the number of bots on the platform and curb inauthentic activity.
Twitter paused its recently announced $8 verified blue check subscription service after a wave of blue check accounts appeared on the platform, impersonating big brands and making embarrassing posts.
Musk said recently that the verified check service would be returning on Dec. 2, adding that Twitter would also be rolling out gold and gray checks in addition to blue ones, and that all verified marks would be manually authenticated.
THIS NEW ACT REPRESENTS A BLATANT ATTEMPT DURING THE LAME DUCK SESSION OF DEMOCRAT CONTROL OF CONGRESS.
ven as manufacturing tanks into recession territory in America, lobbyists for factories clamor to suck up to Joe Biden and the D.C. establishment. Their latest efforts come in the form of a ludicrous new public relations campaign: Manufacturers for Gay Marriage.
Specifically, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) officially calls for passage of the misnamed “Respect for Marriage Act” on Capitol Hill. This once-revered industry group leverages its considerable political capital to venture far beyond matters of relevance to the productive capacity of US manufacturing. The Association incredulously claims this new law would allow factory workers to “bring their authentic selves to work.”
Why must a group like the NAM insert itself into this social issue?
POST FROM THE CEO OF THE NATL. ASSOC. OF MANUFACTURERS
The answer flows from the giddy readiness of big business to please permanent Washington to effectively bribe liberal and establishment powerbrokers to protect the interests of corporate C-suite executives.
Through this practice, large enterprises pay the modern equivalent of indulgences – channeling the former Medieval Catholic practice of paying stipends for the forgiveness of sins. In this 21st century version, a corrupt, rent-seeking corporate class pays these indulgences to the permanent political class, advocating for radical social policies. In return, these connected firms receive preferential regulatory and policy treatment that ensures their existing dominant market positions.
For example, massive multinational consumer names get an effective pass on using Chinese slave labor to produce goods for sale in America. Similarly, U.S.-based manufacturers suffer no financial penalties for shipping American jobs overseas, in large part because these same companies dutifully finance the political establishment. On Wall Street, financial giants secure generous contracts to manage the public money of government entities and pensions, in return for aggressively supporting the secular humanist agenda of the ruling class.
Regarding this latest social engineering power grab, this unnecessary and radical legislation only serves as a potential potent state weapon against people and institutions that hold to the belief in traditional marriage between one man and one woman. Because of state statutes and the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision, gay marriage is already legal everywhere in America.
This new act, therefore, represents a blatant attempt during the lame duck session of Democrat control of Congress, to nonetheless further federalize marriage policy and thereby provide secular opponents of religious groups with a powerful national legal weapon for coercion and harassment.
New York Archbishop John Cardinal Dolan warns of this threat, predicting that when “conflicts between religious beliefs and same-sex civil marriage arise, the Act will be used as evidence that religious believers must surrender to the state’s interest in recognizing same-sex civil marriages.” Evangelical leader Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council also warned that this bill is “light years more radical than the justices’ [Obergefell] ruling seven years ago.”
If passed into law, Perkins predicts that “government would be declaring open season on anyone who believes in marriage as it’s always been: the union of a man and woman.”
RAHEEM KASSAM JOINS THE MOMENT OF TRUTH PODCAST FOR A DEEP DIVE ON BREXIT AND THE UK CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT.
National Pulse editor-in-chief Raheem Kassam sat down for an extended chat with Saurabh Sharma, host of the ‘Moment of Truth’ podcast and executive director of the American Moment group based in Washington. D.C..
During the show, the pair discussed never-heard-before behind-the-scenes Brexit-era stories, as well as the future of the political right in the United Kingdom.
Evangelist Franklin Graham is calling on Americans to contact their senators, warning them that the so-called “Respect for Marriage Act” legislation would fail to protect individuals with the traditional concept of marriage.
“The Respect for Marriage Act is coming before the Senate again on Monday. Why should that matter to you? Because it could impact you, your family, your church, and our nation. The name is a smoke-screen. Very deceptive,” wrote Graham, president of Samaritan’s Purse and Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, on his Facebook page on Nov. 26.
He added, “It’s like the Democrat’s ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ that did nothing but increase inflation and further hurt our economy.”
The Respect for Marriage Act (RFMA) would repeal the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman and a spouse as a person of the opposite sex. It would not require states to issue same-sex marriage licenses but would force them to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states.
The House approved a version of the legislation in July by a bipartisan 267–157 vote, with 47 Republicans backing the bill. A day after the House vote, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he intended to get the bill to the Senate floor.
On Nov. 16, the Senate voted 62 to 37 to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to the legislation, with 12 Republicans joining all 50 Democrats voting to advance the bill. Before the Senate vote, Schumer urged his colleagues to vote yes on the bill in a Senate floor speech, saying the legislation would make the United States a “better, fairer place to live.”
After the legislation passed cloture in the Senate, Tony Perkins, president of the Washington-based conservative advocacy group Family Research Council, issued a statement criticizing the Senate for “making a mockery of marriage as it tramples on a foundational right—religious freedom of the individual.”
The Senate is scheduled to convene and resume consideration of the legislation on Nov. 28.
“The current version of the Respect for Marriage Act being pushed by Senator Chuck Schumer is designed to provide strong protections for same-sex marriage—but it fails to protect those of us who believe marriage is between a man and a woman,” Graham wrote.
He added, “It is dangerous legislation that would be used against individuals, churches, and organizations who honor traditional marriage.”
Amendment
To improve the current Senate legislation, Graham said it was important to include an amendment by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah).
“The Lee Amendment, if approved, can bring critically-needed protection for religious liberty and rights of conscience to the pending legislation,” Graham wrote. “Many say this is a long shot, but we desperately need Senators to demand the Lee Amendment be added to the current version of the Respect for Marriage Act before it is finalized.”
If added to the Senate bill, the proposed amendment would prohibit the federal government from taking any discriminatory action against any person who has a moral conviction or religious belief that marriage should be between “one man and one woman” or a union of “two individuals as recognized under federal law,” according to the language of the bill.
The amendment lists many examples of what such discriminatory action would be, including withholding, reducing, or denying “any entitlement or benefit under a Federal benefit program.” Another such action is to “alter in any way the Federal tax treatment of, or cause any tax, penalty, or payment to be assessed against, or deny, delay, or revoke an exemption from taxation.”
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) walks on Capitol Hill in Washington in a file image. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Lee’s amendment is currently co-sponsored by 13 Republicans, including Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), and Rand Paul (R-Ky.).
In a letter to colleagues dated Nov. 17, Lee explained that his amendment would offer individuals and groups protections.
“My amendment would ensure that federal bureaucrats do not take discriminatory actions against individuals, organizations, nonprofits, and other entities based on their sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions about marriage by prohibiting the denial or revocation of tax exempt status, licenses, contracts, benefits, etc.” Lee wrote.
Lee added, “It would affirm that individuals still have the right to act according to their faith and deepest convictions even outside of their church or home.”
On Nov. 25, Lee took to Twitter to comment on the upcoming vote on his proposal.
“The Senate will be voting on the Lee Amendment next week, and if it isn’t adopted, no one who claims to support religious freedom should support the RFMA,” Lee wrote.
Action
Graham called on Americans to reach out to their senators immediately over the legislation.
“Call your Senators as soon as possible and ask them to vote YES for the Lee Amendment—or to vote NO to the Respect for Marriage Act if it doesn’t have this amendment,” Graham continued.
He added, “Time is short—freedom-loving people have to take action before it’s too late.”
Like Graham, Family Research Council is making the same appeal.
“Tell your senators to insist that Senator Mike Lee’s amendment is adopted into the (Dis)Respect for Marriage Act,” the group wrote on Twitter on Nov. 23. “Email your senators, the next vote on the bill is Monday, November 28.”
Nina Jankowicz, who briefly served as the Biden administration’s “disinformation czar,” has registered as a foreign agent of a nonprofit organization based in the United Kingdom.
According to registration documents received by the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) unit, Jankowicz filed for her foreign agent status this month (pdf). The name of the foreign principal is listed as the Centre for Information Resilience (CIR) from the United Kingdom. The nonprofit is founded and directed by Adam Rutland, a UK citizen, and Ross Burley, a dual UK–U.S. national.
The entity is financed by a “foreign government, foreign political party, or other foreign principal,” the documents show. It receives grants from the UK government, including the Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development offices.
According to its website, CIR “is an independent, non-profit social enterprise dedicated to countering disinformation, exposing human rights abuses, and combating online behavior harmful to women and minorities.”
At CIR, Jankowicz is tasked with supervising research, executing business strategy, overseeing the establishment of CIR’s research, communicating with the media, and briefing individuals and officials on the organization’s research, according to her registration documents.
She will work with CIR employees from the UK via online communication platforms in order to “further the goals” of the organization.
Jankowicz also documented that in the 60 days prior to the obligation to register for the foreign principal, she received money for promoting the interests of the organization. She cited two payments in excess of $12,000 each made in October and November with the purpose stated as “remuneration for services rendered.”
Involvement With Biden Administration
Jankowicz was selected to lead the Disinformation Governance Board under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in April 2022. At the time, the Biden administration had portrayed Jankowicz as an expert in online disinformation.
Her appointment instantly drew criticism, with reports showing that Jankowicz had made posts on Twitter trying to whitewash the Hunter Biden scandal as disinformation.
She also made posts in support of the discredited “Steele dossier” that was used to smear former President Donald Trump by insisting he had ties with the Russian government.
Jankowicz submitted her resignation in May and the Disinformation Governance Board was disbanded in August.
Burley, the co-founder of Jankowicz’s new company, has worked in the UK Government’s Stabilisation Unit since 2017, according to his LinkedIn profile, and spent almost three years in senior positions at Zinc Network, a communications contractor linked to the UK Home and Foreign offices, whose activities are kept secret from the public under the country’s Official Secrets Act.
Workers in the gig economy might gag on the new forms they will be receiving at the end of 2022.
The Biden-era American Rescue Act, rammed home in 2021 by a Democratic-majority Congress, makes a major change in how Americas who are paid through third-party companies are taxed. Companies include Cash App, Venmo, and PayPal, according to the New York Post.
Before 2022, the rule was that a worker had to receive more than 200 payments and receive more than $20,000 from those payments to trigger a form 1099-K. The form is sent by a third-party processor to the worker who was paid for services as an independent contractor. But the form also goes to the IRS.
Beginning in 2022, the rule on who gets a 1099-K was changed so that everyone who makes over $600 in a year is issued a form. The form still goes to the IRS, which means that taxpayers ignore the form at their peril.
“It’s going to be a new form for a lot of people,” said Adam Markowitz, an enrolled agent and vice president at Howard L Markowitz PA, CPA in Windermere, Florida, according to CNBC. “And the worst thing they can do is ignore it.”
#Thread There’s alot of confusion around whether the new #1099K threshold change affects ALL transactions through third-party apps. Check out this thread for a simplified explanation on the topic ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/ymjk055BrV
Tommy Lucas, a certified financial planner and enrolled agent at Moisand Fitzgerald Tamayo in Orlando, Florida, said if the income is not listed on a tax return, an automatic IRS notice or audit could be triggered.
Should the IRS focus on these smaller transactions?Yes No
Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Justin Miller, national director of wealth planning at Evercore Wealth Management in San Francisco, said the form could include other income, such as selling concert tickets at a profit if the transaction when through a third-party processor.
“The challenge with the new lower threshold amount of $600 for Form 1099-K is that personal payments and reimbursements could be incorrectly reported as taxable transactions,” Miller said.
The Center for a Free Economy is calling upon Congress to use its lame-duck sessions to amend the law, saying that due to the change, “both very small business ventures and unwitting non-business taxpayers have found themselves caught in the 1099-K reporting net.”
“Congressional policymakers have several bills before them to restore the old 1099-K thresholds, or at least greatly increase them from where they are now. We urge you to consider and adopt these policies before the end of this Congress and the next tax filing season,” the group wrote.
“Millions of Americans who have never received a 1099-K form before, and don’t know what to do with it, will get one. If they seek help from the IRS, they will quickly run into an overwhelmed agency trying to process this gusher of new 1099-K returns, keep up with filing season, clear out prior backlogs, respond to correspondence, and even answer the 800-number telephone line,” the group said.
“Even a $5K threshold would provide significant relief for families and microbusiness. The hope is that the threshold will be raised as part of a #tax extender package in the lame duck session,” #1099K#IRShttps://t.co/hisGaYsW7O
“Taxpayers receiving a 1099-K may not know what to do with it, and may be apt to ignore it on their tax return. Doing so will result in the IRS assessing tax on the full amount found on the 1099-K, even if the taxpayer has basis or business expenses that would reduce or eliminate the ultimate amount of tax owed,” the group said.
The group said failure to change the law will impact many Americans.
“The new 1099-K rules are a textbook example of how a well-functioning tax system must have tradeoffs between complexity and enforcement. This targeting of Lilliputian pockets of income will result in bad outcomes for taxpayers, 1099-K issuers, and the IRS. It will fuel illegal and cash economy transactions which often lead to more serious crimes,” the group said.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, many Americans were skeptical of the so-called “experts” leading the response effort.
Sure, epidemiologists know a lot when it comes to the spread of diseases. But when it comes to public policy, psychology, human nature, economics and a thousand other factors relating to massive decisions like country-wide lockdowns, they tend to be just as clueless as the rest of us.
Nevertheless, NAIAD director Dr. Anthony Fauci and his big-government cronies were given carte blanche to order around the American people as they saw fit, which resulted in the destruction of children’s social and educational development and, for many, total economic devastation.
As it turns out, infectious disease experts don’t know the first thing about what’s best for the economy or your child’s education.
Nevertheless, anyone who dared questioned their opinions was silenced by social media companies as the pandemic lockdowns raged on.
Thankfully, on Wednesday, Republicans tried to find some answers.
During a several hour-long deposition, Republicans grilled Fauci regarding the NAIAD director’s reported collusion with Big Tech companies to censor opinions about COVID-19, according to Fox News.
More specifically, the deposition was part of Republican attorneys general Eric Schmitt and Jeff Landry’s lawsuit filed against the Biden administration in May.
The two allege that information, such as the origin of COVID-19 and the effectiveness of masking, was censored thanks to collusion between the White House and social media companies, Fox News reported.
Should Fauci face a full investigation for his response to COVID?Yes No
Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Perhaps the most notable fact to come out of the deposition has fallen completely under the media radar.
According to Kheriaty, Fauci sent NAIAD deputy Clifford Lane to China in order to represent the U.S. for the WHO.
After meeting with Chinese officials, who falsely claimed their draconian lockdowns had effectively combated the virus, Lane convinced Fauci that the U.S. needed to follow the communist, authoritarian government’s lead.
“From the very beginning, the evidential basis for this global policy catastrophe was always paper-thin,” Kheriaty wrote. “We are now living in the aftermath.”
Jenin Younes of the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), another partner in filing the lawsuit, explained as much via Twitter as well.
Younes concluded that Fauci was “apparently willing to base his lockdown advocacy on the observations of a single guy relying on reports from a dictator.”
It looks like the American economy was completely devastated and the development of an entire generation of children was ruined all because Fauci was willing to regurgitate information fed to him by the communist authoritarians of China.
If a series of comments from European officials reflect a wider view, a gap may be opening between the Biden administration and its European allies over the way America has conducted itself during the Ukraine war.
The report, which relies extensively on sources that are not named, frames European officials as fuming that America grows stronger while Europe faces a cold winter of privations due to shortages in fuel for heating, while U.S. subsidies for green industries have become a flashpoint of contention.
“The fact is, if you look at it soberly, the country that is most profiting from this war is the U.S. because they are selling more gas and at higher prices, and because they are selling more weapons,” an unnamed “senior official” told Politico.
“We are really at a historic juncture,” the senior EU official said, arguing that the double hit of trade disruption from U.S. subsidies and high energy prices risks turning public opinion against both the war effort and the transatlantic alliance. “America needs to realize that public opinion is shifting in many EU countries.”
One source Politico described as a “senior official from a European capital,” said some Europeans view the necessary replacement of American-made weapons shared with Ukraine taking years and bringing millions to U.S. defense companies.
Another source Politico described as an “EU diplomat” argued that “the money they are making on weapons” could help Americans understand that making “all this cash on gas” might be “a bit too much.”
A discount in gas sold to Europe could help us to “keep united our public opinions,” the diplomat is quoted as saying.
“It’s not good, in terms of optics, to give the impression that your best ally is actually making huge profits out of your troubles,” the diplomat said.
European Union chief diplomat Josep Borrell said the Biden administration should weigh the costs it imposes on allies.
Should the United States continue to funnel money and arms to Ukraine?Yes No
Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
“Americans — our friends — take decisions which have an economic impact on us,” he said.
“The rise in gas prices in Europe is caused by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and Putin’s energy war against Europe, period,” a National Security Council representative said, adding that liquefied natural gas exports to Europe “increased dramatically and enabled Europe to diversify away from Russia.”
The Politico report described America’s perceived lack of awareness when it comes to European problems as a primary sticking point for Europeans.
“The Europeans are discernibly frustrated about the lack of prior information and consultation,” David Kleimann of the Bruegel think tank said.
Officials fear the Inflation Reduction Act’s $369 billion subsidy for green industries will harm Europe.
“The Inflation Reduction Act has changed everything,” the report quoted another “EU diplomat” as saying. “Is Washington still our ally or not?”
In an Op-Ed on Bloomberg, Hal Brands notes that the war “has been a strategic windfall for Washington. Russia’s military is being reduced to rubble. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is expanding and strengthening its defenses. China is facing greater resistance in the Western Pacific, as Japan, Taiwan and Australia hasten their military preparations. European nations that now see the downsides of dependence on one coercive autocracy are reconsidering their ties with another: Beijing.”
“Yet key officials wonder whether the US has already reaped all the advantages the Ukraine war has to offer,” he wrote, adding that, “A long war that exposes how pitifully inadequate the US defense industrial base has become could force the nation to get serious about rearmament.”
Allies are providing Ukraine “just enough” weapons “to survive, not enough to regain territory,” Ulrich Speck, a German foreign policy analyst, said. “The idea seems to be that Russia should not win, but also not lose.
“What countries send and how slowly they send it tells us a lot about the war aims of Western countries. And it becomes even more important now because Ukraine is more dependent on Western arms,” he said.
At least 42 Biden administration officials were sent letters by Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee this month requesting testimony from a variety of White House officials.
Those letters primarily dealt with the suspected politicization of the FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ), investigations into U.S. border security, and President Joe Biden’s son Hunter.
A recent letter (pdf) led by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) to White House chief of staff Ron Klain requested testimony from Biden administration staffers relating to alleged “misuse of federal criminal and counterterrorism resources to target concerned parents at school board meetings.” Interviews from four White House officials were requested.
Around the same time, another letter (pdf) from Jordan was sent to the Department of Education requesting testimony from three officials, and another letter to the Department of Homeland Security requests interviews from around a dozen administration officials. That includes embattled Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement chief Tae Johnson.
Even more DOJ and FBI officials were asked to testify during the next Congress, according to two separate letters (pdf, pdf) sent by Jordan and others last week. They’re seeking testimony from Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, and dozens of other DOJ and FBI officials, according to a Washington Examiner analysis of the GOP-backed letters.
It’s likely that Republicans will seek to investigate how the FBI and DOJ handled investigations into former President Donald Trump and the raid that targeted Mar-a-Lago in August. Republicans and Trump have long said the two agencies have exhibited a politically motivated animus toward the former president, coming after Garland announced he had appointed a special counsel, Jack Smith, to investigate him.
FBI Director Christopher Wray (R) and Attorney General Merrick Garland speak at a press conference at the Department of Justice in Washington on Oct. 24, 2022. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
More than a week ago, Garland appointed Smith as special counsel to “oversee two ongoing criminal investigations” into Trump, namely events surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach and the Mar-a-Lago raid, according to a DOJ statement. Just days before, Trump announced he would be embarking on a third presidential bid in 2024.
Other Investigations
House Majority Leader-elect Steve Scalise (R-La.) revealed that some of the GOP’s priorities for the incoming Congress are probing the origins of COVID-19, the widely criticized U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and allegations surrounding Hunter Biden.
The House Oversight Committee, under its top Republican and likely next chairman, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), is “ready to go start looking into a lot of the questions that people have had,” Scalise told Breitbart this weekend.
“Whether it’s Hunter Biden’s dealings with all kinds of foreign countries [or] the laptop scandal, which the liberal media tried to dismiss when it came out in 2020,” he added. “It’s been verified.
“It turns out there’s a lot of information on that laptop that raises serious questions, and James Comer’s committee’s going to be asking those.
“The origins of COVID is something we’ve talked about a lot, and looking into whether or not taxpayer money was used by companies like EcoHealth Alliance to promote gain-of-function research in the Wuhan lab, where many scientists have said that’s where COVID started, not at some wet market,” Scalise added, referring to claims that the U.S. National Institutes of Health provided funding to EcoHealth to carry out the controversial research into bat coronaviruses in the years before the emergence of COVID-19, a type of coronavirus.
Scalise also referenced the U.S. military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan last summer, which many analysts claim was botched. In just over a week after pulling out of the country, Taliban militants were able to quickly recapture the country as throngs of Afghans gathered near the Kabul airport.
“Did they leave caches of guns behind to the Taliban with ammunition and night vision goggles?” Scalise told the outlet. “All of those reports we’ve seen, there’s never been a thorough hearing on it. Who was in the room? Which generals said it’s okay to leave that behind so that the Taliban can get it?”
Earlier in the week, Comer told Just the News that Republicans will investigate some 150 suspicious activity reports relating to Hunter Biden. There have been allegations that President Joe Biden was involved in his son’s controversial overseas business deals, which the elder Biden has denied.
“The Democrats have set a precedent on this,” he explained. “They filed suit forcing former President [Donald] Trump to have to turn over his tax records. So the Democrats have already set a precedent for bank records and tax records.”
With just two races left uncalled after the 2022 midterms, Republicans have netted at least 220 seats to Democrats’ 213. Republican candidates lead for both seats, in Colorado and California, according to data provided by The Associated Press.
Dissenting views about the COVID-19 narrative have been censored: Retsef Levi
Retsef Levi, a former Israeli military intelligence officer, an expert in risk management and health systems, and a professor at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management, coauthored a paper that found a 25 percent rise in heart attack emergency calls among young Israelis after the country’s rollout of the COVID genetic vaccine.
Levi argues that there is enough data from this and various other studies on the vaccine’s adverse heart effects, to stop its use and run a thorough investigation into why many once-healthy young people suffer or die from heart inflammation after being vaccinated.
“The main question that we need to ask ourselves is, do we have enough evidence from this study and many other studies, to say halt!” Levi said during a recent interview with Epoch TV’s “American Thought Leaders” program. “We’re going to stop these vaccines, for young individuals, but maybe overall, and we’re going to take the time to really look very, very carefully and scrutinize every piece of data and bring together every possible piece of data to understand what is the answer.”
Levi has worked extensively in the areas of analytics and modeling, looking at issues of risk management in the field of healthcare and other related systems. Mainly, analyzing data sets to see what they reveal about quality, safety, risks, etc.
His coauthored paper in Nature Scientific Reports looked at Israel’s national emergency calls in the first five months of 2021 and found a 25 percent increase in cardiac arrest and heart attacks in men aged 16-39 as compared to the year before the national vaccine rollout.
The study found, “a temporal correlation between this increase starting in early 2021, and the launch of the vaccination campaign in Israel,” said Levi.
The paper does not conclude a causal relationship between the vaccine and the observed increase in heart problems, but it definitely gives enough evidence to warrant an in-depth investigation said, Levi.
Further, Israel’s health ministry should want to know why there was an increase in heart problems; but instead, they “launched an attack on us, both in the public domain, as well as even actively trying to approach the journal and asked the journal to retract the paper,” said Levi.
An artist rendering of a heart and SARS-CoV-2 virus particles. (By Lightspring)
Sound Scientific Process Abandoned
There is a lot of data that strongly suggests an increase in myocarditis or death in young people who have been vaccinated. Levi believes that the haste with which the vaccines were produced, approved, and deployed, neglected safety and best practices for rolling out vaccines.
This deviation from basic sound scientific principles has put health officials in Israel and the United States, “in a situation where you essentially cannot admit any wrong anymore because that will imply that you did something very, very disastrous,” said Levi. “We approve it in a very expedited way, and we approve it to everybody regardless of the risk, and that was basically the fundamental mistake that we’ve done. And I think everything else can be explained by that.”
There was strong early evidence, including a 2020 study done by Stanford University researchers John Ioannidis and colleagues concluding that people under 65, with no comorbidities, had very little risk of death from COVID-19 and should have helped target vaccines to the high-risk populations.
Levi believes health agency officials and governments should not have required vaccinations for healthy young people, and by doing so, “put them in a situation when they take an unknown risk that now we know is actually, in some cases pretty substantial, and could really compromise the future of young people and including causing their death.”
Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo. (York Du/The Epoch Times)
Mounting Evidence Against Vaccinating Youth
Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo, recently advised Floridians not to vaccinate healthy young people, because he found an 84 percent increase in heart problems among young men. While his study also does not prove a causal relationship, “at the very least, this should just raise your concerns that something really, really disturbing is happening here,” said Levi.
Levi thinks the public should look at a variety of studies when determining the safety of any vaccine or health guidance, and that Ladapo’s findings are in keeping with a large body of evidence that supports his guidance, even though the mainstream is dismissing this evidence.
Levi believes Ladopo was correctly following the mounting evidence of vaccine-related heart problems and deaths, and the principle of “do no harm.” “Ladopo was saying, I don’t feel comfortable to continue to give these vaccines to young individuals, given the evidence that I have,” said Levi.
Fear Is Destroying Health Systems
“I actually think that the regulatory agencies, with the support of some scientists in the media, are essentially representing a very extreme approach and a very dangerous approach, if I may say, because again, they are undermining the fundamentals of proper scientific and medical work,” said Levi. “And I’m very, very concerned about the future of science, the future trust in science and medicine.”
Fear has caused many people to make poor decisions said, Levi. “What I realized is that in many cases, it [fear] shuts down intellect, rationale, ethics, [and] scared people can do very, very bad things to each other.”
This fear caused health officials to abandon reason and prevented them from looking at the whole health of an individual, including the mental, emotional, and physical aspects, especially in the case of young people said, Levi.
Consequently, young people have been deeply affected, with among other things, a loss of education, weight gain, increased anxiety, and depression, much of which could have been prevented had leaders used a holistic and science-based approach to mitigating the threats of the pandemic, Levi said.
A cyclist with a trailer for children passes a “Beach Closed” sign on the boardwalk in Miami Beach, Fla., on March 22, 2020. (Cliff Hawkins/Getty Images)
We have failed our children, said Levi.
“And to me, that’s not only a scientifical scientific flaw, but this is also an ethical flaw. This is an ethical failure, that as a society, we then [did not] put the young and the children as a top priority. That, to me, that’s what the society is supposed to do.”
The lockdown protocol used around the world failed miserably, especially in China said, Levi.
“What is striking to me is that freedom is a fundamental value of democratic societies, but it’s also a fundamental value of science,” but was largely ignored, said Levi.
Instead, those in democratic societies used the most draconian policies to take away fundamental freedoms and in the scientific realm, people were “essentially imposing censorship mechanisms that I’ve never seen, in my over 16 years as a scientist, I’ve never seen something close to that,” said Levi.
A medical worker prepares to give 62-year-old Moshe Geva Rosso a fourth dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, at Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan, Israel, on Dec. 31, 2021. (Nir Elias/Reuters)
Israel’s Vaccine Monitoring
“The Ministry of Health (MOH) in Israel, is actively hiding critical information about side effects of the vaccines from the Israeli public,” said Levi. In addition, the health ministry did not have a functional monitoring system for vaccine adverse effects until recently.
This is a critically important fact because Israel has been at the forefront of requiring their citizens to get vaccinated and boosted, having signed a contract with Pfizer early on in the pandemic, “that essentially made Israel a worldwide lab for the rest of the world,” said Levi.
Israel only started to broadly monitor adverse side effects at the end of 2021, and hired a team to research what they found regarding adverse effects, which is why they leaked a video showing Israel’s health ministry discussing the issue, said Levi.
The Israeli MOH commissioned researchers to analyze adverse event reports submitted by Israelis. The researchers presented findings from the new surveillance system at an internal June meeting, video footage of which was obtained by an Israeli journalist. This research team’s findings are contrary to the health ministry’s claim that the adverse events, if any, are short-term.
Many of the side effects are in fact, not short term. These health problems, “actually last weeks, months, and sometimes over a year. When I say side effects, I talk about menstrual irregularities, I talk about serious neurological side effects, and so forth,” said Levi.
In these videos, the team of researchers is heard advising the Israeli health ministry to use caution when speaking to the public about the vaccines’ adverse health effects.
“It seems that the Ministry of Health in Israel took this to their attention because when you look at the actual report that they post in the public domain, they essentially took out a lot of the messages, a lot of the findings that were found by the research team that they hired. And moreover, they misrepresented the data, and misrepresented the reporting rates of the different side effects and made them look like very, very rare,” said Levi.
The reports that the ministry put up for the Israeli public to see were clearly manipulated said, Levi.
“And essentially, these reports are representing only six months out of a year and a half, and only 15 to 17 percent of the population in Israel, rather than the entire population and all the doses that were given in Israel.”
The Epoch Times reached out to Israel’s MOH for comment but had not receive a reply before publishing time.
Rechallenge
“So, now I have a situation when every time they take the vaccine I see the same response, that is called rechallenge,” said Levi. A positive rechallenge was reported in 10 percent of the women who complained of menstrual issues, according to the researchers, who also identified cases of rechallenge for other adverse events.
The phenomenon of rechallenge—when adverse events reoccur or worsen following additional vaccine doses—proved that some of the events were caused by the vaccine, researchers said.
Dr. Sharon Alroy-[Preis], who is the number two healthcare official in the Ministry of Health, when interviewed on Israeli TV said the adverse reactions that women are facing with things like menstrual irregularities were fleeting, and of no great concern.
“In fact, there are women that suffer from weeks and months, and over a year sometimes, of irregular menstrual cycles and different types of irregularities,” said Levi. “And there is no acknowledgment from anybody in the Ministry of Health, there is no acknowledgment that I’m aware of, from any health authority or health agency in the world, [that] hey, there is a problem here.”
Eroded Trust
“And the worst thing is they ignore the voice of the patient.”
Public health agencies around the world, including the United States and Israel, have not been transparent about the vaccines and the adverse events from the shots, said Levi, to such an extent that it takes a lawsuit to get the data they have collected.
The public should be told, “what is the impact of these vaccines on all-cause mortality and other health outcomes in a way that is informative, so that people can make their risk-benefit decision based on their age, health background, beliefs, whatever. But this is unheard of that health agencies behave in a way that you need to take them to court to release data,” said Levi.
These agencies need to return to basic principles of transparency and empathy, fundamental to public health, in order to eliminate the mistrust created by the lack of honesty during the pandemic.
Americans have lost their trust in science, and it can’t be repaired without public health leaders and scientists admitting and apologizing for their wrongs during the pandemic, said former White House COVID-19 adviser Dr. Scott Atlas.
While serving in the Trump administration’s pandemic task force in 2020, Atlas was attacked by the mainstream media and academia over his advocacy for “focused protection.”
Public health leaders like Drs. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx, as well as academics who supported lockdown measures, have left behind a harmful legacy that Americans are still grappling with today, Atlas said.
“Their legacy is: number one, the history’s biggest public health failure; number two, massive avoidable deaths in society’s most vulnerable; and number three, ongoing enormous health damages to low-income families and to children,” Atlas told The Epoch times in a recent interview.
“They have created a severe loss of trust in public health and science, and left us as a public in a situation where we cannot trust guidance,” he added. “Because the experts have been exposed—like in the story, ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’—as being non-expert, politicized, and simply unfit to hold the public trust.”
According to the latest survey by Pew Research Center, just 29 percent of American adults say they have “a great deal of confidence” in medical scientists to act in the best interests of the public, down from 43 percent who said so in April 2020, when state and local governments started to roll out lockdown measures in accordance to federal guidelines.
This eroded trust can be rebuilt, Atlas said, but public health officials and academic experts have to first admit that the lockdowns have not only failed to stop the spread of the virus or reduce the number of deaths, but also added suffering to low-income families and children.
“Trusted is granted by privilege from the citizens of this country,” he told The Epoch Times. “We need a public admission from Dr. Fauci, Dr. Burks, and the university scientists who supported their policies. We need a public admission of error and an apology. That’s the first step in restoring the trust that they squandered.
When asked about the proposal of “pandemic amnesty,” which asks Americans to forgive decisions made with a lack of understanding of the virus, Atlas said he “completely disagrees” with the idea, which apparently is based on a “false premise.”
For example, it was already known in the spring of 2020 that healthy children had an extremely low risk of becoming severely ill or dying from COVID. The fact that school closures and social isolation were leading to a dramatic rise in mental illness, suicides, and drug abuse among children and adolescents was also known at that point, he added. Yet the schools remained closed in some of the nation’s largest public school districts.
What Americans need, according to Atlas, is not amnesty, but accountability.
“We need to not turn the page, we need an investigation—an non-partisan exposure of what happened,” he said. “Only public accountability will prevent the repetition of this heinous, destructive policy by those in power.”
Atlas pointed to several of the Biden administration’s public health policies, which are still in place despite not being backed by science or reason.
“We are the only country of civilized nations in the world that still requires proof of vaccination to enter this country,” he said. “This is bizarre, particularly since well over 90 percent of Americans have already had COVID. This is simply nonsensical.
“We have a government leadership that continues to insist there’s a public health emergency when there is not a public health emergency. We have a government leadership that’s allowing emergency use authorization of an experimental vaccine on infants and children,” he added. “So we are still in a country that is denying science.”
“We need good people, rational people to have the courage to rise up and speak up, as you are expected to do in a free ethical society.”
Republicans in the House of Representatives said on Nov. 25 that they will subpoena a former FBI official who’s accused of misconduct if necessary.
Three top Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee wrote in a letter to Timothy Thibault, the former FBI official, that he has refused to voluntarily comply with requests for a transcribed interview despite his statement that he “[welcomes] any investigation.”
“Our requests, therefore, remain outstanding,” the Republicans said. “Your testimony is necessary for our oversight, and you can be assured that the Committee will continue to pursue this matter into the 118th Congress, including by compulsory process if necessary.”
Because Republicans flipped the House in the midterm elections, the party will control each committee once the new Congress is sworn in shortly after the start of 2023.
Majority control will also give Republicans subpoena power.
If Thibault is subpoenaed, he will have to appear or risk facing contempt of Congress charges.
Rep. Jim Jordan, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, and two members of the panel, Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Mike Johnson (D-La.), sent the letter to Thibault.
A request for comment to representatives of Thibault from The Epoch Times wasn’t returned by press time.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Nov. 17, 2022. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Allegations From Whistleblowers
Republicans are investigating allegations from whistleblowers that Thibault, who was the assistant special agent-in-charge at the Washington Field Office before retiring in August, pressured agents to reclassify certain cases as “domestic violent extremism” even though there was “minimal, circumstantial evidence to support a reclassification.”
Other whistleblowers say that when the FBI acquired information in 2020 about Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son, Thibault “ordered the matter closed without providing a valid reason as required by FBI guidelines,” Senate Republicans have said.
Thibault and other officials then tried to mark the matter in such a way that it couldn’t be reopened in the future, according to the whistleblowers.
Whistleblowers also told the senators that an assessment was utilized by the FBI to improperly label another chunk of Hunter Biden information as disinformation, and that the information was siloed to only certain agents.
“If these allegations are true and accurate, the Justice Department and FBI are—and have been—institutionally corrupted to their very core to the point in which the United States Congress and the American people will have no confidence in the equal application of the law,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) wrote in a previous letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, a Trump appointee, and Attorney General Merrick Garland, a Biden appointee.
Thibault also shared posts on social media that called then-President Donald Trump “a psychologically broken, embittered, and deeply unhappy man,” and he told Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) that her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, “was a disgrace.”
The FBI has declined to comment and the Department of Justice (DOJ) didn’t respond to requests for comment by press time.
Jordan wrote in a recent letter to Wray and Garland that they have ignored or “failed to respond sufficiently” to requests for information and documents, and that they might turn to the compulsory process to obtain the materials if that continued.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco speaks in New York, in this file photograph. (Richard Drew/Pool via Reuters)
Other Priorities
As Republicans prepare to take control of the House, Jordan has unveiled other early priorities for when he becomes chair of the judiciary panel.
Jordan wants to speak to DOJ officials to question them on a range of matters, including how the DOJ has abused the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court system.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division Kenneth Polite Jr., and Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division Matthew Olsen are among the DOJ officials Jordan plans to seek testimony from, he told Garland (pdf).
Multiple U.S. attorneys, including Matthew Graves, are also on the list.
“We expect your unfettered cooperation in arranging for the Committee to receive testimony from Justice Department employees,” Jordan said.
Similar letters were sent to White House chief of staff Ronald Klain; Wray; Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, a Biden appointee; and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, a Biden appointee.
To conduct oversight of the Biden administration’s tasking federal law enforcement with investigating threats to school boards, House Republicans want to speak with four White House officials, including policy adviser Katherine Pantangco. They’re also seeking to speak with three education officials, including Cardona’s senior adviser Larry Bowden.
To examine homeland security matters, House Republicans want to talk with 11 officials, including Mayorkas; Tae Johnson, the acting director of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement; and Raul Ortiz, chief of U.S. Border Patrol.
As part of the investigation into the FBI, the Republicans are seeking testimony from Wray; two officials involved in pressuring Big Tech companies to censor information, special agent Elvis Chan and Laura Dehmlow, chief of the bureau’s Foreign Influence Task Force; and Steven D’Antuono, who succeeded Thibault.
Twitter’s new boss Elon Musk took a swipe at a mainstream media report that cited activists claiming lives were being put at risk by Musk’s decision to reinstate a number of banned Twitter accounts, including that of former President Donald Trump.
“Much Ado About Nothing,” Musk said in a tweet Friday, responding to left-leaning Axios’ report that carried the caption: “Activists warn lives at risk over Elon Musk’s amnesty plans for suspended Twitter accounts.”
Musk on Thursday announced a “general amnesty” for some suspended Twitter accounts, provided that the accounts weren’t engaging in “egregious spam” or hadn’t broken the law.
“The people have spoken,” Musk wrote on Twitter in response to a poll that showed the vast majority of his followers on the platform voting in favor of a “general amnesty” for banned accounts.
“Amnesty begins next week. Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” he added, which translates as “the voice of the people, the voice of God” in Latin.
That came several days after Musk ran a poll asking his Twitter followers to weigh in on whether Trump’s suspended account should be reinstated, with most voting in favor.
“The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated. Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” Musk said in a post.
But Musk’s decision to reinstate suspended accounts has fired up critics who see unfettered speech as a danger.
Axios, a left-leaning media outlet, ran a story in response to Musk’s pledge to restore suspended accounts, sharing it on Twitter with the caption: “Activists warn lives at risk over Elon Musk’s amnesty plans for suspended Twitter accounts.”
The report cited a number of individuals and organizations who had a critical take on Musk’s banned account reinstatement.
One of the individuals Axios cited was Alejandra Caraballo, clinical instructor at Harvard Law’s cyberlaw clinic, who told The Washington Post that for marginalized communities, the amnesty was “existentially dangerous.”
“It’s like opening the gates of hell in terms of the havoc it will cause,” Caraballo said, adding that “People who engaged in direct targeted harassment can come back and engage in doxing, targeted harassment, vicious bullying, calls for violence, celebration of violence.”
She added that both Apple and Google should consider removing Twitter from the respective app store offerings.
The report also cited another opponent of Musks’s banned account reinstatement, Imran Ahmed, CEO of campaign group the Center for Countering Digital Hate.
“Superspreaders of hate, abuse, and harassment will be the only people to benefit from this latest decision by Twitter,” Axios cited Ahmed as saying, via the Guardian.
Musk’s characterization of the claims in Axios’ report as little more than a tempest in a teacup drew a range of reactions from Twitter users, both critical and sympathetic.
‘Not Freedom of Reach’
When Musk took over Twitter at the end of October, he vowed to dial down the previous management’s restrictions on free speech on the platform while pledging to maintain curbs on illegal activity and reduce the number of bots.
He also announced earlier in November that Twitter’s new policy is “freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach,” adding that Twitter wouldn’t demonetize and not promote “hate/negative tweets.”
“You won’t find the tweet unless you specifically seek it out, which is no different from rest of Internet,” Musk said.
Following Musk’s takeover at the end of October, there was a spike in “hate speech impressions” on the platform, Musk acknowledged in a tweet on Thursday.
But those impressions have since dropped to levels lower than before the surge in negative posts, he added.
“Hate speech impressions down by 1/3 from pre-spike levels. Congrats to Twitter team!” Musk wrote.
A Twitter user responded by asking whether “hate speech” means “how often racial slurs or certain bigoted phrases” show up on the platform.
“Yeah, these are umm … bad words. I read through the list last week & have to say I learned a few things,” Musk replied, punctuating his remark with the blushing face emoji.
While Musk did not elaborate further on the concept of hate speech, Twitter’s hateful conduct policy states: “You may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.”
“We also do not allow accounts whose primary purpose is inciting harm towards others on the basis of these categories,” the policy states.
As part of a gargantuan 1,050-page report detailing whistleblower findings from the FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ), Republicans found that the FBI waited over a year to begin a comprehensive investigation into the pipe bombs that were planted in front of both major parties’ headquarters on Jan. 5, 2021.
Specifically, the report focuses on the Department of Justice (DOJ) under Attorney General Merrick Garland and the FBI under Director Christopher Wray (pdf).
Garland, Republicans said, has been “a willing participant of the Biden Administration’s weaponization of law enforcement.” The FBI too, Republicans assert, “has abused its law-enforcement authorities for apparently political purposes.”
Republicans listed a series of seemingly-partisan decisions and top-down efforts by Garland’s DOJ to mislead or deceive the American people.
For instance, the bombshell report found that the FBI has been incentivizing and pushing its field agents to classify certain crimes as incidents of domestic violence extremism (“DVEs”) even when the facts do not align with such a classification. Republicans contended that this is part of an effort to bolster Biden and other Democrats’ contested claims that right-wing DVEs are one of the greatest threats Americans face.
The report also noted a bizarre incident in which the FBI went a step further, and actually manufactured a DVE.
The event occurred in Michigan, where several men were arrested for a planned plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. At their trial, defense attorneys revealed that no less than 12 FBI assets had participated in and pushed the men toward the plot.
Republicans also cited Garland’s controversial Oct. 4, 2021 “school board memo,” in which he offered federal resources and guidance for municipalities seeking to punish parents voicing opposition to their children being taught radically left-wing ideas like critical race and gender theory.
Additionally, Judiciary Republicans cited Garland’s unprecedented authorization of a raid on President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home. Purportedly, Trump had taken classified documents from the White House that posed a national security threat. It was only after the midterms that the DOJ backtracked, and admitted that, contrary to their earlier allegations, Trump had no documents that posed any national security threat.
A deeper dive into the report reveals that the FBI and DOJ, while actively targeting conservatives, inexplicably dragged their feet in investigating pipe bombs that were planted by an unknown man ahead of the Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally.
Specifically, security footage captured a still-unidentified man planting pipe bombs in front of both the Republican National Committee (RNC) and Democratic National Committee (DNC) buildings in Washington, on Jan. 5, 2021.
A suspect in the placement of two devices that the FBI said were pipe bombs is seen in Washington on Jan. 5, 2021. On right is a closeup photograph of one of the devices. (FBI)
At one point, then-Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris was even in the DNC building, meaning her life was imminently at risk.
Still, Judiciary Republicans ruled, “The FBI appears to not be aggressively investigating pipe bombs placed by political party headquarters on January 6, 2021, while prioritizing other January 6, 2021-related investigations.”
Specifically, Republicans learned from a whistleblower that it took over one year for the FBI to mount a full-scale investigation into the pipe bombs.
According to the whistleblower, it was not until Feb. 7, 2022—more than a month and a year after the incident—that the Washington Field Office of the FBI asked its national field offices to investigate and try to identify the man.
In that directive, the FBI warned agents that the suspect’s “motive and ideology remain unknown.”
Speaking to The Epoch Times about the snail’s pace of the investigation, Ed Martin, an attorney for some Jan. 6 defendants, ruled “the judgment of the Department of Justice is clearly biased against certain types of people and certain types of conduct.”
“It appears that the executive branch, the law enforcement branch, has been operating to facilitate a political vision of the article one branch,” Martin said later.
He explained: “The Pelosi select committee [the House January 6 Committee] had a vision of what they wanted to highlight. The conduct of the executive branch, the law enforcement branch has not been to pursue truth and safety. It’s been to pursue the political agenda that’s been driven hand in glove with the select committee.”
Martin, who used to work with the RNC, said that he was pleased that Republicans were giving the issue attention but said that “what we need now is to get to the bottom of what happened.”
He added, “We need to know who said pipe bombs against the American leadership, right?”
“We are living with a bomber, who successfully planted bombs—didn’t go off, thankfully—and who has never been caught,” Martin emphasized. “Shouldn’t that be a worry?”
The FBI did not return a request for comment.
Possible FBI Involvement
The FBI’s slowness in investigating the pipe bombs comes amid a backdrop of suspicion that the FBI played a role in the events of Jan. 6.
Suspicion that the FBI was involved in the events of that day only ramped up after Jill Sanborn, the executive assistant director for the National Security Branch of the FBI, refused to disavow agency involvement at the rally.
During a Jan. 11, 2022, Senate hearing, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) questioned Sanborn about potential FBI involvement. These questions were met with deflection by Sanborn, who avoided giving a definitive answer to the yes or no questions posed by Cruz.
(L–R) Brian Brase, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) at the Senate Visitor Center in the U.S. Capitol on March 8, 2022. (Terri Wu/The Epoch Times)
“How many FBI agents or confidential informants actively participated in the events of Jan. 6?” Cruz asked.
“So I’m sure you can appreciate that I can’t go into the specifics of sources and methods,” Sanborn replied.
“Did any FBI agents or confidential informants actively participate in the events of Jan. 6, yes or no?” Cruz asked.
“Sir, I can’t—I can’t answer that,” Sanborn said.
“Did any FBI agents or confidential informants commit crimes of violence on Jan. 6?” Cruz asked.
“I can’t answer that, sir,” Sanborn replied.
“Did any FBI agents or FBI informants actively encourage and incite crimes of violence on Jan. 6?”
“Sir, I can’t answer that.”
Questions about the FBI’s involvement have also been raised by the mystery of Ray Epps, a man who was caught on video on Jan. 5, 2021, encouraging protestors to go into the Capitol building the next day.
“Tomorrow, we need to get to into the Capitol,” Epps was caught saying. “Into the Capitol,” he reiterated.
Epps was immediately shouted down by cries of “Fed! Fed! Fed!,” common internet slang describing someone who works with federal law enforcement, particularly the FBI.
Ray Epps tells protesters on Jan. 5, 2021, that on Jan. 6 they need to go into the Capitol. (Villain Report/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)
The next day, additional video caught Epps whispering into the ear of a protestor, who proceeded to begin tearing down one of the first barricades around the Capitol.
Initially, Epps was identified as the FBI’s number 16 most wanted person for their involvement in the events of Jan. 6, with the agency offering a cash reward for information that led to his arrest. But Epps was later mysteriously removed from the list—a fact that further attracted suspicion amid the largest manhunt in the history of the Department of Justice (DOJ), which saw dozens of nonviolent offenders who entered the Capitol rounded up.
“Ms. Sanborn, who is Ray Epps?” Cruz asked during the Jan. 11 hearing.
“I’m aware of the individual sir,” Sanborn said. “I don’t have the specific background on him.”
“Well, there are a lot of people who are understandably concerned about this,” Cruz said before describing the videos captured showing Epps attempting to incite violence.
“On the night of Jan. 5, 2021, Epps wandered around the crowd that had gathered, and there’s video out there of him chanting ‘Tomorrow, we need to get into the Capitol, into the Capitol.’
“This was strange behavior, so strange that the crowd began chanting, ‘Fed, fed, fed, fed, fed, fed.’
“Ms. Sanborn, was Ray Epps a fed?”
“Sir, I cannot answer that question,” Sanborn replied.
Cruz then cited the other incident caught on tape involving Epps.
“The next day, on Jan. 6, Mr. Epps was seen whispering to a person and five seconds later—five seconds after he’s whispering to a person—that same person begins to forcibly tear down the barricades,” Cruz said. “Did Mr. Epps urge them to tear down the barricades?”
“Sir, similar to the other answers, I cannot answer that,” Sanborn repeated.
Cruz noted that for a brief period, Epps was given a relatively high spot on the FBI’s wanted list before being “magically” removed.
The wanted ad “was posted and then sometime later, magically, Mr. Epps disappeared from the public posting,” Cruz said.
In an emailed statement to The Epoch Times, the FBI claimed that the reported delay in beginning a full investigation into the pipe bombs did not happen.
“The FBI immediately began an investigation into the devices discovered outside the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee,” the national FBI press office said. “There was no delay of any kind.”
The FBI said it had taken “a variety of steps,” including interviews, assessing tips, and analyzing video files. In addition, the agency said that it launched “an extensive investigative publicity campaign” to try to identify the unknown suspect that included a $100,000 reward.
Despite being no closer to identifying the unknown suspect than they were almost two years ago, the FBI said it “continues to aggressively investigate this matter.”
The FBI also said that it did not play a role in “instigat[ing] or orchestrat[ing]” the events of Jan. 6.
“[To] the extent that there’s a suggestion that the FBI’s confidential human sources or FBI employees in some way instigated or orchestrated January 6th, that’s categorically false,” the spokesperson said.
Still, the veracity of this claim remains dubious after Sanborn’s refusal to deny FBI involvement while speaking under threat of perjury.
“The FBI has testified to Congress and responded to letters from legislators on numerous occasions to provide an accurate accounting of how we do our work,” the spokesperson said. “The men and women of the FBI devote themselves to protecting the American people from terrorism, violent crime, cyber threats, and other dangers.
“Put quite simply: we follow the facts without regard for politics,” the agency insisted.
However, this too conflicts with reports by Republicans that the FBI and DOJ have given incomplete or unsatisfactory answers to a series of questions about its decisions over the past two years, including the Michigan plot, the school board memo, the raid on Mar-a-Lago, and others.
“While outside opinions and criticism often come with the job, we will continue to follow the facts wherever they lead, do things by the book, and speak through our work,” the FBI’s statement concluded.
Despite the FBI’s assurances that it takes finding the would-be pipe bomber seriously, nearly two years after the threat, the individual remains at large.
Notably, the spokesperson evaded questions about whether Ray Epps was an FBI asset.
Jan. 6 Defendants Face ‘Despicable’ Conditions
Even as the FBI and DOJ dragged their feet on looking into the pipe bombs, others who committed nonviolent crimes on Jan. 6 have faced “despicable” conditions, according to advocates for the defendants.
Following the breakdown of order at the Capitol on Jan. 6, the DOJ undertook one of the most extensive manhunts in DOJ history; even some of those protestors who did not enter the Capitol were rounded up and left to languish in a jail cell.
Though some of these defendants have managed to break free of what critics call the “D.C. Gulag”—the D.C. Metropolitan Jail, where many Jan. 6 defendants continue to be held—many more have been detained awaiting trial since their arrest.
“The slow pace of the pipe bombs investigation stands in contrast to other Department investigations and prosecutions related to the events of January 6, 2021,” Judiciary Republicans wrote in the report. “According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, as of October 6, 2022, it had arrested 880 people for January 6-related offenses, filed criminal charges against 272 defendants, and secured sentences for 280 defendants. There are also serious concerns about the pre-trial detention of January 6 defendants.”
U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) speaks during a press conference on the House Jan. 6 Committee hearings at the U.S. Capitol on June 15, 2022. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Currently, some who entered the Capitol building on Jan. 6 are being held in the D.C. jail in conditions that Greene described as “unusually cruel.”
Greene listed a slew of examples of this treatment.
According to Greene, Jan. 6 prisoners held in the D.C. jail have been beaten by guards and prison staff, have been unable to speak with their attorneys, have been denied haircuts or razors to shave, and have not been given proper medical treatment when they needed it, among many other examples.
Greene noted another peculiarity of the Jan. 6 defendants: Usually, Greene says, members of Congress have no problem in gaining access to jails when they make the request. In this case, however, Deputy Warden Kathleen Landerkin denied Greene and her coalition access to the facilities on several occasions before finally allowing access to the representatives.
“In fact, [Landerkin] locked us out before,” said Greene, adding, “It’s clear that there was a lot to hide.”
Cynthia Hughes, founder of the Jan. 6 advocacy group called the Patriot Freedom Project, echoed Greene’s claims in an interview with The Epoch Times.
Hughes started the organization after her nephew Tim Hale-Cusanelli was arrested for a nonviolent offense in connection to the Capitol breach.
After entering the D.C. jail in January 2021, Hughes said, her nephew and other Jan. 6 defendants were held in solitary confinement and only allowed outside of their cells one hour per day.
Defendants still “don’t get to go outside, they don’t get to see the sun,” Hughes added. “I anticipate many will have serious health issues.”
“If you have a medical problem, you’re not seeing a doctor,” she continued. “Tim has had two very significant ear infections, so bad that it caused bleeding from the ear, and he never got to see a doctor. He got to see a nurse practitioner, and they flushed his ear out with peroxide and gave him some penicillin.
“He’s got significant hearing loss in both of his ears right now,” Hughes added.
Hughes described other conditions faced by detainees as well.
Until “very recently,” Hughes said, detainees who met with their lawyers were put into solitary confinement for two weeks, purportedly on grounds of COVID. However, Hughes judged that the measure was more intended to be punitive than anything.
Detainees have faced other indignities as well: “Lots of strip search, their cells get raided, they’re mocked, they’re spoken down to, you can’t mail packages [to detainees].”
She added, “I think the biggest thing of all that people should know: they’re denied religious services.”
Hughes said that she and her nephew are Catholic, a denomination of Christianity that places a great deal of emphasis on priests and rituals conducted by clergy, which has made the absence of any priest particularly difficult. But protestants, Muslims, and adherents of the Jewish faith have also been denied services, Hughes noted.
“Tim’s been in jail for 18 months and he hasn’t had any religious services,” Hughes said, noting that defendants had banded together to form their own religious services in the absence of any clergy.
“That’s very disturbing,” Hughes added.
‘Disparity’
Judiciary Republicans concluded the section of the report by opining that the slow pace of the pipe bombs investigation compared to other Jan. 6-related matters suggests “a disparity in how the FBI and Justice Department are pursuing January 6-related matters.”
“Compounding this appearance,” Republicans argued, is the serial failure by the FBI to answer questions and inquiries about these and other issues raised by Republicans.
At the same time that Republican inquiries went ignored, they noted, the FBI has been “providing information to the partisan Democrat-led Select Committee investigating the events of January 6, 2021.
“The FBI’s decision to provide information on a partisan basis is inconsistent with the FBI’s purported impartiality and further erodes public confidence in the FBI’s leadership.”
Concluding the subsection, Republicans said that given the FBI’s “enormous power,” the American people expect it “to fairly and evenhandedly enforce federal laws.”
They continued: “As this report documents, the FBI has abused its law-enforcement authority in several ways—violating the fundamental civil rights of American citizens and chilling their participation in the political process. The examples and incidents highlighted in this report are not exhaustive, but they are indicative of the degree to which the FBI—and by extension the Justice Department—have strayed from their apolitical law-enforcement mission.”
For partisan purposes, Republicans argued, Attorney General Garland and FBI Director Wray “have weaponized federal law enforcement to target the Administration’s political opponents and protect political allies. Instead of using its enormous law-enforcement capabilities to make America safer, the FBI is investing its limited time and resources to further a leftist political agenda.
“The American people deserve better, as do the many patriotic Americans who joined the Bureau to make America a better place,” the lawmakers wrote.
What Comes Next
Now that Republicans are on track to retake the lower chamber, the party will have wide-ranging authority to conduct investigations and issue subpoenas.
The pipe bombs are only one of a series of questions Republicans hope to investigate when the 118th Congress sits.
Republicans also have promised investigations into the role that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) appointed officials played in leaving the Capitol unprepared on Jan. 6.
Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) told The Epoch Times that he considers the pipe bombs investigation a priority, and will push his colleagues to do the same.
“It has been almost two years, and we are no closer to knowing the identity of the January 5th pipe bomber,” Nehls said. “The FBI has shown corruption in the past, especially in the case of Donald Trump, so it is no surprise that no progress is made while defendants who entered the Capitol deteriorate in the D.C. gulag.
“With a Republican majority that has subpoena power, we will get to the bottom of it,” he vowed.
Others want to look into the ties between President Joe Biden, his son, and foreign business activities.
Republicans are also planning broad investigations into Garland’s handling of the DOJ, particularly his infamous school board memo. Several Republicans have called for Garland’s impeachment.
Some have also proposed investigations or even an effort to impeach Department of Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who has overseen unprecedented levels of illegal immigration along the southern border.
Amid all these efforts, it is unclear whether the pipe bombs investigation will be a key focus for the long-promised GOP investigation into the events of Jan. 6.
“New Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.” -Elon Musk 11-18-22
“This isn’t that hard. Freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom of reach.” – Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the ADL 4-5-22
Every now and then someone new comes around and claims to support free speech. I do my best to give you my analysis of the situation objectively. This is often difficult to do in my position as the CEO of Gab because so many people dismiss my insight as “envy” or “fear” when in reality I’m just doing what I always do and calling it how I see it. I don’t say this to be braggadocios, but as a matter of fact I am the foremost expert in the world when it comes to free speech online and so my opinion on these matters holds weight.
I’ve spent six years building the only platform on the internet that upholds First Amendment-protected political speech as the baseline for what is allowed to be posted. I’ve paid the price for this policy, getting banned from App Stores, banks, payment processors, hosting providers, and dozens of other services. No other platform can make this claim, certainly not Musk’s Twitter.
If you’ll remember I was correct about Parler and their use of AI to censor, I was correct about Rumble and their “hate speech” terms of service, and I was correct about Gettr using AI to censor as well. All of them claim to support free speech and all of them bent the knee to the Regime powers and censor “hate speech.” Twitter under Elon Musk is no different and my analysis about this situation will be right as well. Believe me now or thank me later. Take it or leave it.
Nothing has changed at Twitter and based on Elon Musk’s tweets over the past month nothing will be changing anytime soon. People who have been banned in the past have been given amnesty only to return to shout into the void. Folks like Alex Jones aren’t welcome back at all not because of specific policy violations, but rather because of Elon’s emotional reaction to him on a whim. The Twitter rules have not changed. The shadowbanning has not ended—in fact Musk is openly tweeting that “negative” and “hateful” content will be “deboosted” and celebrating that “hate speech” is being removed from view in record numbers. These are the facts.
The reasoning for all of this is that Twitter’s policy is now “freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.” This is the same policy that vampire demons like Jonathan Greenblatt at the ADL have been trying to normalize for years. The policy is contradictory on its face. The entire point of freedom of speech—of speech in general—is to reach someone. Freedom of speech cannot exist in a vacuum.
Think of the actual word “speech.” What is a speech? It’s a “formal address or discourse delivered to an audience.” Notice the key words here “delivered to an audience.” A speech without an audience is just a monologue delivered to yourself.
The Jews did not want Jesus killed and eventually have Him crucified (John 5:18, John 7:1, John 8:37, 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16) because He spoke to Himself alone in the corner. They did so because He was reaching people and making fools of the Jews in power by exposing them as hypocrites. His speech grew His ministry precisely because it reached people. Jesus could not have done this if He was simply talking to the wall.
The Jews did not care about His freedom to speak, they cared about the amount of people He was reaching with that speech. The same is true today. The Jews in positions of power do not care that you have the freedom of speech in this country, they care that people like Ye have the freedom to reach a lot of people and criticize their power and oversized influence in our culture, government, and society. They care that people like me have the ability to reach millions of people with a post like this that contains Biblical Truth and objective facts about this reality, both of which they would label “hate speech.” Finally, they care that people like you have the potential for same amount of reach by posting information online from your couch.
Another classic historical example is Socrates. Socrates was not put to death for muttering to himself alone in his house. He was out and about in the city engaging in “harmful” and “dangerous” discussions with people. He challenged the public by daring them think and question their assumptions about their culture, leaders, and society. He couldn’t “corrupt the youth,” which is what he was charged for, if he didn’t reach them with his speech.
Freedom of speech necessarily includes the freedom to reach someone else with that speech. Freedom of speech without freedom of reach as a policy on Twitter is worse than having your Twitter account suspended. At least when that happens you have a sense of achievement that what you were saying mattered and made an impact. So much of an impact that you had to be ejected from the platform completely.
Freedom of speech without freedom of reach is the ultimate form of demoralization.
It is psychological warfare on your mind.
You keep posting and stay hooked on the platform—making Mr. Musk plenty of money from your usage—but your posts go unseen by anyone but yourself. You are allowed to speak but no one can hear you.
The 2014 Black Mirror Episode “White Christmas” illustrates what Elon Musk’s Twitter will be like for dissidents and anyone that poses any real challenge to the Regime. In the episode we are introduced to a “blocked” technology in the real world. Blocking causes people to see each other as grey silhouettes and prevents them from communicating with other people. In other words when you are blocked in the Black Mirror world you have freedom of speech, but no one can hear you so you reach no one.
This isn’t a world I want to live in. I don’t want a Godless technocratic transhumanist deciding who can be heard and who cannot so that he can dig his way out of the $44 billion dollar hole he dug himself into. The sad reality is that none of this bending of the knee will appease the Regime machine. Elon is about to find out the hard way what it really means to go up against the powers that be in this country. This is why I have never given these demons an inch and always doubled down on Gab’s free speech policies no matter what the cost. We will continue to build the home of free speech–and reach on Gab.com without apology and without compromise. We hope you’ll join us.
Andrew Torba CEO, Gab.com Jesus Christ is King of kings
Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake said that she is planning a larger legal challenge than the one that her team filed against Maricopa County earlier this week.
“So we filed this lawsuit in court today asking the county to cough up some of the public documentation we need for our bigger lawsuit,” she told Just the News Wednesday. Lake added that she has not determined what the remedy of the lawsuit would be.
“Many people are saying they want a redo of Maricopa County. I’ve heard people say throw it out. We have not determined what the remedy is. But I don’t think you can fix what happened,” she said.
Lake, a Republican backed by former President Donald Trump, criticized how the County ran the election, saying “there were three-hour lines” in part caused by problems with the tabulation equipment at polling locations, in an interview with Newsmax.
Earlier this week, Lake’s team filed a lawsuit (pdf) against Maricopa County that called for the release of the county’s election records.
“We have a case that we’re putting together that I believe is going to be shocking,” Lake, a former local television host, said of the lawsuit. “We have whistleblowers coming forward. We have inside information about how this was run, what was going on behind the scenes. What they did to our sacred vote is unforgivable.”
Authorities in Maricopa County on Nov. 8 confirmed that tabulators in numerous polling locations had problems and told voters they had the option to leave their completed ballots in drop-boxes for later counting or to go to a different voting site. Later that day, those officials—Maricopa County Supervisor Bill Gates and County Recorder Stephen Richer—said they identified the printer problem and claimed that no voters were disenfranchised.
“People were still able to vote, it was just a matter of maybe not voting in the way they wanted to,” Gates said in a news conference on Nov. 8. “We do not believe that anyone has been disenfranchised, because no one has been turned away.”
Last week, Democrat Katie Hobbs, who is Arizona’s secretary of state, declared victory over Lake. Election data show that she is currently ahead in the race, although Lake has not conceded.
Requests
Arizona’s Attorney General’s office also issued a letter to Maricopa County and requested answers for problems relating to Election Day.
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, Arizona, 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 County’s lawful compliance with Arizona election law,” the letter stated.
The office requested the information before Maricopa County submits its vote canvass to the secretary of state because it relates to its “ability to lawfully certify election results.” County officials have until Nov. 28 to respond to the letter’s request.
But in response, Gates said Maricopa won’t delay the vote canvass.
“Prior to the canvass, the County will respond to a letter from the Arizona Attorney General’s Office requesting information about the administration of the November General Election,” he said last week in response to the letter. “Board members received this letter on Saturday night and had a team working on a response all day Sunday, even as staff continued counting votes. We look forward to answering the AG’s questions with transparency as we have done throughout this election.”
Lake’s recent comments come as outgoing Republican Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey met with Hobbs on Wednesday and confirmed he would work with her to carry out a transition of power.
“Today I congratulated Governor-elect Katie Hobbs on her victory in a hard-fought race and offered my full cooperation as she prepares to assume the leadership of the State of Arizona,” Ducey said in a statement on Wednesday.
With 99 percent of the vote counted, Hobbs leads Lake by about 16,000 votes, according to The Associated Press.
The Epoch Times has contacted Maricopa County for comment.
You can’t make this up. Earlier this month, some dough-faced dork named Sam Bankman-Fried—an MIT grad and son of Stanford law professors—vaporized the GDP of a small country after successfully conning the entire world of so-called educated elites.
All of them. The freaks in Silicon Valley, the freaks on Wall Street, the freaks in Hollywood, and the freaks in Washington. Even (or especially) the journalists who are supposed to be holding everyone accountable. The smartest, most enlightened professional experts and self-appointed moral referees.
Bill Clinton. Tony Blair. The Democratic Party. Larry David. Tom Brady. Fortune magazine. Andrew Ross Sorkin. CNBC. The bald guy from Shark Tank. BlackRock, the $10 trillion investment firm where former Obama aides go to get rich and serve as “Global Head of Sustainable Investing.”
They all vouched for Bankrupt-Fraud and his blockchain stonk machine. Like they vouched for Elizabeth Holmes and her magic blood box. Like they vouched for Michael Avenatti and his bullshit litigation racket. The Lincoln Project. OZY Media. Stacey Abrams.
These are people who demand to be taken seriously. You know the type. You’ve probably heard them ranting about gullible rubes being duped by “misinformation,” or denouncing half the country as irredeemably stupid, unserious, and uncultured.
Shockingly enough, most normal Americans are starting to suspect our elite overlords are full of shit, and the elite overlords are freaking out. This lack of fealty to their expertise is not merely misguided, we are told. It’s an existential crisis imperiling American democracy.
This raises an interesting question: What in the actual f— is wrong with these people?
Bankman-Fried was the next J.P. Morgan. They actually said that. Of course they did. They adored his dorm-room bong-rip attire and corresponding philosophy—”effective altruism”—through which their capitalist sins can be absolved by attending charity galas and buying hideous art at silent auctions. Better yet, they can start a charitable foundation to avoid paying the tax rates they are constantly trying to raise on everyone else. Giving money to Democrats is also encouraged.
Time and time again, the unwashed masses of non-experts have watched the elite overlords get scammed by charismatic frauds, or team up to incinerate multiple Powerball jackpots—or in one case the entire global economy—only to shrug it off as a “whoopsie” and repeat.
They’ve been mocked as morally depraved by the same people who partied with Harvey Weinstein and attended his political fundraisers. The same people who hobnobbed with Jeffrey Epstein—before andafter his conviction for sex crimes.
They’ve been lectured at for driving SUVs and complaining about gas prices by millionaires who fly around the world on leather sofas in private jets with nicknames like “Air F— One” and “Lolita Express,” and shamed for being unable to afford an electric car that costs more than their annual salary.
They’ve been denounced as racist and subjected to corporate diversity training by woke weirdos who say “Latinx” and hyperventilate about “Jim Crow on steroids” when voter turnout is through the roof. The same people who attack successful black conservatives as angry, ignorant traitors.
They were told it was totally unreasonable to want their children to go back to school during the pandemic by the same experts who said mass public gatherings were safe as long as they were supporting a righteous left-wing cause.
They were called “out of touch” by the same political gurus who touted Beto O’Rourke, Elizabeth Warren, and Pete Buttigieg as the next generation of transformative leaders.
And they wonder why no one takes them seriously anymore.
