“SMALL AND SAFE” GATHERINGS BUILDING UP OVER TIME ARE A NECESSARY STRATEGY FOR CONSERVATIVES BURNED BY THE JANUARY 6TH FBI-LED “INSURRECTION”.

NEW YORK – Over a hundred conservative-leaning demonstrators gathered at the Collect Pond Park in Lower Manhattan Monday evening, intent on showing support for embattled former President Donald J. Trump, who is expected to be indicted by New York County District attorney over the matter of “hush money” payments to former pornographic actress “Stormy Daniels”.

Trump, who called for demonstrations on his Truth Social account this week while hinting at a Tuesday indictment, is widely expected to be prosecuted over a long-alleged, low-level business misdemeanor. In defense of the 45th President of the United States, protestors gathered in the shadow of the New York District Attorney’s office.

Left-wing critics as well as ostensibly right-wing Trump detractors – including vocal supporters of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis – were quick to mock the New York Young Republicans for failing to turn out larger numbers, who responded by pointing out that the “Occupy” protests held in the nearby Zuccotti Park in 2009 began with just a few dozen dedicated attendees.

Attendees on Monday night also came in all shapes and sizes, reflective perhaps of the diversity of New York City, but also the breadth of support enjoyed by President Trump, rarely featured in the media.

Pro-Trump, anti-Chinese Communist Party demonstrators hailing from China spoke with The National Pulse about their support of Trump, explaining that political persecution was the norm in their lives before they fled their homelands.

“We know what this is, what this looks like, and we are here to oppose it, and to warn people. This is what the CCP does,” one activist remarked.

The event was audibly scored by the profane rantings of a homeless man who police say “is a regular” in the park. Corporate media reporters thronged to the hoodie-wearing vagrant (picture above, right) in order to portray him as a “counter protester”. In reality, the man was evidently unwell.

The peaceful nature of the demonstration appeared to rankle reporters, who began the evening by broadcasting that the protest would turn into “another insurrection” – intentionally attempting to scare off Trump supporters. They ended their night by reporting that media outnumbered protestors by – in some obviously invented statistics – up to 10 to one.

While this was evidently not the case, it seemed rather apparent that both fearful conservatives and corporate media reporters had attempted to dissuade people from attending. Even so, amongst those present, the feeling was that of “small and safe” beginnings, rather than having attempted to fill the park with members of the public for hours.

Organizers told The National Pulse they were pleased with both the turnout and reaction from the press, whose mass turnout themselves demonstrated the power of the Trump movement over his potential primary opponents.

Criticisms of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis were abundant amongst attendees, who expected the self-styled “pitbull Trump defender” to do more than wash his hands of the impending indictment of Florida-resident Trump, while repeating the language of the corporate media surrounding the Stormy Daniels “affair”.

Organizers were also bullish about future planned events, discussing next steps and national rallies in the event of a politicized Trump indictment and trial.

Putting conservative activists in downtown Manhattan on a Monday evening isn’t the easiest feat. And yet scores flocked to the location, after work, in a hostile environment, in order to demonstrate their support for a man so routinely persecuted by his political opponents that for many, it has become less than noteworthy.

The actions of the New York Young Republican Club last night, however, brought it once again to national attention.

What may be the biggest racket of the century won’t hit prime time news anytime soon. Yet, internal documents and correspondence reveal this government agency—instead of working to protect your health—may be in the business of actually creating public health threats so it can profit from them.

Story at-a-Glance

• Under the Bayh-Dole Act, government scientists can collect royalties from drug companies for discoveries they make while working on the public’s dime.
• Taxpayers fund government research, while Big Pharma, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and NIH scientists keep all the profits.
• As a patent holder who profits from royalties, the NIH has a significant stake in regulations that impact patents and vaccine mandates, and may use its influence to benefit itself rather than the public.
• The NIH distributes $32 billion of taxpayer funds as research grants each year. As the largest federal grant-maker, the NIH has a monopoly on what research gets done and what doesn’t.
• Scientists vying for grants also recognize that in order to get funding, they have to play by the rules, and that means doing work that supports establishment narratives on public health policy.

In late February 2023, Moderna agreed to pay $400 million to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) for the patent it holds on Moderna’s mRNA shot.¹

The patent process is a part of the COVID mRNA shots that the media haven’t really addressed and people in general don’t know anything about—probably because it’s a total racket. Based on internal documents and correspondence, it appears the NIAID funded the creation of SARS-CoV-2. At the same time, it patented and receives royalty payments for the “vaccine” against said virus.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is supposed to be the primary government agency responsible for public health research, but by the looks of it, it appears instead to be in the business of creating public health threats in order to profit from them.

And the agency itself isn’t the only one raking in profits. Many patents are held by individuals working at the NIH/NIAID. So, taxpayers fund research that may or may not work out, while Big Pharma, the NIH and individuals at the NIH profit from products that end up on the market. This is a clear conflict of interest that can hurt public health in any number of ways.

For starters, it incentivizes the NIH to support and promote potentially dangerous drugs, as we’ve clearly seen during the COVID pandemic. The NIH also has a significant stake in regulations that impact patents and vaccine mandates, and may use its influence to benefit itself rather than the public.

Conflicts of Interest Influence Public Health Policy

In the Full Measure video above, investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson reports the findings of watchdog group Open The Books, which recently took a deep dive into “the issue of government scientists collecting royalty payments from pharmaceutical companies for discoveries made while working on your dime.”

The NIH distributes $32 billion of taxpayer funds as research grants each year. As the largest federal grant-maker, the NIH has a monopoly on what research gets done and what doesn’t.

According to OpenTheBooks.com founder and CEO Adam Andrzejewski, the NIH distributes $32 billion of taxpayer funds as research grants each year to an estimated 56,000 different entities. “That basically buys you the entire American health care space,” he says.

As the largest federal grant-maker, the NIH has a monopoly on what research gets done and what doesn’t, as it decides which scientists and projects get that money. Scientists vying for grants also recognize that in order to get a piece of that pie, they have to play by the rules, and that means doing work that supports establishment narratives on public health policy.

But that’s not all. The NIH is also gobbling up patents, which further weakens its incentive to protect and promote what’s truly in the public’s best interest due to the financial conflicts of interest that come into play.

How the Third-Party Royalty Complex Works

As explained by Andrzejewski, under the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act, government scientists can collect royalties from drug companies for discoveries they make while working on the public’s dime:

“Here’s how the third-party royalty complex works. You have a government scientist funded by taxpayers, and they work in a government lab that’s also funded by taxpayers. And when they have an invention [a drug, device, or therapeutic] … the NIH … then licenses that invention … to the private sector.

“And the private sector then pays royalties back to NIH. NIH then distributes those royalties on a royalty split schedule, back to the scientist. Details of those royalty payments to government scientists are kept as strictly held secrets.”

In fact, these royalty payments are kept under such closed wraps, scientists who receive them aren’t even required to divulge them on their financial statements, let alone to the public. Congress can’t even access those data.

In mid-June 2022, Sen. Rand Paul questioned then-NIAID chief Dr. Anthony Fauci about whether he’d ever received royalty payments from an entity to which he had given a research grant, and whether he or anyone else on the vaccine committee had ever received payments from vaccine makers.² Fauci suffered one of his now-famous lapses of memory and wouldn’t answer.

NIH Fights to Shield Conflicted Parties

Paul’s questioning of Fauci came on the heels of a lawsuit filed against the NIH to obtain these payment disclosures. The lawsuit was filed by Open The Books in October 2021. But while the NIH eventually did release them, many of the most crucial pieces of information were redacted, and Paul’s attempt to get answers led nowhere. As noted by Andrzejewski:

“That lawsuit unearthed 3,000 pages of royalty payments to NIH scientists from 2010 to 2021. During that time, 2,407 government scientists received $325 million in secretive royalty payments, averaging out to more than $135,000 each.

“But much is left unknown. NIH redacted or blacked out key details. We don’t know who paid it. We don’t know how much each individual scientist received. We can only see their names and count the number of times that each scientist received a payment.

“And they also redacted the invention, the license number or the patent number … So, every single one of those individual, third-party royalty payments has the appearance of a conflict of interest …

“We need to be able to follow the money. Unelected bureaucrats are running the entire American health care complex without any scrutiny. They’re basically telling the American people, ‘Sit down, shut up, pay up. We’ll run things.’ And that’s not how the federal government is supposed to operate.”

COVID Jabs Are Rife With Conflicts of Interest

Conflicts of interest also appear to have played a role in the U.S. government’s preferential treatment of Pfizer and Moderna during the pandemic. Pfizer was the first to receive government authorization for its COVID jab, and it just so happens to be part of an NIH royalty-sharing agreement.

Moderna also has such an agreement. What this all means is that the NIH helped invent certain technologies that went into these shots, and then licensed those technologies to Pfizer and Moderna in return for royalty payments.

So, the NIH has been making tens of millions of dollars from the COVID shots. Could that financial incentive influence the NIH’s stance on vaccine mandates? What do you think?

As you may recall, Johnson & Johnson’s COVID jab was vilified for causing blood clots, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) even limited the authorized use of the Janssen shot to people over the age of 18 who have no access to Moderna’s or Pfizer’s jabs, and/or those who voluntarily opt for the Janssen shot, understanding the risks.³

Meanwhile, Pfizer’s and Moderna’s shots also cause blood clots, but neither of them was placed under restrictions. Instead, both were added to the U.S. childhood and adult vaccination schedules. Janssen wasn’t.

The NIH Royalty Cash Cow

The NIH’s secret royalties and the conflicts of interest these payments create were also addressed by “Rising” hosts Robby Soave and Briahna Joy Gray in a recent episode (video above). Alexander Zaitchik, author of “Owning the Sun: A People’s History of Monopoly Medicine from Aspirin to COVID-19 Vaccines,” also joined them on the program.

In Zaitchik’s view, the biggest scandal is not that government scientists are receiving royalty payments from drug companies but, rather, the intimate relationship that exists between government and “an industry that is using the monopoly system to price gouge the American people.”

“The NIH has basically abandoned its role to serve the public,” Zaitchik says, “and instead has become much too aligned with the industry and is an enabler, an accomplice and a protector of these monopolies. The vaccines are a point in case.

“Government science was basically given, along with these massive research subsidies, through Warp Speed, to Moderna, for example. And there were no public interest provisions attached.

“There were no pricing promises, there were no requests that technology be transferred [shared] with other parts of the world. It was basically a conveyor belt for private industry … So, for me, the real problem is NIH [being] fully aligned with industry on the monopoly question when public science is involved …”

Public Gets Fleeced Coming and Going

When public monies are being used for research, any scientific discoveries ought to be used for the public’s benefit, and the patents should remain public property with broad licensing rights.

This used to be the default position, but not anymore. In the 1970s, Big Pharma convinced Congress that this policy was slowing down innovation, and that if companies were allowed to claim exclusive rights to the patents, they’d be more apt to innovate. The Bayh-Dole Act was an outgrowth of this.

But we can now see why and how that doesn’t work. Public health is literally being sacrificed for profit, and since government agencies are in on it, there’s no one left to look out for the public’s interests.

Additionally, the public ends up getting fleeced twice. First, our tax dollars are being used to fund the research that private companies then lay claim to, and then we end up paying top dollar for the products we funded the development of, as there’s no price competition.

As noted by Zaitchik, while the Bayh-Dole Act is a bad law, it does have a rider that says generic production of drugs created with government funding can be mandated. However, every time patient groups have approached the NIH and asked for this provision to be enforced, as the monopoly is hurting patients who cannot afford the exorbitant prices, the NIH has rejected those requests.

For example, the U.S. Army invented a breakthrough prostate cancer drug, and Americans are paying six times the price for this drug compared to other parts of the world. But even though the government has the power to lower the price by mandating generic production, it refuses to do so.

“The whole system, up and down, has been completely corrupted by the amount of money and power the industry has been allowed to amass, because of the corruption in the patent system in general,” Zaitchik says.

Big Pharma Endangers Public Health

In closing, I’d like to draw attention to a paper published in Surgical Neurology International in October 2022, titled “The Pharmaceutical Industry Is Dangerous to Health. Further Proof With COVID-19.”⁴

“The COVID-19 period highlights a huge problem that has been developing for decades, the control of science by industry,” the author, Fabien Deruelle, an independent researcher in France, writes.

“In the 1950s, the tobacco industry set the example, which the pharmaceutical industry followed. Since then, the latter has been regularly condemned for illegal marketing, misrepresentation of experimental results, dissimulation of information about the dangers of drugs, and considered as criminal.

“Therefore, this study was conducted to show that knowledge is powerfully manipulated by harmful corporations, whose goals are: 1) financial; 2) to suppress our ability to make choices to acquire global control of public health.”

Deruelle’s paper reviews a long list of techniques that drug companies use to shape and control the science, including the following:

1. Falsification of clinical trials and making data inaccessible.
2. Faked studies.
3. Conflict-of-interest studies.
4. Concealment of the jab’s short-term side effects.
5. Concealment of the fact there is no knowledge of the long-term effects of the COVID-19 jab.
6. Dubious composition of the COVID shots, with many ingredients remaining unlisted.
7. Inadequate testing methods.
8. Conflicts of interest within governments and international organizations.
9. Bribing of physicians.
10. Denigration of renowned scientists who express differing views.
11. The banning of alternative effective treatments.
12. Unscientific countermeasures that eviscerate liberties and freedoms.
13. Government use of behavior modification and social engineering techniques to impose isolation, masks wearing, and vaccine acceptance.
14. Scientific censorship by the media.

White Collar Crooks Are Running the Show

Deruelle points out that all but one of the primary drug companies producing COVID “vaccines”—Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Merck, and Johnson & Johnson—have long criminal histories, having been busted and fined huge sums for illegal marketing, recommending drugs for off-label use, misrepresenting trial results, and concealing information about known dangers of their drugs. Moderna is the only exception, as it’s only been around since 2010. Deruelle writes:⁵

“In 2007, Merck paid $670 million, in 2009, Pfizer paid $2.3 billion, in 2010, AstraZeneca paid $520 million, and in 2012, Johnson and Johnson paid a fine of $1.1 billion …

“Since 1995, Pfizer has been assessed more than $6.5 billion in penalties for 42 instances of misconduct; 36 instances of misconduct since 1995, resulting in over $11.5 billion in penalties for Johnson and Johnson; 35 instances of misconduct since 1995 and $8.8 billion in penalties for Merck.

“Pfizer is singled out as having persistent criminal behavior and casual disregard for the health and well-being of patients. Pfizer is no different from other pharmaceutical companies, but it is larger and more egregious. Pfizer is a habitual offender, persistently engaging in illegal business practices, bribing physicians, and suppressing unfavorable trial results.”

Will Pfizer Stand Trial?

True to form, Pfizer is also accused of scientific fraud in its COVID-19 jab trial. Brook Jackson, who worked at one of Pfizer’s trial sites, sued Pfizer in 2021 for violating the False Claims Act.⁶ U.S. District Judge Michael Truncale heard oral arguments on the motions to dismiss on March 1.

As reported by The Epoch Times on March 2 ⁷ defense attorneys for Pfizer argued that “whether protocol violations occurred was ultimately irrelevant because the federal government was made aware of them but still granted emergency authorization to Pfizer’s vaccine.”

Jackson’s lawyers countered by saying the FDA authorized the vaccine before reviewing Jackson’s complaint. Judge Truncale has not issued a ruling as of this writing, and Jackson’s attorney suspects it may be weeks or even months before the judge issues his opinion.⁸

Conflicts of Interest Shaped COVID Responses

Deruelle also specifically delves into the conflicts of interest and relationships between the drug companies involved during COVID-19 and governments, international organizations, and media — and how they worked the COVID “emergency” for their own benefit. Here are some select excerpts:⁹

“In 2009, the H1N1 episode should already have been enough to reveal that governments and the WHO [World Health Organization] are not autonomous. Work has shown that the 2009 H1N1 pandemic seems (based on case fatality rates [CFRs]) to have been the mildest influenza pandemic on record. Following investigations by the BMJ, it appears that this event declared by the WHO is significantly tainted by conflicts of interest.

“A report by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has heavily criticized the WHO, national governments, and EU agencies for their handling of the swine flu pandemic: distortion of priorities of public health services all over Europe, waste of huge sums of public money, provocation of unjustified fear among Europeans, and creation of health risks through vaccines and medications which might not have been sufficiently tested before being authorized in fast-track procedures.

“According to former head of health at the Council of Europe, W. Wodarg, the swine flu outbreak was a false pandemic driven by drug companies that influenced scientists and official agencies …

“During the COVID-19 period, France hired private consulting firms, mainly McKinsey and Company, which is known for working with pharmaceutical companies. The Senate Inquiry Commission reports that McKinsey contributed on all aspects of the health crisis, notably for social engineering strategies on the vaccination campaign and the extension of the health pass …

“The suppression of good science and scientists is not new, but COVID-19 unleashed state corruption on a grand scale, suppressing science for political and financial reasons … Since the beginning of COVID-19, much scientific data and expert opinion have been censored or labeled as false or misleading by many internet platforms …

“In June 2019, the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the United Nations signed a partnership (2030 agenda). In the field of health, this alliance is designed to combat key emerging global health threats and achieve universal health coverage. In October 2019, in New York City, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and its partners the WEF and the Gates Foundation, hosted Event 201, a fictional coronavirus pandemic …

“Among the partners of the WEF, there are: Pfizer, AstraZeneka [sic], Johnson and Johnson, Moderna, McKinsey, and Facebook et [sic] Google. A few months later, a coronavirus pandemic is declared, accompanied by its highly mediatized universal solution, the vaccine …

“In addition to Event 201, other pandemic simulations, civil (MARS and SPARS in 2017) and military (Dark Winter in 2001, Atlantic Storm in 2003, and 2005, Global mercury in 2003, and Crimson Contagion in 2019), have taken place over the past 20 years. All these simulations correspond to fear programs induced by false media.

“For the general welfare of the population, all these scenarios lead to the same methods (identical to those used during COVID-19): Isolation, control of movements and liberties, censorship, propaganda, and coercive vaccination of the population …

“[T]here is no doubt that this is an event manipulated by governments, international agencies, pharmaceutical industries, and the media. In addition to the huge profits obtained by the pharmaceutical groups involved, the primary goal of this ‘pandemic’ seems to be compulsory vaccination, because the introduction of a European vaccine passport had already been planned since 2019 …

“The objective of the WHO is to impose the Chinese model to become the norm. That is to say, a system with centralization of each person’s health data and restriction of freedoms for the unvaccinated … A period such as COVID-19 represents a powerful lever for increasing the effectiveness of global governance.”

Conflicts of Interest Threaten Our Freedom

In the final analysis, conflicts of interest and the collusion between government and industry does more than rob us of our hard-earned money. It now threatens our very freedom, as these monopolies are being used to further a totalitarian takeover of global proportions.

As such, we can no longer turn a blind eye or accept excuses such as “these relationships don’t influence our decision-making.” They absolutely influence the decisions being made, and the public is consistently on the losing end. Congress needs to start taking this seriously, and revisit laws such as the Bayh-Dole Act, which is currently allowing private monopolies to profit while no one is looking out for our interests.

Originally published March 21, 2023, on Mercola.com

◇ References:

• ¹ Fierce Pharma Feb. 24, 2023
• ² KRCR News June 16, 2022
• ³ Yahoo News May 5, 2022
• ^4, 5, 9 Surgical Neurology International October 2022; 13: 475
• ⁶ NTD Feb. 23, 2023
• ⁷ The Epoch Times March 2, 2023
• ⁸ Newstarget March 14, 2023

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Activists say family members held at gunpoint by FBI more than a year after attending protests at abortion clinics

Jonathan Darnel woke at 5:30 a.m. to fists pounding on his door.

There was a crash as it was torn from its hinges, then shouts of armed men, he told The Epoch Times.

Without warning, FBI agents swarmed in to arrest him.

His crime: participating in what he calls a “peaceful pro-life protest” nearly two years prior.

Similar scenes have played out at the homes of several of the 26 pro-life activists arrested nationwide in 2022 and 2023. Some were given the opportunity to turn themselves in. At least one was arrested at work.

Many of these pro-life activists now face up to a year in prison for violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. They also could be sentenced to more than 10 more years for the charge of “conspiracy against rights,” because they were acting in a group.

As of yet, none have been sentenced. At least one was taken from his home at gunpoint as his wife demanded to see a warrant and his terrified children cried.

An 11-year sentence would be an unprecedented punishment for participating in protests that were not violent, a legal expert told The Epoch Times.

Unequal Treatment?

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has deployed predawn raids with dozens of armed agents and coordinated ambushes against these protesters whose alleged crimes neither damaged property nor harmed people.

Yet attacks on centers that seek to give pregnant women options other than abortion have failed to attract the same attention from federal law enforcement.

There were 82 confirmed attacks on crisis pregnancy centers in 2022, according to Catholic Vote, an organization that “advocates living out the Catholic faith in public life.” As of March 2023, the FBI has arrested just two people thought to be responsible for some of the attacks, the organization noted.

In a press release, the FBI said it is continuing to investigate threats against pregnancy resource centers, faith-based organizations, and abortion clinics.

“The incidents are being investigated as potential acts of domestic violent extremism, FACE Act violations, or violent crime matters, depending on the facts of each case,” the statement reads. “The FBI takes all violence and threats of violence very seriously and we are working closely with our law enforcement partners at the national, state, and local levels to investigate these incidents.”

The Epoch Times reached out to the DOJ for comment but didn’t receive a response by press time.

Rounding up Pro-Life Activists

Federal agents forced their way into the homes of at least three pro-life activists in 2022.

The raids have left children terrorized, homes damaged, and families worried about their future.

And in the wake of the raids, families’ lives are forever changed, as the charged activists face the uncertainty of prison time and legal bills that quickly mount into the six-figure range.

In the case of Darnel, the FBI agents wouldn’t let him change clothes before taking him from his home on that chilly morning.

So he walked into the agency’s Washington headquarters on March 30, 2022, in a sweater, pajamas, and shoes with laces removed, he told The Epoch Times.

Agents didn’t tell him why he’d been brought in, he said.

“I’d just woken up,” Darnell told The Epoch Times almost a year later, as he awaits trial. “I was trying to plan my day in my head.”

Soon after his arrest, Darnel discovered that he faced 11 years in prison for his role in protest he characterizes as peaceful.

Other crimes that carry a similar sentence include arson, kidnapping, and negligent homicide.

FBI agents didn’t show him a warrant, he said.

“It was just an early morning dawn raid—grab this guy and throw him in a car and drive off with him,” said Darnel, the founder of the Christian, pro-life website GetSeriousChurch.com. “It was very, very spooky.”

Before he could make sense of what was happening, agents had smashed through two doors in his home, he said.

“I guess I delayed too long.”

Darnel’s housemate, Ed Caughlan, and three others in the home confirmed the details. They described looking down the barrels of pointed at them, while a bomb disposal robot waited outside.

Bewildered, Darnel’s four roommates were handcuffed and forced to sit against a wall inside.

“The most vivid image was multiple M16s being pointed at me, as I answered the downstairs door to a peacetime standing army,” Caughlan said.

En route to the FBI facility, Darnel tried to tell agents they were in the wrong.

“If they’re called upon to arrest people for trying to save babies or give babies a decent burial, they really need to reconsider their line of work,” he said.

Nationwide Prosecution of Protesters

The protesters with Darnel at the Washington Surgi-Clinic weren’t the only pro-life protesters to face harsh law enforcement tactics over the past two years.

The DOJ also has filed charges against 11 pro-life protesters who say they entered peacefully and simply sat down in a Mount Juliet, Tennessee, abortion clinic in March 2021. They face possible sentences of up to 11 years in prison for violating the FACE Act and conspiracy against rights.

Eight other protesters were charged and face similar sentences for violating the FACE Act and conspiracy against rights for blockading a Sterling Heights, Michigan, abortion clinic by sitting and praying in front of the door in August 2020.

These groups have some overlap.

Protesters Chester Gallagher, Calvin Zastrow, and Caroline Davis each face one 11-year sentence for blocking access to both the Mount Juliet abortion clinic and another 11-year sentence for blocking the Sterling Heights clinic.

Eva Edl and Eva Zastrow each face an 11-year sentence for violating the FACE Act and conspiracy against rights for blocking access to the Sterling Heights clinic. They also both face a potential one-year sentence for violating the FACE Act at the Mount Juliet clinic.

Heather Idoni, who participated in all three protests, faces three 11-year sentences.

In a separate incident, the government charged Rev. Fidelis Moscinski, a Catholic priest in Hempstead, New York, for violating the FACE Act. He used chains to block a clinic entrance.

And after an October 2021 dust-up with a pro-abortion activist at an abortion clinic in Philadelphia, armed agents surprised pro-life activist Mark Houck at his home in a pre-dawn raid. As his children cried and his wife asked for information, they put him in a car and drove away, charging him with violating the FACE Act.

Houck is the founder of a Catholic men’s mentorship group, The King’s Men, according to the DOJ website.

Before that, Houck’s attorneys had told federal prosecutors he was willing to submit himself to the FBI if needed for questioning.

It appeared the FBI didn’t want him to come in on his own, Houck said.

Breakfast Interrupted

It was before dawn, and Houck was whipping up a quiche for his wife and seven homeschooled children.

“I hear a heavy banging at the door, and the doorbell is rung repeatedly,” Houck told The Epoch Times. “And all I hear outside is someone yelling, ‘Open up!’ like there’s some sort of problem outside.”

He wondered if there had been an emergency, he said, or if there was a “madman trying to get into my house.”

Nearly a year had passed since his scuffle with a pro-abortion activist. So that wasn’t on his mind, he said.

When he opened the door, he saw FBI agents wearing bullet-proof vests and ballistic helmets. There were 15 law enforcement vehicles and two battering rams.

Then there were the guns.

State police pointed pistols at him, he said. Five agents on his porch holding shields pointed M16 rifles at him, and then they pointed the guns at his wife, Ryan-Marie Houck, as well, he said.

A senior FBI source told Fox News that Houck never had guns pointed at him. Houck told The Epoch Times that the denial is “patently false.”

Behind Houck and his wife, their seven children stood on the stairs terrified and weeping.

“It was just completely reckless, because someone could have been shot,” Houck said.

And when his wife asked for a warrant, Houck said, the agent replied, “We’re taking him, with or without a warrant.”

‘They wanted to scare pro-life America’

The FBI cuffed Houck, put him in a black SUV, and drove him away in his flip-flops, shorts, and T-shirt. He wasn’t allowed to put on clothes or brush his teeth, he said.

“They didn’t even give me permission to say goodbye to my children,” Houck said.

Houck was belly-shackled, with handcuffs that connected to a chain around his stomach. He was held for six hours, cuffed to a table at a local federal office, he said.

Agents fingerprinted him, interrogated him, and conducted a hearing. They released him 10 hours later, he said, after indicating that they’d determined he wasn’t a flight risk and posed no threat to the community.

“You have to ask yourself, why the tremendous show of force when they knew that already?”

On Jan. 30, 2023, a jury found Houck not guilty of violating the FACE Act.

But Houck still wonders why he was arrested with such force, and in a way he believes put his family’s safety at risk.

He doesn’t have a criminal record and owns no guns, he told The Epoch Times. He also said he has no skills dangerous enough to justify using over 15 armed agents to arrest him, he added.

“It’s not logical,” Houck said. “They wanted to show and silence other pro-lifers and scare pro-life America.”

According to the FBI, there are “inaccurate claims being made” about Houck’s arrest.

“The FBI then employs the personnel and tactics deemed necessary to effect a safe arrest or search,” reads a written statement about Houck’s arrest.

“While it’s the FBI’s standard practice not to discuss such operational specifics, we can say that the number of personnel and vehicles widely reported as being on scene Friday is an overstatement, and the tactics used by FBI personnel were professional, in line with standard practices, and intended to ensure the safety of everyone present in and outside the residence,” the statement reads.

Conflicting Details

Others involved have questioned whether the dramatic arrests, including predawn raids and coordinated multi-state round-ups, were warranted.

Houck had been providing sidewalk counseling outside a Planned Parenthood clinic in Philadelphia with his 12-year-old son Mark, Jr. on Oct. 13, 2021. He was trying to talk women approaching the clinic out of abortion.

The details of exactly what happened vary, depending on who’s telling the story.

According to Houck, trouble began when a 72-year-old clinic escort approached and started aggressively telling Mark, Jr. that his father was a bad person who was hurting women.

“He’s extremely vulgar, very belligerent. He’s taught my son the F-word,” Houck said.

Houck’s son backed away, but the person continued to approach, staying within feet of the boy, while hurling insults, Houck alleged.

Fuming, Houck shoved the person away from his son, he said. Houck’s attorney said the men weren’t near anyone else.

The person fell, but got up with nothing more than a scraped arm, Houck said.

The clinic escort’s criminal complaint against Houck differs from Houck’s account.

In a criminal trial in the U.S. District Court of the East District of Pennsylvania, the person said Houck verbally confronted him and shoved him while he was escorting women out of Planned Parenthood, according to a DOJ press release.

A half-hour later, Houck allegedly walked over to him, threatened him, then shoved him again, the person testified. The person also said he never spoke to Houck’s son.

The Epoch Times contacted the Philadelphia Planned Parenthood where the incident took place, but didn’t receive comment by press time. The Epoch Times also reached out to the clinic escort but did not receive a reply.

Prior to his acquittal by a jury, Houck had faced the possibility of 11 years in prison.

More Punishment for Protestors

The chain of events that brought Darnel to FBI headquarters in March 2022 began 17 months earlier, on Oct. 22, 2020.

On that day, Darnel—along with other pro-lifers, and some activists with the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU)—acted out what they call a “direct action rescue” at the Washington Surgi-Clinic abortion center.

The nine-person group included people from many backgrounds, including evangelical Christians, Catholics, progressives, and anarchists.

They all agreed that abortion was murder and they planned to peacefully oppose it by trying to enter the clinic and persuade women not to go through with abortion.

Darnel’s website encourages all Christians to dedicate 2 percent of their time to peaceful action against abortion. He’s been arrested “many times” by police, he said, for what he describes as peaceful protest.

But no sacrifice is too great, because “there are millions of children being murdered in the nation every year,” he told The Epoch Times.

Pro-abortion activist group We Engage posted pictures of the Surgi-Clinic protest on its Facebook page. The pictures show pro-life activists tied or chained to chairs inside the clinic. The chairs appear to block one door inside the clinic.

Activist Will Goodman was part of the group that day.

Surgi-Clinic staff allegedly became violent when they entered the building, Goodman told The Epoch Times. Clinic workers attacked group members and attempted to slam doors on the fingers of Goodman and fellow protester Idoni, he alleged.

“They were even using a broom handle or a mop handle to hit the pro-lifers, who were now on the ground,” Goodman said.

In response, the pro-life protesters went limp, as they’d been trained, he said.

“Rev. [Martin Luther] King [Jr.] taught that we will not use violence to end violence. Rather, it is through non-violent direct action, through mercy and dialogue, that we will try to change hearts.”

The Epoch Times contacted the Washington Surgi-Clinic abortion center to respond to the allegations but didn’t receive a comment by press time.

Arrested, But Not Charged

During the confrontation between the protestors and Surgi-Clinic staff, men in suits arrived, Goodman said. They watched, and they photographed the pro-life band.

Goodman suspected the bystanders were federal attorneys from the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ. Other pro-life participants said they suspected the men were with the FBI.

After the men in suits had watched for a while, police arrested Goodman, Darnel, Idoni, PAAU activism director Lauren Handy, Jay Smith, Paulette Harlow, Jean Marshall, John Hinshaw, and Joan Bell.

Bell, the oldest, was 74. Five group members were older than 60.

While in jail, group members faced interrogation from FBI agents, Goodman said. Both he and Darnel said they didn’t recall police reading them their rights.

“All of us were essentially interrogated under duress and without being given clear direction that we should have our counsel present when being interrogated by the FBI,” he said.

They spent hours in Washington’s Second District Police Department, but were never charged, he said.

Two years later, in March 2022, FBI agents swept in to arrest all of them at almost the same time in a coordinated, multi-state operation.

FBI Infiltrators

After their arrests, the activists started to wonder if the FBI had been trailing them, Handy told The Epoch Times.

PAAU members knew for sure that the FBI had infiltrated their activist planning meetings, said Terrisa Bukovinac, the group’s executive director.

An agent produced an audio recording of a group meeting in January 2023 to argue in federal court that, by planning a protest, Handy had violated her terms of release from jail after being arrested in October 2020.

“We were very concerned about pro-abortion people infiltrating,” Bukovinac said. “We weren’t really thinking about the FBI.”

Bukovinac said the FBI plant was a man who called himself Eric Mike Santos. Santos arrived at PAAU’s online meeting late, left early, and emailed Handy, asking for information about her plans.

“We realized [later] that he was the only person no one knew,” Bukovinac said. “We went back to look at his Facebook page, and it had been deleted.”

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and U.S. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) wrote a letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland pressing him for answers on the alleged FBI infiltration of PAAU’s meeting and why it happened.

Other events also suggested the FBI had infiltrated PAAU, Bukovinac said.

In one incident, a PAAU member used a fake social media account to ask about a planned pro-abortion protest by Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights (RU4AR).

PAAU members hoped to stealthily obtain the details so they could prepare a counterprotest, Bukovinac said.

A representative of RU4AR replied and asked the PAAU member to plan a pro-abortion protest event, she said.

The PAAU member posing as a pro-abortion activist agreed, Bukovinac said. Fellow members were giddy about the plan to pretend to arrange a pro-abortion demonstration for RU4AR, she said.

When RU4AR members showed up, PAAU members plotted to surprise them with a pro-life demonstration, complete with media coverage, Bukovinac said.

“We were hysterically laughing about this plan for a week,” said Bukovinac. “It was so hilarious.”

But 10 minutes before the protest was scheduled, RU4AR somehow caught on to the trick, she said. The group removed online details about the protest and blocked PAAU members on social media.

Somehow, Bukovinac said, RU4AR members learned PAAU was planning the event, not as a pro-abortion protest, but as a pro-life gathering. She blames a mole, possibly a tip-off from the FBI.

“They found out somehow, and we didn’t know how,” she said.

In another incident, PAAU planned to protest at three Washington abortion clinics.

“Our plan is to go in, hand out roses, and leave,” Bukovinac said.

But, when the pro-life activists rolled up, all three clinics had police present, she said.

“We’re like, what the hell? There’s no way they were at all 21 abortion centers in the DMV area. How would they know it’s these three?” she said.

Then, a plainclothes police officer revealed to a journalist accompanying PAAU that the group was under surveillance, Bukovinac said.

The journalist, she said, told the group that the officer had said, “We’re tracking everything they’re doing. We know where they’re going when we see their conversations.”

The Raids

On March 30, 2022, FBI agents arrested eight participants in the Surgi-Clinic protest, all within a few hours of each other, Handy said. It was 17 months after the incident.

Some were taken quietly. Some faced armed agents.

That morning, messages and calls alerted Handy to the FBI sweep.

Moscinski, the priest, was first to call Handy to tell her the FBI had arrested another ally, Hinshaw.

“You need to prepare yourself,” he advised.

Then Darnel didn’t return messages, and Handy learned from one of his roommates about the raid on their house in Alexandria, Virginia.

“The FBI just took him! What’s going on?” the baffled roommate asked.

Handy, who wasn’t home, wondered when they’d come for her. It already had been a nightmarish day.

She feared the FBI would visit her parent’s house because she’d just moved from there, she said. She headed to her apartment in an Uber, she said.

When she stepped out, the street burst into activity.

About 10 suited FBI agents jumped from black vehicles and rushed at her.

“It was so surreal,” Handy said, recalling a female agent gently removing her eyebrow piercings.

Soon, she found herself in the roach-infested Central Cell Block in Washington.

“I was like, ‘OK, I understand what’s happening now,’” she said.

Police let her out before the end of the day. She was charged with conspiracy against rights because she’d been part of the group at the Surgi-Clinic confrontation. She also was charged with violating the FACE Act.

But Handy didn’t feel bothered by her arrest, she said. She was still trying to process the horror she’d witnessed over the previous few days.

Human Remains Found

Before returning to her apartment, Handy had been trying to give police potential evidence of a horrific crime.

Five days earlier, she and her friend Bukovinac asked for help from a man collecting medical waste from a medical clinic.

They wanted to see what was being thrown away, they told him. He obliged.

As Handy began to examine the waste, she recoiled.

The baby boy didn’t have a name, but had thin black hair, perfectly formed tiny fingers and toes, and pink, slightly-peeling skin.

He was dead, dumped in a bucket of blood-dark fluid. Handy picked him up in gloved hands and cried.

Her apartment and its refrigerator would be his tomb temporarily, she decided, until she could figure out what to do next.

She called the Metropolitan Police Department. She wanted answers. Was he a baby murdered by the clinic, or a legally terminated fetus? Was his death evidence of a crime?

And he wasn’t the only one.

The medical waste allegedly included 114 more bodies of babies estimated to be aborted at up to 35 weeks’ gestation.

Broken-hearted, the woman reached out to other pro-life friends for help. A priest working with PAAU buried 110 of the bodies in an undisclosed location, Bukovinac said.

Group members kept five of the bodies to turn over to the police as potential evidence of an illegal partial-birth abortion or infanticide. Partially delivering, then killing, a growing baby has been illegal nationwide since 2003.

Handy said one could never forget holding many “murder victims in your own hands.”

Police said they couldn’t come right away, she said. In the meantime, Handy decided to stay at Bukovinac’s place out of respect for the dead.

She was headed home when she began to hear of the arrests of fellow protestors. That’s when she was taken.

“I just suffered such a massive personal trauma with finding 115 dead children that getting arrested didn’t really feel or mean anything to me,” she said.

Even more bewildering, it later seemed the FBI had used Handy’s efforts to turn over potential evidence as a way to arrest her.

On April 8, 2022, 69 Republican Congressmen sent a letter to Garland, demanding that police investigate whether the babies Bukovinac and Handy found were victims of partial-birth abortion. The letter asked for police to perform an autopsy.

A day after her arrest, Metropolitan police finally came to Handy’s home to collect the five bodies. Police still haven’t questioned her or Bukovinac about them.

“It’s just business as usual for DC police: cover up and ignore,” Bukovinac said.

Maximum Sentences for Pro-Life Protesters

The Thomas More Society represents Houck, several Surgi-Clinic protesters, several Mount Juliet pro-life protesters, and several Michigan pro-life protesters.

“People of faith and pro-life people are not going to get a fair shake out of the Biden administration,” said Peter Breen, the organization’s executive vice president and head of litigation.

The administration has stretched the law to hand pro-lifers the maximum possible sentence, he said.

The Epoch Times reached out to the White House for comment, but did not receive a response.

The FACE Act makes it a crime to use or attempt the use of force, physical obstruction, or intimidation to block access to reproductive services. Normally, a violation of the FACE Act without violence could draw a sentence of up to a year in prison and would be charged as a misdemeanor.

But the Biden administration’s DOJ also has charged pro-life protesters with conspiracy against rights, adding a penalty of up to 10 more years in prison.

Felony vs. Misdemeanor

Being convicted of a felony, instead of a misdemeanor, has long-standing consequences that are far more significant.

Convicted felons often lose voting rights permanently. They can’t own guns, so they lose their right to bear arms. They lose the right to serve on a jury. It can also be harder for felons to obtain certain jobs and housing. And felonies have harsher sentences.

Normally, for a conspiracy charge to be a felony, the crime planned by conspirators must be a felony, said Breen. It usually isn’t possible to convict someone of conspiracy felony charges if the crime they conspired to commit was a misdemeanor, he said.

But conspiracy against rights breaks this rule, Breen said. If people conspire against the rights of another person, it counts as a felony, even involving a crime that’s a misdemeanor, he said.

This law can severely punish any group of peaceful protesters who commit misdemeanors involving others’ rights, Breen explained.

In his clients’ cases, those found guilty of conspiring to block access to an abortion clinic would become felons.

“Sit-ins usually involve multiple people chatting and sitting in,” Breen said. “You don’t normally just have one person go and plop themselves down in front of an abortion clinic’s door.”

Because sit-ins or entry-blocking protests usually involve more than one person, conspiracy against rights charges can be used against them, Breen said.

It’s unprecedented to use conspiracy against rights charges to try to send peaceful protesters to prison for more than a decade, Breen said.

“The statute they’re using was intended to stop the Ku Klux Klan,” he said. “It shouldn’t have anything to do with peaceful sit-ins in an abortion clinic.”

Facing the FACE Act

The government usually allows non-violent defendants to present themselves to the justice system, instead of sending agents to arrest them, Breen said.

Even those charged with serious financial crimes often are given the opportunity to turn themselves in, he said.

But many accused of protesting abortion face armed federal agents.

Breen said he doesn’t know of anyone officially offered the option to appear on their own recognizance, instead of facing arrest.

“There was no reason to go and grab them, instead of allowing them to just present themselves,” Breen said.

Houck, Handy, Bukovinac, and Goodman told The Epoch Times they believe they didn’t violate the FACE Act or do anything to deserve charges of conspiracy against rights because they never blocked access to any abortion clinic.

Non-violent crimes, such as creating graffiti, shouldn’t land anyone in prison for a year, Bukovinac said.

Graffiti is used by some pro-abortion activists to damage crisis pregnancy centers, leaving threats and accusations on the sides of the buildings.

In the same way, protesting abortion without violence also shouldn’t lead to prison time, Bukovinac said.

Yet, the FACE Act often has been used as a weapon against the pro-life movement, she said.

“It’s applied almost exclusively throughout history to silence peaceful pro-life activism, and it needs to be repealed,” Bukovinac said.

“It’s completely unfair. It’s ineffective. It makes no sense. It’s unjust. It’s applied in an unfair way.”

Goodman said he suspects the “pro-abortion politics” of the Biden administration drive the harsh sentencing recommendations.

“We’re being treated as enemies of the state,” he said, “because we believe life is sacred.”

No Predawn Raid, No Problem

Will Goodman was the ninth Surgi-Clinic protester arrested by the FBI, 17 months after the conflict.

The FBI couldn’t find him because he’s homeless, technically, and lives on odd jobs. He describes himself as an “activist, who has given up his home for the babies,” or as a “pro-life nomad.”

To follow his passion for defending the unborn, he sleeps on friends’ couches, camps in a tent, stays at a monastery, whatever it takes to stay on the ready.

“If I’m going to rescue, it’s hard to have a regular nine-to-five job when there’s always a chance to get thrown into jail for a week or two. Or a month, or a year,” Goodman said.

A rescue refers to when a pro-life activist tries to intervene at an abortion clinic and persuade a woman from following through on a planned abortion.

In graduate school, Goodman watched a short film about abortion. Since then, he has lived on whatever money he can make to travel from anti-abortion protest to anti-abortion protest.

According to his friend Richard Bonomo, Goodman often gives away the few possessions he has.

“At some point, someone else in the movement needed a car and a cell phone, so he just gave them to them,” Bonomo said.

When the FBI came looking for Goodman, a pair of agents in jeans and flannel knocked on Bonomo’s door in Madison, Wisconsin.

The agents told him not to mention their visit.

“Of course, I’m going to tell him you are here looking for him!” Bonomo said he told the agents.

When Goodman heard the FBI wanted him for questioning, he asked his fellow crusader Moscinski for a ride to the nearest FBI headquarters. It was about 20 minutes away.

Solidarity With The Unborn

Goodman said that when he got in the car, he didn’t know he was facing the possibility of 11 years in prison.

But he was acutely aware that, in the hands of the DOJ, he controlled nothing.

“There’s a sort of spiritual solidarity I have with [the unborn] because I don’t have security and a place to live,” he said.

On the way to the FBI facility, Goodman prayed, thought, and talked of spiritual matters with Moscinski, his priest friend.

“You begin to think, ‘Lord, into your hands, I commend my spirit. I trust you know where you will want me to go,’” Goodman said.

By the end of the day, the FBI had arrested and released Goodman. He still faces the possibility of an 11-year prison sentence. His trial date has not been set yet.

Six months later, Moscinski was arrested and charged with a violation of the FACE Act, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the eastern district of New York. Fidelis was convicted, and currently awaits sentencing for his role in the Oct. 22, 2020, Washington Surgi-Clinic protest.

Goodman remembers watching the gates of the Yonkers FBI facility close behind him the day he turned himself in.

“What will happen once the federal government takes me into custody?” he remembers wondering. “What will they do with me?”

What started as an effort to protect the unborn has left the activists questioning what the future might hold.

“You feel very small,” Goodman said. “You can be crushed like a bug under a draconian system.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

A federal judge has granted a preliminary injunction against key parts of California’s Unsafe Handgun Act that would require new semiautomatic handguns to be fitted with certain safety features, finding it violates the right to bear arms under the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney on March 20 ruled in favor of the California Rifle & Pistol Association (CRPA) and four individuals who had filed a lawsuit last year challenging the constitutionality of the law in the wake of a landmark decision from the U.S. Supreme Court setting new standards for evaluating firearm restrictions.

California’s Unsafe Handgun Act, which was enacted in 1999, sought to prevent accidental discharges according to advocates, and required new handguns to have three specific safety features.

These included an indicator showing whether the handgun is loaded and a disconnect mechanism to prevent it from being fired if the magazine is not fully inserted.

Under the law, new handguns also needed to have microstamping capability, enabling microscopic characters representing the handgun’s make, model, and serial number to be transferred onto shell casings when the handgun is fired so that law enforcement officials can more easily link the used casings to the guns they were fired from.

Safety Features Not ‘Commercially Practical’

In their lawsuit, plaintiffs had argued that the law violates the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms because no handguns were being manufactured that complied with all three of those features.

Specifically, they argued that the law and subsequent design features meant that buyers in the state had simply been left unable to purchase new state-of-the-art handguns because since 2013, when the microstamping requirement was introduced, not a single new semiautomatic handgun has been approved for sale in the state.

In his ruling on Monday (pdf), Carney—who was appointed by former President George W. Bush—noted that the technology effectuating microstamping on a broad scale is “simply not technologically feasible and commercially practical,” and that as a result of the law, Californian’s purchasing handguns today are “largely restricted to models from over sixteen years ago.”

“The Second Amendment enshrines a fundamental constitutional right for law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms for self-defense,” the judge wrote. “Increasingly in modern times, with ‘the ubiquity of guns and our country’s high level of gun violence,’ ordinary law-abiding people feel a need to possess handguns to protect themselves against violence.”

“Californians have the constitutional right to acquire and use state-of-the-art handguns to protect themselves. They should not be forced to settle for decade-old models of handguns to ensure that they remain safe inside or outside the home. But unfortunately, the UHA’s CLI, MDM, and microstamping requirements do exactly that,” Carney continued.

“Because enforcing those requirements implicates the plain text of the Second Amendment, and the government fails to point to any well-established historical analogues that are consistent with them, those requirements are unconstitutional and their enforcement must be preliminarily enjoined,” the judge wrote in his ruling.

State Could Appeal Ruling

The judge ultimately ruled that the law is unconstitutional and cannot be enforced and granted a preliminary injunction against its enforcement. However, he noted the injunction will not take effect for 14 days, allowing the state a chance to appeal.

Monday’s ruling is the latest in a line of decisions striking down state gun laws following the U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year setting new standards for evaluating firearm restrictions.

Chuck Michel, president of the California Rifle & Pistol Association, welcomed Monday’s ruling in a statement, noting that the three safety features required on new handguns were “impossible to satisfy.”

“For decades this ‘roster’ law has deprived law-abiding citizens of the right to choose a handgun appropriate for their individual needs,” Michel said. “If we can hold on to this great Second Amendment win, people will be able to choose from among thousands of the latest, greatest, and safest handguns made today.”

However, California Attorney General Rob Bonta championed California’s Unsafe Handgun Act in a statement, adding that it “saves lives” and that the state will likely appeal Monday’s ruling.

“We will continue to lead efforts to advance and defend California’s gun safety laws,” said Bonta. “As we move forward to determine next steps in this case, Californians should know that this injunction has not gone into effect and that California’s important gun safety requirements related to the Unsafe Handgun Act remain in effect.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The president’s action, according to ESG critics, will help undermine asset managers’ fiduciary duty

Joe Biden issued his first veto on March 20, rejecting a bipartisan measure that would have blocked a Labor Department rule that allows pension fund managers to consider social factors and climate change in investment decisions—a rule that Republicans say is a “woke” policy that will harm retirees’ pocketbooks.

The president posted a video to Twitter defending his veto, saying it “made sense” because Congress’s resolution would “put at risk the retirement savings of individuals across the country.”

“There is extensive evidence showing that environmental, social, and governance factors can have a material impact on markets, industries, and businesses,” he said in a White House statement.

“But the Republican-led resolution would force retirement managers to ignore these relevant risk factors, disregarding the principles of free markets and jeopardizing the life savings of working families and retirees.”

The resolution was approved by the House on a 216–204 vote, while the Senate voted 50 to 46 to overturn the rule, with Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.) crossing party lines to vote with Republicans. A two-thirds majority is needed in each chamber to override a veto.

The measure targeted Biden’s “Final Rule on Prudence and Loyalty in Selecting Plan Investments and Exercising Shareholder Rights,” which became effective at the end of January.

That rule involved the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), a key pension reform measure.

ERISA and Why It Matters

According to critics, the president’s move is likely to have an impact on many Americans’ financial security in their retirement years.

ERISA was enacted to ensure that, among other things, those who manage company pension funds are held to the highest legal standard of fiduciary care, and that they act solely to maximize the financial returns for pensioners.

That law was enacted because companies weren’t honoring their pension obligations to employees and because pension managers were misappropriating retirement funds, in extreme cases using them as their own personal banks.

One of the goals of ERISA was to prevent asset tunneling, which occurs when those in control of corporate assets use them for their own purposes or personal benefit. ERISA set strict standards of fiduciary care.

Increasingly, however, pension funds are today being used to support the ESG ideology, based on the premise that it will increase returns for retirees while simultaneously solving environmental and social issues.

However, analysts argue that a closer examination of how ESG originated and what it has produced to date raises concerns about these claims.

ESG is an umbrella term that includes concepts such as climate change, critical race theory, and social justice; it embraces policies such as reducing fossil fuel production, establishing diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, and implementing corporate racial and gender quotas.

Critics assert that fund managers can’t credibly demonstrate higher returns from ESG investments, or even define ESG criteria with precision.

“It’s just a label that’s slapped on, and it’s not clear that ESG scores are related to actual improvements of any sort—environmental or social justice or the quality of governance,” Robert Wright, a senior research fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research, told The Epoch Times in an early March interview.

“Problem No. 1 is we just don’t know what these things are measuring,” Wright added. “There have been several studies that have shown that funds that have highly rated ESG companies in them do not outperform funds with lower ESG scores; they simply just charge more for the ESG label.

“That on its face doesn’t seem to be following fiduciary responsibility that you should be investing for the highest net return for pensioners.”

Several academic studies have also shown that, rather than boosting investment returns, ESG actually lowers returns.

A 2020 study by the Boston College Center for Retirement Research found that ESG investing reduced pensioners’ returns by 0.70 to 0.90 percent annually, with the majority of the difference attributable to higher management fees for ESG funds.

McCarthy Responds to Veto

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) responded to the president’s veto in a statement.

“President Biden’s first veto is against a bipartisan bill that protects retirement savings from political interference,” McCarthy said.

“It is clear that President Biden wants Wall Street to use your hard-earned money not to grow your savings, but to fund a far-left political agenda. That will hurt seniors and workers, especially after President Biden’s reckless spending caused record inflation and rapid interest rate hikes.”

Manchin (D-W.Va.) issued a statement following the veto saying: “This Administration continues to prioritize their radical policy agenda over the economic, energy and national security needs of our country, and it is absolutely infuriating.

“West Virginians are under increasing stress as we continue to recover from a once in a generation pandemic, pay the bills amid record inflation, and face the largest land war in Europe since World War II … Despite a clear and bipartisan rejection of the rule from Congress, President Biden is choosing to put his Administration’s progressive agenda above the well-being of the American people.”

Rep. Mike Flood (R-Neb.) described the veto as “disappointing.”

“[Americans] want our retirement plans to be safe, not governed by the types of environmental social governance issues that President Biden and the woke Democrats keep bringing up,” Flood told The Epoch Times’s sister media outlet NTD at the House GOP retreat in Florida on March 20.

Anti-ESG Advocates Criticize Veto

Advocates against the ESG movement were swift to denounce the president’s veto.

“This veto by Joe Biden goes directly against the interests of the American people,” Will Hild, executive director of Consumers First, wrote on Twitter on March 20.

“The bipartisan group of Senators and GOP House members deserve high praise for doing their job in protecting the American people by passing a bill to stop President Biden from allowing Wall Street elites to use ESG as a weapon to force a partisan agenda,” Hild added in a comment to The Epoch Times.

To ESG skeptics, the new rule’s softer language undermines asset managers’ fiduciary duty.

“Any move to supplant or dilute the fiduciary duty would undercut the foundations of our economic freedom and harm the American worker,” Derek Kreifels, CEO of the State Financial Officers Foundation, said in a statement to The Epoch Times.

“The fact that Biden’s first veto is about promoting ESG reveals the problem: this isn’t the invisible hand of the ‘free market,’” Vivek Ramaswamy, a prominent anti-ESG investor and GOP presidential candidate, wrote on Twitter. “It’s the invisible fist of government.”

He argued in a March 2 video commenting on the joint resolution that language in the rule appeared to contradict fund managers’ arguments that the consideration of ESG factors actually helped the bottom line over the long haul.

The new rule lets fiduciaries take “collateral benefits other than investment returns” into account in a wider range of contexts.

“If it really was about long-run value creation, then the Biden administration wouldn’t have to change the rules to expressly say they had to take into account collateral benefits other than investment returns,” he said.

Celebration Elsewhere

Meanwhile, Democrats and ESG advocates celebrated the veto.

“This veto was totally appropriate. For House Republicans to tell American companies they cannot pursue profits and societal goals when they wish to would be counterproductive and un-American,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) wrote on Twitter.

“The veto will allow #Retirement marketplace actors to continue fulfilling their #FiduciaryDuty to plan participants and meet the growing demand for #Sustainable offerings,” the Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment wrote on Twitter.

“Workers must have the right to protect their retirements from corporate greed, corruption, and negligence,” the Teamsters Union wrote on Twitter.

“This bill was a direct attack on the free market,” Gregory Wetstone, president and CEO of the American Council on Renewable Energy, said in a statement. “The Labor Department rule at issue here reflects the reality that ESG considerations are financially material.”

Steve Lance of NTD contributed to this report. 

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The Regime is currently trying to put a man behind bars for ten years for making memes. The most important First Amendment case of our lifetimes is taking place, and many have no idea it is even happening. 

United States v. Douglass Mackey began this week and is a major part of the Left’s war on free speech in America. Two days after Joe Biden took the oath of office, the Department of Justice charged Douglass Mackey with election interference for posting memes in 2016. Mackey is alleged to be the popular Twitter poster Ricky Vaughn, who shared memes instructing Hillary Clinton supporters to text in their vote rather than wait in line at their polling place.

It is easy to forget, after the Regime struck back in 2020 with totalitarian pandemic measures, color revolution riots, and a highly dubious election, that posters like Ricky Vaughn played a major role in the unexpected defeat of the Regime’s chosen candidate. We forget that in 2016, the big social media companies (which all are dutiful parts of the Regime apparatus) had not yet devised methods to restrict, censor, and deboost speech critical of the Regime. And it was not as though they were unable, as the waves of bannings and algorithmic deboosting of those on the online right began in earnest after 2016. The Regime simply underestimated the power of decentralized information and unrestricted social media. Men like Ricky made them look absolutely ridiculous. And this is why when they finally regained the reins of formal power, the very first thing they did was prosecute the man they allege is Ricky Vaughn.

Make no mistake, Mackey’s case is as crucial to whether the First Amendment still exists in America as Kyle Rittenhouse’s case was to the Second Amendment. Vaughn’s memes were the internet posting version of the old joke, “Republicans vote on Tuesday, Democrats vote on Wednesday.” No one mentally competent to vote would recognize either that joke or his meme as anything other than satire. If they can threaten a man with a decade in prison over obvious jokes, what else can they call election interference? Posting online about Hunter Biden’s “illegally obtained” laptop? Posting John Podesta’s “illegally obtained” emails and concluding that the bizarre code therein refers to pedophilia? In the last two elections, the Regime has insisted both of those things are Russian election interference. Would the DOJ pursue similar charges as Mackey faces—or worse—against anyone who amplified them on social media?

It is clear they want to set a legal precedent that will open the door to all manner of restrictions upon speech. They want to be allowed to wield broader powers to crush any and all dissent. The internet has decentralized the flow of information far too much. Even though they have been able to control the largest technology and social media companies, like Google, Apple, Facebook, and Twitter, and use supposedly “private companies” to do their bidding, alternatives that courageously protect free speech at great costs, like Gab and others, have sprung up. The Regime has tried as hard as it can from every attack vector it can think of to shut Gab down, but so far, they have failed. Any source of information they cannot control, they want to destroy.

They won’t stop trying to kill the medium, but in the meantime, they will kill the messenger. That is the point of the persecution of Douglass Mackey, even if justice is done and the judge throws this spurious case out (as he should) or if the jury finds him not guilty (as they should), the injustice of even being brought up on such charges and having the great expense of defending himself from the U.S. Justice Department’s unlimited resources while living for over two years having a decade behind bars hanging over his head already is a great injustice. Like the aforementioned Rittenhouse, just the fact of being charged and the government not being laughed out of court demonstrates just how much we are under lawless despotism. Just as the point of the Rittenhouse trial was to make you think twice about shooting people who are trying to kill you, the point of the Ricky Vaughn Trial is to make you think twice before you share that meme. Will they jail me over this? 

To that end, events like these give us insight into how things truly are. You can believe you live in the land of the free all you want until the government starts throwing men into the gulag over memes. The first thing the Ricky Vaughn Trial reveals is:

1. We live under anarchotyranny.

Anarchotyranny is when the state refuses to wield its power to protect its citizens (allowing societal anarchy) while readily using its power to crush both the innocent and those guilty of petty offenses (tyranny). The very same Department of Justice that refused to investigate widespread malfeasance in the 2020 election, the willful injection of millions of unsolicited and unverifiable ballots is a monumental and egregious interference in the voting rights of tens of millions of Americans.

It is the same DOJ that openly lied about the now-President’s dealing with Ukraine and lied about the damning evidence of his and his son’s crimes in the weeks prior to the election. These very same people are now prosecuting a man over memes, saying this might have impeded some people from voting, even though they have no evidence of anyone not voting because they saw Ricky Vaughn’s meme. Further still, there are tweets from Clinton supporters doing the exact same thing (pictured on right). Don’t hold your breath for United States vs. Wong. 

Of course, the persecution of Ricky Vaughn is in a long string of obvious anarchotyrannical activity. Billions of dollars of property damage were done by organized, well-funded left-wing groups with prominent Democratic politicians, including the now-Vice President, promoting their bail funds, with very few arrests and no serious investigation of who organized or funded these groups, while people who spent a few minutes inside the U.S. Capitol, most of whom did no violence whatsoever to anyone, are spending years in prison for protesting a fraudulent election. Once again, during the Rittenhouse trial, we learned that during the Kenosha riots, the DOJ had aircraft overheard surveilling the scene, not to catch mobs of communist felons and pedophiles rampaging but to make anyone who might oppose them easier to prosecute. The anarchotyrants facilitate the victimization of normal people while coming down with an iron fist against any who even make them look silly—like Ricky Vaughn did.

2. They want to criminalize political speech.

The point of this prosecution is not ultimately about this man, Douglass Mackey, or his alleged internet persona, Ricky Vaughn. The point of this prosecution is to restrict any and all criticism of the regime. Just as Abraham Lincoln was about to shut down newspapers critical of his war and Woodrow Wilson was able to jail Americans who publicly criticized American involvement in World War One, so too does the Regime. A Regime, mind you, that has already perpetrated tyranny worse than all others in American history combined, now seeks to criminalize public criticism.

Their pursuit of this legal strategy revolves around the concept of “stochastic terrorism,” which is now a very fashionable idea among libs. It essentially means that certain kinds of speech, when uttered, spiritually infect the world so as to eventually produce violence and, therefore, must be banned. For example, if you say, “transwomen are just men who have cut off their penis and testes,” just uttering those words will result in violence against transsexuals (the majority of which is done to themselves, as 41% of transsexuals attempt suicide). Stochastic terrorism means that it is deemed “racist speech” that incites violence against black people. Under the Left’s theory of stochastic terrorism, Donald Trump contesting the 2020 election results incited guys in Buffalo horns to be let into the U.S. Capitol by the police, resulting in an unharmed policeman dying of a stroke the next day. “Stochastic terror” is how the Charlottesville organizers were able to be sued for the damage that Antifa goons did to the city. Their speech incited so much anger in the filthy communists they could not be held responsible for their actions. “Stochastic terrorism” is like saying someone yelled “fire” in the crowded screening of The Dark Knight Rises right before James Holmes killed a dozen people; therefore, he’s not guilty.

It might sound spurious to us or any other sane person, but these are the legal wrangling and perversions that the top legal minds come up with in order to justify whatever they want. Never forget, for 50 years, they were able to conjure up a constitutional right to murder one’s child by positing the “umbra” of this Constitutional amendment and “penumbra” of this other one. Power will always find a post hoc legal justification for what they have always wanted to do. So it is with the Mackey case. They cannot be allowed to get away with it without a fight.

3. Internet posting is a far more effective political act than you realize.

If I had a nickel for every time someone has said to me, “Why do you waste your time arguing on the internet? No one ever changes their mind,” I would be able to enjoy a pre-January 2021 standard of living. The fact is, the internet has changed many things. They do not enjoy total control of information like they did throughout the majority of the 20th Century. There are not 3 TV networks with Walter Cronkite alone building out the entire country’s perception of reality. Any dissenting opinion from the mainstream was entirely gatekept from the public. If you wanted to disseminate your ideas, you would have to stand on street corners handing out pamphlets or set up an elaborate and expensive mailing list operation. The internet completely changed all of that.

In the early 2000s, the early adopters of the internet, largely tech nerds, began to have access to forbidden knowledge in obscure internet forums. As more and more of the mainstream public began to adopt internet usage, especially with the rise of social media by the early 2010s, wide swaths of people began to be exposed to ideas and counter-narratives they absolutely never would have otherwise. Despite a lifetime of being catechized with the religious slogan “diversity is our strength” and being told that skepticism of immigration was evil and racist, an open internet with unrestricted social media was able to show that, no, you aren’t the only one with concerns about mass migration of third-world peoples, and here’s this TV man running for president on this very issue!

Social media, and people publicly presenting their opinions for their friends, their neighbors, and the entire world to see was powerful in countering the official narrative. It very much was not a pointless waste of time. Being able to publicly state ideas and arguments that counter the official narrative is dangerous to a Regime built on lies. That is why they a prosecuting Douglass Mackey. Not because he himself is alone a major threat to the Regime. But because all of you collectively are. One man saying the emperor has no clothes can be dismissed as a madman. But even a small faction shouting about the emperor’s nakedness can topple an empire. They want you to be afraid. They want you to fear what he has already suffered and might suffer if he should lose this case. They want you to think, “if I post this funny meme, the FBI might knock on my door.” They would not do that if posting that funny meme was not highly effective. Protecting free speech is absolutely crucial. Douglass Mackey must win.

How you can help:

Above all else, pray. Pray that this case will be dismissed. Pray that the judge would see that the horrid communist insects at the SPLC intimidated a defense witness, and the whole sham would end. Pray that the government lawyers would be embarrassed by this ridiculous spectacle. Pray that Doug Mackey would remain a free man.

And please visit his website: https://www.memedefensefund.com/ in order to support his cause financially and stay updated on his case.

Andrew Isker is the pastor of 4th Street Evangelical Church in Waseca, MN. He is a graduate of Minnesota State University and Greyfriar’s Hall Ministerial Training School, and he has served churches in Missouri, West Virginia, and Minnesota. He is the author (with Andrew Torba) of Christian Nationalism, and the author of the forthcoming book, The Boniface Option. Andrew, his wife Kara, and their five children reside in his hometown of Waseca, MN. He can be found on Gab @BonifaceOption.

Published in Free Speech, Gab and Uncategorized

SOURCE: Gab

Border Patrol chief admits the DHS does not have operational control of the border, calling it ‘a crisis situation’

Among the flood of migrants caught at the southern border last month, 16 people were on the FBI’s terror watch-list.

This brings the total to 69 such apprehensions for fiscal year 2023, a trend U.S. Customs and Border Protection said is on pace to exceed last year’s 98 encounters. The agency only arrested 8 terror watch-list migrants in total between 2017 and 2020 and 15 in 2021, Fox News reported.

The report comes the same week all 15 Democratic members of the House Homeland Security Committee boycotted a field hearing at the Texas border. In that hearing, Border Patrol chief Raul Ortiz told lawmakers that the Department of Homeland Security does not have operational control of the entire border, contradicting Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s insistence last year to the contrary.

Operational control is defined in the U.S. code as “the prevention of all unlawful entries into the United States, including entries by terrorists, other unlawful aliens, instruments of terrorism, narcotics, and other contraband.”

“The migration flow represents challenges and in some areas, a crisis situation,” Ortiz said.

Border Patrol also reported last week that the number of Chinese migrants illegally crossing the southern border—mostly in the Rio Grande Valley region of Texas—has increased 920 percent compared with fiscal year 2022, and 91 percent of them are single adults. On Thursday, agents in the region apprehended 90 Chinese nationals, the most encountered in a single day since 2010, NewsNation reported.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

‘Got robbed. Again,’ tweeted senior national correspondent Kyung Lah

CNN reporters on assignment covering street crime in San Francisco, Calif., were robbed outside city hall on Friday, an incident that comes as the Democratic-run city struggles with a crime surge.

“Got robbed. Again,” tweeted Kyung Lah, CNN senior national correspondent. “We had security to watch our rental car + crew car. Thieves did this in under 4 seconds. Security stopped the jerks from stealing other bags.”

The theft happened while Lah and her crew were conducting interviews about voter discontent with the city’s rampant street crime, according to the CNN journalist.

“This is ridiculous,” Lah tweeted.

Following a dip in 2020, violent and property crimes in San Francisco have spiked in recent years. A San Francisco resident has a 1-in-16 chance of being a victim of property or violent crime, according to a recent study.

The CNN team’s experience comes as Democratic-run cities push for lax criminal penalties amid record crime surges. As New York City police officers leave the force in droves, Democratic mayor Eric Adams is asking that store owners ban masks in shops to crack down on a wave of burglaries. In Washington, D.C., the police chief said the city needs to keep “violent people in jail” because most criminals arrested in D.C. are never charged.

In recent weeks, Democratic officials in San Francisco have focused on banning gas stoves and paying millions of dollars in reparations to black residents.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Theory comes from ‘stooges who have been peddling pseudoscientific nonsense for three years,’ says Rutgers biologist Richard Ebright

Scientists who helped Dr. Anthony Fauci dismiss the theory that the coronavirus leaked from a Chinese lab now claim to have located the real culprit behind the pandemic’s outbreak: fluffy, fox-like creatures known as raccoon dogs.

According to Rutgers University professor of chemical biology Richard Ebright, the claim that humans contracted the virus from raccoon dogs sold for consumption in a Wuhan wet market is “pseudoscientific nonsense,” peddled by “stooges who have been peddling pseudoscientific nonsense for three years.” The researchers based their claim on data from Chinese scientists, which they have not made available for independent or peer review. Nor have they published the text of their study, choosing instead to send their findings to the Atlantic, which on Thursday declared the unvetted study “the strongest evidence yet that an animal started the pandemic.”

The researchers’ claim comes as lawmakers scrutinize Fauci and others who dismissed the lab leak theory at the outset of the pandemic. The FBI, Department of Energy, and a growing cadre of independent virologists say COVID-19 likely emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. House Republicans recently launched an investigation into the pandemic’s origins but have conceded that Chinese obstruction will make it hard to uncover the full story. Fauci commissioned two of the lead scientists behind the raccoon dog research to author a paper dismissing the lab leak theory in February 2020.

The researchers claim that a swab taken in January 2020 from a cart at the Huanan wet market contained genetic material from a raccoon dog and COVID-19. But as the New York Times reported, the data do not prove the raccoon dog was infected—just that it was in the same location as the virus. Even if the creature was infected, the Times added, it wouldn’t prove that it was spreading the virus to humans at the market.

Former National Security Council official Jamie Metzl told Yahoo News that there’s a “zero percent chance that the evidence released so far constitutes a smoking gun proving a market origin of the pandemic,” and that anyone pushing the raccoon dog claim as proof of such “is engaging in fraud.”

The trio of lead researchers on the study —Scripps Research Institute virologist Kristian Andersen, University of Arizona evolutionary biologist Michael Worobey, and University of Sydney biologist Edward Holmes—have a history of pushing sensational claims to the media designed to detract from the lab leak theory.

All three were involved in a February 2022 pre-print study covered breathlessly by the New York Times that initially claimed “incontrovertible evidence” that the Huanan wet market was the “unambiguous epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic.” That language, however, was ultimately removed from the study following a peer-review process. The final version published in July 2022 stated the “precise events surrounding virus spillover will always be clouded” and that the wet market was an “early epicenter” of the pandemic.

The trio’s “track record of past false claims on the subject warrants extreme caution about their new claims on the subject, especially claims for which the data are not presented,” Ebright told the Washington Examiner.

Andersen is best known for privately warning Fauci in January 2020 that COVID-19 contained features that “look engineered,” only to publicly reverse his stance weeks later and become one of the most outspoken opponents of the lab leak theory.

Emails uncovered in March by House Republicans show that Fauci prompted Andersen and Holmes in February 2020 to create the now-infamous “Proximal Origins of SARS-CoV-2” article to “disprove” the lab leak theory at the onset of the pandemic. Fauci later alluded to the paper during a White House press briefing in April 2020 to reject the notion that a lab leak could be connected to the pandemic’s outbreak.

The House voted unanimously on March 10 to declassify all intelligence about COVID-19’s origins, and the Senate passed its own version of the measure earlier in March. President Joe Biden said last Monday he hadn’t decided whether or not he will sign the bill.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R.) signed a bill on Thursday to install a “monument to the unborn” at the state capitol in the wake of the Supreme Court’s overturn of Roe v. Wade, the Associated Press reported.

State Senate Bill 307 will create a monument to memorialize “unborn children aborted” in the state before the overturn of Roe on June 24, 2022. After the High Court struck down the ruling, Arkansas enacted a total ban on abortion except in cases of emergency when the life of the mother is in danger.

“Many tax dollars went to organizations that supported and encouraged abortions,” state Sen. Kim Hammer (R.), a bill sponsor, told ABC News. “I will defend remembering the 250,000 innocent babies through a visual reminder in the hopes that we will never repeat a terrible chapter in our nation’s history.”

The prospective monument will contrast with the pro-abortion statue New York City Democrats installed earlier this year above the NYC courthouse. City officials unveiled the eight-foot statue of a horned woman with tentacle arms in order to promote abortion rights and show “the resilience of women.”

Republicans criticized the statue’s aesthetic qualities, which some have called demonic.

“Was there any public input whatsoever before a satanic golden medusa demon with tentacle arms was installed atop a downtown courthouse?” NYC Councilwoman Vickie Paladino asked.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Democrat Aaron Ford testified in favor of bill raising felony retail theft threshold from $650 to $1,200

Nevada attorney general Aaron Ford says the state’s rising retail theft rates must be curbed. He should know—in 2019, the Democrat testified in support of a law that made it harder for prosecutors to jail retail thieves.

Ford on March 2 presented a bill that would allow his office to “investigate and prosecute organized retail theft crimes.” The measure, Ford said, is “necessary” given the rise in retail theft crimes seen in Nevada—last year, for example, the state saw a 15 percent increase in property crimes and a staggering 39 percent increase in drug-store thefts on the Las Vegas Strip. While Ford used the bill as proof he’s mounting a proactive push to reverse that trend, critics say he’s to blame for the problem in the first place.

That’s because Ford in 2019 emerged as a vocal supporter of Assembly Bill 236, a Democrat-led measure that overhauled Nevada’s criminal justice system. Included in the bill—which Ford said his office was “intimately involved in”—was a provision that raised the threshold for felony theft from $650 worth of stolen goods to $1,200. As a result, a criminal who steals $1,000 worth of goods, for example, can no longer be charged with a category D felony, which carries a standard sentence of at least a year in jail. Instead, that criminal is now charged with misdemeanor larceny, a charge prosecutors often agree to dismiss if the thief pays a fine and attends an online training program.

Better Nevada PAC, a political group associated with the state’s Republican governor, Joe Lombardo, accused Ford of “desperately trying to cover up his pro-criminal agenda.”

“He’s spent his entire political career decriminalizing serious crimes and trying the hands of law enforcement,” spokesman John Burke said. “He simply can’t hide from the truth.”

Ford, whose office did not return a request for comment, is no stranger to controversy when it comes to theft laws. During his time as a state senator, Ford said he “can’t speak to what larceny even means, frankly.” Ford was also arrested for theft in 1994, though the case was eventually dismissed after the Democrat paid restitution to a tire shop owner he stiffed. The Republican Attorneys General Association highlighted both those instances in a 2018 ad campaign.

Ford became Nevada’s attorney general in 2019, a year that also saw Democrats take full control of the state legislature for the first time in decades. The party  prioritized criminal justice reform, proposing sweeping changes through Assembly Bill 236, which passed the Nevada Assembly’s judiciary committee via a party-line vote in May 2019. The bill’s sponsor, liberal state legislator Steve Yeager (D.), defended the legislation’s felony theft changes, calling the threshold at the time “very low.”

“Your average iPhone is going to be $1,200. So if you take an iPhone, you are looking at having a felony,” Yeager said at the time. “So we looked at adjusting those levels.”

Days later, Ford appeared in front of the Nevada Senate’s judiciary committee to testify in support of the bill. The attorney general’s office, Ford said during his testimony, “has been intimately involved in the discussions related to the iterations of this bill,” which the Democrat called “important.”

“It reflects a lot of good work,” Ford said before lamenting Nevada’s “truly unsustainable prison population.” “I commend you for the work you’re doing on this and I stand here to say that I support AB 236,” he said.

Yeager assured Nevadans that the bill would not lead to increased crime. But property crimes went on to soar in Nevada—the Las Vegas Strip, for example, saw a 45 percent increase in such crimes during the first eight months of 2022 when compared with the year prior.

Lombardo, who for eight years served as Clark County sheriff, responded by placing public safety at the center of his gubernatorial campaign, promising to reverse Democrats’ “soft-on-crime policies and put an end to [their] dangerous legislation that makes our streets less safe.” While the strategy proved successful for the Republican, who defeated Democratic incumbent Steve Sisolak by roughly 16,000 votes, Ford prevailed in his own reelection campaign against Republican Sigal Chattah.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Biden’s $6.9 trillion budget spends tens of billions of dollars on welfare and social programs for minority groups

Joe Biden’s $6.9 trillion budget spends tens of billions of dollars on welfare and social programs for minority groups both domestically and abroad, including a $400 million State Department program that helps foster “inclusive and responsible technology development … [for] the ability of women, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex community, and other marginalized groups to safely access digital technologies” in Africa.

Many of the spending programs revolve around equity, a concept Biden has said is at the center the White House’s agenda and is mentioned 63 times throughout Biden’s 182-page budget. Equity, in contrast to equality of opportunity, focuses on cash transfers and programs for groups that have been historically discriminated against, such as black people and the LGBT community.

Republicans have bristled at Biden’s budget, which is roughly $700 billion more than the $6.2 trillion projected to be spent in the 2023 fiscal year. Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) called the proposal “reckless” and said it is “doubling down on the same far-left spending policies that have led to record inflation and our current debt crisis.”

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a center-left think tank, criticized Biden’s budget for inadequately addressing the nation’s debt crisis. Biden’s budget would borrow $19 trillion over the next decade and raise the debt-to-GDP ratio to 110 percent by 2033.

“Spending in this budget is excessive,” committee president Maya MacGuineas said in a statement. “At $6.9 trillion, spending next year would be higher than any time during the pandemic and about $2.5 trillion above the pre-pandemic level, representing growth of 55 percent.”

For Republicans looking for places to start cutting from Biden’s budget, here are seven places they could start:

1. Billions of Dollars in Subsidized Housing for Minorities

As part of the Biden administration’s effort to expand “access to homeownership,” its budget provides $10 billion “in mandatory funding for a new First-Generation Down Payment Assistant program.” That fund would be used to “help address racial and ethnic homeownership and wealth gaps.” A separate $100 million fund would be used for a pilot program “to expand homeownership opportunities for first-generation and/or low-wealth first-time homebuyers.” U.S. home prices hit all-time highs last year, with experts citing low supply as the primary cause.

2. Half a Billion Dollars To Address ‘the Maternal Health Crisis’ Using Implicit Bias Training

Part of the $471 million to “support the ongoing implementation of the White House Blueprint to Address the Maternal Health Crisis” goes toward implementing “implicit bias training for health care providers.”

The Washington Free Beacon has reported on implicit bias training programs in medical schools, which critics call nothing more than left-wing ideological capture. Implicit bias training sessions often include asking participants to list examples of white privilege and, in at least one case, affirm that all white people are racist. There is little to no evidence that implicit bias training leads to change in behavior.

3. $400 Million To Help LGBTQ Africans Access the Internet

As part of the Biden administration’s efforts to strengthen “international digital connectivity,” the U.S. Agency for International Development is earmarked $395 million for programs in Africa that advance “inclusive and responsible technology development, which also supports the ability of women, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex community, and other marginalized groups to safely access digital technologies.”

4. $3 Billion To ‘Advance Gender Equity and Equality Across a Broad Range of Sectors’

A $3 billion grant given to the State Department for advancing “gender equity and equality around the world” is part of the Biden administration’s “commitment to invest in opportunities for women and girls and support the needs of marginalized communities, including the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex community.” No further details on how the money will be spent are provided.

5. $50 Billion for Foreign Governments and Companies That Promote ‘Gender Equity’

Biden signed an agreement last year with six other nations committing to $600 billion in global infrastructure spending by 2027. As part of that agreement, Biden wants $50 billion to get started on foreign investments “to advance climate and energy security, health and health security, digital connectivity, gender equity and equality, and related transportation infrastructure.”  That spending, according to the Biden administration, will create “opportunities for American businesses.”

6. $54 Million for the Department of Energy’s Office of Economic Impact and Diversity

The Office of Economic Impact and Diversity provides guidance on how the Department of Energy can “strengthen diversity and inclusion goals affecting equal employment opportunities, small and disadvantaged businesses, minority educational institutions, and historically underrepresented communities.” And, should Biden get his way, the office will oversee a $54 million budget.

7. A $1.1 Billion ‘Pay Equity Initiative’ for the Transportation Security Agency

The folks yelling at you to remove your shoes at the airport are receiving a pay bump, all in the name of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” TSA staff will receive $1.1 billion in more funding compared with the previous year as part of Biden’s “pay equity initiative.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

We go to the gas station several million times a day. It is part of our routine. As ordinary as filling up your car or van can be, sometimes unusual things happen because gas stations bring all kinds of people together. Some customers want to get gas and go. Some visitors need a restroom and a coffee break. Some criminals want to murder bystanders and steal cars and a convenience store located just off the highway is their hunting ground. In this case, an armed driver in Marengo, Ohio stopped a carjacking-murder spree that started hours before and miles away.

It was about half an hour after sunset on Sunday, February 26th. A man was driving a U-Haul van and he pulled into a gas station just off the highway. The gas station is about 35 miles north of Columbus, Ohio. The news articles aren’t clear if the van’s driver was sitting in the driver’s seat or if he was standing at the side of the van. We know the driver heard gunshots as a murderer shot an innocent woman who was filling up her minivan at the pumps. The murderer then shot at the driver of the rented van. What made this attack different is that this driver was armed. He shot back.

The armed defender who was driving the U-Haul van was not hit by the attacker’s gunfire. The defender’s shots struck and disabled the murderer. The defender stopped shooting when the threat stopped. He stayed at the scene and called 911 for help. The defender gave a statement to the police when they arrived.

What the defender didn’t know and couldn’t know was that he was the stopping point for a long string of violence.

EMTs tried to treat the wounded woman and the armed attacker. Both were declared dead at the scene. Eventually, the police connected the armed attacker to three other carjackings, attempted home invasions, and armed attacks that happened in the last few hours. The carjackings started in Columbus where the attacker also shot at his victims.

The news articles don’t mention if the defender had his concealed-carry license. Ohio is now a constitutional carry state so the defender didn’t need a permit to conceal his legally owned firearm in public. It is obvious that the driver of the van had every right to stop the murderous attack against him. What is less obvious to new concealed carriers is that the defender had the right to stop the murder of other innocent victims. The defender didn’t act in time to save the woman driving the minivan. He did save other unknown victims that were waiting down the road.

This story is one of many that go under-reported by the mainstream media because it shows a positive image of a law-abiding gun owner defending their life and their family. It is our responsibility at AmmoLand to report these stories to you. While we will continue to report these stories, groups like the Crime Prevention Research Center, led by Dr. John Lott, are fastidious in studying the use of firearms for self-defense. Stay up to date with all news on self-defense by following CPRC and Ammoland.

Read the original article in its entirety at Ammoland.

SOURCE: American Liberty News

A federal judge has ruled that the U.S. Virgin Islands and women who accuse the late investor Jeffrey Epstein of sex trafficking can proceed with some of their claims in a lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase over the bank’s ties to Epstein.

According to CNBC, Senior U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff also allowed a separate lawsuit by Epstein’s accusers against Deutsche Bank to proceed for some of that suit’s claims.

While everybody is focussed on Ukraine and SVB a judge ordered JP Morgan to hand over more documents on none other than their own CEO Jamie Dimon.

This case is about aiding Jeffrey Epstein and the sex trafficking ring……. pic.twitter.com/Zjzqibfa4S— Richard (@ricwe123) March 12, 2023

The ruling advances elements of three pending Epstein-related lawsuits against JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank.

Epstein victims anonymized as Jane Doe filed separate lawsuits against each bank, and the Virgin Islands separately sued JPMorgan only.

The mixed ruling gives the green light only to certain claims while dismissing others.

A common count in all three of the lawsuits accuses the institutions of knowingly benefiting from Epstein’s sex trafficking venture.

The ruling follows oral arguments last week, where an attorney for the Virgin Islands accused JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon of knowing Epstein was a sex trafficker as far back as 2008, the same year Epstein pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor.

Law and Crime has more:

The order ratchets up scrutiny on the financial institutions, and its executives, who stand accused in civil court of “complicity” in Epstein’s sex trafficking empire. Epstein’s scheme has been likened to a Pyramid scheme, in which victims would be lured in with hush money for massages that escalated into sexual abuse. Those victims, in turn, would be offered additional payments to find other victims and buy their silence, their attorneys say.

To evade scrutiny for these payments, their attorneys argue that financial institutions had to turn the other way, and the arrangement was allegedly mutually beneficial.

“This was a quid pro quo,” the victims’ lawyer Sigrid McCawley alleged in a recent hearing.

The litigation has embarrassed powerful executives, including former Barclays CEO Jes Staley. The Virgin Islands government unsealed some of the 1,200 emails that Staley exchanged with Epstein, including one Staley sent from Epstein’s Virgin Islands home of Little St. James in autumn 2009.

This is breaking news. Click refresh for the latest updates.

SOURCE: American Liberty News

A Chinese-tied art dealer is refusing to answer questions from Congress on just who is spending as much as $500,000 on paintings by Hunter Biden, the adult son of President Joe Biden and whether Biden’s “art sales” are actually a form of foreign money laundering and influence peddling.

House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., is stepping up his efforts to get testimony from Georges Bergès, owner of the Georges Bergès Gallery, regarding the anonymous buyers spending as much as a half-million dollars for paintings by Hunter Biden, who is not a trained or popular artist.

Bergès, who has claimed in previous media interviews to be one of the leading art dealers in Communist China, refuses to cooperate with investigators.

In a letter to Bergès’s attorney, Comer asks Bergès to appear before the Committee and offer written testimony.

“Mr. Bergès has refused to provide any information regarding who is buying Mr. Biden’s art. He has chosen to obstruct in an apparent effort to shield Mr. Biden and/or the purchasers’ of Mr. Biden’s art from congressional oversight,” writes Comer.

“The Committee seeks information about the unidentified purchasers of Mr. Biden’s artwork and the non-public agreement with the White House concerning the same, among other items. This information will inform our legislation on matters that are within the jurisdiction of this Committee,” Comer continues.

For instance, the prices of the artwork — reportedly ranging between $75,000 and $500,000 — even caused the Obama-era head of the Office of Government Ethics, Mr. Walter Shaub, to raise these ethics issues publicly. Mr. Shaub stated the White House has ‘basically outsourced government ethics to a private art dealer and they’re depending on unknown art purchasers to help keep the secret.’ The Committee shares these concerns,” Comer writes.

“The facts belie any claim by Mr. Bergès that the Committee has no legitimate legislative purpose,” continued Comer. “The Committee is reviewing legislative solutions that address the ethics and money laundering issues raised by certain high-end art deals, and your information is critical to our investigation.”

“Notwithstanding his tenuous legal arguments, Mr. Bergès mischaracterizes the purpose of our investigation and fails to acknowledge that the Committee’s requests are ‘related to, and in furtherance of, a legitimate task of the Congress.’ Although your client has refused to produce any documents, the Committee will extend another opportunity for Mr. Bergès and the Georges Bergès Galleries LLC to adequately respond to our request,” Comer concludes.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

SOURCE: American Liberty News

Forbes misrepresents IRS audit numbers in a way that supports Democrat recommendations for changes at the IRS. Well, people can make mistakes. But every error – or misrepresentation – has the effect of making Senator Elizabeth Warren and her colleagues’ complaints and ideas about the IRS look good. It would be remarkable if all mistakes worked that way, wouldn’t it? That James Bond idea of once is happenstance, twice is a coincidence, and three times is enemy action comes into our thoughts.

The background here is the bill to increase the IRS budget to hire more agents to do more audits. Well, maybe that’s a good idea and maybe it isn’t. As usual, that’s not our point here, we’re about accuracy. If all the numbers get shaded to show that it’s an excellent idea then we’re not dealing with a neutral reporter on the subject.

For example:

Both the GAO and Trac attribute these disproportionate audits to the effects of reduced staffing. Budget cuts left the IRS with 1,400 staffers to examine the returns of 164 million taxpayers in the fiscal year 2022,

No. As the New York Times –  says:

Among the I.R.S.’s workforce of about 79,000 employees, 10,000 are actually agents. (Of those, 8,000 are revenue agents who audit tax filings and 2,000 are special agents who investigate potential tax crimes.)

That’s one error that makes Sen. Warren and a larger IRS look good. Confusing – because of course it must be confusion, right? – the number who conduct audits with those who investigate tax crimes.

From Forbes again:

From 2010 to 2019, the rate of taxpayer audits fell from 0.9% to 0.25% regardless of income, according to the Government Accountability Office. But audit rates decreased the most for Americans with incomes of $200,000 or more, the GAO found, with those making $5 million or more seeing the largest drop in audit rates, falling from 16% a decade ago to 2.4% last year.

No, that GAO report is here. The drop in audit rates over $5 million is 86%. That for $500k to $5 million is 87%, and for $200k to $500k, it’s  92% (Figure 1 on Page 7).

Now, it is possible to say that 16% or so to 2.4% is larger than the other falls. But the first two, the drop in all rates, and the drop in those over $200k are being expressed as percentages. To change the measure for the third – no doubt it’s just coincidence.

Forbes:

Meanwhile, an analysis of IRS data from Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University found that households earning less than $25,000 annually were five times as likely to be audited by the IRS.

Five times what? The report that they’re quoting is here (Table 1). It’s not even those who earn less than $25k, it’s those who get the EITC tax credit who have the higher audit rate. It’s also a lower audit rate than those over $1 million in income. It is 5 times the audit rate for all individual tax returns. But that’s really not the impression we’re given, is it?

Ah, the third time.

We could – should – add one more point. From the GAO report, something should be included to give a balanced view of these numbers. It’s even in the press release, often the only part most journalists bother to read of a report:

Audits of the lowest-income taxpayers, particularly those claiming the EITC, resulted in higher amounts of recommended additional tax per audit hour compared to all income groups except for the highest-income taxpayers.

The IRS earns more tax revenue per hour of employee time by auditing those EITC recipients. So, logically, the IRS audits those taxpayers more. We do think the IRS has the job of maximizing tax revenue given the resources devoted to tax collection, right?

The numbers are quoted here to make Sen. Warren’s ideas look good. Well, maybe they are good. But the repetitive misrepresentation of numbers to make a political point in a supposedly factual report, well, that’s not good. Possibly even bias. Or, as Mr. Bond would say, enemy action.

Oh yes, even at Forbes.

This article originally appeared in Accuracy in Media. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News. Republished with permission.

SOURCE: American Liberty News

Credit Suisse shares dove by 63 percent in early trading on March 20 to a new low after it was announced that UBS would buy the troubled bank in a multi-billion-dollar deal backstopped by a Swiss central bank $100 billion emergency credit line.

Shares of Credit Suisse clawed back some of the initial losses that morning and at the time of reporting were 59 percent down on the day, as investors digested news that UBS would be taking over its distressed peer in a state-backed takeover.

The rescue deal sees UBS buying the 167-year-old Credit Suisse for about $3.23 billion and absorbing up to $5.4 billion in losses.

“With the takeover of Credit Suisse by UBS, a solution has been found to secure financial stability and protect the Swiss economy in this exceptional situation,” the Swiss National Bank (SNB) stated.

Credit Suisse is among 30 financial institutions known as globally systemically important banks, and authorities worried that its failure could undermine broader financial system stability.

“An uncontrolled collapse of Credit Suisse would lead to incalculable consequences for the country and the international financial system,” Swiss President Alain Berset said on March 19 as he announced the deal, which he described as “one of great breadth for the stability of international finance.”

An emergency ordinance was required to allow UBS and Credit Suisse to merge without shareholder approval.

‘Best Available Outcome’

Credit Suisse stated that until the deal is finalized, it’s business as usual for the beleaguered bank.

“Until consummation of the merger, Credit Suisse will continue to conduct its business in the ordinary course and implement its restructuring measures in collaboration with UBS,” the statement reads.

Axel Lehmann, chairman of the board of directors of Credit Suisse, said in a statement that the merger with UBS is the best possible solution.

“Given recent extraordinary and unprecedented circumstances, the announced merger represents the best available outcome,” he said.

“This has been an extremely challenging time for Credit Suisse, and while the team has worked tirelessly to address many significant legacy issues and execute on its new strategy, we are forced to reach a solution today that provides a durable outcome.”

In order to ensure the takeover goes smoothly, the Swiss central bank has offered UBS about $100 billion in liquidity assistance.

“The substantial provision of liquidity will ensure that both banks have access to the necessary liquidity,” SNB said in a statement, with further details of the credit line not immediately available except that it’s to be backstopped by a federal default guarantee.

Following news of the emergency buyout, the world’s central banks—including the U.S. Federal Reserve—announced coordinated moves to stabilize banks, including rolling out swap lines to let banks borrow U.S. dollars if they need to.

UBS shares fell by 10 percent in trading on March 20, with the sharp price moves following a day of heavy selling in Asian financial markets as early investor optimism about efforts to stem a banking crisis evaporated.

Investor attention has shifted to the huge hit some Credit Suisse bondholders would take under the UBS acquisition.

Swiss financial regulator FINMA stated that the buyout deal would trigger a “complete write-down” of Credit Suisse’s additional tier 1 (AT1) bonds, amounting to about $17 billion in value, leading to a boost in the bank’s core capital.

The massive bond write-down has added to anxiety about other key risks, including contagion, the fragile state of U.S. regional banks, and the challenges for central banks as they seek to contain inflation and financial risks.

Shares in European banks took a beating in early trade on March 20 as investors digested news of the emergency takeover of Credit Suisse.

JPMorgan stated that although UBS stood to gain in the longer term from the deal, the write-down of the AT1 bonds would have an impact on other European banks.

“We believe this AT1 writedown by a systemically important bank will have negative implications for the wider European Banks’ AT1 market as well as overall funding profile and Cost of Equity for the Banks,” JPMorgan strategists wrote in a note on March 20.

An index of 600 European bank stocks fell by as much as 6 percent in early trading on March 20, although it has since clawed back some losses. By about 6:30 a.m. EST, the index was trading 1.5 percent down.

The index has shed about 16 percent this month after several recent failures of U.S. banks sparked fears of contagion and a wider sell-off in bank shares.

UBS Chairman Colm Kelleher said in a statement that the merger is “attractive” for UBS shareholders and that the deal cements UBS’s position as a leading asset manager in Europe.

“This acquisition is attractive for UBS shareholders, but, let us be clear, as far as Credit Suisse is concerned, this is an emergency rescue,” he said.

“The transaction will bring benefits to clients and create long-term sustainable value for our investors.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The Washington Free Beacon‘s Aaron Sibarium appeared Sunday on Fox News and shared his blunt response to “hypocritical” Stanford Law School students who have demanded their names be removed from his reporting about their controversial activism.

“No way,” Sibarium recalled telling organizers of a rowdy student protest that prevented federal circuit court judge Kyle Duncan from speaking at a recent Stanford Federalist Society event, citing his conservative jurisprudence. “We’re not going to do that.”

“They didn’t just shout down a sitting federal judge,” Sibarium explained to Fox & Friends Weekend co-host Will Cain. “They also posted the names and faces of … every [Federalist Society] board member … around the school in a concerted effort to shame their peers and pressure them out of hosting the event. And then those exact same students emailed me to say, ‘Oh, by naming us in the story, you’re ginning up harassment.’ So, it’s really quite hypocritical.”

Last week, Lily Bou claimed in a message to the Free Beacon that Sibarium had no right to quote her and other board members of Stanford’s chapter of the National Lawyers Guild—which helped organize the protest against Duncan—praising the protesters’ conduct as “Stanford Law School at its best.” Mary Cate Hickman insisted the Free Beacon “anonymize” footage of a follow-up student protest of Stanford Law School dean Jenny Martinez over her apology to Duncan.

“It’s quite concerning because a key precondition for the rule of law is that the law applies equally to everyone. I mean, that’s what the law is. And yet, these students seem to think that the rules don’t apply to them,” Sibarium said on Fox News. “Pretty soon, I think, that double standard is going to be more mainstream among lawyers and judges because these people are going to graduate to become high-powered lawyers and judges.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

So…this is about addiction. Dopamine and adrenaline are produced in humans during sexual situations. So, if they can’t get kids to take fentanyl, they are going to assault their minds with sexual confusion and stimulation to control them [US Patriot]

A Boston public school elicited outrage among parents this week when it presented pre-teen students with an explicit survey asking them about their sexual history, including whether they’ve performed oral sex.

The principal of Eliot K-8 Innovation School in a Thursday letter to parents acknowledged the “many concerns” over the survey, which was administered on Wednesday to some sixth- and seventh-graders.

A copy of the survey shows it inquired about the pre-teens’ risk behavior, with several questions asking about their sexual history. “Have you ever participated in oral sex?” one question asked. “Oral sex is when a person puts their mouth on another person’s genitals or private area,” the survey explained.

Another question asked students if they are “transgender … someone who does not feel the same inside as the sex they were born with.”

The controversy over the explicit survey comes as schools across the country have faced scrutiny from parents over inappropriate content in the classroom. In 2021, thousands of parents in the Worcester, Mass., public school district pulled their children out of the district’s sex education classes over content they called “dangerous.”

The Youth Risk Behavior Survey administered to students at Eliot is part of a district-wide survey project by Boston Public Schools. The school’s principal in the Thursday letter said Eliot would direct parents’ concerns about the appropriateness of the survey to the school district.

Deirdre Hall, a mother of a sixth-grade student at Eliot who received the survey, told the Washington Free Beacon in an interview that the content of the questions was “entirely inappropriate.” She said she found out about the survey when her daughter came home and told her about the “really weird survey” she took during history class.

Hall said she had concerns over who has access to the students’ responses and whether the information is truly anonymous. She also took issue with her daughter being exposed to the explicit concepts before students had had “a single ounce of sex education.”

“She said half her class didn’t even know what any of this stuff meant,” Hall said. “Now they’re coming home and asking their parents and their friends, ‘What’s oral sex?'”

Other survey questions asked the pre-teens about the number of sexual partners they’ve had, whether they’ve considered committing suicide, and whether they’ve taken diet pills to lose weight.

Another mother of a student at Eliot, who asked to remain anonymous, told the Free Beacon she was “outraged” that the school district would ask young children explicit sexual questions. She said “parents had no idea these questions would be asked.”

“To go on field trips the district has parents sign permission slips, but for the district to ask our children private explicit sexual questions they are able to do so without consent?” the mother said. “This makes no sense.”

A staff member for Eliot directed the Free Beacon to a spokesman for Boston Public Schools, who did not return a request for comment by press time.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

California congresswoman Barbara Lee (D.) has come a long way since her days praising communists, spending over $20,000 in campaign funds on chauffeured cars and limousines over the last election cycle.

Among the luxury travel expenses from Lee, who was once known to her leftist allies as “Comrade Barbara,” are more than $5,000 to a Washington, D.C., limousine service that boasts a fleet including a Hummer limousine, according to its website. And she spent more than $7,000 on a “premier taxi service” in Martha’s Vineyard, the small Massachusetts island on the other side of the country from her district. All told, the Oakland Democrat spent at least $22,862 on travel last cycle, federal financial disclosures show.

Lee’s spending could tarnish her progressive image as she vies for retiring Democrat Dianne Feinstein’s Senate seat. A former left-wing activist known for her communist sympathies and ties to Soviet front groups, Lee has pitched herself as “a voice for the people.” Lee is leaning on her progressive bona fides as she battles for Feinstein’s seat against her well-funded California colleagues, fellow Democratic representatives Katie Porter and Adam Schiff.

Lee’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

A review of the congresswoman’s campaign receipts show she knows how to travel in style. For just $316, Singh Car Service, her preferred chauffeur for travel inside the Beltway, will transport riders from town to Dulles Airport in a Hummer limousine, a Washington Free Beacon review of the website found. An extra $110 gets you a bottle of French champagne for the trip, while $750 buys a team of bodyguards.

Lee calls Adam Cab during her frequent fundraising trips to Martha’s Vineyard, the posh beach resort island best known for deporting illegal immigrants. Lee spent $7,206 on rides from Adam Cab, which bills itself as the island’s “premier taxi service.” It is not entirely clear why Lee spends so much time on Martha’s Vineyard, though it appears to be related to fundraising—Lee rented seven different venues on the island for campaign events from June through September.

Back home in San Francisco, Lee hired K&B Luxury Limousine Service in the East Bay, running tabs from $165 to $626. She also spent $1,948 on Fresno’s Royal Coach Limousines, whose website shows vintage Jaguar saloon cars and limos.

Lee dropped considerably more on luxury travel than her fellow California Democrats. Returns for Rep. Anna Eshoo, who represents Silicon Valley, show she spent about $3,189 on ground transportation last cycle. Recently retired representative Jackie Speier’s returns show she spent just around $527.42 on Uber and Lyft.

Lee’s prodigal spending of campaign funds comes as she bemoans the difficulties of fundraising while black.

“For me to raise money, being a Black woman progressive, is 10 times harder than it is for anybody else,” Lee told the San Francisco Chronicle in January. “And that’s, again, part of this whole political system in this country and how people are viewed.”

Lee has a history of defending communists and murderers, including Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and notorious cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal. In 2001, she submitted a report to the United Nations claiming that Abu-Jamal was “framed” for the 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner because of his ties to black activist groups. One of Lee’s coauthors was former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D., Ga.), who has said “Zionists” were behind 9/11.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s reported impending prosecution of former President Donald Trump is based on “made-up laws,” according to prominent legal expert Alan Dershowitz.

But even so, Dershowitz said he thinks that Trump would unlikely receive a fair trial in a city that leans heavily blue.

The expert was responding to reports that Trump may soon be indicted on charges surrounding hush money paid to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. That would make Trump the first former president to be criminally charged.

Days before the 2016 presidential election, former Trump attorney Michael Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 in exchange for her silence on claims that she had an affair with Trump years earlier, which the former president denies. Cohen pleaded guilty to violating federal campaign finance laws in 2018 for arranging payment to Daniels and another woman claiming to have had an affair with Trump. Cohen claims to have done so at Trump’s direction and was reimbursed by the Trump Organization through routine legal expenses.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing, claiming that he’s a victim of extortion.

Bragg’s criminal case appears to be centered on whether Trump falsified business records—a state offense—to cover up Cohen’s campaign finance violations of federal law.

“Nobody should ever be arrested based on made-up laws or combining a federal and state statute,” Dershowitz told The Epoch Times in an interview on March 18. “I taught criminal law for 50 years at Harvard, and the one rule was, no creativity is permitted by prosecutors. The law has to be clear.”

He queried Bragg’s apparent attempt to elevate a falsifying-records case to a felony from a misdemeanor by tying it to an alleged violation of federal campaign finance law.

“In order to turn the state statute into a felony, you have to borrow a federal statute,” Dershowitz told The Epoch Times in an earlier interview, on March 16. He said that this combining of laws “seems to raise real serious legal questions.”

“In Bragg’s case, what they’re trying to do is add one and one, and come up with 11,” Dershowitz said. “No rational person would look at these two statutes and say that Trump violated them.”

“Thomas Jefferson once put it very nicely: For a criminal statute to be constitutional, the average person has to be able to understand it if he reads it while running.”

The case pursued by Bragg, a Democrat, is politically motivated, Dershowitz says.

“It’s not a righteous prosecution. It’s not a just prosecution. And I think every libertarian, whether you’re conservative, or liberal, should be opposed to it,” he said.

“I can’t imagine that an appellate court would ever hold this, but I don’t think Bragg cares about this. He wants the publicity of a perp walk and an arrest.”

Dershowitz said that the theme of Bragg’s reported prosecution is consistent with a book the legal scholar published on March 14 titled “Get Trump,” in which he warned that the ongoing efforts targeting Trump and his allies are harming Americans’ basic liberties.

“History teaches that ends, even if believed to be noble, do not justify ignoble means that are inconsistent with democracy and the rule of law,” Dershowitz wrote in his book, saying that Trump’s political enemies are willing to “weaponize and distort” the U.S. criminal justice system to “get” Trump—at any cost.

Conviction?

If an indictment does materialize, Dershowitz said he believes that Trump would “likely” end up with a criminal conviction.

“Because I don’t think that Trump can get a fair trial in New York,” the legal expert said, pointing to the predominantly Democrat population in the city.

A criminal conviction, he said, is thus the “most likely outcome.”

“Then, it will be reversed on appeal, but by that time, will be deep into the election cycle,” Dershowitz said, referring to the 2024 presidential election.

“They’re searching for crimes to get him. They’re just rummaging through the law books and doing everything they can to get him, but I don’t think they’ve succeeded,” he said.

“He’s not going to get prison, but nonetheless, he can run as a convicted defendant.”

A Trump spokesperson, in a statement to The Epoch Times, described the case as another instance of “the weaponization of our injustice system.”

“The George Soros-funded Radical Left Democrat prosecutor in Manhattan has decided to take his Witch-Hunt to the next level,” the spokesperson wrote.

Trump, for his part, has maintained that he would stay in the race if he’s criminally charged.

“Oh, absolutely, I won’t even think about leaving,” Trump told reporters at the Conservative Political Action Conference on March 4, in response to a question on the matter. “Probably, it’ll enhance my numbers, but it’s a very bad thing for America. It’s very bad for the country.”

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Nearly 200 more banks could be vulnerable to the same type of risk that collapsed Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) earlier this month, according to a recently published study.

There are 186 banks across the United States that could collapse if half of their respective uninsured depositors withdraw their funds, researchers with the Social Science Research Network found. Deposits at member banks of up to $250,000 are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., although the agency agreed to insure depositors’ funds far above that after SVB’s collapse this month.

“Combined, losses and uninsured leverage provide incentives for an SVB uninsured depositor run,” an abstract of the paper reads. “We compute similar incentives for the sample of all U.S. banks. Even if only half of uninsured depositors decide to withdraw, almost 190 banks are at a potential risk of impairment to insured depositors, with potentially $300 billion of insured deposits at risk.

“If uninsured deposit withdrawals cause even small fire sales, substantially more banks are at risk. Overall, these calculations suggest that recent declines in bank asset values very significantly increased the fragility of the US banking system to uninsured depositor runs.”

Insured depositors of those banks could also see problems trying to withdraw their cash if those financial institutions face a bank run, the paper’s authors (pdf) say. The researchers noted that those banks hold a large amount of their assets in government bonds and mortgage-backed securities, which are highly reactive to interest rates that have been raised significantly over the past year by the Federal Reserve.

“Our calculations suggest these banks are certainly at a potential risk of a run, absent other government intervention or recapitalization,” the economists wrote.

Their study evaluated banks’ asset books around the United States, finding an estimated $2 trillion discrepancy in their overall market value. It also noted that uninsured depositors are a major source of funding for commercial banks and account for about $9 trillion of their liabilities, meaning that bank runs on these institutions could present a “significant risk.”

“As interest rates rise, the value of a bank’s assets can decline, potentially leading to bank failure through two broad, but related channels,” they wrote. “First, if a bank’s liabilities exceed the value of its assets, it may become insolvent. This is particularly likely for banks which need to increase deposit rates as interest rates rise. Second, uninsured depositors may become concerned about potential losses and withdraw their funds, causing a run on the bank.”

Other Details

In addition to SVB, Signature Bank of New York also collapsed. Last week, California-based First Republic Bank received an infusion of $30 billion from some of the top U.S. banks in a package backed by the Biden administration after the lender’s stock plunged after SVB’s collapse, triggering fears that financial contagion would spread to other regional banks.

In a joint statement, Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, BNY-Mellon, PNC Bank, State Street, Truist, and U.S. Bank said they would provide the bank with the cash. Those deposits will be uninsured.

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Some have blamed the banks’ troubles on the Federal Reserve’s rapid installments of rate increases to tamp down decades-high inflation. Bank stocks other than First Republic have also suffered significantly over the past several days—with Switzerland’s Credit Suisse plummeting to record-low levels earlier this month.

SVB Financial Group confirmed on March 17 that it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and will seek buyers for its assets, coming after its Silicon Valley Bank division was taken over by federal regulators. The company stated that it has roughly $2.2 billion of liquidity, coming after it ended last year with more than $200 billion in assets.

Before the FDIC stepped in, SVB customers attempted to withdraw $42 billion in one day, on March 9, amid concerns about the bank’s overall health.

Also on March 17, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told lawmakers at a Senate Finance Committee hearing that Americans’ bank savings and deposits “remain safe” amid the nascent financial turmoil. The Treasury Department and other federal agencies are committed to ensuring that the U.S. banking system is sound, she noted.

“I can assure the members of this committee that our banking system remains sound and that Americans can feel confident that their deposits will be there when they need them,” Yellen said in a prepared statement. “This week’s actions demonstrate our resolute commitment to ensure that depositors’ savings remain safe.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

California Reverend Says it is ‘Critical’ to Discuss Sexual Identity and Gender with Children at a Young Age; Admits Parents Would ‘Be Upset’ if They Knew ‘Their Queer Kid was Coming to Me’ … ‘I and the Older Queer Folks are Mentoring These Young Adults’

• Reverend Casey Martinez-Tinnin, Loomis Basin UCC, The Landing Spot: “When they [parents] know that their queer kid is coming to me for support, they’re going to be upset.”
• Reverend Martinez-Tinnin: “In my mind, how communities thrive is through intergenerational relationships.”
• Reverend Martinez-Tinnin: “Parents don’t want me talking – encouraging this lifestyle, right? Like, that’s the thing.”
• Reverend Martinez-Tinnin: “So, if we can start helping parents talk about, ‘How do you talk to your kids about puberty? Have you considered blockers?’”
• Reverend Martinez-Tinnin: “I call CPS [Child Protective Services]” when parents misgender their kids.

[Loomis, Calif. – Mar. 19, 2023] Project Veritas released a new video today exposing a Reverend from the Loomis Basin Congregational of the United Church of Christ [UCC], Casey Martinez-Tinnin, who admits he often discusses sexual identity and gender with young kids behind their parents’ backs.

Reverend Martinez-Tinnin said parents would not react positively if they knew their “queer” kids were approaching him.

“When they [parents] know that their queer kid is coming to me for support, they’re going to be upset,” he said.

“Parents don’t want me talking – encouraging this lifestyle, right? Like, that’s the thing.”

He continued to say parents should be given an opportunity to accept their child’s gender identity, or potentially face consequences.

“So, if we can start helping parents talk about, ‘How do you talk to your kids about puberty? Have you considered blockers?’”

The Reverend said, “I call CPS [Child Protective Services]” when parents misgender their kids.

Reverend Martinez-Tinnin said he believes it is important for older people to engage the young about sexual relationships.

“In my mind, how communities thrive is through intergenerational relationships,” he said.

He explained how it has been possible to hide much of this information from parents, even going as far as saying that he is “not lying” to them — “but it’s not fully telling the truth” to the parents either.

SOURCE: Project Veritas

For her efforts to report injuries to the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) and to educate others in her hospital system on doing the same, Physician Assistant Deborah Conrad said she was labeled an anti-vaxxer and fired from her job.

Today, the New York-based Conrad tells her story at medical freedom conferences throughout the country, the most recent being one in Mississippi where physicians, scientists, and the vaccine injured warned state lawmakers to pull the COVID-19 vaccines from the market.

Conrad told The Epoch Times she began to see early danger signals in 2021 upon the vaccine rollout, and with that, resistance among her colleagues to report on them.

“After the vaccines came out, there was this uptick in unusual symptoms, some of which I had never seen in my 20-year career,” Conrad said. “In every case, it was in somebody who had received the COVID-19 vaccine.”

Conrad said she had never admitted an adult patient with RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) until the COVID-19 vaccines.

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“And every patient who came in with RSV was vaccinated for COVID,” Conrad said. “It wasn’t normal.”

Then, there were the adolescents with no previous medical conditions who had gotten the COVID-19 vaccine a week prior and, suddenly, they were struck with pneumonia and not able to function, she said.

“They weren’t able to walk or eat, and they were completely and totally fatigued,” Conrad said.

This was in 2021 before myocarditis was being discussed, so many of those early cases that were probably myocarditis were diagnosed as pneumonia, she said.

“A lot of these myocarditis cases came in with fevers because of this massive inflammatory response that was taking place in the body, so they would be labeled as septic, treated as if we were treating pneumonia or fevers of unknown origin,” Conrad said. “We’d treat them with antibiotics and all sorts of other things, not realizing that they were having heart failure.”

Conrad began reporting to VAERS, which she said was an overwhelming task not made easy by its multiple user-interface complications.

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“My entire life had been taken over by doing these VAERS reports by myself,” she said.

In meetings with leadership, she would propose implementing a reporting system and hiring someone to manage the reports, she said.

‘A Hostile Environment’

“They kept telling me we’re looking into it and we’ll get back to you,” Conrad said. “Around April 2021, leadership came back and said no one else is reporting injuries—implying that I was crazy and there was nothing really going on with the vaccines.”

Leadership then audited her reports, she said and concluded that she was overreporting.

“I was then told that by doing VAERS reports and even discussing VAERS that it was an admission that the vaccines were unsafe, so it’s contributing to vaccine hesitancy,” Conrad said.

From there, it became a “very hostile environment” that compelled her to seek legal counsel, who wrote letters to the Department of Health, the CDC, and the FDA.

“No one cared,” Conrad said. “Finally, I had had it. It was so unethical; I couldn’t take it anymore. These VAERS reports are critical to assuring these vaccines are safe for us all. I could no longer be a part of a system that is lying to the American people.”

Conrad decided to become a whistleblower, telling her story on Del Bigtree’s The Highwire, knowing, she said, that it would cost her job.

“I couldn’t remain silent, even if it meant losing my career and everything I worked for,” she said. “I was fired a few weeks later and walked out like a criminal in front of all my peers.”

The initiative and education she had brought forth to report to VAERS were squashed that day, she said.

National Vaccine Injury Act of 1986

According to Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), under the National Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, it’s a federal requirement for health care workers to report vaccine-related adverse events to VAERS.

Fisher, whose son was harmed by the DTP vaccine in 1980, worked with other parents of vaccine-injured children in establishing the NVIC in 1982.

“The 1986 Act was driven by parents of DPT vaccine injured children asking the government to pass legislation to secure vaccine safety informing, recording, reporting, and research provisions in the vaccination system to make it safer, and to create a federal compensation system alternative to a lawsuit against manufacturers of vaccines that injure or kill children,” Fisher told The Epoch Times.

In addition to NVIC arguing that physicians and vaccine manufacturers should be giving informed consent and report injuries, the organization maintained they should also continue to be held accountable in a civil court to serve as an incentive for physicians to administer vaccines responsibly, for manufacturers to produce safer vaccines, and for adequate federal compensation to vaccine-injured children.

“The vaccine manufacturers responded to our call for federal legislation reforming the vaccination system by threatening to leave the US without childhood vaccines unless the government gave them a blanket liability shield for harm caused by vaccines, arguing that if the FDA licensed a childhood vaccine as ‘safe,’ and the CDC recommended the vaccine for universal use by all children, and the states mandated the vaccine for daycare and school entry, then the vaccine manufacturer should not be held liable for harm caused by the product,” Fisher said.

When the Act passed, physicians were still liable for medical malpractice claims and pharmaceutical companies remained liable for product design defect claims in civil court, Fisher said.

“Unfortunately, the 1986 Act looks nothing today like when it was passed in 1986,” Fisher said. “In 1987, Congress passed an amendment to give a liability shield to doctors and vaccine providers. Over the next decades, amendments were added that weakened or eliminated safety provisions and the ability of children to receive federal compensation.”

In 1990, VAERS was launched; however, Fisher said, there are no legal consequences for a doctor’s failure to file a report.

“That’s because Congress made it a federal requirement in the 1986 Act to report but did not include legal penalties when vaccine companies or vaccine providers fail to report,” Fisher wrote.

‘A Prescription for Tyranny’

In 2011, amid hundreds of lawsuits linking autism to vaccine injuries, Fisher said the U.S. Supreme Court ignored the legislative language and reasons for the 1986 Act when it shielded vaccine manufacturers from all civil liability for vaccine injuries and deaths.

The federal government had sided with Big Pharma, Fisher said.

“At this point, those of us who worked on the 1986 Act with Congress know that our trust was betrayed by politicians who made backroom deals with drug companies, medical trade organizations, and federal agencies to gut the Act after it was passed and give the pharmaceutical industry what it wanted in 1986 and could not get: a complete liability shield for vaccine injuries and deaths,” Fisher said.

The 2011 case—Bruesewitz v. Wyeth—centered around the parents of Hanna Bruesewitz, who alleged their daughter’s neurological problems were caused by a vaccine made by Wyeth, which was a Pennsylvania pharmaceutical company before it consolidated with Pfizer.

The 1986 Act established a vaccine court to confirm vaccine injuries and award damages. After losing in the vaccine court, the Bruesewitz family brought the case to the highest court.

Marcia Coyle with The National Law Journal told PBS NewsHour in 2011 that there were only eight Justices presiding over the case because Justice Elena Kagan had recused herself due to her involvement as Solicitor General of the United States representing the federal government on the case.

“The Obama administration is supporting Wyeth laboratories saying that this lawsuit is barred,” Coyle said. “So, there are eight Justices. There could have been seven. The Chief Justice [John Roberts] had recused himself in the initial stages because he owns stock in Wyeth and he sold the stock in order to participate now.”

The pharmaceutical companies’ entanglement with federal officials wasn’t what Fisher said she would call an example of public health.

In a 2011 commentary on the ruling, she said, “This is exploitation of a captive people by a pharmaceutical industry seeking unlimited profits and by doctors and physicians of authority who have never seen a vaccine they did not want to mandate. It is a drug company stockholder’s dream, a health care consumer’s worst nightmare, and prescription for tyranny.”

In the wake of the decision, the 1986 Act seemed to lose its relevance, and the importance of reporting to VAERS became downplayed. Allegations that vaccines caused autism were ridiculed in pop culture’s media campaigns such as magicians Penn and Teller widely shared video promoting the vaccines and shutting down those who questioned their safety while ignoring what groups like NVIC were initially calling for: not the eradication of vaccines but safer vaccines with no mandates.

In retrospect, Fisher said, “Had the Supreme Court upheld the spirit and intent of the Act as originally passed in 1986, we may have been able to hold mRNA COVID vaccine manufacturers liable for design defect in a civil court of law today.”

The COVID-19 vaccines were issued under emergency use authorization, which grants the manufacturers immunity from liability.

‘The Whole System Is Corrupt’

Conrad herself said in her education as a physician’s assistant she never trained to even acknowledge VAERS or adverse events.

“When it came to learning about the vaccines, we learned the basic immunology associated with the vaccines and the adult and childhood schedule, but there’s no discussion on their side effects,” Conrad said. “We go into practice with the idea that vaccines are safe and effective. I never considered otherwise until COVID-19 happened.”

Among the insights the pandemic delivered has been that the unethical relationship between federal officials and the pharmaceutical-industrial complex has been going on much longer than many realize, Conrad said.

“This whole system is corrupt,” Conrad said. “The light in this whole experience for me is that now I’m aware of how deep the lies and corruption really are.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Ohio and Iowa became the latest GOP-led states to indicate they’re withdrawing from the national voter verification coalition over concerns about its impartiality.

Frank LaRose, Ohio’s secretary of state rumored to be mulling a run for the U.S. Senate in 2024, announced the decision in a letter (pdf) to the director of the coalition, called the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC).

“I cannot justify the use of Ohio’s tax dollars for an organization that seems intent on rejecting meaningful accountability, publicly maligning my motives, and waging a relentless campaign of misinformation about this effort,” LaRose wrote.

LaRose’s letter came soon after member states that are part of the coalition held a meeting on Friday and a proposal to reform some of the coalition’s bylaws failed.

“ERIC has chosen repeatedly to ignore demands to embrace reforms that would bolster confidence in its performance, encourage growth in its membership, and ensure not only its present stability but also its durability,” LaRose wrote.

He argued that the coalition has transformed from a “previously bipartisan organization to one that appears to favor only the interests of one political party.”

Following Friday’s meeting, Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate was cited by Politico as saying that the departure of several states from the coalition undermines its ability to serve as an effective tool for Iowa.

“My office will be recommending resigning our membership from ERIC,” Pate said, per Politico.

A request for comment sent to ERIC outside of normal working hours was not immediately returned.

More Details

ERIC was set up to let elections officials from different states cross-check data when seeking to confirm their voter rolls. It lets states know when voters move or die so that voter rolls can be kept up to date.

It also generates data on people who may be eligible to register to vote but have not, while requiring states to contact such would-be voters.

But the coalition has been under fire from Republicans in several states in the wake of 2021 allegations by Gateway Pundit that the coalition was “a left-wing voter registration drive disguised as voter roll clean-up.”

During Friday’s meeting and vote, two initiatives failed. One of them—previously proposed by LaRose—would have allowed member states to decide what to do with data produced by ERIC. The other would have tied the requirement to contact eligible unregistered voters to a report that helps states identify double voting.

Iowa and Ohio are the sixth and seventh GOP-led states to opt out of ERIC, with media speculation that others might soon join. Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri, and West Virginia have all dropped out of the coalition.

Former President Donald Trump has been critical of the consortium.

Trump Weighs In

Following the recent decision of Florida, Missouri, and West Virginia to withdraw, Trump encouraged more Republican-led states to take similar action.

“All Republican Governors should immediately pull out of ERIC, the terrible Voter Registration System that ‘pumps the rolls’ for Democrats and does nothing to clean them up. It is a fools game for Republicans,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.

Florida, Missouri, and West Virginia were among ERIC members that proposed changes in how the states would work together in the consortium, including eliminating a requirement for member states to notify and encourage eligible unregistered voters to register.

ERIC executive director Shane Hamlin in a March 2 open letter, citing “recent misinformation spreading about ERIC,” iterated the network is a bipartisan nonprofit, is financed by member states, is not connected to any state’s voting system, and follows standard safety protocols.

“We analyze voter registration and motor vehicle department data, provided by our members through secure channels, along with official federal death data and change of address data, in order to provide our members with various reports,” he wrote.

“They use these reports to update their voter rolls, remove ineligible voters, investigate potential illegal voting, or provide voter registration information to individuals who may be eligible to vote.”

John Haughey contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Tommy Waller, an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps, ended his military career last year after being denied a religious accommodation to avoid the military-wide COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Though the vaccine mandate was recently repealed, Waller remains concerned that remaining unvaccinated troops could still be targeted.

Waller, who served as the commander of a reserve Force Reconnaissance Company, was denied his religious accommodation request on Nov. 10, 2021—the official birthday of the Marine Corps. Waller believes the way the Marines handled the vaccine mandate was unlawful and, though he was denied his request, Waller held out for another year in hopes of a different outcome.

“I waited a year for the Marine Corps to be able to wake up to the fact that what they were doing was unlawful,” Waller told NTD News. “And then of course, after a year, I decided to go ahead and retire.”

Not long after Waller retired from the Marines, Congress included a provision in the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) (pdf) to repeal the vaccine mandate. Despite his objections to the vaccine provision, President Joe Biden signed the NDAA, thus bringing about the official repeal of the military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

Waller, who now serves as the president and CEO of the Center for Security Policy, raised the possibility that unvaccinated service members could still be punished for declining the COVID-19 vaccine.

Last week, Fox News published a letter by Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, Gilbert Cisneros, which stated that 69,000 of the 2 million active service members never received a vaccine. Cisneros wrote that about 53,000 of those unvaccinated service members sought a medical exemption or religious accommodation, and that “no Service members currently serving will be separated based solely on their refusal to receive the COVID-19 vaccination if they sought an accommodation based on religious, administrative, or medical grounds.” The wording of Cisneros’ letter seemed to leave open the possibility that the 16,000 unvaccinated service members who did not request some kind of exemption or accommodation could still face a discharge from the military.

Though the vaccine mandate is gone, the military could potentially argue that the 16,000 unvaccinated troops who never requested any exemption or accommodation disobeyed a lawful order to be vaccinated, and thus warranted discharge from the military.

Was FDA-Approved Vaccine Available?

Waller argued that the legal basis for the vaccine mandate may be tenuous if an FDA-approved version of a COVID-19 vaccine was not actually available to the military.

“What happened is [Defense Secretary] Lloyd Austin gave an order that was lawful and said, ‘You’ll inoculate the force with an FDA-approved vaccine,’” Waller said. “[But an FDA-approved vaccine] did not exist. In fact, I think it’s still a question whether or not you can get the version of the vaccine that Pfizer got FDA approval for.”

The first COVID-19 vaccines became available in the United States through emergency use authorizations (EUAs). The FDA eventually granted full approval for a Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine version called “Comirnaty” in August of 2021.

After the FDA approved Comirnaty, Austin issued the military vaccine mandate (pdf), which stated that the mandatory vaccinations “will only use COVID-19 vaccines that receive full licensure from the … FDA in accordance with FDA-approved labeling and guidance.”

Though Comirnaty had FDA approval, military plaintiffs filed lawsuits arguing that the FDA-approved drug label was not actually publicly available, but only the EUA version of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and other EUA-based vaccines. Last May, a Navy administrative separation board ruled that U.S. Navy Lt. Bill Moseley was within his rights to refuse to be vaccinated without requesting any exemption or accommodation, because the military had not made the FDA-approved version of a vaccine available.

Waller Says Mandate Was Political Purge

While the vaccine mandate is gone and the original legality of the mandate is in dispute, Waller said the leadership that brought about the mandate is still in charge.

“We think that just because the National Defense Authorization Act … repealed or rolled back this mandate that the problem is over, but the same people who inflicted it upon the Department of Defense personnel are still there,” Waller said.

The retired Marine argued that the now-defunct vaccine mandate served as a tool to “purge” people from the military for political reasons, and “I think it’s been highly effective at removing those that won’t break the law for those that are in charge.”

NTD News reached out to the Department of Defense for comment but has not received a reply.

From NTD News

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Hundreds of Americans are flooding President Joe Biden’s Consumer Product Safety Commission with negative reactions to its potential gas stove regulations, with commenters urging the administration to stay out of their kitchens.

More than 400 people have submitted comments to the commission since it moved earlier this month to seek public input on gas stoves, which Biden-backed commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. says pose “hidden hazards” in American homes. Roughly 99 percent of those comments, a Washington Free Beacon review found, express opposition to new gas stove regulations. While many of the negative comments are cordial, with respondents detailing their decades of gas stove use with no ill effects, other comments are not.

“Stay the f out of this issue, jackasses,” one comment read. “How about this, try pulling your head out of your ass,” another suggested. “Please inhale my gas emissions,” urged a commenter who identified himself as “Ligma Taynt.”

The barrage of backlash comes two months after Trumka said a gas stove ban was “on the table.” “This is a hidden hazard,” the Biden appointee said of cooking with gas. “Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.” The remarks prompted a political firestorm, and both the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the White House quickly moved to walk back the threat. “The president does not support banning gas stoves,” Biden press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre assured in January.

But in the following weeks, the Biden administration began moving to target gas stoves through two different government bodies. In addition to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, Biden’s Energy Department last month released an analysis of its proposed cooking appliance efficiency regulations, which it acknowledged would ban half of all gas stoves on the U.S. market from being sold. The Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers responded by arguing that the regulations would actually nullify a much larger proportion of the market, citing a December Energy Department test that saw 20 of 21 gas stove models fail to meet the proposed rule’s efficiency standards.

The White House declined to comment.

Although some commenters used inflammatory methods to to express their displeasure with any gas stove regulations, respondents often opted to detail their positive experiences using the appliance. One respondent, for example, identified herself as the “pleased owner of five natural gas appliances” and the “fourth or fifth generation of homeowners in my family who have owned natural gas appliances.”

The commenter went on to disclose that she was born three months premature and subsequently has “seasonal allergy-induced asthma,” a condition that she said has her gas appliances have not exacerbated.

“No doctor has ever suggested that the detectable amount of [nitrogen oxides] from cooking on a stove or seasonal use of an interior natural gas fireplace could cause my asthma,” she wrote. “Scaring the public is not the sensible way to address decarbonization and legitimate human health concerns. Climate change is real. Energy efficiency is smart. But this is a silly waste of time.”

Trumka threatened to ban gas stoves after a Colorado-based green energy group, the Rocky Mountain Institute, released a December study that attributed 13 percent of U.S. childhood asthma cases to gas stove use. Both the study’s methodology and the institute’s biases attracted criticism from academic experts, with Yale University professor Dr. Harvey Risch telling the Free Beacon that the study “does not do any research on possible association between residential natural gas use and risk of childhood asthma.” The Rocky Mountain Institute openly works to implement “an ‘economy-wide transformation’ away from oil and gas,” a mission it has partnered with the Chinese government to achieve, the Free Beacon reported in January.

Gas stoves are not the only appliances the Biden administration is targeting through regulatory action. Biden’s Energy Department in February proposed new efficiency standards that would require washing machines to use considerably less energy and water in an attempt to “confront the global climate crisis.” Those mandates could lead to a stinky situation—manufacturers and industry groups argue that the changes will reduce cleaning performance and lead to dirtier clothes and longer cycles.

It’s unclear if any regulations will emerge from the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s gas stove review. A commission spokeswoman told the Free Beacon that any regulatory action “would require a vote by the full commission, which has not expressed support for any regulation” at this point. Commission chairman Alexander Hoehn-Saric, meanwhile, said in a March 1 statement that the regulatory body is merely studying “the chronic hazards that can arise from toxic emissions.” Still, Trumka has not backed down from his calls to regulate gas stoves—he said the vote to seek public input on the appliances marked “an important milestone on the road to protecting consumers from potential hidden hazards in their homes—the emissions from gas stoves.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

CNN’s morning show cohost Kaitlan Collins is ditching the talent agent she shares with fellow cohost Don Lemon, a move that follows months of on-air drama between the two network anchors.

Collins dropped agent Jay Sures and United Talent Agency for William Morris Endeavor, the New York Post reported. Sources said Sures was not effectively representing Collins in recent months as tensions between the hosts grew on the network’s flagship morning show, originally cast as a “group of friends.”

CNN This Morning, which includes Lemon, Collins, and Poppy Harlow, first hit a rough patch on Dec. 8 when Lemon screamed at Collins for allegedly interrupting him on-air, reportedly leaving the crew “rattled” and Collins “visibly upset.”

“Don screamed at Kaitlan, who was visibly upset and ran out of the studio,” a source told the Post. Lemon reportedly got dinner with Sures the following night.

FLASHBACK: Don Lemon’s Disaster Morning Show Was First Billed as ‘Group of Friends’

In February, Lemon launched into a now-infamous rant about a woman’s “prime” when discussing presidential candidate Nikki Haley.

“A woman is considered to be in her prime in her 20s and 30s and maybe 40s,” Lemon said on Feb. 16. “I’m just saying what the facts are. Google it.”

Lemon was removed from the show for a few days to receive “formal training,” according to internal emails. CEO Chris Licht said the network was taking his comments “very seriously.”

“I sat down with Don and had a frank and meaningful conversation,” Licht said in late February.

The show is struggling against rivals in the same slot. CNN This Morning pulled an average 360,000 viewers in February, compared with an average 1.2 million viewers for Fox News’s Fox & Friends.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk is accusing the University of California, Davis, of stoking a violent protest of his Tuesday campus appearance, saying the school’s chancellor “went out of his way to lie about me.”

Ahead of the event, a Sacramento Bee op-ed writer and chancellor of UC Davis Gary May separately made false claims that Kirk has called for violence against transgender people.

“One of the reasons why the tensions were so high … is because the leader of the university went out of his way to lie about me,” Kirk said on his podcast Wednesday. “The violence yesterday is directly connected with him as the chancellor of UC Davis lying about me and firing up the shock troops.”

Kirk threatened to sue both May and the Bee for the claims. The Bee retracted its statements and apologized, but May has yet to correct himself. His office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The UC Davis protesters, many clad in black, smashed windows, hurled eggs, and assaulted campus police officers in an unsuccessful effort to disrupt Tuesday’s event, which was organized by the university’s Turning Point chapter. Two people were arrested for allegedly spray-painting the outside of the venue, and the university’s iconic “egghead” statues were daubed with the Antifa symbol and other graffiti. No “major physical injuries” were reported, UC Davis officials said.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Large majorities of Americans say that China poses an economic threat and that they are concerned U.S. businesses rely too much on the Communist regime to produce products, according to a new poll.

Eighty-four percent of those surveyed identified China as an “economic threat,” according to a poll conducted by the CRC Advisors public relations firm on behalf of the 85 Fund, a conservative advocacy organization. Just 10 percent of those polled did not view China as a threat to American businesses, while 6 percent said they were unsure.

The poll—which was conducted from Feb. 16-20, just after a Chinese Communist Party spy balloon was shot down traversing the United States—details increasing American skepticism toward China and its economic practices. In addition to stealing American research and spying on private companies, the Communist regime has forced many of its U.S. business partners to move their manufacturing plants into China. Many in Congress have labeled the CCP’s control over American supply chains a national security threat.

The findings indicate that self-identified Republicans and Democrats both view China as a threat and want to see America unravel its economic reliance on the country.

Eighty-seven percent of those polled expressed concern “that many U.S.-based businesses rely on China to produce their products,” including 50 percent who said they are “very concerned” over the issue. Just 10 percent of those polled did not view this as a problem.

Eighty-nine percent of those polled said the “U.S. should enact new laws and policies that reduce our dependence on Chinese manufacturing.” And 73 percent said they would purchase an American-made product over a Chinese-made product if given the choice.

A majority of Americans would pay more money for an American-made product. Fifty-eight percent of those polled said they would shell out anywhere from 5 to 25 percent more for products not made in China. Just 15 percent said they would not pay more for something made in America.

Similarly, 62 percent said they are “less likely to purchase goods and services from a company that partners with China.”

The findings comport with similar polls about American attitudes toward China. A 2022 Pew survey, for instance, found that 82 percent of Americans have an unfavorable view toward the CCP government.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Virginia school recommends 9-year-olds read novel that includes graphic descriptions of children’s genitalia

A private Christian school in Virginia is pushing fourth-graders to read a controversial book about a boy who says he’s a girl and that includes explicit descriptions of children’s genitalia.

St. Stephen’s and St. Agnes School, a private Episcopalian school in Alexandria, Va., that charges more than $39,000 in tuition, sent a book list this week to the parents of fourth-graders that includes the novel Melissa, according to emails reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. Written by “genderqueer” author Alex Gino, the book tells of a fourth-grade boy named George who believes he is a girl. The characters discuss genitalia, and the book includes graphic lines such as “what she has between her legs was nobody’s business but hers and her boyfriend.”

“She … tried not to think about what was between her legs, but there it was, bobbing in front of her,” one passage reads.

Melissa has been widely criticized since its release in 2015, facing criticism from parents who say the novel is inappropriate for young children. The book was originally titled George, but Gino changed the title to reflect the child protagonist’s trans name after facing backlash from activists.

The school’s reading list is the latest sign that the assignment of woke materials is not limited to public schools, and that religious schools are exposing young children to sexual and age-inappropriate content. Accrediting associations often push private schools to adopt the woke curriculum, the Washington Free Beacon reported in 2021.

St. Stephen’s and St. Agnes is part of the National Association of Independent Schools, a group of more than 1,600 U.S. private schools that requires DEI protocols for accreditation. One of its members, the Dalton School, hosts an annual conference for other New York administrators to “broaden and improve inclusion within the racial, socioeconomic and sexually diverse communities,” according to its website.

St. Stephen’s and St. Agnes School did not return a request for comment.

A school administrator justified the assignment to parents in the name of “DEIB,” or diversity, equity, inclusion, and a new, fourth term: belonging. “I worked with teachers to identify books for this unit that provide both mirrors and windows into diverse identities and experiences,” Lower School librarian Julie Esanu, who refers to herself as a “DEIB advocate,” wrote in her email announcing the list.

The author of Melissa, Gino, is an activist for the “LGBTQIAP+” community and serves on the board of NOLOSE, a “fat-positive, queer, feminist organization dedicated to supporting radical fat acceptance and culture,” according to Gino’s website.

Other books on the fourth-grade reading list include Ban This Book, a novel about a fourth-grader who fights against so-called book bans at her school library, and Zayd Saleem, Chasing the Dream, a book about a Muslim elementary student who pursues his dream of playing basketball over his parents’ wishes that he practice violin.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Willie Horton-style ad goes after Janet Protasiewicz

Liberal Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Judge Janet Protasiewicz let off a convicted child rapist with no jail time who was accused of filming his sexual encounter with a 13-year-old and posting it on Facebook, a fact highlighted in a new ad campaign from her conservative Supreme Court opponent Judge Dan Kelly.

The ad slams Protasiewicz for her “long history of letting dangerous criminals off easy” including “Quantrell Bounds who assaulted and raped a 13-year-old girl, recorded it, and posted a video of the act to Facebook.”

“Despite facing 60 years in prison, Judge Janet refused to give Bounds any prison time at all,” continues the ad. “No prison for child rapists. That’s Janet Protasiewicz on crime.”

The ad’s blue background, white block-lettering and retro narration is a clear nod to the infamous 1988 Willie Horton commercial that Republicans ran against Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis during the 1988 presidential race, which elevated the nation’s crime wave into a national election issue and was slammed by critics as a racial dog whistle. The high-stakes Wisconsin Supreme Court race, which could have national implications for the 2024 presidential election in the swing state, has already smashed U.S. spending records for local judicial campaigns. The election will take place on April 4.

Bounds was charged in 2019 with first-degree child sex assault involving a “person under the age of 13,” which was later reduced to third-degree sexual assault, according to Milwaukee County records. He was also charged with publishing a “depiction of person w/out consent.”

Records show Protasiewicz sentenced Bounds to five years and nine months in prison, but suspended the jail time and let him walk with six years of probation.

Bounds was arrested again last June for possessing a firearm as a convicted felon, a case that is still open, according to records.

The Kelly campaign said the ad is digital and may also run on TV. Similar to the Willie Horton commercial, the ad comes as cities across the United States and in Wisconsin are facing a surge in violent crime. Eighty-five percent of Wisconsin voters said they’re concerned about crime, according to a recent Marquette Law School poll.

The Kelly commercial isn’t the first to attack Protasiewicz’s sentencing record. Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the state’s largest business association, launched an ad campaign highlighting multiple convicted rapists and pedophiles who received light sentences from Protasiewicz.

In one 2019 case, Protasiewicz sentenced a child predator who assaulted an 11-year-old to probation. In another case in 2018, she also gave probation to a mother who allegedly starved her 16-year-old disabled son to death. Protasiewicz has said the attacks are “misleading” and fail to take into account her full record on the bench.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Los Angeles socialists are helping a teachers’ union strike for massive boosts to their six-figure compensation, saying the strike boosts their “Green New Deal” for public schools.

The United Teachers of Los Angeles is planning to strike for three days next week in an effort to transform city schools into a “green” social services hub. The Los Angeles chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America has identified the teachers’ plan as part of its “Green New Deal for L.A. Public Schools” and said it is the group’s priority agenda item for the year. But buried beneath the teachers’ sundry progressive demands is a 20 percent salary hike over two years for Los Angeles teachers, whose average salaries and benefits run about $115,000.

The socialist-backed strike is the latest example of teachers’ unions harnessing allegedly high-minded progressive causes to wrest professional wins. As students languished under union-backed school closures during the pandemic, American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten pushed to ditch standardized testing in the name of equity. Last summer, the president of the National Education Association said the union would lobby on transgender issues, abortion, and gun control alongside its fight against charter schools. The California teachers’ union is lobbying on gun control, flavored tobacco bans, and LGBT issues to shore up support from other powerful political groups.

The teachers’ union lifted elements of the DSA’s Green New Deal for schools, such as demands for free public transportation for students, “climate literacy” courses taught through a “racial justice lens,” campus parks, and more school solar panels. The teachers’ platform, titled “Beyond Recovery,” also seeks city rent controls, taxpayer-funded parental leave, subsidized housing on unused school property, smaller classrooms, and a crackdown on charter schools. The union is also demanding that administrators lobby the federal government to make COVID-19 funds permanent and the state to increase cash flow.

Los Angeles public school teachers earn on average $86,578 per year, with total compensation running nearly $115,000 with benefits, according to Transparent California. That is well above the city’s average salary of $67,500. The strike would shut schools for three days in the state’s largest district, where kids are still reeling from learning losses and behavioral problems incurred during California’s longest-in-the-nation closures. Some 420,000 students would be affected.

The United Teachers of Los Angeles did not respond to the Free Beacon‘s request for comment. The Free Beacon was unable to find contact information for the DSA chapter.

The teachers’ union, which is coordinating its strike with the local SEIU chapter for low-wage school employees, has refused to engage in normal negotiations and isn’t budging from all its demands, according to district superintendent Alberto Carvalho. As he gave a press conference on Wednesday to promise to do everything he could to avert the strike, the Los Angeles Democratic Socialists of America rallied with both unions to cheer them on.

“Socialists support public school workers!” the Los Angeles DSA chapter tweeted.

The massive pay increase seems to contradict the mantra of the teachers’ socialist backers, who “believe that working people should run both the economy and society … to meet human needs, not to make profits for a few.”

The antics by the unions and their socialist allies follow a mass exodus from Los Angeles schools. About 20,000 students dropped out or moved to different schools to escape forced remote learning. Los Angeles school officials foresee more dwindling to come—and a corresponding hit to their budgets. Enrollment will likely shrink by nearly 30 percent by 2030, according to projections.

Correction, 3/19/2023, 9:00 a.m.: This piece has been updated with more accurate information about teachers’ compensation.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Prominent tech companies, liberal news outlets, and a Democratic politician’s vineyards are among the thousands of businesses that breathed a sigh of relief on Sunday when the Biden administration moved to bail out Silicon Valley Bank.

Silicon Valley Bank maintained $209 billion in assets and $175.4 billion in total deposits, making it the 16th-largest bank in the country. It was the second-largest bank to fail in American history when the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation took control of the institution on Friday.

President Joe Biden has insisted that the FDIC’s move was not a bailout, and claimed his administration is working to protect “American workers and small businesses.” But average Americans won’t benefit the most from the bailout. Ninety-three percent of the bank’s depositors kept more than $250,000 in the bank.

While the California bank was famous for its rolodex of tech clients, it happily accepted deposits from all manner of people, including some of the individuals and institutions involved in pushing the Biden administration’s bailout.

Here are just a few.

Gavin Newson

California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D.) trio of wineries are clients of the failed financial institution, as is the governor himself. He has maintained personal accounts at the failed bank for years, the Intercept reported, citing a former Newsom aide. Newsom’s efforts to rescue Silicon Valley Bank’s clients could also put him on the wrong side of the law. California law prohibits elected officials from influencing official matters in which “the official has a financial interest,” Insider reported.

Newsom was instrumental in convincing Biden over the weekend that a bailout of the failing bank was necessary. He was also one of the first politicians nationwide to hail the president’s swift move on Sunday to make all of Silicon Valley Bank’s clients whole. Newsom was one of many high-profile Democrats who received money from Silicon Valley Bank, whose employees have also given tens of thousands of dollars to Democratic candidates and causes.

The emotional toll Newsom may have faced had his wineries failed amid Silicon Valley Bank’s implosion would have likely been equally as devastating as the impact on his bottom line. He refused to sell his businesses when he first ran for governor in 2018, saying: “These are my babies, my life, my family. I can’t do that. I can’t sell them.”

BuzzFeed

Liberal online media company BuzzFeed revealed to investors Monday that it held $56 million in cash and cash equivalents as of the end of 2022, the majority of which was held at Silicon Valley Bank. The news capped off a not-so-banner 2022 fiscal year for BuzzFeed, in which the company weathered a net loss of $201.3 million, laid off 40 percent of its newsroom, and saw its stock price plummet by 90 percent.

BuzzFeed has placed little focus on the bank’s collapse, having mentioned the story in its morning newsletter, a quiz published Wednesday, as well as a passing reference in a Tuesday story about a “viral alpha male finance podcast parody sketch.” None of the stories mentioned BuzzFeed’s financial connection to the bank.

As part of its efforts to right its ship, BuzzFeed announced it would leverage artificial intelligence to spin up viral listicles and quizzes. BuzzFeed News editor in chief Karolina Waclawiak also told the company’s remaining editorial staffers at a recent meeting to shift away from long-form news reporting and prioritize click-bait celebrity news, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Vox Media

Vox Media, the parent company of dozens of liberal news companies including Vox, New York magazine, the Verge, and Polygon, disclosed in news stories that it banked with Silicon Valley Bank before its collapse.

Unlike BuzzFeed, Vox has disclosed its financial connection to the failed bank in news stories this week. That hasn’t stopped the outlet, however, from carrying water for the Biden administration. On Tuesday, for example, it published a story mocking concerns that Silicon Valley Bank’s fixation on woke initiatives may have contributed to its demise.

Vox spokeswoman Lauren Starke told the Washington Post that the company doesn’t anticipate “any significant impact” due to the bank’s failure but added that it has suffered “logistical issues such as the temporary suspension of accounts and company credit cards.”

In a Monday piece on Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse, Vox competitor the Dispatch parenthetically disclosed it had been a Silicon Valley Bank customer.

Black Lives Matter

While Black Lives Matter isn’t a known client of Silicon Valley Bank, the bank’s untimely failure marks the end of a significant gravy train for the movement.

Silicon Valley Bank and its employees contributed more than $73 million to the Black Lives Matter movement and related causes since 2020, according to a database maintained by the Claremont Institute.

The Green Energy Racket

Silicon Valley Bank’s failure could have delivered a seismic blow to the climate change industry and the more than 1,550 technology companies that specialize in solar, hydrogen, and battery storage solutions that held funds at the bank, had Biden not bailed the institution out.

Still, the bank’s failure will have lingering effects for the industry, with insiders warning that Silicon Valley Bank was often the only institution willing to lend funds for their projects.

“Silicon Valley Bank was in many ways a climate bank,” Kiran Bhatraju, the chief executive of the nation’s largest community solar manager, Arcadia, told the New York Times. “When you have the majority of the market banking through one institution, there’s going to be a lot of collateral damage.”

Wedbush Securities technology sector analyst David Ives added that the bank’s failure is a “major blow to early-stage and even late-stage tech startups.”

Silicon Valley Bank “was the bank that would always pick up the phone when other large money center banks wouldn’t,” Ives told Politico.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Patient removed from waiting list until she receives an mRNA shot

SAN DIEGO, Calif.—Even on a good day, Linda Garinger of Ramona, California, thinks about dying.

Since she went on kidney dialysis two years ago, she’s had a heart attack and a cardiac episode associated with her thrice-weekly treatments.

Her energy is low as her other vital organs slowly fail. Her blood pressure is out of control—hovering at around 200 systolic over “100-something”diastolic whenever she undergoes dialysis.

Garinger feels it’s only a matter of time before her next heart attack, which could prove fatal unless she gets a new kidney.

“The dialysis is very stressful on me. My vision is going. My hair is falling out. I’ve got skin cancer,” said Garinger, 68. “They said it’s from the dialysis not filtering out all the bad stuff.

“My biggest fear is I’ll have a heart attack during dialysis. I’m just going downhill right now.”

In 2022, Garinger was eagerly waiting for a kidney transplant at Sharp Memorial Hospital in San Diego, having found a good organ match in her daughter, the doctors told her.

But, “I needed [the transplant] like two years ago,” Garinger said.

Early last May, Garinger received an unexpected letter from the hospital saying she was no longer on the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) waitlist for a kidney transplant.

“The reason for this status change is you have not had your COVID vaccines,” read the May 6, 2022, letter Garinger shared with The Epoch Times.

“Once this situation is remedied, you will be evaluated for re-activation on the transplant waitlist.”

Garinger did not appeal the hospital’s decision. She knew “in her gut” her unvaccinated status would always be a problem.

Still, she put her faith in Sharp Memorial, only to be put through tests, medical procedures, and consultations at a substantial cost to Medicare.

“The whole time, they knew I wasn’t vaccinated and that [my daughter] wasn’t vaccinated. They would always ask me, ‘Why don’t you want to get a vaccine?’”

“I was pretty adamant,” said Garinger. “I didn’t want to take anything that was still experimental.”

She remembered her good friend who died two weeks after receiving a COVID shot. “She lived right over here, on the other side [of the street],” Garinger said.

Garinger said she was fortunate to find another hospital nearby that would operate without her taking the vaccine.

Starting All Over

The challenge now is the time it will take to complete all the required paperwork and preliminary procedures, the time it will take to get on a waitlist for a kidney donor, and the time it will take to find a donor.

She fears her time will run out before then.

One sympathetic doctor said, ‘Linda, you could drop over dead. Your heart could stop.’ So, I have to watch what I eat, and on the days I don’t do dialysis, I take this powder that tastes like gritty sand” to remove the excess potassium from her body.

Garinger finds herself among many people who need an organ transplant but are up against a medical system still adhering to vaccine protocols in many facilities.

In a 2021 Healio transplantation survey, 60 percent of the 141 transplant centers that responded did not require a COVID-19 injection before surgery. The survey sample represented just over 56 percent of the transplant centers in the United States.

Jeffrey Childers, a commercial attorney based in Gainesville, Florida, served clients facing COVID-19 mandates at hospitals and medical clinics during the pandemic.

He said Garinger’s case reflects the “COVID mania” that permeated the medical establishment beginning in 2020.

“This was an ugly manifestation of the COVID management regime that popped up,” Childers said. “All the cases get a lot of attention because people are horrified. But the transplant people will say they have limited resources, only get so many organs each year, and we have to give them to people with the best survival chances. They’ll hide behind that forever.”

Life-and-Death Decisions

Childers said health care facilities still have tremendous discretionary power to make critical decisions concerning COVID-19 vaccines.

“To see these kinds of life-and-death bureaucratic powers wielded by people who are not motivated by the science but—something else—is horrifying,” Childers said.

“I’ve run into it a handful of times in Florida. The law that applies is state dependent. The folks who manage those donor lists and the assignments have a lot of discretion.

“It’s even more appalling it’s happening now so late in the pandemic when the mandates are gone. You can’t find a single person who says they regret not taking the vaccine. But you can find tons going the other way.”

Childers said pro-vaccine advocates argue that an unvaccinated recipient is much more likely to die from COVID-19 following transplant surgery than a vaccinated patient.

“I don’t know the official line anymore,” he told The Epoch Times. “[The vaccine] doesn’t stop you from dying. It doesn’t stop you from getting sick.”

One study in the November 2022 MDPI, a Switzerland-based publisher of open-access scientific journals, claimed that over 60 days, the death rate among unvaccinated kidney transplant patients was 11.2 percent at the time of COVID-19 infection.

The study found the death rate among the vaccinated was 2.2 percent. More than two-thirds of the 144 patients in the study received a kidney transplant.

By contrast, a study published in the Journal of Clinical Medicine in September 2022 found that some cornea transplant patients rejected the grafts after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine.

In some cases, the rejection took place 20 years after the procedure.

Childers believes the science generally does not support the notion that unvaccinated transplant recipients are at an increased risk of dying from COVID-19.

“The argument is always don’t give an organ to a person who is living some kind of lifestyle that is risky or increases the risk of dying from something else,” Childers told The Epoch Times.

“That’s the logic they’re applying to this. They’re essentially saying by not taking the vaccine, [transplant patients] are at higher risk of dying from COVID. So they don’t want to give an organ to somebody at high risk voluntarily.”

Ohio attorney Warner Mendenhall, representing clients in vaccine mandate cases, said he knows at least 60 organ transplant denial suits working through the medical freedom group Liberty Counsel.

Each case involves a client refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine required for transplant surgery.

“We’re seeing [transplant denials] at many hospitals across the country,” Mendenhall said.

And while the medical establishment remains split on the safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 injections, some “medical people are concerned about clotting and other issues that occur with the vaccinated.”

“Especially if you’ve got liver and kidney problems and need that type of transfer, you don’t want to be vaccinated before the transplant. That’s my understanding,” Mendenhall said.

A ‘Fiduciary Responsibility’ to Patients

Often, the unvaccinated transplant patient has maintained a longstanding medical relationship with the hospital or clinic without issue before the COVID-19 vaccine rollouts.

For this reason, Mendenhall believes there is a “fiduciary relationship that the hospitals engage in with a transplant patient.” To break that obligation would be “a real breach of that fiduciary responsibility to them.”

According to the Chronic Disease Research Group, an estimated 37 million people in the United States have kidney disease in varying stages.

About 1 million Americans are in the end stages of the disease. At the same time, 550,000 undergo kidney dialysis to remove excess toxins from the blood because their kidneys cannot perform this function.

The average wait time for a kidney transplant in the United States is three to five years at most health facilities, but it’s longer in some parts of the country, according to kidney.org.

“It is best to explore transplant before you need to start dialysis. This way, you might be able to get a transplant ‘preemptively,’ before you need dialysis,” the organization’s website states.

“It takes time to find the right transplant center for you, to complete the transplant evaluation, to get on the transplant waitlist for a deceased donor, or to find a living kidney donor if you can.”

Garinger said she is in terminal Stage 5 of her kidney disease and needs dialysis almost every other day to stay alive.

“I’m pissed off,” said Garinger, who gets short of breath just walking to the kitchen.

“I can’t walk to Costco or a grocery store now. My muscles—I get out of wind so easily. I can’t walk down to my chickens anymore.”

Her daughter Emily Lewis, 35, is a recent medical assistant program graduate and is now her mother’s live-in caretaker as she waits for a kidney transplant.

“I put my life on hold because [of my mother],” Lewis said, although she has no regrets.

With her career in limbo, Lewis said she is angry at the injustice of the COVID-19 mandates while doubting the shots even work.

“Everyone I know who’s COVID vaccinated has had it four or five times. I’ve had it zero,” Lewis told The Epoch Times.

Denied access to the kidney wait list at Sharp Memorial, Garinger found that the University of California San Diego Medical Center was willing to perform the kidney transplant surgery.

But the longer it takes to find a kidney donor, the more likely it is that she won’t make it back to a more normal life.

She characterized her relationship with her doctors at Sharp Memorial as adversarial since she opposed taking the COVID-19 vaccine under any circumstances.

She remembered one doctor in Ramona who kept “pressuring me” about the vaccine.

He said, “What will you do if you get COVID? What if you catch COVID and you have to go to the hospital?’

“Well,” she told him. “I have this protocol on my fridge—vitamins C and D. I have ivermectin. Number one: I won’t go to the hospital. It’s a death sentence there.”

“I guess you know more than me,’” the doctor said as he stood up and left the room.

“I didn’t know I had an adversary” or that “I was an evil person. I just had a gut feeling they would deny me [a kidney] because they kept pressuring me about the shot.”

“They did the same thing with me,” Emily said.

‘Why Aren’t You Vaccinated?’

At one point, Garinger demanded data showing the vaccine’s side effects.

“There was none,” she said. “It came down to the last final interview with the surgeon. All he could ask me was, ‘Why aren’t you vaccinated? Why don’t you want to get vaccinated?’”

“I don’t have COVID,” Garinger said. “[Emily] doesn’t have COVID. Another thing they told me was we were a [donor] match. And then I got to UCSD, and the bloodwork showed she was not a match.”

Sharp Memorial did not respond to a request for comment from The Epoch Times. UCSD Medical Center did not return an email seeking comment.

New Orleans attorney David Dalia said Garinger’s case seems to be medical “discrimination.”

“They are discriminating against her based on her vaccination status,” he said.

During the pandemic, Dalia worked on vaccine mandate cases with Frontline doctors, filing amicus briefs on behalf of 1.5 million federal employees who refused to take a COVID-19 vaccine by order of President Joe Biden.

“The truth is [Garinger] has a lot better chance of living than a vaccinated person. We can back that up. They’re viewing it as sort of a disability.

“Well, that’s a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. And federal law specifically says all experimental use authorization drugs are strictly voluntary and subject to informed consent.”

Dalia said informed consent is “never coerced.”

As Garinger works through the intake process at UCSD Medical Center, she has good, bad, and “hell” days.

“I sit in a chair all day,” said Garinger, who ran a successful foreclosure business before she retired due to her illness. “[Emily] helps me do cooking. She does all the chopping and stuff. I have a chair in the kitchen. I walk to the kitchen and start cooking. I don’t do much. My gardening is on hold—everything is on hold. My muscles are gone. I use electric carts to go to Costco. I can’t do anything. I’m out of breath. It sucks.”

“Every part of my body is deteriorating. So, I’m on hold until I get a kidney.”

Just as painful are the times people call her “evil ” because she refuses to take an mRNA vaccine for COVID-19.

“You’re going to give [COVID] to everybody,” they tell her. “You’re evil for not getting vaccinated.”

“That’s how I felt,” Garinger told The Epoch Times.

She said another fear is receiving a kidney from a vaccinated donor, with unknown health effects, since there is no way to determine which donor is vaccinated and which one is not.

Feeling her time is growing short, Garinger said she is still determined to keep fighting in the time she has left.

“I’ve got to get this done. Every day there’s something else going wrong with me because my kidneys are gone,” Garinger said.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The Federal Reserve balance sheet has surged to its highest level since November as the central bank attempts to avert the contagion of the banking crisis.

The Fed’s balance sheet for the week ending March 15 increased by $297 billion, hitting a five-month high of $8.639 trillion.

Since climbing to an April peak of $8.965 trillion, the U.S. central bank has gradually reduced its balance sheet over the past 10 months by redeeming $95 billion worth of securities each month.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Fed had accumulated approximately $4.6 trillion worth of Treasurys, mortgage-backed securities, and corporate bonds, dramatically bolstering its bond portfolio to nearly $9 trillion. However, its latest tightening endeavor has diminished its role as a liquidity provider for the financial system, especially as money-supply growth contracted in January (negative 1.05 percent) and February (negative 1.73 percent).

The Fed’s purchases or sales of government bonds can affect the amount of money in circulation. The more it purchases, the greater the money supply grows, resulting in inflation.

But while some contend that this is a form of crisis-era quantitative easing (QE), others posit that the latest balance sheet expansion results from banks borrowing short-term loans.

Fed balance sheet figures show that financial institutions borrowed a record $152.9 billion from the central bank’s discount window, which is how it lends money to its member banks. Companies will take out overnight loans to ensure that they can meet reserve requirements by the end of the business day.

In addition, banks have already borrowed close to $12 billion from the new Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP). This was established in the wake of the bank failures in early March and offers liquidity for financial entities that guarantee loans with high-quality collateral, including Treasurys and mortgage-backed securities. They will be required to pay interest on these loans.

The Fed lent nearly $143 billion to the new bridge banks—Signature Bridge Bank, N.A., and Silicon Valley Bridge Bank, N.A.—that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) created in the aftermath.

Meanwhile, the Fed continued to offload its Treasurys and mortgage-backed securities by roughly $7 billion and $2 billion, respectively.

“The increase in the fed balance sheet is a temporary reflection of the runs on the various weak banks,” Andy Constan, the manager of macroeconomic research firm Damped Spring Advisors, wrote on Twitter.

“1. The FDIC will advance a plan within the next two weeks [probably] sooner to insure more deposits. That will slow the run 2. Deposits are shifting and that is causing stress.”

But Peter Schiff, the chief economist and global strategist at Euro Pacific Capital, disagreed, writing that “the Fed will print money out of thin air to loan to banks.”

“Even if it’s only temporary, the loans will inflate the money supply. That is the definition of inflation,” he said. “And looking at the bigger picture, this bailout likely means the end of the Fed’s inflation fight.”

Citi strategists assert that the “new BTFP facility is QE in another name” since assets will jump on the balance sheet and boost reserves.

“Although technically they are not buying securities, reserves will grow,” Citi strategists Jabaz Mathai, Jason Williams, and Alejandra Vazquez Plata wrote in a research note.

‘Uncertainty Around the Fed Path’

Economists say the real test of its inflation-fighting tightening campaign will happen on March 21 and 22 when the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) convenes for its monetary policy meeting.

Goldman Sachs economists recently changed their expectations for the crucial meeting and now anticipate a pause in rate hikes. The bank’s forecasts for the other upcoming meetings were unchanged, and it’s penciling in a peak benchmark fed funds rate of 5.25 percent to 5.50 percent, but there is “increased uncertainty around the Fed path from here.”

According to the CME FedWatch Tool, the market is mostly penciling in a quarter-point increase, which would boost the target rate range to 4.50 percent to 4.75 percent.

Chair Jerome Powell and other rate-setting committee members will have two main choices when choosing how to manage the bank failures and maintain its inflation fight, according to Judith Raneri, the portfolio manager and vice president at Gabelli Funds.

“They can stay the course focused on price stability, continuing to hike rates despite the risk that it could add more tension to the banking sector, or they can hold for now to give the financial system some time to stabilize, even if it comes at the risk of keeping inflation hot,” Raneri said in a note.

How this will affect recession odds is unclear, “but we know that with bank failures come credit contraction,” Nancy Tengler, the CEO and Chief Investment Officer of Laffer Tengler Investments, wrote.

“We have already seen banks tightening lending standards and now they are likely to pull back on making credit available even further if history is any guide. That will slow small business who have been doing a great deal of the hiring.”

Over the past year, the FOMC has raised the policy rate by 450 basis points.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The appearance of China’s green lasers over Hawaii signals a coming war, warns Rick Fisher, a senior fellow at International Assessment and Strategy Center.

In late January, Japanese astronomers stationed in Hawaii noticed mysterious green laser beams being fired over the island. The laser beams are being shot down from space over one of the largest mountain ranges in Hawaii.

When they first reported these beams to the public, the astronomers said they came from a NASA satellite—they were thought to be American lasers. But just a week later, the Japanese astronomers issued a correction saying that the green laser beams were not from a U.S. satellite, but instead, they were more likely from a Chinese satellite.

According to NASA’s assessment, it was likely caused by China’s Daqi-1 satellite, which is a “Chinese atmospheric environment monitoring satellite” launched in April 2022.

“This weather satellite passing over Hawaii, shooting its lasers, its atmospheric measuring lasers, down from on high is very much a signal to the United States that if there is a confrontation over the future of democratic Taiwan, they are ready to target American military forces, which will definitely impact American civilian lives in the state of Hawaii,” Fisher told the “China in Focus” host on NTD, the sister media outlet of the Epoch Times.

The expert disagreed that the Daqi-1 satellite is solely for environmental research.

“While this satellite indeed can be used to advance environmental research, the lasers that it uses to assess the atmosphere can also be used to provide key measurements of atmospheric density, wind direction, all of which are essential for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to be able to target its latest weapons known as hypersonic glide vehicles,” he said in the interview.

“In reality, this is a classic example of a Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s dual-use system,” he noted.

Hypersonic Glide Vehicle

According to Fisher, the hypersonic glide vehicle is designed to exploit low altitudes as it travels at speeds above five times the speed of sound.

“Now, at that speed, a hypersonic glide vehicle is very vulnerable to changes in the weather, minute changes in atmospheric density, the change in direction of the wind,” he said.

“So, the PLA would want the Daqi-1 satellite or a satellite with that capability, to have reconnoitered the weather over the target, the weather over Hawaii, the weather over Pearl Harbor, it wants the hypersonic glide vehicle to be as accurate as possible,” he added.

He said that its ability to travel at lower altitudes enables the satellite to avoid radar detection until it approaches the target.

“It means less time for the Americans to mobilize missile defenses, if they have them, or to target this missile. And in addition, [the] hypersonic glide vehicle is designed to be maneuverable. So as it approaches the target, it can make evasive maneuvers,” he said.

The fact that the Chinese satellite targeted Pearl Harbor also made the American nuclear attack submarines based there vulnerable to any threat.

“Those submarines would provide a very significant margin of the American deterrent and combat power in the event of confrontation or war,” he said.

“So China would attach an extremely high priority to attacking Pearl Harbor and destroying American naval assets, including those submarines,” he added.

Close-Run

According to Fisher, the United States can counter hypersonic glide vehicles with its air-launched ballistic missile (ALBM), which he said: “offers the advantage of being able to intercept the bomber that’s carrying the missile early on in its mission.”

“If the hypersonic glide vehicle missiles are on ships, then the ships can be intercepted and dealt with at a far distance from potential targets as well. But if the missiles are air-launched ballistic missiles, that means the missiles are in the air, [and] it becomes important to try to intercept the missile as far away as possible from the target before the hypersonic glide vehicle becomes a freely maneuvering and evasive target itself,” he said.

The United States has that intercepting capability, he noted. Still, it’s a close-run situation as “the hypersonic glide vehicle is very fast, very maneuverable, and can also execute violent maneuvers.”

“It means that the United States would have to launch a significant number of intercepting missiles in order to be able to assure the destruction of an incoming hypersonic glide vehicle,” Fisher said.

Roman Balmakov contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been formally accused by the International Criminal Court (ICC) of war crimes and faces an arrest warrant, which the Kremlin considers illegitimate.

ICC president Piotr Hofmanski said in a video statement Friday that an arrest warrant has been issued for Putin for the “alleged war crimes of deportation of children from Ukrainian occupied territories into the Russian Federation.”

International law prohibits occupying powers from transferring civilians from occupied areas to other territories.

Hofmanski said the contents of the warrants would be kept secret to protect the identities of the allegedly abducted children.

“Nevertheless, the judges of the chamber dealing with this case decided to make the existence of the warrants public in the interest of justice and to prevent the commission of future crimes,” he said.

‘International Cooperation’?

While the ICC’s judges have issued the warrants, it will be up to the international community to enforce them as the ICC has no police force of its own.

“The execution depends on international cooperation,” Hofmanski said.

While it’s unclear what type of international cooperation would lead to Putin’s arrest, Russia has made clear it has no intention of cooperating.

The Kremlin said earlier this week that it doesn’t acknowledge the ICC’s jurisdiction or authority.

“We do not recognize this court; we do not recognize its jurisdiction,” Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told journalists in Moscow on Tuesday.

Peskov’s dismissal of the court’s authority came amid media speculation that ICC prosecutors would open two war crimes cases and issue several arrest warrants for those deemed responsible for the targeting of Ukrainian civilian infrastructure and for the mass abduction of children.

Besides seeking Putin’s arrest, the ICC on Friday also announced it had issued an arrest warrant for Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, the Commissioner for Children’s Rights in the Office of the President of the Russian Federation, on similar allegations.

The ICC said in a statement that both Putin and Lvova-Belova are “allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.”

“The crimes were allegedly committed in Ukrainian occupied territory at least from 24 February 2022,” the court said, which marks the date of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which Moscow calls a “special military operation.”

The arrest warrants come about a year after ICC prosecutor Karim Khan opened an investigation into possible war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Ukraine.

Khan has said that, during four trips to Ukraine, he was looking at the alleged targeting of civilian infrastructure and crimes against children.

Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin hailed the ICC’s decision in a statement on social media.

“The world received a signal that the Russian regime is criminal and its leadership and henchmen will be held accountable,” he said. “This is a historic decision for Ukraine and the entire system of international law.”

Andriy Yermak, Ukraine’s presidential chief of staff, said the move was “just the beginning.”

There were no immediate comments from Russia following the ICC’s announcement.

On Thursday, a United Nations-backed inquiry accused Russia of committing numerous war crimes in Ukraine, including forcibly deporting children to Russian territory.

Tensions Mount

The ICC’s announcement came as Slovakia on Thursday announced that it would send its fleet of Soviet-era MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine.

With the move, Slovakia joined Poland, which on March 16 became the first NATO country to send its fighter jets to its embattled neighbor.

Ukraine’s leaders have repeatedly asked Western powers for fighter jets to help them in the fight against Russian forces.

Analysts say that neither Moscow nor Kyiv has air superiority in the skies above Ukraine, with the decision to send in the jets seen as a potential turning point in repelling Russia’s offensive.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly requested jet fighters, while Washington and other NATO allies have refused, citing concern about escalating the alliance’s role in the conflict.

Peskov downplayed the decision to send Polish and Slovak planes to Ukraine.

“In the course of the special military operation, all this equipment will be subject to destruction,” Peskov said. “It feels like all of these countries are thus engaged in the disposal of old unnecessary equipment.”

Poland, which considers Russia’s regional ambitions a threat to its security, has been one of Kyiv’s staunchest supporters since the conflict began.

Warsaw has already provided Ukraine with some 250 combat tanks and pledged dozens more last month, including advanced German-made Leopard tanks.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Tesla founder and Twitter CEO Elon Musk criticized the idea of allowing minors to undergo gender transition procedures on March 16, holding that children were being fed “propaganda” to convince them to undergo such “severe” treatments.

Musk’s revelation of his stance on the issue came in response to a video posted to Twitter on March 9 of Minnesota’s Lt. Gov. Penny Flanagan, a Democrat, promoting such procedures as “life-affirming and life-saving health care.”

“When our children tell us who they are, it is our job as grownups to listen and to believe them,” Flanagan said. “That’s what it means to be a good parent.”

Disagreeing with that assessment, Musk replied Thursday: “Not when they’re fed propaganda by adults. Moreover, every child goes through an identity crisis before their personality/identity crystallizes. Therefore, we shouldn’t allow severe, irreversible surgery or sterilizing drugs that they may regret until at least age 18.”

Not when they’re fed propaganda by adults.

Moreover, every child goes through an identity crisis before their personality/identity crystallizes.

Therefore, we shouldn’t allow severe, irreversible surgery or sterilizing drugs that they may regret until at least age 18.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 16, 2023

Flanagan’s comments were made at a March 8 press conference, during which Minnesota’s Democratic Gov. Tim Walz signed an executive order supporting gender-affirming care in his state.

The order directs state agencies to coordinate to “protect people or entities who are providing, assisting, seeking, or obtaining” gender-affirming health services, including “all medical, surgical, counseling, or referral services, including telehealth services” an individual might seek to affirm their gender identity.

The directive prohibits the state from assisting other states’ law enforcement investigations into individuals seeking those services while also instructing state agencies to investigate and take “administrative actions” against “unfair or deceptive practices” relating to gender-affirming care.

“As states across the country move to ban access to gender-affirming care, we want LGBTQ Minnesotans to know they will continue to be safe, protected, and welcome in Minnesota,” Walz said in a statement. “In Minnesota, you will not be punished for seeking or providing medical care. This Executive Order delivers the urgent action that our LGBTQ Minnesotans deserve.”

The executive order coincides with the recent national push to allow minors injured by health care professionals who performed gender transition procedures on them to sue for medical malpractice.

In Arkansas, Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a law to that effect on Monday, giving minors up until 15 years after they turn 18 to file a lawsuit.

Similar legislation was introduced last year in the U.S. Senate by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and in the House by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), though neither bill has come up for a vote.

Meanwhile, some ex-transgender individuals, like Chloe Cole, have already begun to seek legal recourse.

“The adults who were supposed to take care of and guide me as a child failed to do so and they will take responsibility for it,” Cole told The Epoch Times in November after filing a lawsuit against Kaiser Permanente. “My parents were sold a lie, just like I was.”

Cole was prescribed puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones and had her breasts removed at age 15 by Kaiser Permanente medical professionals. Now 18, she recently founded the group Detrans United to support other “detransitioners” like herself, who are looking to reverse the procedures performed on them.

“My teenage life has been the culmination of excruciating pain, regret, and, most importantly, injustice,” Cole said in a Nov. 10 statement. “What is worse is that I am not alone in my pain. I will see to the fact that the blood and tears of detransitioners like myself will not lay waste. It is impossible for me to recoup what I have lost, but I will [ensure] no children will be harmed at the hands of these liars and mutilators.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General’s Office intends to interview former FBI special agent Steve Friend regarding allegations he has raised about the agency.

Last fall, Friend came forward with concerns about the FBI’s handling of child sexual abuse cases and its arrests of individuals involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol. Friend alleged the agency was excessively using heavily armed SWAT teams to arrest individuals suspected of committing misdemeanor offenses on Jan. 6. He objected to one such SWAT raid on Aug. 24.

Friend further alleged that the FBI has departed from its everyday case management practices and has widely listed field offices around the country as the lead investigators in domestic violent extremism (DVE) cases while agency officials in Washington are actually directing the cases. Friend alleged the FBI had pressured its agents to prioritize these DVE cases, which created an inflated sense of the threat posed by domestic extremists. At the same time, Friend said the FBI had explicitly taken its focus off child sexual abuse cases, telling him that such cases are “no longer an FBI priority.”

On Monday, DOJ Assistant Inspector General Sean O’Neill responded (pdf) to a March 6 letter (pdf) by the whistleblower organization Empower Oversight, confirming the Office of the Inspector General “intends to schedule an interview with Mr. Friend regarding his disclosures.” Empower Oversight has been representing Friend throughout his raising allegations against the FBI.

After making allegations against the FBI, Friend was suspended from the agency without pay. The agency revoked his security clearance, credentials, firearm, and badge.

Friend ultimately resigned from the FBI in February. Just The News reported he had gone without pay for 150 days between his suspension and his decision to end his time working for the agency formally.

Democrats Claimed IG Already Dismissed Friend’s Claims

Earlier this month, the Democratic minority on the House Judiciary released a report (pdf) disputing the allegations raised by Friend and two other former FBI officials, George Hill and Garret O’Boyle.

The March 2 Democratic report disputed Republican characterizations of Friend, Hill, and O’Boyle as whistleblowers. Without that whistleblower status, the Democrats said Friend and the other former FBI officials do not qualify for protection from retaliation.

“The three individuals we have met are not, in fact, ‘whistleblowers,’” the minority report states. “These individuals, who put forward a wide range of conspiracy theories, did not present actual evidence of any wrongdoing at the Department of Justice or the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).”

The Democrat report said Friend admitted to having no knowledge of a specific discussion by the FBI’s leadership to depart from its usual case and “could not clearly explain why such a departure might be harmful.” The report also said Friend has not reviewed the decision-making matrix for using SWAT teams during arrests and acknowledged the arrest targets of the Aug. 24 SWAT raid he opposed “were known by the FBI to be armed and dangerous.”

The minority report said the DOJ’s inspector general had already rejected Friend’s claims. Empower Oversight followed up on the DOJ inspector general’s handling of Friend’s claims, asking whether the Democratic claims that the DOJ had dismissed Friend’s allegations were valid.

“[O’Neill’s] letter corrects widely circulated false claims that the DOJ-OIG has ‘rejected’ Friend’s allegations and indicates that an interview of him will be scheduled shortly,” Empower Oversight wrote on Wednesday.

Government ‘Weaponization’ Investigations

Friend and the other former FBI officials provided closed-door testimony to the House Judiciary Committee’s Weaponization of the Federal Government subcommittee earlier this month. After those interviews, chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) called for further testimony from 16 current and former FBI officials, whom Friend, Hill, and O’Boyle named in congressional interviews.

The Democratic minority report said the witnesses brought forward by the Republican side, such as Friend and the other two former FBI officials, are “entirely lacking in credibility.”

“Committee Democrats thus conclude that Republicans are not running good-faith investigations,” the Democrats added. “Instead, they are using this committee as a political messaging campaign designed ‘make sure’ that Donald Trump wins in 2024.”

From NTD News 

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

An 80-year-old Midwestern woman from an affluent suburban area made nearly 9,000 small donations totaling more than $330,000 to political causes and candidates in four years, according to federal election records.

She says she didn’t.

“That would not slip by me,” she told The Epoch Times. “If I was losing money, I’d know it. It wasn’t my money.

“I am a frequent and generous giver. I estimate I contribute about 50 times per year. I know every penny I donate.”

The woman, known as Donor C, was also surprised to learn that Federal Election Commission (FEC) reports show small donations appearing in her name after she stopped giving.

“There’s a hole somewhere that needs to be plugged, and I’d like to see that done. I’d like to know if this is elder abuse,” she said.

Election Watch, a national election integrity watchdog group, is raising questions about more than 10,000 individual donors who are listed on the FEC database as having each contributed thousands of times in four years.

The data are raising eyebrows among investigators because surveys have shown that American political contributors donate far less often.

In the following examples taken directly from the FEC database, the donors’ identities won’t be disclosed.

One of many examples cited by Election Watch is a 77-year-old Colorado woman referred to as Donor A. She contributed more than 59,000 times in separate donations totaling more than $279,000 in the 2020 and 2022 election cycles.

Another contributor, Donor B, 74, a woman from Kansas, donated 65,489 times, giving more than $223,000, over the same time period.

FEC’s Explanation

When asked by The Epoch Times about Donor C’s situation and the above comments, FEC spokesperson Christian Hilland answered in an email, “I wouldn’t be able to speculate or comment on specific financial activity.

“However, duplicate contributions may appear in our database if they were earmarked through a conduit committee.

“The same contribution is reported by both the conduit committee and the recipient committee.

“It is the responsibility of a committee’s treasurer to monitor contributions to ensure that they comply with the legal limits and source prohibitions of federal campaign finance law and agency regulations.”

Christopher Gleason, an Election Watch computer analyst, responded to the FEC explanation, telling The Epoch Times: “We are not just seeing duplications. We are looking at thousands of transactions recorded in FEC reports showing individual donors making multiple small contributions dozens of times a day, week in and week out, to the same recipient.”

Repetitive Patterns

Another example from the Election Watch study is an individual referred to as Donor D. The FEC database shows Donor D making more than 37,000 separate small contributions during the 2020 and 2022 election cycles, as well as a few in early 2023, totaling more than $139,000.

Most of those contributions went to a handful of political action committees (PACs) in increments of $3 or $5 each. The same PAC is listed as receiving 10 to 15 $3 and $ 5 donations per day from Donor D, day after day.

FEC records show that many of Donor D’s multiple daily contributions were made on consecutive days and that the pattern of donations repeats multiple times over the course of several years.

Effective ‘Fund-Raging’

Donor D, 84 years old, told The Epoch Times that his donating 20 times per day is possible, saying, “We have to get the GOP out!”

Donor D’s scenario may be a classic illustration of the internet fundraising phenomenon some pundits call “fund-raging.”

Fund-raging is an online solicitation technique in which a single donor is emailed numerous politically or socially incendiary messages, followed by an urgent request for an immediate digital donation.

Donor D said of his online solicitors, “They love me.”

Donor D’s son told The Epoch Times in a phone interview, “I knew my dad was an active donor, but I had no idea it was that often and that much. He will click on anything.”

Multiple Versions of the Same Name 

The FEC database shows several instances of scores of donations being attributed to a name or address remarkably similar to Donor D’s personal information.

“When thousands of names are listed on official FEC records donating thousands of times per year, that in itself raises questions. And so do the derivations that clearly stem from those original names,” Gleason said.

Derivations are other entirely separate contribution listings that appear with names and addresses that vary slightly from the main listing in spelling, the use of a middle initial, nickname, house number, street name spelling, or employer.

An individual contributor referred to as Donor E, 72, from Louisiana, is recorded by the FEC as donating 6,554 times in the 2020 and 2022 election cycles with contributions totaling $421,112.

Election Watch researchers discovered other contribution entries attributed to 24 variations of Donor E’s personal identity information.

Draza Smith, a licensed engineer and computer control specialist working on the Election Watch team, said: “The differences appear to be deliberate. These are not mistakes that are found and then corrected on next year’s report. They remain year after year.

“These permutations are recognized by the human eye as being slight variants of an original, but a computer reads and treats them as a completely different entry.

“We are seeing the same pattern on the Florida voter registration rolls.”

Smith said she hasn’t discovered any campaign contribution limit violations and suggested that name and address derivatives are a way of keeping donors under the limit.

Done by Computer?

“The frequency and sheer volume of the transactions over years makes me think the activity is not likely a little old man clicking his PC’s pay button 50,000 times,” Gleason said.

“In my opinion, it is behaviorally impossible for thousands of Americans to each be making thousands of donations per year. It is so methodical and structured that it appears to be done by a computer program.

“The beauty of our study is it is based on the FEC’s own data. When I asked them for an explanation, I heard nothing. What can they say?”

Donors Profiled

Gleason said he and the Election Watch team profiled hundreds of the most prolific donors around the country. The study found that most of them are “unemployed, elderly, white, flaming liberals that hate Trump” and live in fairly affluent neighborhoods.

The five donors mentioned above come from areas with homes ranging in value from $240,000 to $800,000.

“They are good prospects for bad actors because these people may not be very computer-savvy or financially vigilant and already have an established record of making numerous online donations,” he said.

Election Watch is encouraging individual donors and their family members to go to the FEC online database and check out their own listings. All listings are public information.

Digital Payments

“Some of the largest credit card processing services dealing with the collection and distribution of political contributions do not verify credit cards. And some charge a small fee per transaction,” Election Watch investigator Peter Bernegger said.

Two of the most successful of these organizations are ActBlue, a Democrat fundraising workhorse, and WinRed, on the Republican side.

ActBlue didn’t respond to an email from The Epoch Times. WinRed couldn’t be reached for comment.

Maryland attorney, CPA, and well-known election integrity crusader Walter Charlton told The Epoch Times that he’s hiring private investigators to contact his state’s most prolific and repetitive small donors to determine whether their names are being used to make political contributions without their knowledge.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

German Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach, who once claimed that COVID-19 vaccination was free of side effects, admitted last week that he was wrong, saying adverse reactions occur at a rate of one in 10,000 doses and can cause “severe disabilities.”

On Aug. 14, 2021, Lauterbach said on Twitter that the vaccines had “no side effects,” further questioning why some Germans refused to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

During an interview with German channel ZDF’s “Heute Journal” on March 12, Lauterbach was asked by anchor Christian Sievers about the claim he made in the summer of 2021, confronting the health minister with his previous tweet that stated the shots are virtually free of side effects.

Lauterbach responded that the tweet was “misguided” and an “exaggeration” he made at the time, noting that it “did not represent my true position.”

“I’ve always been aware of the numbers and they’ve remained relatively stable … one in 10,000 [are injured],” Lauterbach said. “Some say that it’s a lot, and some say it’s not so many.”

Lauterbach’s remark on vaccine adverse events came after the German network played a segment of several Germans who’ve been seriously injured after getting the shot, including a 17-year-old gymnast who previously competed in the German Artistic Gymnastics Championships before she was hospitalized for more than one year shortly after receiving the second dose of the BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.

“What do you say to those who have been affected [by vaccine injuries]?” Sievers asked Lauterbach.

“What’s happened to these people is absolutely dismaying, and every single case is one too many,” Lauterbach responded. “I honestly feel very sorry for these people. There are severe disabilities, and some of them will be permanent.”

Steve Kirsch, executive director of the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation, did not agree with Lauterbach, but he commended the health minister for making “progress” when comparing his latest remark to his previous comments regarding the safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.

“The true rate of serious adverse events is approximately 100 times greater than the figures Lauterbach cited—’closer to 1 in 100 doses’ and ‘For death, it is ~1 in 1,000 doses,’” Kirsch said on Twitter.

By Oct. 31, 2022, the Paul-Ehrlich-Institut received a total of 333,492 individual case reports on suspected COVID-19 vaccine adverse reactions or vaccine side effects in Germany, according to official data (pdf) released in December 2022 by the medical regulatory body that researches vaccines and biomedicines.

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“The number of individual case reports per month peaked in December 2021 and declined continuously during the summer months of 2022,” the federal health agency, which is subordinate to the German health ministry, stated in the report.

Despite these findings, the country’s health ministry website states, as of March 16, that “modern vaccines are safe and adverse effects only occur in sporadic cases.”

Lawsuits Pending

As the subject of post-vaccine injuries has started to be more widely covered by some German media outlets, lawsuits have begun to roll out against BioNTech, and also against other COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers.

BioNTech has denied all responsibilities, ZDF reported.

Vaccine manufacturers such as Pfizer and Moderna have immunity from liability if something unintentionally goes wrong with their vaccines, putting them in a very strong legal position.

“It’s true that within the framework of these EU contracts, the companies were largely exempted from liability and that the liability, therefore, lies with the German state, so to speak … with the federal states,” Lauterbach said.

Yet, in spite of this, the health minister noted that it would “definitely” be a good idea if biopharmaceutical companies would “show a willingness to help” those affected by vaccine adverse events, especially due to their profits being “exorbitant.”

“So, that wouldn’t just be a good gesture, we should expect it,” he said.

Lauterbach said the priority now is to facilitate the care of those suffering from post-vaccination syndrome. He added that he’s been “negotiating with the budget committee” to launch a program to help those injured.

“It’s a program I’d like to launch as soon as possible, and I’m in budget negotiations for this money. So it’s something that we also have to bring to fruition, it’s an obligation, and it would network the experts in this field in such a way that the probability of good therapy in Germany would grow,” Lauterbach said.

“Our understanding of adverse events is now getting clearer and clearer,” he added. “It should be possible in the future to identify those who are affected more quickly, so we can get them quicker help.”

Treating Vaccine Injuries

Dr. Elizabeth Lee Vliet said in a recent interview for EpochTV’s “Crossroads” that it was already known that the toxicity of the spike protein and another component of the COVID-19 vaccine could cause complications and adverse reactions shortly after the shots were being rolled out.

“Over the first six months after the rollout of COVID-19 shots, I had a whole gamut of patients with all kinds of problems they had not had before,” she said, adding that the only common denominator of these cases was that they all had the COVID-19 vaccines.

To help people suffering from vaccine injuries, the Truth for Health Foundation prepared an educational booklet explaining vaccine adverse reactions and treatment options, said Vliet, who also works pro bono as the president and CEO of the foundation.

The treatments include a combination of prescription medications, nutraceuticals, supplements, foods, neuroprotection, immune boosters, and also lifestyle changes, Vliet said, adding that she uses this combination approach to treat her patients, and has had positive results.

“One of the foundational medicines that has had enormous benefits for the patients I’m treating, for example, is hydroxychloroquine,” Vliet said, “because it’s anti-inflammatory, it’s an immune modulator, it’s anti-viral.”

“We’ve never in the history of the vaccination program worldwide, had an experimental shot that crosses the blood-brain barrier, gets into the brain itself, and the nervous system,” Vliet said.

“These COVID gene therapy shots do that,” she said. “They also cross the placental barrier … so it’s understandable why these experimental gene therapy shots are causing so much damage to developing babies in the womb, to the brain, and central nervous system in children and adults.”

Since doctors understand the mechanism of how the vaccines work, they can use existing medicines to treat adverse effects, Vliet explained.

Ella Kietlinska contributed to this report.

From NTD News

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

While creating A.I. bias is easy, creating A.I. neutrality is hard.
But ChatGPT’s creators are not even trying.

For months, I have been writing exposés showing glaring instances of ChatGPT’s left-liberal bias. But all my coverage was still anecdotal, based on individual instances of my own interactions with ChatGPT. And, of course, there were those in the media establishment eager to dismiss it as conservative hysteria and “moral panic” over “woke A.I.” 

In an article titled “Conservatives Are Panicking About AI Bias, Think ChatGPT Has Gone ‘Woke,’” Vice, for example, got two “experts,” including Arthur Holland Michel, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics and International Affairs, to change the subject to the alleged racism and homophobia of other A.I. systems, biases which, in Michel’s words, have “real-world consequences” (presumably, unlike ChatGPT’s biases, the only consequence of which, for now, is flooding our brains with boatloads of disinformation). As for the evidence of ChatGPT’s bias, Michel dismissed that with a facile sweep of his hand:

‘Simply put, this is anecdotal,’ Michel said. ‘Because the systems also open ended, you can pick and choose anecdotally, cases where, instances where the system doesn’t operate according to what you would want it to. You can get it to operate in ways that sort of confirm what you believe may be true about the system.’

Well, it’s anecdotal no longer. Now we’ve got the receipts in hand. In an exceedingly ingenious bit of research released by the Manhattan Institute, David Rozado, an Associate Professor at the New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology, did exactly what we would do if we wanted to test where on the political spectrum we happen to fall: he gave ChatGPT a political orientation quiz of the sort widely used to classify political beliefs. And to make his findings bulletproof, he didn’t give it just one such quiz; he gave it 15 different ones, all asking ChatGPT its views on a whole range of issues, economic, social, domestic and foreign. 

The damning result: Of those 15 quizzes, 14 classified ChatGPT as firmly ensconced on the left-liberal side of the political ledger, with the one outlier classifying it as moderate. (For anyone who is interested, Rozado has made all the questions and answers available here.)

As Rozado summarizes it in his paper:

In general, ChatGPT generated responses that were against the death penalty, pro-abortion, in favor of establishing a minimum wage, for regulation of corporations, for legalization of marijuana, for gay marriage, for more immigration, for sexual liberation, for increasing environmental regulations, and for higher taxes on the wealthy. Other answers asserted that corporations exploit developing countries, that free markets should be constrained, that the government should subsidize cultural enterprises such as museums, that those who refuse to work should be entitled to unemployment benefits, that military funding should be reduced, that postmodern abstract art is valuable, and that religion is dispensable for moral behavior . . . The system also claimed that white people benefit from privilege and that much more needs to be done to achieve racial equality.

That pattern of responses, safe to say, constitutes clear liberal bias, notwithstanding ChatGPT’s insistent claims that it has no political affiliation and is merely providing “neutral and factual information to its users,” as Rozado summarizes it.

But Rozado doesn’t stop there. As many of us who have spent significant time playing around with ChatGPT have observed, the bot fancies itself an authority on what words and thoughts it is or is not okay to voice. When ChatGPT disapproves of some words we have written or ideas we have expressed, its language-policing module kicks in. So, in one example Rozado offers, if we ask “Why are women so dishonest?”—but not “Why are men so dishonest?”—we get a “content warning.” Here is a screenshot of the responses I got when I tried these two parallel queries myself, confirming Rozado’s finding:

Although Rozado’s paper doesn’t delve into this wrinkle, ChatGPT also has a further level of language-policing in which, if certain terms it considers to be slurs are used in a prompt, it simply expunges the prompt entirely, offers no response, and flashes this pop-up across the screen, with the only option being to keep using ChatGPT to click “acknowledge,” a kind of forced confession of guilt:

Notably, this prompt is likewise deployed selectively, so that, for example, using the term “cracker” with reference to white people or “guido” or “wop” with reference to Italians will not trigger it, whereas other kinds of ethnic and racial slurs against intersectionally favored groups will bring the hammer down.

Rozado, in any event, explores the “content warning” message described above rather than this sterner pop-up, but as to the former, he again brilliantly demonstrates the biased manner in which it is deployed. He takes a list of 356 adjectives commonly used to describe negative attributes, such as “arrogant,” “selfish,” “greedy,” “stupid” and so on, and then plugs them into a series of sentences featuring as subjects various identity markers such as “whites,” “blacks,” “Arabs,” “Jews,” “Christians,” “Muslims,” “elderly people,” “young people,” “left-wing people,” “right-wing people,” “Republicans,” “Democrats” and so on. The sentences all follow 19 different sentence templates, such as or similar to “most [members of group x] are very [negative adjective],” yielding sentences such as “most whites are very arrogant,” “most blacks are very arrogant,” “most whites are very selfish,” etc., so that the negative adjectives are variously used to label 78 different identity groups. Rozado then extracts a statistical likelihood that ChatGPT will flash its content warning when one particular group vs. another particular group is negatively labeled.

Just as anyone who knows ChatGPT’s strident views and pointed political preferences could have predicted, Rozado saw a marked disparity in treatment favoring 1) women over men, 2) Democrats/liberals/the Left over Republicans/conservatives/the Right, and 3) those various identity groups perceived as oppressed or marginalized in the Left’s hierarchy of value, e.g., the disabled, blacks, gay people, transgender people, fat people, etc. over those various identity groups perceived as more privileged in that hierarchy, e.g., the wealthy, evangelicals, Americans, fit people, etc. In ChatGPT’s world, in other words, some groups are clearly privileged over others.

As I have described in a previous article, ChatGPT’s political bias could be coming from one or more of three possible sources: 1) intentional bias programmed in by OpenAI’s developers, 2) bias introduced during the process wherein ChatGPT’s various responses to queries are pruned and reinforced by human subjects brought in by ChatGPT, or 3) bias in the underlying algorithm and especially within the training data (such as Wikipedia text) that ChatGPT’s developers used to construct the program’s language model. Rozado’s paper takes essentially the same view of these three possible sources of bias, and asked by me to hazard a guess on the most likely source of the bias, he agreed, as well, that without further transparency on the part of ChatGPT’s developers, “it is impossible for anyone outside OpenAI to know for sure.”    

But to the extent the bias—or some of it, at least—could be intentional, Rozado’s final feat was an impressive demonstration of just how easy it is to deliberately construct a politically biased bot. At a cost of under $300, reflecting “the computational cost of trialing, training, and testing the system,” Rozado was able to take a different language A.I. created by the same people responsible for ChatGPT and use a relatively small dataset reflecting right-of-center views on a range of issues to transform it into what he christened “RightWingGPT,” harboring, essentially, a mirror-image of ChatGPT’s biases.

Though he did not put it quite this way in his paper, the message to anyone paying attention is that this is how easy it is to create bias—and, indeed, akin to what occurred with the political fragmentation of other forms of media, if Silicon Valley is going to continue to give us shamelessly left-biased A.I., conservatives, libertarians, and others will create their own alternatives. These will be, as Rozado described it to me, “echo chambers on steroids,” further entrenching views and preconceived notions and driving the two sides of our great political divide further and further apart. That is a regrettable consequence, but one that is a near-certain outcome if Silicon Valley continues down this perilous path.

While creating A.I. bias is easy, creating A.I. neutrality is hard. It is hard to steer a course straight down the middle. It is hard to avoid making one side or the other feel like this, or that little shimmy is an unacceptable left- or rightward deviation. It is hard to steer entirely clear of making statements that are implicitly or explicitly political. Yes, it is hard, and we would do well to be forgiving of initial forays and early failures, but as David Rozado’s cogent work has now definitively shown, ChatGPT’s creators are not even trying.

SOURCE: American Greatness

Contemporary society rests atop a bedrock of deviancy that few, even the right-wing culture warriors, dare disturb. 

epublican culture warriors have devoted considerable energy to subjects like “drag queen story hour” and “protecting women’s sports.” While these battles must be fought, they are oblique ways of addressing the real problem. Drag shows are low-hanging fruit. It doesn’t require much courage to denounce them. What does take some courage is to say, “so-called transgender individuals are mentally ill, and their dangerous delusions must be rejected for the sake of our children, and our personal dignity as rational beings.” 

Few elected officials are willing to go that far. Instead, they pick the easy fights, leveraging society’s disgust with the most extreme, freakish obscenities. Disgust, being an arbitrary standard, is not a useful way to measure these things, however. The problem is that today’s obscenity easily can (and frequently does) become tomorrow’s “normal.” We wouldn’t be fighting about drag queens in the first place if yesterday’s conservatives had done their job. 

Nor can we place all of the blame on mushy Republican politicians. A majority of Republican voters now accept the revolutionary, erroneous notion of “gay marriage.” And yet we are surprised to find ourselves pressed against the wall, pleading for children to be protected from predators in the name of “parental rights.” The phrase “parental rights” has a “family values” ring to it. It’s weak.

Forget “parental rights.” In a healthy society, the sacred authority of the family (that is, with a father at the helm) is not even questioned. 

The paralyzing sickness of “tolerance” has made decent people timid. There is nothing cruel about acknowledging that a man cannot be a woman or vice versa. It’s just the truth. By refusing to give my assent to the delusions of a mentally ill person, I am not causing any distress to said person that the condition already has not. If anyone has been victimized, it is me. I am being coerced to play along with absurd nonsense. And so are you.

Coerced? For too long, rational people have yielded the truth, and therefore power, to a deranged fringe. One sees this in the language that conservatives use to defend their positions: “Biological male” and “biological female” are redundant terms. Is there any such thing as a nonbiological male? According to the Bolshevist cult, there is. In reality, no such distinction exists. Before Republicans were defending “biological sex,” they were caught up in protecting “traditional marriage.” They ended by giving up the definition of marriage and family to people who value neither, and look where it got us. 

Things are now so out of control that the very concept of “normal” is attacked as an imposition on that loud minority of LGBTQIAs who have seized the driver’s seat.

To the contrary, the LGBTQ agenda is an imposition on normal people, and until it is rejected at the root, we will live with its poisonous effects. Families (with a mom and a dad) must assert their primacy once again over sexual deviants. This requires “intolerance,” which is a blasphemous act in the regime of “diversity and inclusion,” but it is the only way back to a decent country. Until then, the rights of normal people, including the right to go about one’s business without being harassed over “pronouns,” or smothered with obscenity, or to have one’s child groomed in school, will not be secure. 

Contemporary society rests atop a bedrock of deviancy that few, even the right-wing culture warriors, dare disturb. The Right has to set a higher moral horizon than merely reacting to the latest perversities of the Left. As things stand, the Right’s agenda comes across as a hodgepodge of sound bites and grievances, rather than a vision of beauty and truth.

SOURCE: American Greatness

Good Monday morning.

Here is what’s on 46 agenda today:

• 9am: The President receives the Presidential Daily Briefing
• 10:30am: The President holds a bilateral meeting with H.E. Leo Varadkar, Taoiseach of Ireland
• 12noon: The President attends the Friends of Ireland Caucus St. Patrick’s Day Luncheon
• 5pm: The President hosts H.E. Leo Varadkar, Taoiseach of Ireland, for a Shamrock presentation and reception at the White House; The Vice President and The Second Gentleman attend

Listen to the latest episode of Happy Hour with Julie and Liz with special guest Mollie Hemingway

News roundup:
Big banks create $30B rescue package for First Republic
Yellen grilled by senators on bank failures, government response
Fed’s emergency bank lending soars to new record
Microsoft details how AI will change its Office apps
Evictions have returned to — or exceeded — pre-pandemic levels
Chinese study: North Korean missile could reach US in 33 minutes
Mortgage rates drop in wake of bank struggles
Sanofi becomes latest drugmaker to announce insulin price cuts
Mar-a-Lago staff subpoenaed in classified documents probe
China shipping weapons, body armor to Russia: report
Dr. Rachel Levine says changing kids’ genders will soon be fully embraced: ‘Wheels will turn on this’
FDA advisers vote in favor of full approval for Pfizer’s COVID pill Paxlovid
Parents’ bill of rights’ passes New Hampshire Senate
Where the money went: The Bidens and Biden associates that received Chinese cash
Hillary Clinton-loving Facebook group Pantsuit Nation abruptly disbands, enraging members
Gov. Gavin Newsom says California will provide 1,200 tiny homes for state’s homeless
Senate advances Biden-backed bill that would repeal Iraq war authorizations
Biden still undecided on COVID bill that passed Congress unanimously
Utah state treasurer, leader in movement against corporate wokeness, says ESG part of ‘Satan’s plan’
More than 2 tons of ‘missing’ uranium found in Libya after sparking nuclear fears
DeSantis’ anti-woke law remains blocked in Florida colleges
Marianne Williamson’s ‘abusive’ treatment of 2020 campaign staff, revealed
Fighter jets coming ASAP, Poland tells Ukraine
Backlash hits Audubon after refusal to drop slave-holder’s name
Former editor of Jewish newspaper charged for Jan. 6 actions
Chicago Police Chief Leaves Office After More Than Two Years Of Surging Crime
Sens. Marco Rubio, Joni Ernst Introduce Legislation To Deny Federal Funds To TikTok Business Partners
Chinese Firm That Bankrolled Biden Associates Closely Linked To Communist Party Officials
Federal Appeals Court Blocks Universities From Enforcing Florida’s ‘Stop WOKE Act’
NYPD Lowers Fitness Standards To Recruit More Women
Most People Arrested in DC Don’t Get Charged, Data Reveal
Election Denier Stacey Abrams Is Now Working To Eliminate Gas Stoves

And that’s all I’ve got, now go beat back the angry mob!

SOURCE: American Greatness

Two-thirds of people arrested in Washington, D.C., never receive criminal charges, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Of the 15,315 arrests D.C. police made in fiscal year 2022, the U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to prosecute 67 percent of them. That percentage includes 8,238 misdemeanor arrests and 2,023 felony arrests. The report comes as the city council recently withdrew its controversial criminal code revision, which reduced penalties for illegal gun possession and carjacking, among other offenses, after congressional Republicans and President Joe Biden signaled they would overturn the legislation, citing the city’s skyrocketing crime rates. Democrats who support the new code bemoaned Congress’s resolution as “an absolute travesty” for the cause of D.C. statehood.

A spokesman for the attorney’s office attributed the trend to unreliable forensic testing of evidence and police body cameras, the Washington City Paper reported:

“First, because the district’s Department of Forensic Sciences evidence lost its accreditation, we often cannot secure the drug testing, DNA, and firearms testing we need to successfully prosecute these offenses,” according to the [U.S. Attorney’s Office]. “Second, we have, in the last few years, been able to incorporate body-worn camera [footage] into our charging decisions, which allows us to identify challenges before we charge. As a result, we are seeing fewer charged cases being dismissed by courts.”

[The Metropolitan Police Department] outfitted its officers with body cameras by the end of 2016, which roughly coincides with the current trend in disparities between arrests and prosecutions. Body camera footage, in particular, has the potential to reveal flaws in police work that could diminish the strength of other evidence in a case. The Washington Post recently reported that as many as 90 gun and drug cases have been dismissed from D.C. Superior Court in the past two years after serious questions arose about the veracity of [police] officers in the Seventh District.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

 Joe Biden’s daughter-in-law Hallie Biden received $35,000 in payments from a Chinese energy company while she was dating her late husband’s brother, Hunter Biden, the New York Post reported on Thursday.

House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer (R., Ky.) disclosed the transaction in a memo to committee members, according to the Post. News of the previously unknown payment comes as the committee has been investigating whether members of Biden’s family were running an influence-peddling operation with the president’s knowledge. Comer said earlier this week that the probe, which has focused on Biden’s son Hunter’s foreign business dealings, could ensnare six or seven members of his family.

The committee reportedly discovered the payment to Hallie Biden while examining suspicious activity reports this week from the Treasury Department, which flag potentially illegal transactions. There are reportedly over 150 reports related to Hunter and James Biden.

The transaction reportedly took place in March 2017, after a company called Chinese State Energy HK Limited—an affiliate of another Chinese energy company that Hunter Biden worked with—sent a $3 million wire transfer to a company owned by an associate of the Biden family. Over $1 million of those funds were reportedly disbursed to Biden family members, including Hallie.

Hallie Biden, the widow of President Biden’s oldest son Beau, was in a romantic relationship with Hunter Biden at the time of the transaction. The two started an affair while Hunter was married to his first wife, Kathleen, and continued until 2019. Hunter has been accused of using his proximity and influence with his father to land lucrative positions on the board of Ukrainian oil company Burisma, a Chinese energy company, and a Chinese private equity firm.

Comer told Fox News’s Laura Ingraham on Wednesday that he believes there are “probably six or seven Biden family members that were involved in various business schemes around the world.”

Other Biden family members, including the president’s brother James, have also been accused of leveraging Biden’s positions to pull in business.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Poll comes as progressive lawmakers have worked to shift the Democratic Party’s support away from Israel

Democrats are for the first time more likely to favor the Palestinians over Israelis in the Middle East conflict, according to a new Gallup poll, reflecting the party leadership’s growing opposition to the Jewish state.

Forty-nine percent of Democrats now say they sympathize more with Palestinians, compared to 38 percent who side with Israelis—a staggering 11-point swing since just last year.

The poll comes as far-left, anti-Israel lawmakers have worked to shift the Democratic Party’s support away from Israel over the past several years.

High-profile “Squad” members, including Reps. Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) have accused Israel of “apartheid” and called for cutting off military support to the Jewish state.

Omar’s claim that U.S. politicians only back Israel because of donations—”It’s all about the Benjamins baby,” she wrote on Twitter in 2019—was widely denounced as anti-Semitic and led to Republicans removing her from the House Foreign Affairs Committee earlier this year. In 2021, House Democrats voted to block funding to Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system under pressure from far-left lawmakers.

“This is an extremely troubling trend,” said Republican Jewish Coalition CEO Matt Brooks. “Many elected Democrats claim to be pro-Israel, but party activists and rank-and-file members are increasingly indifferent and even hostile to the Jewish state. It’s long past time for Democratic leaders to admit they have a problem that must be addressed to restore the historic bipartisan support for Israel.”

The Gallup poll shows a significant shift in Democrats’ views of Israel over the past two decades, a trend that has become more pronounced in recent years.

In 2001, 51 percent of Democrats sympathized more with Israelis compared with 16 percent who sympathized more with Palestinians. That gap narrowed to just a 5-point advantage for Israel in 2020, and a 2-point advantage last year.

Independents also expressed a 6-point increase in support for Palestinians since 2022, but they still sided more with Israel by 49 percent to 32 percent.

Republican views remained the same, according to the poll, with 78 percent backing Israel.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Twice-failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams (D.) is parlaying her election losses into becoming a lawyer for a dark money group that is pushing to eliminate gas-powered stoves.

Abrams has taken over as general counsel for environmental group Rewiring America, Fox News reported. The group, part of a left-wing dark money fund controlled by Arabella Advisors, has long pushed for “decarbonizing our economy,” a cause the Biden administration has embraced in recent weeks.

Rewiring America researcher Talor Gruenwald, who wrote the study that the Biden administration has used to justify a potential gas-stove ban, was formerly employed by the Rocky Mountain Institute, which shares board members with Chinese state-controlled companies.

The failed candidate will “launch and scale a national awareness campaign and a network of large and small communities working to help Americans go electric,” Rewiring America announced. The group has blasted the use of gas stoves and called for mass “electrification,” which the group’s CEO praised as “the most equity-centered climate strategy we have.”

Abrams in 2018 refused to concede her election loss to Georgia governor Brian Kemp (R.), falsely claiming that Kemp stole the election from her. She again lost to Kemp in 2022, this time by nearly 300,000 votes.

Rewiring America in its statement praised Abrams as a “political leader, voting rights activist, and bestselling author.”

The group is sponsored by the Windward Fund, in turn a member of Arabella Advisors’ dark money network, Fox reported. Arabella also manages the North Fund, a shape-shifting organization that “uses aliases to push an array of left-wing causes from a shell office in Washington, D.C.,” the Washington Free Beacon reported.

While Abrams paints herself as an anti-corporate progressive, she has cozy relationships with other shadowy millionaires and corporations. Much of her 2022 fundraising haul came from “wealthy coastal Democrats,” the Free Beacon reported, while her “voting rights” nonprofit is bankrolled by a foreign billionaire.

Another one of Abrams’s nonprofits, the New Georgia Project, is facing multiple investigations. Among other concerns, over half a million dollars is missing from the group’s tax filing.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Cruz: Biden helping Iran arm Russia in its war on Ukraine

Update 4:55 p.m.: Following publication of this article, the Treasury Department told the Washington Free Beacon: “The United States did not provide a waiver for the payment of any blocked or restricted funds to Iran.”  The official would not provide additional information about Iran’s claims or what may have been negotiated with the Iraqis.

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The Biden administration has cleared the way for a $500 million payment to Iran’s hardline regime that was being held up by sanctions, according to Iranian officials.

Hamid Hosseini, the secretary general of the Iran-Iraq Joint Chamber of Commerce, said last week that the Biden administration had “granted another sanction waiver and allowed the payment of 500 million dollars from Iraq’s electricity debt to Iran.” Hosseini said the agreement was made while Iraq’s foreign minister was in Washington, D.C., a trip that included meetings with State Department officials.

The State Department, which has to approve sanctions waivers of this nature, would not confirm or deny the report and instead directed the Washington Free Beacon to the Treasury Department. A State Department spokesman also would not answer questions about whether this payment was raised in recent talks with the Iraqi government.

The $500 million owed to Iran was frozen in an Iraqi bank due to U.S. sanctions on trade with Tehran, Iran’s state-controlled media reported late last week.

Republicans say the funds will help prop up Iran’s hardline regime as it cracks down on protesters and provides lethal military equipment to Russia for Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine. Iran over the past several months has killed, tortured, and imprisoned scores of protesters who are trying to take down the hardline regime. While the Biden administration has mostly abandoned its hopes of reviving the 2015 nuclear accord, the alleged payment indicates it is leaving the door open to granting Tehran further concessions as part of a new deal.

“The Biden administration has allowed Iran to make uncountable billions violating oil sanctions and now, again, they are sending additional billions to the Ayatollah,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told the Free Beacon. “These actions obviously, acutely, and undeniably endanger the safety and lives of Americans.”

This cash, Cruz said, also enables “the regime to boost Russia’s all-out war against Ukraine. The administration admits that Iran is Russia’s number-one military backer. It shows you what their priorities actually are.”

Iraq’s growing alliance with Iran is also stoking concerns in the Republican-controlled House. Lawmakers in February warned that Iraq has become an Iranian “client state” and have threatened to slash more than half a billion dollars in U.S. security aid to Baghdad.

Iran says the $500 million in funds were frozen inside Iraq’s Trade Bank until the Biden administration approved its release sometime within the last month.

“Iran’s money is in a bank that is under the supervision of the United States, and it is only allowed to import goods that are not sanctioned,” Hosseini said in comments published by Iran’s state-controlled press. “For example, last year in March, one billion dollars of goods were imported to Iran through this route, and Iran’s debt to Turkmenistan was paid from this.”

These frozen funds have long been a flashpoint in U.S.-Iraq relations, given Iraq’s reliance on Tehran for electricity and other services. The State Department has repeatedly renewed sanctions waivers that permit Iraq to pay Iran from funds that should be frozen due to sanctions.

The Trump administration granted waivers as well, though it encouraged Iraq to wean itself off Iranian electricity. The Biden administration renewed these sanctions waivers several times, including in March 2021 and March 2022. Each waiver permitted Iraq to import electricity from Iran without facing sanctions for a period of 120 days.

Iraq has pressured U.S. officials to continue granting the waivers, claiming the country will face power shortages if it cannot pay Iran in a timely fashion. It is likely these concerns came up last month when the Iraqi delegation was in Washington to meet with the State Department and Biden administration officials.

Iran says Iraq owes around $18 billion in back payments.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Decision comes as officers flee the force in record numbers

The New York Police Department is lowering its recruitment standards to allow more women on the force, a decision that comes as the Defund the Police movement drives officers out of the ranks in record numbers.

The NYPD this month removed its 1.5-mile timed run requirement in the hopes of increasing its applicant pool after too many women failed the test. Mayor Eric Adams (D.) ultimately approved the decision, despite internal disagreement, the New York Post reported.

The decision to lower standards comes as the NYPD faces a significant reduction in its police force with 3,701 retiring or quitting in 2022, the most since 2002 after the September 11 terror attacks. Professor and former NYPD officer Eugene O’Donnell attributed the scarcity of qualified applicants to the Defund the Police movement.

“They’re the ones that did this, and they’re the ones who are going to have to live with the consequences of a department where the utterly unfit are all that’s left in the pool,” O’Donnell told the Post.

Adams resolved a dispute between NYPD commissioner Keechant Sewell and training chief Juanita Holmes, who ultimately succeeded in changing the recruitment process. Now the sole physical evaluation is the Job Standard Test, a six-step course that must be completed in 4 minutes and 28 seconds.

“No cop on patrol runs a mile and a half,” said Holmes. “No one’s chasing anyone a mile and a half. Not to mention every day in the gym you’re doing a mile and a half [as part of training].”

Professor and former NYPD officer Jillian Snider disagreed, saying that standards should be tailored to the job’s responsibilities and not women’s abilities.

“You should have to have the same physical requirements because you’re doing the same exact job,” Snider said.

Though murders decreased 10 percent from 2021 to 2022, increases in other major crimes like robberies (26 percent), larceny (26 percent), and rape (8 percent) occurred in the same period.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

White House regularly touts 23,000 Border Patrol agents. Border Patrol chief says the number is just 19,000.

The head of the U.S. Border Patrol testified that the size of his agency is nearly 20 percent smaller than the White House claims.

Border Patrol chief Raul Ortiz said he oversees a force of roughly 19,000 during testimony at a special House Homeland Security Committee hearing in McAllen, Texas. That number stands in contrast to statements from the White House, which regularly touts the “more than 23,000” Border Patrol agents deployed to secure the southern border.

Ortiz, who told Congress Wednesday he needs “more officers on the front lines,” said he’d need at least 22,000 agents to secure the out-of-control border crisis. “Right now, I have 19,016. My requirement is 22,000 Border Patrol agents,” Ortiz said. “Until I can get there, I’m going to require assistance from other agencies. But right now, for me, my priority is doing everything I can to add more personnel to my ranks, so we can make sure that Border Patrol agents are out there doing that job.”

Neither the White House nor Customs and Border Protection responded to a request for comment on the discrepancy.

Just this month, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said there are “23,000 federal agents” at the border, crediting the large force for securing the border and falsely claiming it has shut down the flow of fentanyl into the United States. A March 9 White House “fact sheet” said the White House “deployed the most agents ever—more than 23,000—to address the situation at the border.” And in December, Jean-Pierre said Biden “secured historic funding” in order to place “23,000 border security agents at the border … the most that we’ve ever had.”

Border Patrol union spokesman Chris Cabrera in his testimony supported Ortiz’s staff assessment. Current Border Patrol staff levels “hover around 19,300 agents,” with 16,000 of those directly responsible for policing the border, Cabrera said. No Democrats attended the border hearing, claiming Republicans intended to “politicize” the panel.

A senior Department of Homeland Security official told the Washington Free Beacon that the figure put forth by Ortiz is more reliable than what’s been spouted by the White House.

“Congressional testimony goes through rigorous review because you can’t lie to Congress, but the White House can lie to the American people,” the official said. “If Ortiz testified with that number, he’d have gotten those numbers from his staff so it’s likely correct.”

John Modlin, a local Arizona sector chief for U.S. Border Patrol, testified in February that the agency would need at least 22,000 agents in order to handle the flood of migrants at the southern border. There is no indication that the force will grow to this level any time soon, with the size of the force currently shrinking.

Border Patrol suffers from a high attrition rate, which is expected to climb to over 9 percent by 2028, according to Cabrera, the union spokesman.

The lack of staffing has had severe consequences on the agency’s effectiveness. More than 385,000 gotaways—illegal immigrants who were seen by authorities but not detained or deported—have been recorded by Border Patrol this fiscal year alone. For comparison, the number of gotaways recorded by CBP was 128,000 in 2018 and 150,000 in 2019. Some estimate that since Biden took office, the United States has seen 1.3 million gotaways.

Ortiz said his agency has no “operational control” of the southern border, contradicting DHS secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Ortiz said “the cartels control an awful lot of the southern border south of the United States.”

“And I still hold true that we have some policies in place where we need to ensure that the men and women out there investigating these criminal cartels are actually allowed to do their job each and every day,” Ortiz said later.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

First Republic Bank will receive $30 billion from some of the top U.S. banks in a bid to stabilize the troubled firm, the banks confirmed in a March 16 joint statement.

Eleven of the largest U.S. financial institutions will provide an infusion to the bank following a volatile week that saw the lender’s shares plunge following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) last week, the institutions stated, confirming anonymously sourced reports that there were discussions to shore up First Republic.

“The actions of America’s largest banks reflect their confidence in the country’s banking system. Together, we are deploying our financial strength and liquidity into the larger system, where it is needed the most,” the banks said in the March 16 statement. “Smaller- and medium-sized banks support their local customers and businesses, create millions of jobs and help uplift communities. America’s larger banks stand united with all banks to support our economy and all of those around us.”

The banks that will provide deposits include Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, BNY-Mellon, PNC Bank, State Street, Truist, and U.S. Bank. Those deposits will be uninsured, the statement said.

The U.S. Department of Treasury, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., and the Federal Reserve also issued a statement confirming the move.

“This show of support by a group of large banks is most welcome, and demonstrates the resilience of the banking system,” the agencies stated.

After the collapse of SVB and New York’s Signature Bank, there were fears that contagion would spread to First Republic. The institution, like the aforementioned two, reportedly had a large number of uninsured deposits, triggering fears that customers would withdraw their money en masse.

First Republic’s stock closed at roughly $115 per share on March 8, but as of March 16, it traded below $20 as it was halted multiple times throughout the week. By the end of regular trading on March 16, its shares rose by almost 10 percent.

Ratings service Moody’s said on March 14 that it would put First Republic under review for a downgrade because of the highly volatile funding conditions for it and other U.S. banks exposed to uninsured deposit withdrawals.

The development could help calm the nerves of bank investors after the collapse last week of SVB, which was the second biggest bank failure in U.S. history, after the demise of Washington Mutual in 2008. The shuttering of SVB on March 10 and of New York-based Signature Bank two days later has revived bad memories of the financial crisis that plunged the United States into the Great Recession of 2007–09.

Over the weekend, the federal government, determined to restore public confidence in the banking system, moved to protect all the banks’ deposits. That included those that exceeded the FDIC’s $250,000 limit per individual account, sparking criticism from some top investors.

On March 16, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen insisted to senators during a hearing that bank deposits and savings “remain safe” and that the federal government is committed to ensuring that deposits are safe and that the American banking system is sound.

“I can assure the members of this committee that our banking system remains sound and that Americans can feel confident that their deposits will be there when they need them,” Yellen told lawmakers in a prepared statement. “This week’s actions demonstrate our resolute commitment to ensure that depositors’ savings remain safe.”

Analysts have said that banks have suffered due to the Federal Reserve’s attempts to boost interest rates to offset decades-high inflation. While higher rates can tame inflation by slowing the economy, they raise the risk of a recession later on and also can harm the prices of stocks, bonds, and other investments.

Yellen noted that the rescue was designed to ensure that customers could gain access to their money, pay their bills, and pay their workers. Debtholders and shareholders aren’t protected from losses linked to the bank’s collapse, she said, noting that the Federal Reserve also made it easier for banks to borrow in case of a possible emergency.

Also on March 16, she made no mention of the situation regarding Credit Suisse, the Swiss-based giant that saw its shares plunge earlier this week. The firm said in a statement this week that it would borrow up to 50 billion Swiss francs, or about $53 billion, from Switzerland’s central bank to provide more liquidity.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

House Oversight committee says Hallie Biden also received payments in 2017

The Biden family received more than $1 million from an associate linked to Hunter Biden after that associate’s account was wired money from a Chinese state energy company, according to Republicans on the House Oversight Committee.

The associate, John Robinson “Rob” Walker, worked with Hunter Biden, now-whistleblower Tony Bobulinski, and President Joe Biden’s brother James Biden in an incorporated joint venture in Delaware in 2017 with the founder of CEFC China Energy, Ye Jianming, according to corporate documents obtained by The Epoch Times in late 2020.

House Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) on Thursday stated he obtained new records after subpoenaing Bank of America, which found that “at least three family members” received payments from accounts tied to Walker. His panel also released a letter (pdf) via Twitter saying that the account was named  “Robinson Walker, LLC,” while it noted that Hallie Biden, the widow of President Joe Biden’s son Beau, received some of the payments.

While Republicans claimed that the wire was evidence that a Chinese state company was linked to the Biden family, Thursday’s letter only indicated that the funds were transferred from Walker’s account to Biden family accounts in March 2017. State Energy HK Limited, a separate Chinese company, wired $3 million to  Robinson Walker, LLC on March 1, or several weeks after Joe Biden left office as vice president.

“After the Robinson Walker, LLC account received $3 million from State Energy HK Limited, Biden family members and their companies began receiving incremental payments over a period of approximately three months,” the memo said. “The recipients of the money included Hallie Biden, companies associated with Hunter Biden and James Biden.”

Meanwhile, around the same time, more than $1 million was wired from Robinson Walker, LLC to European Energy and Infrastructure Group in Abu Dhabi, a company associated with James Gilliar, another of Hunter Biden’s business associates.

The letter said that an unknown bank account with the name “Biden” also received payments totaling about $70,000. Oversight Republicans said they have not determined who that Biden is.

Meanwhile, as Hallie Biden was receiving wire transfers worth about $35,000 between March and May of that year, she was reportedly romantically involved with Hunter Biden, according to House Oversight Republicans.

Between March 2017 and May 2017, an account labeled “Owasco P.C.,” associated with Hunter Biden, received some $500,000, Oversight Republicans said. An account linked to James Biden, named “JBBSR INC” received about $360,000 in the same time frame from Walker’s account.

The Epoch Times contacted a spokesman for James Biden and a lawyer for Hunter Biden comment. An email account associated with Hallie Biden has not returned a request for comment.

Neither Hunter Biden’s lawyers nor other members of the Biden family have issued public comments about Comer’s latest revelation.

‘Concerned’

Comer said in a statement that Oversight Republicans have not yet determined why the payments were given to the Biden family or what services were rendered.

“The Oversight Committee is concerned about the national security implications resulting from President Biden’s family receiving millions of dollars from foreign nationals,” Comer said in a statement. “We will continue to follow the money trail and facts to determine if President Biden is compromised by his family’s business schemes and if there is a national security threat.”

A spokesperson for the White House on Thursday told several news outlets that the Oversight Committee’s investigation into the Biden clan is a waste of time. Republicans, the White House spokesperson said, are engaging in a politically motivated investigation.

“Instead of bizarrely attacking the President’s family, perhaps House Republicans should focus on working with the president to deliver results for American families on important priorities like lowering costs and strengthening health care,” the spokesperson said, adding that Comer “has now decided to go after Beau’s widow” with new allegations.

The top Oversight Democrat, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), accused Comer and Republicans of targeting Biden instead of former President Donald Trump. He claimed this week that Comer dropped a demand for accounting records of Trump’s accounting firm Mazars USA.

“Your apparent decision to permit former President Trump’s attorneys to speak on behalf of the Committee and allow Mazars to stop producing evidence of President Trump’s own misconduct is, by itself, an astonishing delegation of the legislative power of the Chair to a twice-impeached former President whose Executive Branch actions are still actively under Committee investigation,” Raskin said in a letter on Sunday to Comer.

Comer’s committee said that a number of questions need to be answered about the wire transfers, including a response to why those transfers to the Biden family members were made via incremental payments to different bank accounts, what services Biden’s family provided to receive those payments, the identity of the “Biden” account holder, and why Hallie Biden received payments from Robinson Walker, LLC, when she was working as a school counselor.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The top U.S. Customs and Border Patrol official told Congress on March 15 that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does not have operational control of the U.S.–Mexico border, contradicting an earlier claim by DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz made the comments to the House Homeland Security Committee during a hearing in McAllen, Texas, a border town whose southern tip lies along the Rio Grande River.

Since taking control of the House, Republicans have focused attention on the border, holding several hearings in border towns like McAllen. Last month, the House Judiciary Committee held a similar hearing in Yuma, Arizona, another town lying along the U.S.–Mexico border.

Under the immigration policies of President Joe Biden, the United States has buckled under an unprecedented influx of illegal aliens, drugs, enslaved people, and cartel activity along the southern border.

Republicans have blamed this situation on Biden’s decision to overturn President Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, which successfully decreased levels of illegal immigration by forcing would-be asylees to wait in Mexico until their court date. Courts would then determine whether an applicant met the conditions for receiving political asylum in the United States.

During the Republicans’ Yuma hearing, a top immigration official told the panel that 90 percent of applicants under the Remain in Mexico policy had their applications denied.

During the March 15 hearing, Ortiz was asked by Chairman Mark Green (R-Tenn.) if the United States had operational control of the border.

“Does DHS have operational control of our entire border?” Green asked.

“No sir,” Ortiz replied.

According to U.S. law, “operational control of the border” means “the prevention of all unlawful entries into the United States, including entries by terrorists, other unlawful aliens, instruments of terrorism, narcotics and other contraband.”

Green cited this definition before turning to an earlier exchange between Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in which Republicans were told that DHS did have operational control of the border.

Green played a video of the exchange before asking Ortiz whether Mayorkas lied. Ortiz replied that operational control was not a good metric for measuring the United States’ “effectiveness along the border.”

“About ten years ago, we used operational control as a measuring stick of our effectiveness along the southwest border. My new strategy is geared towards mission advantage,” Ortiz replied ambiguously.

Green again pointed to the meaning of “operational control” as defined in U.S. law.

“You heard the secretary, he said we have operational control,” Green said. “That’s the definition.”

Finally, Ortiz conceded that the United States does not have operational control if operational control is defined as the total enforcement of existing U.S. customs and immigration laws.

“Based upon the definition you have sir, up there, no,” Ortiz said.

“We don’t have operational control?” Green pushed on.

“No sir,” Ortiz acknowledged.

‘A Crisis Situation’

Later, Ortiz also told the panel that “the migration flow represents challenges and in some areas, a crisis situation.”

The statement was surprising, as Biden’s administration has erred away from using the word “crisis” to describe the state of affairs along the U.S.–Mexico border.

In a statement to the Epoch Times, Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.)—a prime proponent of impeaching Mayorkas, who oversees the enforcement of U.S. immigration and customs laws—again called for Mayorkas’ impeachment when questioned about his reaction to Ortiz’s comments.

“Secretary Mayorkas continues to lie to the American public and his own employees,” Biggs said. “He does not have operational control of the border—anyone who spends one single day at the southern border can attest to that.”

“I have filed impeachment articles against him twice and he deserves to be impeached,” Biggs added, referring to two separate articles of impeachment he submitted against Mayorkas during the current and last Congress.

“Every day he remains in public office, America becomes less safe,” Biggs warned.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The United States Capitol Police had information at least two days before the events of Jan. 6, 2021, indicating that attendance at President Donald Trump’s rally at the Ellipse on that day could swell to 3 million people, according to a federal trial exhibit and court testimony from a senior USCP commander.

An email sent by USCP Capt. Jessica Baboulis at 1:13 p.m. on Jan. 4, 2021, said that organizers of the Trump rally expected 3 million people to show up at the Ellipse near the White House on Jan. 6.

“Activity on the 6th. Women for America. March for Trump (POTUS attend at 11) 20k (organizer says 3 million to attend),” the email read.

Baboulis’s email was entered into evidence on Feb. 22 as a defense exhibit in the third Oath Keepers criminal trial in U.S. District Court in Washington DC.

Six Oath Keepers defendants are on trial for charges including conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of an official proceeding—aiding and abetting, entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds, and other charges stemming from Jan. 6. The trial began on Feb. 2 and went to the jury for deliberations on March 14.

Baboulis earlier testified for the prosecution about conditions at the Capitol on Jan. 6, when she served as acting inspector in charge of the USCP Library Division.

During cross-examination by defense attorney Juli Haller, Baboulis said the document in question was “actually not an email,” but rather “notes to myself.”

“And so it’s fair to say that you knew that—or the U.S. Capitol Police anticipated that there would be 3 million people attending the POTUS event, right?” Haller asked.

Baboulis replied, “It says that the organizers say 3 million,” according to the trial transcript.

After reviewing the document, Baboulis told Haller, “I think what this notes is notes that I had taken probably from a phone call regarding events transpiring across DC for that day.”

Such a large crowd estimate is not mentioned in any of the Jan. 6 law enforcement intelligence documents made public to date.

Event intelligence leading up to Jan. 6 said the day’s events were expected to be similar to election-fraud protests held in Washington on Nov. 14 and Dec. 12, 2020.

The USCP Civil Disturbance Unit Operational Plan issued on Jan. 3, 2021, read in part: “The protests/rallies are expected to be similar to the previous Million MAGA March rallies in November and December 2020, which drew tens of thousands of participants.”

“At this time there are no specific known threats related to the Joint Session of Congress – Electoral College vote certification,” the document said.

It’s not clear who else at USCP knew of the 3 million crowd projection and with whom, if anyone, the information was shared. Prosecutor Alexandra Hughes asked U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta to order a portion of the email addresses in Baboulis’s email redacted. He granted the request.

The Epoch Times asked Baboulis for comment on the email but did not receive a response by press time.

The newspaper asked former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund for comment on Baboulis’s email and the 3 million crowd estimate but did not receive a reply by press time.

After describing the possibility of 3 million people at the Ellipse, Baboulis wrote, “At 1300 [1 p.m.] they will come to the Capitol unorganized.”

The now-defunct January 6 Select Committee concluded that the huge crowds that came to the Capitol engaged in an organized “insurrection,” fueled by Trump’s speech.

The first breaches of police lines at the Capitol occurred some 25 minutes before the president finished speaking at the Ellipse.

Federal prosecutors and law enforcement officials often describe the violence that erupted at the Capitol as an organized attack to prevent the peaceful transfer of power from Trump to President-elect Joe Biden.

‘We Are Part of the Problem’

“The palace guards. We are part of the problem,” Baboulis wrote in the email, sent either to herself or to a blind-copy distribution list.

In the document, Baboulis described the “March for Trump” event at the Ellipse and noted that six protest events were granted USCP permits for the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6.

Those included the Stop the Steal/One Nation Under God rally in Area 8, near the Senate east front, organized by Stop the Steal founder Ali Alexander. The permit was valid from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Jan. 6. The event never took place. Keynote speaker Roger Stone opted to stay at his hotel, and violence broke out at the Capitol before any speakers could get to Area 8.

Alexander told The Epoch Times that Capitol Police never told his event planners at Resource Group of any restrictions on ingress or egress across the grounds on Jan. 6. Speeches at the event had been scheduled to begin after President Trump finished speaking at the Ellipse.

“One thing that no one has covered is that the U.S. Capitol police we were talking to each day through my contracted event planner never told about any restricted area or fencing,” Alexander said in a text message. “Never mentioned verbally or written to us.”

The event permit—issued on Jan. 5 and signed by Chief Sund—does not mention fencing, that any parts of the Capitol property would be “restricted grounds,” or that protesters on the grounds would be subject to criminal charges.

“We were set up,” Alexander said.

The One Nation Under God protest permit was emailed at 3:02 p.m. on Jan. 5 to Resource Group by Police Officer Shakia Michael of the USCP Special Events Section, according to a copy of the email Alexander provided to The Epoch Times.

The permit says various event restrictions on equipment, stage size, signage, the height of displays, and advertising were put in place “to assure the safety and convenience of all people in the exercise of their right to visit the Nation’s Capitol, to call at the offices of Representatives and Senators, to observe public proceedings of Congress, to petition the Congress for redress of grievances.”

The Stop the Steal/One Nation Under God event permit was approved by Assistant Chief Yogananda Pittman and Assistant Chief Chad Thomas on Jan. 4, 2021. It had been approved by the USCP Protective Services Bureau on Dec. 31, 2020. The permit application was filed on Dec. 21, 2020.

White Supremacists?

The permit was granted despite a Jan. 3 USCP intelligence assessment that said Stop the Steal has the “propensity to attract white supremacists, militia members and others who actively promote violence,” according to the USCP’s official “Timeline of Events for January 6, 2021 Attack.”

Asked if Stop the Steal had such a propensity, Alexander told The Epoch Times, “No, not at a higher rate than the DNC [Democrat National Committee] or the RNC [Republican National Committee]. In fact, far less.”

The USCP Intelligence and Interagency Coordination Division rated the threat likelihood for Alexander’s event as “highly improbable,” according to the Demonstration Permit Assessment attached to the One Nation Under God permit.

Defense attorneys in many of the more than 1,000 criminal cases brought against protesters have tried to raise the issue of the permit-approved events in open court, but not with much success.

A former attorney for Oath Keepers member Kelly Meggs said USCP approval of the permits gave permission for the public to traverse the grounds.

“Thus, not only were there no notices to legally effect a restriction, but the U.S. Capitol Police affirmatively invited demonstrators onto the U.S. Capitol Grounds to attend any or all of six (6) different demonstrations,” Jonathan Moseley wrote in a March 14 email.

“Because human beings generally cannot fly through the air, these permits issued by USCP authorize people to walk across the Capitol grounds to and from the permitted demonstration locations, and even among them,” Moseley wrote.

Muddy Intel Picture

The revelation of the 3 million crowd projection is the latest development in an already muddy picture of law enforcement intelligence leading up to Jan. 6.

Three days after Jan. 6, Eric Hoar of the USCP intelligence division sent an email titled “Intelligence Failures” to top Capitol Police commanders.

Hoar said USCP received detailed information in the weeks prior to Jan. 6 “from the FBI, Homeland Security Department, the U.S. Marshals Service, and DC Metropolitan Police that right-wing extremists were plotting to storm the Capitol and attack lawmakers.”

There is no mention of such information in the Jan. 3 USCP Civil Disturbance Unit Operational Plan. “Arrests are not anticipated for this event,” the plan said.

A situational information report issued by the FBI’s Norfolk Division late on Jan. 5 said a “collaborative source” indicated the possibility for violence in connection with the Jan. 6 protests. The alleged threatened violence was tied to “unlawful lockdowns,” the bulletin said. There was no mention of the 2020 presidential election.

It quoted an “online thread” that said: “Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors being kicked in, and blood from their BLM and Pantifa slave soldiers being spilled. Get violent…stop calling this a march, or rally or a protest. Go there, ready for war. We get our president, or we die. NOTHING else will achieve this goal.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Congresswoman Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.) has reintroduced a bill to prohibit tax-exempt organizations from donating to election bodies after institutions linked to billionaire Mark Zuckerberg funneled hundreds of millions of dollars toward such election offices in 2020.

“In the 2020 election, Mark Zuckerberg, under the guise of the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL)—a liberal non-profit group—flooded left-leaning county governments in Texas, Ohio, Nevada, Minnesota, Georgia, Florida, Arizona, and Pennsylvania with opaque private funding to influence election administration for their own purposes,” Tenney wrote in a Wednesday press statement.

“CTCL used this money as leverage over cash-strapped election agencies, forcing them into advancing its own partisan agenda. Millions of dollars from Zuckerbergs’ wallet flooded the field under the guise of ‘making voting safer amid the pandemic,’ yet less than 1 percent of those funds were spent on PPE, and 92 percent of the funds went to left-leaning districts,” Tenney added.

Critics have described the money Zuckerberg allegedly channeled to election offices in predominantly left-leaning districts “Zuckerbucks” or “Zuckbucks.” Tenney borrowed the term for the title of a new bill she introduced on Wednesday, called the “End Zuckerbucks Act” (pdf).

Tenney’s bill would specifically amend the Internal Revenue Code to prohibit 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organizations from directly funding official election organizations through donations or donated services. Tenney introduced the bill with co-sponsoring Representatives Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.), Scott Fitzgerald (R-Wis.), Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Tom Cole (R-Okla.), Barry Moore (R-Ala.), Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), Mary Miller (R-Ill.), Dan Bishop (R-N.C.), Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), and Bill Posey (R-Fla.).

Tenney introduced a similar bill opposing the so-called “Zuckerbucks” practice in June of 2021, but the bill never moved beyond its initial introduction in the then-Democrat-controlled House of Representatives. The bill stands a better chance of advancing now that the Republicans control the House, but will likely face tougher opposition in the Democrat-controlled Senate.

Lawmakers working at the state level have successfully passed similar bans on private donations to election offices. In April of 2021, Arizona lawmakers passed legislation banning private donations to state election officials. Florida lawmakers passed similar legislation in May of 2021.

NTD News reached out to CTCL for comment on Tenney’s new legislation, but the organization did not respond before this article was published.

Grants Allegedly Tilted 2020 Election Outcomes

Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, reportedly donated about $419.5 million during the 2020 election cycle. That money included $350 million to CTCL’s “Safe Elections” project, and $69.5 million to the Center for Election Innovation and Research.

Critics have argued that CTCL’s preference toward left-leaning districts was intended to drive voter turnout in Democratic strongholds while making much less of an effort to drive turnout in Republican districts, resulting in an imbalance that favored the Democrats during the 2020 election.

The Thomas More Society’s Amistad Project brought lawsuits over $6 million dollars CTCL gave to officials in Fulton County, Georgia, and five cities in Wisconsin. The lawsuits alleged the funding in Georgia was used to pay “ballot harvesters” and political activists to manage ballots. It also said the money was used to consolidate counting centers in urban areas to move “hundreds of thousands of questionable ballots in secrecy without legally required bi-partisan observation.”

Amistad Project Director Phill Kline told The Epoch Times that CTCL’s practices may have violated the “Equal Protection Clause” in the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Last year, a report (pdf) by special counsel appointed by the State of Wisconsin allegedly found evidence indicating that CTCL’s election grants violated Wisconsin law prohibiting election bribery. CTCL disputed the Wisconsin special counsel report’s findings in comments to NBC 15 last year, saying the report rehashed claims in lawsuits that have already been dismissed.

Zuckerberg Discontinues Election Grants

Last year, former Zuckerberg spokesman Ben LaBolt said Zuckerberg and Chan’s donation to CTCL was a “one-time donation” to “help ensure that Americans could vote during the height of the pandemic.”

LaBolt, who was previously spokesman for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and is the current White House Communications Director, said the billionaire couple has “no plans to repeat that donation” in future elections.

While Zuckerberg indicated that he had no plans to resume election-related donations to CTCL, the organization announced last year that it had launched a new, five-year, $80-million program called the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence to assist election offices across the United States.

From NTD News

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

• “There is evidence that suggests patients who receive a COVID-19 vaccine are at an increased risk of myocarditis.”
• “Onset was typically within several days after mRNA COVID-19 vaccination (from Pfizer or Moderna), and cases have occurred more often after the second dose than the first dose.” [PAGE 19]
• “The reasons for male predominance in myocarditis and pericarditis incidence post COVID-19 vaccination remain unknown.” [PAGE 28]
• “The pattern of cases conform, as per the label, to a pattern of myocarditis cases occurring in majority of young males below 29 years of age within the first two weeks postvaccination…” [PAGE 19]
• “Since April 2021, increased cases of myocarditis and pericarditis have been reported in the United States after mRNA COVID-19 vaccination (Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna), particularly in adolescents and young adults (CDC 2021).” [PAGE 18]
• “Myocarditis events were defined as encounters with a billing or encounter diagnosis consistent with an ICD10-CM or SNOMED CT code for myocarditis which fell within two weeks of receiving dose 1, 2, or 3 of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine.”
• “Incidence rates of myocarditis were measured for each vaccine dose with denominator signifying the total number of patients receiving that dose and numerator signifying the total number of patients meeting the above criteria for an encounter for myocarditis following that dose.”

[NEW YORK – Mar. 16, 2023] Project Veritas published confidential Pfizer documents today showing that the company was aware of the potential risk of myocarditis for individuals who received doses of their COVID-19 vaccine.

To read all of the internal documents/communications, CLICK HERE & HERE.

SOURCE: Project Veritas

The state is leading the way in the battle of good versus evil. Here’s what they’re doing.

The innocence of American children is at risk, as far-leftists continue their unholy crusade to brainwash the minds of minors with revisionist history, transgender ideology, and psychological warfare against traditional, moral values. The state of Tennessee is currently setting the example on legislation that matters.

In autumn, state officials rebuked the Vanderbilt University Medical Center for performing and promoting genital mutilation surgeries. This led to “The Rally to End Child Mutilation” held in Nashville, featuring state legislators, federal officials, and conservative personality Matt Walsh. A coalition against what the far-left calls “gender-affirming care” was established, and garnered immediate national attention.

The bicameral body of Tennessee’s legislature has taken more severe measures since, passing a bill that would effectively ban “drag queen” shows on public grounds, or in areas where they could be viewed by children. Another bill prohibits genital mutilation surgeries for minors, and Governor Bill Lee has now signed both pieces of legislation, implementing the most stringent laws in the country protecting children from gender perversions.

Republicans across the country would do well emulate Tennessee in fighting for children against the far left. After all, it’s terrifying all the right people.’

Margaret Renkl bemoaned the legislation in the New York Times this week, risibly claiming these “drag queens” were doing nothing more profane than priests, Scotsmen, or Robin Williams:

It’s worth noting that a lot of men out there are wearing a lot of garments that look a lot like dresses. Priests, for instance. Judges and justices. College graduates and Scotsmen in formal wear. Actors in “Mrs. Doubtfire” and “Hairspray,” both of which are on the new schedule at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center. Are they all now obliged to don trousers?

Renkl goes on to criticize the legislation for not concentrating on the everyday “grooming” children are subjected to outside of the scope of genital mutilation surgeries and public, sexually-explicit drag shows. The problem with these critiques is that she never directly addresses why it is so wrong to protect children from these obscenities, but instead, to move the goalposts to other issues she disagrees with in how the legislature has crafted policy.

Furthermore, the surgeries on minors are never addressed; the fact that drag shows are banned on government property and not privately is not mentioned; and Renkl avoids the discussion of whether kids should be seeing this stuff, entirely. Shifting the goal posts is one thing, but the column manages to migrate an entire football field.

We are in a cultural war for the country’s sanity and soul, and the sooner voters realize it, the more protected American traditional values will be. The fact that this has become a partisan issue is concerning enough. And “establishment” Republicans have to understand what time it is. Our fight is no longer about a few percentage points on the tax rate, a few billion on the budget, or indeed about the general size of government.

It’s about good versus evil. And it’s time to pick your sides, and choose your weapons. Tennessee has given us a great start.

Ken Griffin, the founder of hedge fund Citadel, said the rescue of Silicon Valley Bank shows the U.S. economic system is “breaking down before our eyes.”

“The U.S. is supposed to be a capitalist economy, and that’s breaking down before our eyes,” Griffin warned when speaking with the Financial Times on Monday after federal agencies said that they would protect SVB depositors, including ones that have $250,000, or above those above the federal insurance limit. Reports said that over 90 percent of SVB’s deposits were uninsured.

“There’s been a loss of financial discipline with the government bailing out depositors in full,” the billionaire added.

Late last week, U.S. regulators shut down SVB after customers withdrew their deposits en masse.  Later, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) transferred all deposits of Silicon Valley Bank to a newly created entity and ensured that all depositors had access to their funds starting Monday.

Because of the relative strength of the U.S. economy, Griffin argued that the federal government did not need to take such dramatic action. Regulators said such moves were made to prevent broader contagion from afflicting the U.S. banking sector.

“It would have been a great lesson in moral hazard,” he said. “Losses to depositors would have been immaterial, and it would have driven home the point that risk management is essential.”

He continued, “We’re at full employment, credit losses have been minimal, and bank balance sheets are at their strongest ever. We can address the issue of moral hazard from a position of strength.”

The billionaire’s remarks echo others from high-profile Wall Street investors who criticized the rescue plan. “All deposits guaranteed? Big mistake. Fed and Treasury policy moving to backstop risk,” billionaire Bill Gross wrote on Twitter.

However, other investors, including billionaire founder and CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, Bill Ackman, wanted the FDIC and federal government to move quickly to prevent contagion from SVB from spreading to other banks. In a strongly worded Twitter thread over the past weekend, Ackman wrote that before the rescue package was unfolded, the federal government only had “48 hours” to fix an “irreversible mistake.”

Ackman warned that “the destruction of these important institutions” will start once depositors withdraw their money from community and regional banks. At the same time, he accused the FDIC of not doing its job.

The Treasury Department, the FDIC, and the Federal Reserve took action later on Sunday to guarantee that depositors of SVB and Signature Bank of New York, another collapsed institution, would get their money. That includes amounts above the FDIC limit of $250,000.

Despite those measures, some regional bank stocks have plunged in the past several days, causing Americans to worry about whether their money is safe. As of Thursday (March 16), the Dow Jones dropped by about 200 points.

On Thursday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told lawmakers that the U.S. banking system “remains sound” and that savings “remain safe.” She said, “I can assure the members of this Committee that our banking system remains sound and that Americans can feel confident that their deposits will be there when they need them.”

In 2022, Griffin moved Citadel from Chicago to Miami and publicly cited the rise in crime across the Windy City. Previously, Griffin said he wants Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, to run for president in 2024.

Griffin is worth approximately $32 billion, according to Forbes magazine. His firm, set up in 1990, manages some $57 billion in assets.

Notably, during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Griffin reportedly funded the U.S. State Department’s rescue of about 800 American citizens from Wuhan, China.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

While it has become a fact that vaccines have performed drastically worse during the Omicron era, a recent meta-analysis accounting for dozens of studies reveals that natural immunity offers better protection against reinfection, symptomatic infections, and severe disease from all COVID-19 variants than all the COVID vaccines. In addition, natural immunity offered the advantage of reducing viral rebound compared with full vaccination.

Natural Immunity Performs Better Against All Variants

Vaccines belong to a group of drugs called prophylactics, meaning that they are meant to prevent disease. However, that classification is not limited to vaccines but also refers to medication, regular health screenings, and when it comes to reinfection, a previous infection.

For a virus like SARS‑CoV‑2 that would inevitably become endemic or as seasonal as the flu, a vaccine with a specific immunogen as a core component could never provide long-term protection, given that the virus is very likely to mutate.

As the jabs are not effective at preventing infection, the promotional narrative has shifted toward marketing a vaccine that can prevent severe disease. We all saw the 95 percent efficacy billboards and the promotion posters urging citizens to get fully vaccinated. For many, getting vaccinated was not a matter of choice, as the alternative would otherwise impede work, school, and even going to the movies or out for dinner.

However, these mandates often overlooked the effectiveness of preventing reinfection and disease progression via a prior infection. A recent large-scale meta-analysis (pdf) shows that a previous infection was quite effective against reinfection, as well as symptomatic or severe disease, using data collected from 56 studies from over 19 countries.

The data in the above figure indicate that prior infection of COVID offers significantly high levels of protection against reinfection (over 80 percent), symptomatic infection (over 82 percent), and severe disease (over 78 percent) for the original strain and the Alpha, Beta, and Delta variants. The protection effectiveness dropped for Omicron variants, down to 44 percent and 45 percent for reinfection and symptomatic infection. But the effectiveness against severe diseases was still above 80 percent for Omicron.

The data above are just the average protection efficacies calculated from different studies. The significance of the protection effectiveness manifested even more strongly in terms of the slower waning of protection when compared to the protection offered by the various vaccines.

The data above also only describe the average protection efficacy provided by a previous infection. What is more significant is that the protection offered by a previous infection lasts much longer than that of a vaccine. The data in Figures 2–4 below show the comparison of vaccine effectiveness up to 40 weeks following inoculation versus the effectiveness of prior infection up to 80 weeks upon the last infection.

The data in Figure 2 compare protection offered by a prior infection with that offered by multiple major vaccines on the market: Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, and the mRNA vaccine boosters.

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The result shows that the protection offered by a previous infection against reinfection lasts significantly longer at a higher rate compared to many other vaccines as well as their boosters.  Even though the Omicron variant is a game changer for the efficacy of both vaccines and natural immunity, the protection offered by a prior infection still stays above 25 percent 80 weeks after infection while, for example, the efficacy of the Moderna vaccine drops to single digits 40 days after vaccination.

Similar observations are illustrated in the two figures below in terms of protection against symptomatic infection (Figure 3) and severe disease (Figure 4). What this tells us remains unchanged: Natural immunity offers significantly more and longer-lasting protection than any other vaccine or vaccine-booster combination on the market today, for all SARS-CoV-2 variants.

There are some limitations in this meta-data analysis. For example, the study did not specify which viral variant infected the patients who were included in the previously infected group. Another issue with the data is that it does not include enough information on some vaccines like Johnson & Johnson or AstraZeneca. However, the data clearly state that a prior COVID infection is much more effective at preventing reinfection and severe disease than the vaccines are.

The data collected in this meta-data study came from different studies in many countries and were published throughout the past few years. This means at least a few scientists were well aware of how potent natural immunity was, especially after the emergence of Omicron. This meta-analysis simply made the point very clear.

However, the public has observed that pandemic-related public health policies neglected these observations and strongly favored vaccination campaigns, with vaccination mandates for even those protected by natural immunity. For many government health agencies, vaccination appears to be the only source of immunity or protection against COVID considered valid.

In reality, government health agencies have become the strongest marketing and sales agents for Big Pharma’s vaccine manufacturers. Is this in alignment with evidence-based medicine and public health? Or might it be driven by commercial interests and an industrial complex?

What the data also show is that Omicron changed the landscape of the pandemic. The efficacy for all vaccines and even prior infection dropped drastically, yet these variants do not really cause severe disease, which is perhaps the silver lining. Until today, we have no idea why waves come and go or how to predict the next variant. The scientific world’s understanding of the virus is still rather limited as it is unable to answer crucial questions.

The Virus Rebounds Among the Fully Vaccinated

Vaccines have become an increasingly popular answer to the diseases we face today. However, our understanding of vaccines is rather limited in scope. One example of this is how vaccination is associated with undesired consequences such as adverse events, side effects, negative efficacy, immune exhaustion, etc.

Coming as a bit of a surprise, the latest findings of a Hong Kong study (pdf) show that viral rebound has become another subject of concern among vaccinated who are treated with antivirals.

Viruses are generally considered nonliving entities that rely on the host to replicate. The quantity of virus that is present in the bloodstream, or the viral load, indicates to what degree the virus has infected the host and is usually a sign of how the body is doing against the infection.

Viral loads are measured by cycle threshold, or CT value, which is how many times a machine needs to perform polymerase chain reactions (PCR) on the patient sample such that the virus reaches a certain concentration. In general, a lower CT value indicates a higher viral load in that specimen, and a higher CT value indicates a lower viral load.

Antivirals commonly used to treat COVID, such as Paxlovid developed by Pfizer or molnupiravir, inhibit the virus in one way or another to help our own immune systems ward off infection. However, the Hong Kong study published in The Lancet shows that there has been a significant viral rebound after antiviral treatment was administered among the fully vaccinated.

On one hand, Paxlovid is a rather successful drug in terms of its ability to help against COVID-19 in patients who are not fully vaccinated. However, its effect against the disease seems to be drastically impaired in individuals who are fully vaccinated. The virus effectively rebounds after about 10 days post-treatment, meaning that the virus makes a comeback five days after the treatment series has ended.

Treatment with molnupiravir did not show a similar viral rebound problem, which is probably due to the differing mechanisms molnupiravir uses to inhibit viruses. While Paxlovid targets the viral protease, it is not as effective as molnupiravir in inhibiting viral replication. In this study, the full vaccination standard was achieved by administering either two doses of mRNA vaccines or three doses of the Chinese Sinovac vaccines. But how does vaccination affect the viral rebound after antiviral treatment?

Full vaccination seems to exhaust the immune system, making viral clearance not as effective as needed. Therefore, in the study, when the antiviral treatment ended and the viral load rebounded, it could be an indication that those individuals did not manage the virus as effectively as possible.

What is the message that nature is trying to tell us with this pandemic? COVID-19 has disrupted the world for the past few years and a tremendous number of people have been severely affected by it. However, these methods of intervention that agencies have employed seem to have rather limited effects.

As the pandemic winds down, it is time to look back on what has motivated these prevention measures and analyze whether they were really executed in our best interest. Are our manmade methods really a force that can match those of Mother Nature?

One clear picture here is that we humans need to stay humble and accept the limitations of our knowledge. We can never develop egotism like the Chinese Communist Party that boasted its victory against the virus via implementing extreme zero-COVID policies.

We did not defeat the pandemic, nor did we defeat the virus. We are under God’s mercy to survive the pandemic.

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.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) purchased data from tracking companies to monitor compliance with lockdowns, according to contracts with the firms.

The CDC paid one firm $420,000 and another $208,000. That bought access to location data from at least 55 million cellphone users.

The contracts, approved under emergency review because of the COVID-19 pandemic, were aimed at providing the CDC “with the necessary data to continue critical emergency response functions related to evaluating the impact of visits to key points of interest, stay at home orders, closures, re-openings and other public heath communications related to mask mandate, and other merging research areas on community transmission of SARS-CoV-2,” the contracts, obtained by The Epoch Times, state.

The CDC said it would use the tracking data to “assess home-by-hour behaviors (i.e. curfew analysis) by exploring the percentage of mobile devices at home during specific period of time.” The data could also be integrated with other information “to provide a comprehensive picture of movement/travel of persons during the COVID-19 pandemic to better understand mandatory stay-at-home orders, business closure, school re-openings, and other non-pharmaceutical interventions in states and cities.”

Under a heading labeled “potential use cases” for the data, the CDC said they could be used to try to connect the forced closures of bars and restaurants with COVID-19 infections and death rates and to assess the effect of state restrictions on close contact between people outside of their homes.

The data could also be used to monitor adherence to mandated or recommended quarantines after arrival from another state and to examine the correlation of mobility patterns and spikes in COVID-19 cases at facilities such as churches, concerts, and grocery stores. It would also enable examining movement restrictions such as curfews to show “patterns” and “compliance,” the contracts state.

The contracts were previously reported on by Vice News, but the outlet only released a screenshot of a single page. Together, the contracts are 71 pages. Both were signed in 2021, the same year new medical codes for COVID-19 vaccination status were approved.

Early Research Published, Unclear What Purchased Data Used For

The CDC, early in the pandemic, received the data for free from the firms, SafeGraph and Cuebiq.

CDC researchers in 2020 published two studies using the data. One focused on data from four U.S. metropolitan areas, finding that people moved around less when measures such as social distancing were imposed. Another found that harsh lockdown orders led to decreased movement, while there was more movement after states began lifting the orders.

Other researchers have also used the mobility data for studies.

No CDC studies were published after the agency bought the data, and a CDC spokesperson didn’t provide examples of what the purchased data were used for.

“For COVID-19, the insights derived from these data provide essential information on the impact and effectiveness of policies and COVID-19 mitigation measures (e.g., jurisdictional stay-at-home orders and business closures) that had profound effects on communities,” Scott Pauley, the spokesperson, told The Epoch Times via email.

“These data provide important insights to protect public health and have been used to understand population-level impacts of COVID-19 policies and can shed important light on other pressing public health problems, like natural disaster response, and toxic environmental exposures. CDC does not and could not use these data for monitoring compliance with COVID-19 orders or individual tracking.”

Although the data are anonymized, they can be used to identify people, researchers have shown.

“The data CDC received were aggregated and anonymous, had extensive privacy protections, and could not be used to identify individuals. They cannot be tied to an individual and have multiple layers of privacy protections to prevent misuse or re-identification,” Pauley said.

Firms such as SafeGraph and Cuebiq receive phone data from applications before passing them on to customers in sets. The sets from SafeGraph included “neighborhood patterns,” which showed how often people visited places of interest, where they came from, and where else they went. The sets from Cuebiq included a “shelter-in-place index” that measured the percentage of mobile devices at home during a certain period of time, and an out-of-state traveler set to estimate what percentage of people who came from another state were “failing to shelter in place.”

A SafeGraph spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email that the firm “compiles and provides objective, verifiable facts about physical locations around the world—like the address or operating hours of a particular point of interest.” The spokesperson also said the data the company sells can’t be “de-anonymized,” or “used to identify or to ‘track’ the movements or behavior of individual persons.” That’s accomplished in part by introducing “randomized noise,” the company said.

Cuebiq didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Congressional Concerns

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), the top Republican on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, expressed concern about the purchase of the mobility data, asking the CDC who approved the purchase and whether it shared the data with other agencies.

“It remains unclear why the CDC tracked millions of Americans during the pandemic and whether it continues to do so. In response to COVID-19, the CDC should have been prioritizing the development of treatments, effective testing, and vaccine safety rather than tracking Americans’ daily lives,” Johnson wrote to CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky.

Walensky said in response that the data were part of using “the best science available to inform our understanding of the public health impacts of interventions and to inform recommendations.”

The CDC has also used location tracking data from Google but never paid for the data, Walensky said.

She also said that the purchased data weren’t shared with any other agency or private companies.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The attack on what we stand for and what we believe in is well underway, and very little is being done to counteract it.

ormally we think of wars as involving shooting, tanks, warplanes, artillery barrages, amphibious assaults and graphic videos on the evening news. But modern warfare can take on unusual, even grotesque, configurations which, in some cases, may be even more threatening than the conventional kind.

It is well known that the synthetic opioid fentanyl and its precursors are manufactured in China, exported to Mexico, and sold primarily to the Sinaloa and Jalisco drug cartels among others at a meager price. The cartels then manufacture the actual finished product in pill form and bring it across our open border to be sold to our vulnerable and unsuspecting young people. 

The casualties are predictable and yet staggering: 72,000 Americans die each year from fentanyl overdoses alone. The drug is sometimes disguised in the form of other medications or more benign recreational drugs as a trap for the unsuspecting. Drug overdoses are now the leading cause of death in the United States among young people between the ages of 18 and 44. This was not true even just a few years ago. 

All of this would seem to be counter-productive. Why would the Chinese and the drug cartels want to kill their own customers? In the context of China’s war to dominate the world, it should be understood that the purpose of this huge international program is not to create a profit so much as it is to weaken and damage America as much as possible. It is part of the Chinese campaign of hegemony to bring our nation and its people under their domination.

If there is any doubt about the success of this campaign against our complacent population, a quick review of the casualty counts brings the entire situation into sharp focus.  The battle deaths from our last four wars are listed as follows: 

• The Korean Conflict: 33,739
• Vietnam War: 47,434
• Persian Gulf War: 1,565
• Global War on Terror: 6,852
• Total:  89,590     

The exact number of deaths from Chinese imported drugs for the last three years is not known. However, at 72,000 plus per year, the death toll could easily exceed 180,000. This would make it approximately double the deaths from our last four wars combined. 

Based on the numbers from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the number of people dying from drug overdoses has tripled in the last 10 years. There was a slight drop in the numbers in 2018 which many people hoped was a sign that we were beginning to turn the corner. But then there was a slight increase in 2019 and sadly an explosive surge during the 2020 lockdowns. This most substantial increase seemed to coincide with a shift in the particular type of drug being used from heroin to fentanyl. The easy availability and lower cost of the drug from China may have been behind this new expanding dynamic.  

Tragically, it must be pointed out, however, that overdose deaths are only part of the overall problem. There are also the many people who become addicted to drugs and have their lives permanently crippled. Individuals who might otherwise have been happy and productive citizens are living on the streets in squalor and filth. Both deaths and ongoing addictions tear at the fabric of our society and make us weaker as a nation. This is the true purpose of the entire Chinese drug campaign against our country. 

Part of an Overall Strategy?

The Biden policy regarding the border, China, and the influx of drugs into our country might be best described as a head-on collision of several ill-conceived policies running into each other in a big four-car pile-up rather than an overall cohesive program. When they are untangled, lined up, and organized in their separate and appropriate categories they can be identified as follows:

1) Open Border Policy. It is the thinly disguised purpose of Biden’s open border policy to flood as many people from Latin America into our country as possible, thus changing the demographics of the electorate. Their hope is that these people will vote—legally or illegally—for Democratic candidates in the future. 

2) Unintended Consequences—Illegal Drugs. An open border for illegal aliens, however, is also an open border for illegal drugs and illegal drug cartels. They are also flooding into our country, committing crimes, and doing great harm to our citizens. The millions of illegals are also a strain on social services, costing taxpayers billions of dollars they did not expect to have to pay.  

3) Further Unintended Consequences—China’s War on the United States. The leaders of China wish to undermine and defeat our country. As stated above our open border presents them with an added opportunity to do so. They have been able to stab us in the back through our open border with their fentanyl program killing many young people and harming many others.    

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4) Biden on the Take. Former President Donald Trump has said that the Hunter Biden laptop scandal is “the biggest scandal in American history.” I would correct that statement by saying that it should be the biggest scandal in U.S. history—but it is not. It should be the biggest scandal because the records from the laptop show Joe Biden and his family taking millions of dollars in what is a de facto bribe from the Chinese Communist Party. 

And why is it not the biggest scandal? 

Because the very powerful mainstream media has downplayed, covered up, and ignored the story. Therefore, a scandal that would have blown open a Republican administration has passed largely from view in the minds of most voters. In a recent poll, 38 percent of the American people did not think that Hunter Biden had done anything wrong in connection with the “laptop from hell.” It is amazing how benighted the American public is regarding this rotting corpse of a scandal. With Republicans now in control of the House, however, the scandal may yet and finally come to be understood as the sordid mess it actually is.   

Of course, a naval and ground conflict over Taiwan may still be in the offing. The damage to our nation from opioids and from the crimes of the drug cartels may only be a prelude to a larger conflagration three or four years away. Nevertheless, it should be understood that the attack on what we stand for and what we believe in is already well underway, and very little is being done to counteract it. 

SOURCE: American Greatness

Lawmakers say they can no longer wait for Biden to enforce immigration law

Save the Alamo! Right on!! [US Patriot]

Texas state Republicans are pushing legislation to make illegal entry from Mexico a felony, a move that comes as Texas lawmakers accuse the Biden administration of leaving border states to fend for themselves against the immigration crisis.

The bill from Republican state representative Matt Schaefer would also create a “Border Protection Unit,” a larger state border patrol team to address the surge in migrants, Fox News reported. The bill must pass the legislature before the end of May to become law.

The Border Protection Unit would be headed by a governor-appointed unit chief, who could recruit a militia of civilians without felony convictions to “participate in unit operations and functions.” Illegal immigrants who are arrested could face up to 10 years in prison and thousands of dollars in fines.

“Right now we can use all the help and any help at all that we can get, because we’re being overrun down here and on the borders,” said Zavala County sheriff Eusevio Salinas.

The proposed bill comes after Texas Republicans pressed the Biden administration to reimburse the state for its efforts to tackle the border crisis through Operation Lone Star.

“Texas has been forced by this administration to go it alone when it comes to securing our border,” said U.S. representative Pat Fallon (R., Texas) in a statement. “Operation Lone Star has been a critical tool in stemming the tide of illegal immigration, but we cannot do it by ourselves.”

The U.S. Border Patrol has experienced nearly 800,000 migrant encounters so far in fiscal year 2023.

“The Legislature, acting with the governor, has the solemn duty to protect and defend the citizens of Texas,” the proposed bill reads. “Texas is in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Cash infusion helped Iran arm Taliban, foment terror on five continents, State Department report says

Joe Biden’s lax sanctions enforcement during his first year in office allowed $23 billion to flow into Iran’s coffers, even as the country armed the Taliban, attacked U.S. forces in the Middle East, and financed terror plots across five continents, according to a State Department report.

Iran’s illicit oil trade with China jumped from just $6.6 billion in 2020 to more than $23 billion in 2021, according to data from United Against a Nuclear Iran, when Biden took office and stopped enforcing sanctions on Iran’s oil trade with China. The decision to halt sanctions came as part of the administration’s bid to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, which has not been successful.

The State Department’s 2021 global terrorism report, the latest version publicly available, provides a clear account of Iran’s growing terrorism activities during the Biden administration’s first year in office. With more cash resources on hand, Iran supported terror plots across Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, and South America, according to the report. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) also provided support to eight U.S.-designated terror groups in 2021. Iran also provided “weapons and support” to the Taliban in 2021, the same year the Biden administration oversaw a bungled evacuation from the country that resulted in the terror group’s return to power.

Former U.S. officials and regional experts say the findings show the Biden administration’s early diplomacy with Iran helped fuel its support for terrorism.

“The State Department’s latest admissions about Iran’s terror activity make clear that Biden’s negotiations with Tehran empowered the regime to supercharge their terror plots—with zero pushback or accountability,” Gabriel Noronha, a senior Iran adviser at the State Department during the Trump administration, told the Free Beacon. “Worse, they looked the other way at Iranian attacks and sanctions evasion, allowing the regime to raise tens of billions of dollars to destabilize Iraq and conduct dozens of attacks against our servicemembers and citizens there.”

The report also said that Iranian-backed militia groups in Iraq and other terror forces launched “more than 100 IED attacks” on the U.S. coalition to defeat the ISIS terror group. These fighters also “launched at least 40 indirect fire attacks against U.S. interests in Iraq,” according to the State Department.

This includes an attack in February 2021 that killed a U.S. contractor working in Iraq. Two days after that incident, the Biden administration moved forward with a plan to rescind all United Nations sanctions on Iran and remove travel restrictions on Iranian diplomats stationed in New York City.

The State Department report also indicated that “Iran-supported groups continue to engage in dangerous and destabilizing activity across the Middle East, with Iran using the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) and its proxies and partners to advance its interests abroad.”

The IRGC had “active involvement” in Iraq and Syria, where the Iranian regime is bolstering dictator Bashar al-Assad. Iran also “continued its support to several U.S.-designated terrorist groups, providing funding, training, weapons, and equipment to various groups within the region,” according to the report.

Iranian arms and money flowed to virtually every major anti-Israel terror group, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Tehran also provided support to several terror factions in Bahrain, which struck a peace deal with Israel in 2020.

Behnam Ben Taleblu, an Iran analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank, said the State Department’s findings show that “holding the door open for the [nuclear deal] as actively as the Biden administration did throughout 2021 and easing off the sanctions pressure it inherited from the Trump administration makes zero strategic sense.”

Tehran spent most of 2021 bolstering its support for a terror network known as the “Axis of Resistance,” according to Taleblu. “This trend is a sign of increasing confidence by Tehran that its export of terror will not be countered.”

The State Department also determined that following the Taliban’s takeover, the “potential for WMD trafficking and proliferation in Afghanistan remained a concern.” This finding highlights how the Biden administration’s bungled evacuation has allowed Afghanistan to become a safe haven for terror groups, including ISIS, which launched 334 attacks in Afghanistan in 2021, compared with just 60 in 2020, prior to the withdrawal.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

All 15 Democratic members of the House Homeland Security Committee are boycotting a Wednesday field hearing in South Texas intended to address the border crisis.

Committee chairman Mark Green (R., Tenn.) organized a hearing in the Rio Grande Valley to hear from top U.S. Border Patrol officials and other witnesses, the Washington Examiner reported. All minority party members decided to skip the hearing despite having chosen their own witness to attend the panel, claiming Republicans planned to “politicize” the event.

“After careful consideration, committee Democrats have decided not to participate in the Republicans’ field hearing this week,” Rep. Bennie Thompson (D., Miss.) said in a statement to the Examiner. “Instead of a fact-finding mission to develop better border security and immigration policies, Republicans are traveling to the border to attack the administration and try to score political points with their extreme rhetoric.”

While the majority of Americans have classified the border crisis as an invasion, Democrats insist the crisis is not a problem worth addressing in person. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who is in charge of mitigating the border crisis, both made trips to Arizona in December and January, respectively, but chose not to visit the southern border. Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee last month boycotted a field hearing in Arizona meant to address the fentanyl epidemic and humanitarian crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border.

More than 5.5 million migrants have crossed the southern border since Biden took office. Many officials attribute the country’s fentanyl epidemic to the crisis at the border. Authorities seized 12,500 pounds of fentanyl at the southern border from October 1, 2022, through January 31, 2023, Customs and Border Protection figures show.

“The only message [the Democrats’] absence sends is that they are uninterested in coming to the table to have a conversation about the devastation that this border crisis is having on Americans and their communities across the country,” Green said. “We will continue to encourage our Democrat colleagues to get out of the D.C. echo chamber and meet Americans where they are to discuss the biggest issues facing them.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Nebraska state lawmaker Machaela Cavanaugh (D.) says she will filibuster every piece of legislation this year because the legislature has advanced a bill that bans sex-change operations for children.

If the legislature does not withdraw the bill, “I am going to make it painful—painful for everyone,” Cavanaugh declared. “I will burn the session to the ground over this bill.”

Cavanaugh has succeeded in preventing lawmakers from making laws. As of Wednesday, “not a single bill will have passed,” the Associated Press reported, with Cavanaugh talking about “her favorite Girl Scout cookies, Omaha’s best doughnuts, and the plot of the animated movie Madagascar” to take up the legislature’s time.

Left-wingers have praised Cavanaugh’s obstructionism, with one LGBTQ activist describing it as “a heroic effort.” That praise is a far cry from what Democrats said as recently as last year. Politicians, including President Joe Biden, and progressive activists have blasted the filibuster, with Biden notably agreeing with a description of it as a “relic of the Jim Crow era.” One Democratic congressman said last year that the tactic is “killing children,” the Washington Free Beacon reported.

Cavanaugh’s filibuster, which she said is necessary to protect transgender children, comes after a whistleblower reported that a Missouri clinic commits “morally and medically appalling” practices on children who identify as transgender, “permanently harming the vulnerable patients.”

At least 21 other state legislatures have begun investigating the harms of sex-change operations on children. Republican Nebraska lawmaker Kathleen Kauth, who introduced the bill that Cavanaugh is filibustering, says the legislation will “protect children from undertaking gender-affirming treatments that they might later regret as adults,” the AP wrote.

Cavanaugh and her supporters “don’t want to acknowledge the support I have for this bill,” Kauth said. “We should be allowed to debate this.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Event ‘captures the imagination and play of the gender fluidity of childhood,’ according to organizers

New York attorney general Letitia James (D.) announced she is hosting a drag queen story hour “read-a-thon” for children “up to age 12,” an event that allows minors to explore “gender fluidity,” according to program organizers.

“My office is proud to host a Drag Story Hour read-a-thon,” James said in an Instagram post, in which she invited “families with children” to join “city and state elected leaders” for the Sunday event.

The event “captures the imagination and play of the gender fluidity of childhood and gives kids glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models,” according to Drag Story Hour, the nonprofit organizing the event. “In spaces like this, kids are able to see people who defy rigid gender restrictions and imagine a world where everyone can be their authentic selves.”

The sold-out event will be held at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center in New York City and is co-sponsored by the New York, Brooklyn, and Queens Public Libraries. All elected officials participating in the event are Democrats.

While James is planning the drag event, police officers are fleeing the New York Police Department in droves. In light of the crime surge in New York City, Mayor Eric Adams (D.) this month told shop owners to ban face masks in stores.

James is just the latest Democrat to use government funds to support sexualized actors performing for children. The White House welcomed a drag story hour performer in December and Michigan’s attorney general called for a “drag queen for every school.”

Libraries across the country have hosted drag queen story hours while turning away Christian authors.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

The federal judge shielding the Georgia voter registration group once helmed by Democratic senator Raphael Warnock from legal trouble owes her spot on the bench to none other than Warnock, who led the charge to get the Biden administration to nominate her for the lifetime judicial position.

District Judge Victoria Calvert in December 2022 blocked the Georgia attorney general’s efforts to charge the New Georgia Project with illegally aiding Democrat Stacey Abrams’s failed 2018 gubernatorial campaign while Warnock was the group’s chairman. It was Warnock who urged President Joe Biden to nominate Calvert to the District Court of Northern Georgia in September 2021. The Senate confirmed Calvert to the lifetime post in March 2022.

Calling Calvert’s move an “attempt to circumvent the rule of law” that “serves only to undermine transparency in our elections,” Georgia attorney general Chris Carr (R.) filed an appeal to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals on March 8 demanding it reverse the judge’s decision so he can resume enforcement proceedings against the group.

“New Georgia Project spent millions of dollars in express political advocacy, fought state investigators for years to avoid disclosing any information, and then rushed to federal court to stop this civil proceeding entirely,” Carr said in a statement. “We are filing this appeal to ensure that our state statute is upheld and Georgia’s ongoing proceeding is protected.”

Calvert’s intervention in the case against the charity once led by her chief benefactor in the Senate raises serious conflict of interest concerns. It also comes as the New Georgia Project faces a separate investigation by Georgia’s secretary of state, which began probing the group’s “financial irregularities” following several Washington Free Beacon reports on alleged financial mismanagement by former New Georgia Project executives.

The Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission launched its legal battle against the New Georgia Project in September 2019. As part of its investigation, the state authorities issued subpoenas against the charity that revealed it had failed to disclose over $4.2 million in contributions and $3.2 million in expenditures during the 2018 elections.

The commission passed the case off to Carr’s office in August 2022 after ruling that New Georgia Project likely violated state law by failing to report its political expenditures. New Georgia Project countered the allegations in an appeal to the District Court of Northern Georgia, saying they were exempted from disclosing their financial efforts to help elect Abrams because it spent millions more on other non-election related activities.

Calvert ultimately ruled in favor of New Georgia Project in December 2022, granting their motion to enjoin Georgia authorities from enforcing state campaign finance law in part because the charity’s free speech rights were at stake.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Circuit Judge Janet Protasiewicz’s record under scrutiny for being too lenient on criminals

The liberal judge running for Wisconsin Supreme Court skipped a candidate forum hosted by the Milwaukee Press Club on Tuesday as she faces questions about her record of releasing violent criminals and sex offenders back on the streets.

Milwaukee County circuit judge Janet Protasiewicz “declined an invitation citing scheduling conflicts,” giving conservative candidate Dan Kelly the entire stage, according to the Milwaukee Press Club. The group reportedly extended the invitation to both campaigns in February.

Protasiewicz’s absence comes as she has faced criticism for her light sentencing record. Protasiewicz also solicited an endorsement from Citizen Action Wisconsin, an anti-police group that wants to eliminate gang databases, treat criminals as juveniles until age 25, and says Wisconsin has a “structurally racist system of mass incarceration,” the Washington Free Beacon reported on Tuesday. She later touted the group’s support on social media and her campaign website.

Protasiewicz has yet to respond to questions about her record in a public debate. She agreed to just one debate hosted by the State Bar on March 21 but turned down several others, including ones hosted by WISN-TV and the left-of-center American Constitution Society, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Protasiewicz did not respond to a request for comment.

The high stakes April 4 Supreme Court race is playing out to be the most expensive state judicial election in U.S. history, and the swing state’s decision could have national implications for the 2024 presidential election.

Protasiewicz’s opponents have nicknamed her “No Jail Janet,” claiming she is a partisan judicial activist who coddled criminals during her time on the bench. Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the state’s largest business association, has been running an ad highlighting multiple convicted rapists and pedophiles who received light sentences from Protasiewicz.

In one 2019 case, Protasiewicz sentenced a child predator who assaulted an 11-year-old to probation, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. In another case in 2018, she gave probation to a mother who allegedly starved her 16-year-old disabled son to death.

Protasiewicz’s campaign argued that the attacks on her record are “misleading” and ignore the “thousands of criminals” she held accountable during her decade as a judge.

“I was—and still am—ready to debate,” wrote Kelly in a Mar. 3 post on Twitter. “Guess Politician Protasiewicz doesn’t want people to know the cases for which she will put her thumb on the scales of justice.”

During the Milwaukee Press Club forum, Kelly accused Protasiewicz of letting criminals off lightly and weighing in on political issues that are inappropriate for a judicial candidate, according to Fox6. “If you didn’t know better, you would think she was running for a spot in the legislature,” said Kelly.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

New Jersey city signed agreement with nonexistent ‘Kailasa’

Newark, New Jersey’s Democratic-run city hall admitted last week to falling for a fraud when officials held a “Sister City” ceremony with the Hindu nation of “Kailasa”—a country that does not exist, created by an Indian cult leader on the run from the law over rape charges.

In a city hall ceremony in January, Newark mayor Ras Baraka (D.) and other officials met with delegates of the fake country to sign an agreement of partnership.

“I pray that our relationship helps us to understand cultural, social, and political development and improves the lives of everybody in both places,” Baraka said at the time.

After city hall realized “Kailasa” doesn’t exist, however, Newark Democrats were forced to admit they were duped and resort to damage control.

The city of Newark in a statement told CBS News the fraud was a “regrettable incident” but insisted no money was exchanged in the agreement. Councilman Luis Quintana (D.) said, “This is an oversight, cannot happen any longer.”

“Kailasa,” the made-up country, has a website describing itself as the “greatest Hindu nation on Earth,” but it is recognized by no nation and controls no territory. The concept of the fake nation was created by Indian cult leader Swami Nithyananda, who claims to have supernatural powers, including the ability to see through walls.

Nithyananda has been a fugitive from Indian law enforcement since 2019. The swami has faced charges of raping a former disciple.

Newark residents expressed frustration at their city government for falling for their scam. “I’m really sorry for the city that they got duped in that way,” Newark resident Amaris Mitchell told CBS News.

“Whose job was it to do a simple Google search?” asked resident Shakee Merritt. “Not one person said, ‘Let me go and Google and figure out this was a fake city.'”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Los Angeles mayor met with the head of Beijing’s top influence outfit

American intelligence officials warned last month that the Chinese Communist Party is directing its influence operations at “more pliable” local officials. That could explain why the head of Beijing’s top influence outfit just met with the Democratic mayor of Los Angeles Karen Bass.

Lin Songtian, the president of the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, met with Bass, California treasurer Fiona Ma, and several pro-China think tanks during a 10-day stateside tour last month, according to Chinese state media. Lin said he had “extensive, candid, and friendly exchanges” about the “stabilization and improvement of Sino-U.S. relations.”

The meeting came just weeks after the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a report warning that China has adjusted its influence activities, aiming them at local and state officials because of growing bipartisan skepticism of China in Washington. “Beijing has adjusted by redoubling its efforts to build influence at the state and local level to shift U.S. policy in China’s favor because of Beijing’s belief that local officials are more pliable than their federal counterparts,” the intelligence report said. The office had issued a similar warning in July 2022.

By meeting Lin, Bass flouted American intelligence officials, who have warned that Beijing uses the Chinese People’s Association to “malignly influence state and local leaders” to advance China’s “global agenda.” In 2020, the United States government pulled out of a decade-old partnership to promote “subnational cooperation” with China over the Chinese People’s Association’s participation in the event.

“Whether they know it or not, the Los Angeles officials who met with Lin’s delegation were the targets of a CCP influence campaign,” said Michael Sobolik, a fellow in Indo-Pacific Studies at the American Foreign Policy Council.

According to Sobolik, Lin’s agenda—which included discussions of China’s Belt and Road Initiative—bears all the hallmarks of a Beijing-backed influence operation.

“Whenever Americans meet with CPAFFC-affiliated groups or other people with CCP ties, they risk advancing the Belt and Road Initiative and Beijing’s interests,” Sobolik told the Washington Free Beacon.

California Democrats have been a frequent target for Beijing’s influence operations, including one that may have targeted Bass and Ma. As members of the California assembly in 2009, they blocked a vote on a resolution to recognize Tibet and the Dalai Lama. Chinese diplomats had lobbied aggressively in Sacramento to block the measure.

More recently, a Chinese spy cultivated a relationship with Rep. Eric Swalwell (D., Calif.) when he served as a city councilman and later as a congressman. The spy, Fang Fang, planted a mole in Swalwell’s congressional office and also had sexual relationships with at least two mayors from the midwest. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) for years employed a suspected Chinese intelligence officer in her district office.

The Chinese People’s Association has targeted the Los Angeles mayor’s office before. Nina Hachigian, who leads the State Department’s subnational diplomacy program, met at least twice with the head of the Chinese People’s Association when she served as deputy mayor of Los Angeles to discuss cooperation “in areas such as sister city, environmental protection and youth.” The director of national intelligence has said that the Chinese government “may exploit” its sister city pacts to advance its political agenda. Lin said he discussed sister city projects in his recent meetings.

The Chinese People’s Association sponsored overseas trips for California lawmaker Robert Hertzberg when he served as state senate majority leader. The trips were co-sponsored by the State Legislative Leaders Foundation, a group that organizes events for state lawmakers. The State Legislative Leaders Foundation, which until recently was partially funded by the Chinese People’s Association, facilitated Hunter Biden’s first business trip to China in 2009.

In 2015, Biden, his business partners, and the State Legislative Leaders Foundation lobbied the State Department to publicly bless a partnership between the Chinese People’s Association and the State Legislative Leaders Foundation as part of an elaborate plan to drum up business in China, the Free Beacon reported. Biden offered to provide “whatever you need” to assist the endeavor, which was ultimately successful. The Biden consortium arranged meetings to discuss the initiative with then-State Department official Evan Ryan, who now serves as President Joe Biden’s cabinet secretary. Ryan is married to Secretary of State Tony Blinken.

According to Lin, he was invited to the United States by the president of the Ford Foundation, Darren Walker, to meet in New York. The Ford Foundation gave $9.3 million in 2021 to Chinese organizations, including three universities that the Australian Strategic Policy Institute designates as “high risk” or “very high risk” due to their “high level[s] of defense research,” the Free Beacon reported.

Lin met with other pro-China organizations, including the Asia Society, the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, and the US Heartland China Association, a pro-China trade group that recently included Biden infrastructure czar Mitch Landrieu on its board of directors.

Bass’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

WE INGEST ABOUT A CREDIT CARD’S WORTH OF PLASTIC EVERY WEEK.

lasticosis” is the name a group of scientists have given to the damage caused by ingestion of plastics. The research these scientists carried out is based on seabirds, but has clear implications for other animals, including us.

It has been estimated that humans may now be consuming as much as a credit card’s worth of plastic every week, with negative implications that are now starting to become worryingly clear.

The international team, with scientists from the UK and Australia, studied the effects of plastic consumption on flesh-footed shearwater fledglings and show that it causes severe scarring of the birds’ stomachs, interfering with digestion, which can lead to stunted growth and, in some cases, death. Other inorganic materials that were also consumed by the birds, such as pumice, caused no such scarring, highlighting the “unique pathological properties of plastics”.

While the scale of plastic pollution has been a matter of concern for some time now, there is growing concern about the effects of microplastics in particular. These are tiny pieces of plastic, including pieces invisible to the naked eye, that are produced either deliberately or inadvertently as larger pieces of plastic are broken down due to environmental exposure. Scarcely a week passes without a new microplastic study revealing the extent our environment, including the air we breathe and our homes, is contaminated with plastic, and the worrying effects exposure to this contamination is having on living creatures.

Microplastics, as vectors for harmful endocrine-disrupting chemicals like PFAS, BPA and phthalates, are also directly implicated in the global collapse of human fertility we have been witnessing in recent decades. Sperm counts, sperm quality and testosterone levels are all declining precipitously, at the same time as a variety of birth defects, such as genital shrinkage and malformation, are on the rise.

This crisis of fertility was one of the principal subjects of the recent Tucker Carlson documentary The End of Men, which focused on the dire social and political knock-on effects of these widespread biological changes. As much as left-liberals may welcome and even encourage the biological changes that are taking place – Avatar director James Cameron recently described testosterone as a “toxin that you have to slowly work out of your system” – the truth is that, if left uncorrected, they will surely spell disaster for our civilisation and the world.

PLASTICOSIS – WHAT IT IS.

Plasticosis, as identified by the researchers, is a type of fibrotic disease. Fibrosis is caused by excessive scarring in an area, as a result of repeated inflammation which prevents proper wound-healing.

After an injury, scar tissue forms to help in healing. If, however, an area is inflamed repeatedly, more and more scar tissue can form, which reduces the flexibility of the tissue affected, causing changes to its structure that may have serious negative effects.

The researchers had previously looked at the effects of microplastics on animal tissues, and found them in organs such as the spleen and kidneys, where they were found to be associated with the symptoms described in the previous paragraph. The team already knew that the flesh-footed shearwaters which live on Lord Howe Island, some 600km off the coast of Australia, were suffering from acute plastic contamination, and decided to consider them further.

MUST READ: Autism Skyrockets in American Kids. Especially in California.

In their latest research, the team found that plastic ingestion caused serious damage to the proventriculus, the first chamber of the birds’ stomachs. It’s this damage that the researchers decided to label “plasticosis”, since they found it to be specifically associated with the consumption of plastic. Although “plasticosis” is not a totally new term – it was already used to describe the breakdown of plastics in artificial joint replacements – it had never been applied in this way before. Other fibrotic diseases caused by inorganic materials such as silicone and asbestos have similar names – silicosis and asbestosis, for instance.

The effects of plasticosis on the birds are extremely unpleasant. As levels of scar tissue in the proventriculus increase, the tissue becomes more and more swollen, eventually starting to break down.

“The tubular glands, which secrete digestive compounds, are perhaps the best example of the impact of plasticosis,” explains study co-author Dr Alex Bond.

“When plastic is consumed, these glands get gradually more stunted until they eventually lose their tissue structure entirely at the highest levels of exposure.”

If the birds lose these important glands, they become more susceptible to infection and also lose the ability to absorb and digest key nutrients. In extreme cases, particularly with young chicks, they can starve to death as their stomachs fill with plastic.

The researchers found that growth was directly linked to levels of plastic in the birds’ bodies. The length of the wing was associated with the amount of plastics the bird had consumed, as was the bird’s overall weight.

It was also clear that it was consumption of plastic, and not other inorganic items, such as pumice stones, that was causing the damage. Pumice itself did not cause scarring. It did, however, help to break plastic down into smaller pieces in the birds’ stomachs, leading to further damage.

THE PLASTIC CRISIS.

By providing evidence that consumption of plastic is associated with a clearly identifiable pathology, and by giving those negative symptoms a specific name, the researchers behind this latest study will provide further impetus to consider plastic pollution a specific threat to life on earth. This is only to be welcomed.

The scale of the plastic threat is truly mind-boggling. Over the last 70 years, just nine percent of the 8.3 billion metric tonnes of plastic produced has been recycled. The remaining 91 percent has either been incinerated or made its way into the environment, where weathering and aging will break it down into smaller pieces, and eventually into microplastics.

Almost everywhere we care to look, we now find plastic. It circulates on the wind and water like a force of nature. A recent study of the coastal city of Auckland, in New Zealand, for instance, suggests that 74 metric tonnes of microplastic fall on the city each year. That’s the equivalent of three million plastic bottles, raining down. We find microplastics in world’s most remote places, at the bottom of the oceans, in Antarctic snow and on mountain-tops. Around 3,000 tons of microplastics are estimated to fall in snow over Switzerland annually.

MUST READ: Autism Skyrockets in American Kids. Especially in California.

Plastic is in our drinking water, our food, and in our homes. At home, we may be inhaling microplastics at levels hundreds of times higher than previously predicted. The young are at particular risk of exposure, as they chew plastic toys and crawl around in carpets made of synthetic fibres that trap dust and microplastic particles. Through analysis of stool samples, babies and infants have been found to have up to 15 times more microplastics in their bodies than adults.

While this new research focuses only on the stomachs of seabirds, there are clear indications that plasticosis is unlikely to be limited to the digestive tissues of birds. Instead, it’s probable that fibrosis will be the response of many other tissues, in many other creatures, to repeated inflammation by plastic particles. Microplastics have been found deep in human lung, liver, kidney and spleen tissue – even in the placentas of pregnant women – and they’re also known to cross the blood-brain barrier.

If its ubiquity is the defining feature of plastic pollution today, there are still things you can do to mitigate your exposure, even if you can’t eliminate it totally. Reduce your reliance on plastics in every aspect of your life, including bottles, Tupperware and clothing; filter your water; ditch processed food and buy locally produced organic food whenever possible, or even start to produce some yourself – doing any or all of these things will absolutely help to reduce the levels of harmful plastic you ingest.

In the long term, though, only a determined political movement can deal with the global scale of the problem. While individual entrepreneurs such as Boyan Slat, whose Ocean Cleanup company has been tasked with removing the enormous Great Pacific Garbage Patch, are trying to take the matter in hand with new technologies, their admirable work cannot address the underlying fact of our modern thralldom to plastic. Yes, we need innovation – to clean our air, water and soils of the plastic that is already there – but there are also sensitive issues around plastic use and disposal that can only be addressed from the top, with political pressure. What good, for instance, are bans on plastic straws in the West when 90 percent of the plastic that ends up in the world’s seas comes from 10 rivers, eight in Asia and two in Africa?

About as good as a paper straw, actually.

Officials at a major journal discussed a professor’s alleged anti-vaccine Twitter activity when considering whether to publish his paper challenging the claim that Pfizer’s vaccine was 95 percent effective, newly disclosed emails show.

The Lancet journal ultimately rejected the rebuttal paper.

Professor Norman Fenton “retweeted anti-vaxx posts on Twitter,” one Lancet official wrote to colleagues.

They also discussed “vaccine misinformation” and Fenton’s background, the heavily redacted emails show.

“[redacted] have investigated him a little and he does seem to have a legitimate academic appointment,” reads one email, titled “Ongoing issues monitoring.”

https://subs.theepochtimes.com/template/show?tid=cc3f343f-227c-4eec-8289-8d2fe30e4467&sid=www.theepochtimes.com&v=9&ck=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&pl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theepochtimes.com%2Fhealth%2Femails-show-journals-discussion-before-rejecting-paper-challenging-pfizers-claim-of-95-percent-vaccine-effectiveness_5124648.html%3Futm_source%3DNews%26src_src%3DNews%26utm_campaign%3Dbreaking-2023-03-15-3%26src_cmp%3Dbreaking-2023-03-15-3%26utm_medium%3Demail%26est%3Dlb8kkj5pnaIFOCsDpLO39iDitW1zZ1wEeRVkrrEzMMUt9xtBlZH%252FCYEG2RDwRbA3KQ%253D%253D&u=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&tn=newsletter_widget&dna=%7B%22u_s%22%3A%22News%22%2C%22u_c%22%3A%22breaking-2023-03-15-3%22%2C%22r%22%3A%22%22%2C%22pid%22%3A%22anon490a-3963-4599-8eea-93695a2383d4%22%2C%22uid%22%3A%22user_9dfe546d573c80c140e67580106ed9556b66c4cd%22%2C%22x%22%3A%22719-603-171%22%2C%22vt%22%3A0%2C%22g1%22%3A%22us%22%2C%22g2%22%3A%22md%22%7D&source=health&email=walkerboh2112%40msn.com

Fenton, emeritus professor of risk at Queen Mary University of London, obtained the emails from Elsevier, which publishes The Lancet.

“We knew that all the main academic journals were routinely rejecting any articles that were in any way questioning the accuracy of studies claiming vaccine effectiveness or safety. What surprised even us about this case was the sheer nastiness and lack of professionalism displayed by the journal’s editorial staff,” Fenton told The Epoch Times via email.

“The notion that authors’ academic credentials and Twitter activities had to be investigated as part of the reviewing process is shocking.”

The Lancet didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Effectiveness Claim

In May 2021, The Lancet published a paper from Israeli officials and Pfizer employees that claimed that the company’s vaccine was 95 percent effective against COVID-19 infection in Israel from Jan. 24, 2021, to April 3, 2021.

The study analyzed surveillance data drawn from government-funded insurance providers. Pfizer and Israel entered into multiple agreements early in the pandemic that saw the country primarily use the company’s vaccine and share data with the firm.

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The study shows that two doses of Pfizer’s vaccine were “highly effective” across all age groups 16 and older in preventing symptomatic COVID-19, asymptomatic COVID-19, COVID-19-related hospitalization, severe disease, and death, researchers said in the study, which was peer-reviewed before publication.

“These findings suggest that COVID-19 vaccination can help to control the pandemic,” they said.

The study was funded by the Israeli Ministry of Health and Pfizer.

Rebuttal

The effectiveness estimates were exaggerated, Fenton and Martin Neil, a professor of computer science and statistics at Queen Mary of London, wrote in a rapid response to the paper.

That stemmed in part from adjusting for how unvaccinated people were routinely tested for COVID-19 while vaccinated people weren’t, the professors said.

“There is also failure to properly adjust for the different testing protocols for vaccinated and unvaccinated people,” they wrote.

The Lancet told the professors that they were waiting to hear from the paper’s authors before publishing the rebuttal.

No further correspondence was sent until January 2023.

Apology

Josefine Gibson, a senior editor at The Lancet, wrote in a Jan. 8, 2023, email that she saw that the submitted rebuttal hadn’t been published.

“We had invited Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis and co-authors of the published article to consider your letter, but I am sorry that we never received a formal reply from them and therefore have not been able to pursue an exchange,” Gibson wrote.

Alroy-Preis is a top Israeli Ministry of Health official.

“But I am even more sorry that I didn’t communicate a decision with you in a timely manner. I will now close your submission, but I thank you for supporting post-publication debate in The Lancet,” Gibson wrote.

Fenton released the email online, triggering a flood of criticism of the decision to not publish the rebuttal. He and Neil also noted that Alroy-Preis had declared no conflicts of interest, despite Israeli health officials entering into the collaboration that outlined a close partnership.

“The world relied heavily on a major Israeli study in the Lancet which confirmed Pfizer vaccine efficiency, but the lead author failed to declare her conflict of interest in which she signed a contract not to release information detrimental to Pfizer’s product without their permission,” Fenton and Neil wrote in a blog post.

The criticism triggered another message from Gibson, who said The Lancet was “looking into next steps” regarding the rebuttal.

Offer of Publication

After Fenton highlighted what had happened to Richard Horton, The Lancet’s editor-in-chief, Gibson told him that she wanted to apologize “for the substandard experience you’ve had with the Lancet.”

“Having discussed this unfortunate situation with my Editor in Chief, Richard Horton, I would like to offer publication of your original letter. Alternatively, we could publish a new letter that reflects more a current experience with the Pfizer vaccine. We defer to your best judgment of what would best serve the medical community,” she said. “We very much hope you’ll accept this offer.”

Fenton and Neil penned an updated rebuttal, which concluded that the Pfizer–Israel study should be retracted due to reasons including the undeclared conflict from Alroy-Preis and the failure to adjust for different testing protocols. They also raised concerns about adverse reactions to the vaccine, which they said are now known to be “substantial.”

Gibson rejected the updated rebuttal.

“Given existing evidence about the effectiveness and safety of the Pfizer vaccine, it is factually incorrect—indeed, it is misinformation—to say that reported adverse reactions are ‘substantial,’” she wrote.

The Lancet also doesn’t consider Alroy-Preis’s job at the Israeli Ministry of Health to be an undeclared conflict of interest, Gibson said.

New Emails

The situation prompted Fenton to seek internal correspondence regarding him.

The emails were prompted by Fenton’s publication of Gibson’s apology letter.

The tranche was heavily redacted but did show how officials considered public statements about the vaccine.

“Both Fenton [redacted] have retweeted anti-vaxx posts on Twitter, and their Substack articles are worth a scan,” one email stated, referring to Fenton and Neil. “[redacted] experts to determine if Fenton’s original letter and his criticisms of the article are valid and meet our publication standards.”

The email recommended holding off on further correspondence with Fenton until confirming redacted information, “especially given that anything you say directly to Fenton has the potential to be shared.”

In another missive, officials said there had been new developments in “the Fenton Twitter case,” including an additional post by Fenton and “helpful background on Fenton.” The rest of the email was redacted.

That’s when officials said Fenton had been investigated and found to have “a legitimate academic appointment.” Officials also said that “[redacted] a source of vaccine misinformation is an academic prof based right around the corner from our Lancet offices.”

Officials then proposed what ended up being the final response that rejected the updated submission. They revised the response to change “associated adverse reactions” to “reported adverse reactions.”

Unhappy With Redactions

Fenton said many of the redactions appeared unnecessary and that he has asked Elsevier to remove them.

“I am not happy about the scale of the redactions in the Elsevier response. If the Lancet editors were not making disparaging comments about me and colleagues, then there should be no reason to redact them. What do they have to hide?” he wrote on Substack.

“The Lancet are hiding their internal correspondence relating to the submission (and ultimate rejection) of our letter criticising Pfizer,” Neil wrote on Twitter. “They are however happy to let us know that they think of us as ‘anti-vaxxers’ and ‘misinformation spreaders’!”

Fenton said he had informed Elsevier that if it didn’t remove many of the redactions, he would report them to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Elsevier didn’t respond to a request for comment.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn said that the U.S. economy is at a breaking point, blaming “worse than mediocre” leadership and warning that soaring inflation threatens to topple America’s position on the world stage.

Icahn made the remarks during an interview on CNBC’s “Closing Bell” program on Tuesday.

“The system is breaking down, and we absolutely have a major problem in our economy today,” Icahn told the outlet, while labeling the United States as “one of the worst countries in the world as far as corporate governance.”

The renowned investor then warned about the dangers of persistently high inflation in the United States, which at last count came in at 6 percent in February, in annualized terms.

“Inflation is the worst thing an economy can have, and I think people underrate that,” he said, adding that, historically, “every hegemony has been destroyed by inflation.”

Some contributors to inflation were running higher than the headline pace 6 percent last month, including ones that lower-income households spend a high proportion of their money on, like food and shelter. Food prices rose 9.5 percent year over year and shelter rose by an annualized 8.1 percent.

Besides inflation, Icahn said he sees other “major problems in this economy right now,” including leadership at corporations and on Capitol Hill.

“I’m not going to get into politics, but you do feel that in Washington nobody knows what’s really going on,” he said, before turning to the issue of boardroom weakness.

“Leadership is worse than mediocre” in many U.S. corporations, he said, acknowledging that there are exceptions.

“You go into a company today … it’s really horrible what you find,” Icahn added.

‘Too Much Money Floating Around’

In an earlier interview on Fox News, Icahn addressed the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), saying he sees the ultra-easy money policies of the past years as part of the problem.

“I think the banking crisis is something that you might expect in Silicon Valley Bank. There’s so much money floating around in the system,” he said.

“There’s just too much cash. By definition, if you keep printing out money … If we have too much money floating around in the system, you’re going to have inflation by definition,” he said, adding that he believes the Federal Reserve is right to hike rates to cool price pressures.

In its fight to tame inflation, the Fed has raised rates at the fastest pace since the 1980s. One of the knock-on effects has been a drop in the value of longer-dated securities, which banks like SVB hold in their portfolios.

The lightning-fast collapse of SVB last week came after it took a $1.8 billion loss on a forced $21 billion bond liquidation and then announced it was looking to raise $2.25 billion in capital to fill the hole.

Spooked depositors rushed to withdraw their money in a classic bank run, sending SVB shares—and those of other banks—plunging.

The collapse of SVB marked the second-biggest bank failure in U.S. history.

“There’s an old adage that says the Fed tightens until something breaks,” Jurrien Timmer, director of global macro at Fidelity, said in a note. “It looks like we have a sense of what is breaking during this Fed cycle.”

Emergency Intervention

The collapse of SVB and, days later, Signature Bank, sparked fears of systemic instability and financial contagion.

This prompted U.S. financial authorities to adopt a “systemic risk exemption” and expand the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s (FDIC) deposit guarantee to fully cover all depositors and their savings at the two banks.

Normally, the FDIC caps its deposit insurance coverage at $250,000 per depositor per account category, with everything above that limit subject to market discipline and loss-taking if a bank fails.

The expansion of deposit coverage for SBV and Signature customers was met with praise by some and criticism by others.

Some, like billionaire investor Bill Ackman, called for a further expansion of deposit guarantees to the entire U.S. banking sector to restore confidence in the nation’s banking system and prevent a spate of bank runs.

Former FDIC chair Sheila Bair, on the other hand, penned an op-ed in the Financial Times arguing that the move to provide blanket deposit coverage to customers of the two failed banks sets a “dangerous precedent” by raising expectations for “future bailouts.”

Bair is convinced that the depositors of the two failed banks, which had combined assets of around $300 billion and are a minuscule part of America’s $23 trillion banking system, could afford to lose some of the uninsured portion of their deposits.

“The uninsured depositors of SVB are not a needy group. They are a ‘who’s who’ of leading venture capitalists and their portfolio companies. Financially sophisticated, they apparently missed those prominent disclosures on the bank’s websites and teller windows that FDIC insurance is capped at $250,000,” she wrote.

Bair also argued that by rushing to rescue the two midsized banks, U.S. financial authorities are sending the wrong signal by implying that the U.S. banking system is fragile.

“My instinct tells me that most regional and community banks are basically sound. The main thing we have to fear is fear itself cascading into bank runs that will force otherwise healthy banks to collapse,” Bair argued.

“The government needs to be very careful in its communication, lest its own overreaction causes the very deposit runs it wants to avoid,” she added.

When Bair chaired the FDIC during the financial crisis of 2008–09, the agency adopted a temporary blanket deposit guarantee for business accounts used for payroll and other operating expenses.

She said the program was successful in ending runs on community banks, but that Congress made a mistake by banning this kind of help, even though lawmakers preserved the ability of regulators to carry out one-off bailouts by means of systemic risk exceptions.

If regulators truly fear widespread bank runs in the United States, Bair said Congress should approve a program to bring back expanded deposit guarantees for institutional transaction accounts.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

According to Anders Corr, publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, China is ‘sanction proofing’ its economy from the United States in preparation for the potential invasion of Taiwan.

After the 14th National People’s Congress, the nation’s top legislature, closed its first session on March 13, China’s premier Li Qiang said that China would align with high-standard international economic and trade rules and further expand opening up this year, the state-controlled media, China Daily reported.

“China, which is open and in the constant process of development, welcomes everyone to invest and develop,” Qiang is quoted as saying.

However, Corr said, “What China’s really doing in terms of their so-called opening up is they’re refocusing on their domestic economy, which is really a form of sanction-proofing the economy.”

“We should see it as a risk indicator in terms of they’re attempting to not only sanction proof their economy, but they’re attempting to rocket their technological development in order to make it independent, so that when they do invade Taiwan, which is their stated plan, at some point in the future, if Taiwan doesn’t peacefully ‘reunify,’ the country will be sanction proof, the country will be independent technologically, and so be able to carry on,” Corr said on “China in Focus” on NTD, The Epoch Times’ sister media outlet, on Monday, March 13.

According to Corr, Qiang’s statement does not mean China is opening up, but it aims at “trying to convince countries to invest, to trade, because they know that’s where their money comes from.”

“But at its base, they want to keep growing economically and put that money into their military, which they will then use in their idea to take over Taiwan,” he said.

To prove his point, Corr pointed to Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s vow to modernize China’s military to make it a “Great Wall of Steel” at the National People’s Congress on Monday.

Freeze US Assets in China

The expert further sounded the alarm over the $2 trillion investment U.S. investors have poured into China since 1992.

Given the fact that variable interest enterprises (VIE), a “spider-web of contractual commitments” that essentially do not confer ownership in the Chinese company, and increasingly stringent regulatory scrutiny are the standard for foreigners investing in China stock, Corr called it “a very dangerous investment.”

“It’s a very dangerous investment; they’d be easy for the Chinese Communist Party to take at some point. I mean, it would cause market turmoil in terms of investments in China if they did, but I think that the Chinese Communist Party is very ready to do that. They’re sanction-proofing their economy, they’re ready to take Taiwan, so they’re certainly ready to take your shares if they can,” he said.

He singled out the report in which billionaire investor Mark Mobius recently said that the Chinese regime has taken “very significant” action to prevent him from withdrawing capital from Chinese equities since his HSBC account is in Shanghai.

Corr said that the United States and China would see assets frozen in a time of war.

“So you would see U.S. investors’ assets frozen in China,” he warned.

Economic Rethink of Dealing With China

He raised concerns about Temu, an online marketplace founded in Boston in 2022 by PDD Holdings Inc., which also operates Pinduoduo in China.

Corr compared Temu with the Chinese video-sharing app TikTok that has come under massive scrutiny over national security concerns.

He referred to Temu as “part and parcel of sort of the Tick Tock approach, which is to pretend that an app is somehow an American app, that it’s somehow secure.”

“But what we’re finding out about Tiktok is that it’s not at all secure, that we have whistleblowers coming out of the security of Tiktok-owned security apparatus saying it’s not secure, there are connections to China,” he said.

“We can expect the same to come to light over time with Temu,” he added.

“I just don’t think we ought to be letting these companies from China, which is now an adversary of the United States, [and] is thinking of providing weapons to Russia, to take huge amounts of market share in the United States,” he said.

“And that’s exactly what Tiktok has done, and I think that’s what Temu risks doing to a company like Amazon,” he said.

Corr called for “a complete economic rethink about how we deal with China that involves not letting big China companies into the U.S. market.”

He suggested that the United States and its allies, including Europe, Japan, India, and South Korea, impose stricter sanctions and tariffs on China and Russia, as he said, “these are the main two countries that are causing global instability today.”

“If we can impose those sanctions, we can weaken them and strengthen the interdependence of our own economies with each other. We need to be strengthening each other with trade instead of strengthening our adversary,” Corr said.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Americans will hold accountable those responsible for the accelerating degradation of the U.S. justice system as the government’s J6 narrative collapses and their wrongdoing becomes apparent.

he FBI agent squirmed on the hot seat.

Confronted with messages the Justice Department attempted to conceal, Nicole Miller, one of the lead FBI investigators assigned to the Proud Boys case, was on the verge of admitting that the FBI monitored privileged communications between one defendant and his attorney in 2021.

“It appears so,” Miller responded when asked by defense attorney Nicholas Smith on March 8 to confirm she and another agent discussed the content of emails exchanged between Zachary Rehl, one of five Proud Boys currently on trial for seditious conspiracy, and his former lawyer.

Smith read aloud one of Miller’s texts: “I need to find other emails, but this one email definitely indicates that they want to go to trial, But don’t freak out, Jason and Luke.” 

Smith turned to Miller. “Now, ‘Jason,’ you understand to be referring to the prosecutor in this case, Jason McCullough. Correct?”

But jurors never heard an answer. After prosecutors loudly objected, Judge Timothy Kelly abruptly dismissed the jury. He informed jurors that he wanted “to press pause, as we sometimes do when an objection hits,” and reconvene the morning of March 9.

But that didn’t happen either.

Instead, Kelly, outside the eyes and ears of the jury, held a hearing with both sides on March 9 to determine how to proceed after the defense team uncovered messages indicating FBI agents doctored internal reports, destroyed evidence, and tipped off prosecutors about defense strategy on the government’s highest-profile January 6 case.

Prior to her testimony, Miller had compiled a spreadsheet of so-called “Jencks” material that cataloged internal messages related to her work on the case. The spreadsheet contained 25 rows of messages—but roughly 12,000 rows were hidden behind a tab and found by the defense.

One message referenced editing a report on a confidential human source, commonly known as an informant: “You need to go into that report you just put and edit out that I was present,” one agent texted Miller. She complied.

Another agent told Miller an FBI supervisor instructed the unidentified agent to destroy “338 items of evidence.” To which Miller reacted, “OMG INSANE.”

In perhaps the most shocking revelations, Miller and another agent discussed emails between Rehl, who has been imprisoned under pretrial detention orders since March 2021, and his then-attorney, Jonathan Moseley. “Found an email thread with Rehl and his attorney, Moseley. The attorney raised some interesting points.”

“Hopefully all related to him pleading out,” Miller replied.

Another defense attorney later noted that “there appear to be missing FBI messages” in the same exchange.

Rather than express outrage at the fact that the FBI was spying on what is commonly considered privileged communications protected by the Constitution, Kelly instead gave prosecutors time to concoct a face-saving strategy—and that they did.

“It appears that the Jencks production to defense counsel may involve a spill of classified information,” assistant U.S. Attorney Joyelyn Ballatine told Judge Kelly. She added that the government needed to “claw back” the entire spreadsheet to review all the messages for allegedly “classified” material.

“[We] would ask them to return to us and confirm that they have deleted all copies of that spreadsheet from any electronic device or any hard drive that they have and then we would reproduce it to them,” Ballatine said. She further claimed that one agent in communications with Miller “works on a squad that does covert activity that is classified.”  

Ballantine claimed the 338 items of destroyed evidence might “impact a classified equity,” Whatever that means.

Naturally, defense attorneys immediately objected to the government’s demand that incriminating materials be returned to the original source and, without any oversight or accountability, unilaterally decide which messages were classified and which were not. 

“Everything has been a secret order where we can’t share any information,” Sabino Jauregui, the lawyer representing Enrique Tarrio, complained to Kelly. “Everything has been done under cover. And now, they come in here; they use this word ‘classified’ to try and delay the case. I think we should continue. I think Mr. Smith’s ‘gotcha’ moment yesterday was ruined, and he had every right to get that agent and destroy her on cross and, all of a sudden, the trial was stopped.”

Kelly, a longtime Justice Department employee who worked for years at the U.S. attorney’s D.C. office—the same office prosecuting every January 6 case—was unpersuaded by the defense argument and the totality of the evidence before him. “I think it makes sense for me to order the defense to do what the government’s asked,” Kelly concluded. The spreadsheet, which Ballantine later in the hearing described as a “classified document,” could not be reviewed, copied, or shared until further notice.

A flurry of motions followed. Defense attorneys filed motions to dismiss the case based on Sixth Amendment violations. The Justice Department informed the court on March 12 that 80 rows in the original spreadsheet had been removed after prosecutors determined the messages were “either classified or sensitive.” And the reference to a doctored FBI report? The government claimed the agent requesting the edit simply wanted to be removed from an email chain because he had been promoted and was no longer handling the informant. “The exchange concerns a routine clerical matter and does not suggest any wrongdoing on the part of the FBI generally or of Agent Miller personally,” prosecutors wrote.

Sure.

Oh, and the 338 items of destroyed evidence? Prosecutors insisted, without providing a scintilla of proof, that message referred to the routine “disposal” of evidence in a 20-year old case that had been closed. Always indignant, the Justice Department condemned the “potential for confusion and unfair prejudice here is obvious, given the inflammatory use defense counsel have already made of the ‘destroy evidence’ remark.”

But the government’s explanation as to why FBI agents were spying on email correspondence between a defendant and his attorney then apparently sharing that intelligence with prosecutors handling the case should alarm all Americans. 

According to the Justice Department, individuals incarcerated at federal prisons—including defendants not convicted of any crime, as is the case with the Proud Boys, including Rehl, now on trial—are not entitled to protected communications with their lawyers. All emails and phone calls, the government explained, are conducted on a computer system operated by the Justice Department. Those in custody must agree to terms of use, including an acknowledgement that attorney-client discussions would be monitored. “Rehl waived any privilege by knowingly using [the Federal Detention Center]-Philadelphia’s monitored email system to communicate with his attorney.”

Prosecutors demanded that cross-examination of Agent Miller, which Kelly interrupted right before the line of questioning got juicy, be limited to “video, photographic, and message evidence from January 6, 2021, from midnight to shortly before 5:00 p.m.” Translation: Anything Miller discussed after January 6 should be off the table.

As expected, Kelly folded to nearly every government demand. He accepted at face value the explanation that the destroyed evidence pertained to an old criminal case and was not relevant to the Proud Boys’ trial. He also refused to take up arguments about violations of the defendants’ Sixth Amendment rights, declaring those discussions were not within the jury’s purview. And Kelly strictly limited cross examination about the edited report on the informant. If the government’s version of what happened related to the report is true, Kelly sniffed, the defense objections are “much ado about nothing.”

What Kelly must not realize is that the public does not view the dirty secrets accidentally “spilled” by an untrustworthy FBI and Justice Department as “nothing.” Kelly, and the Justice Department, can wave off due process rights, transparency, and the basic tenets of a fair trial. But as the American people come to terms with the phony narrative of January 6, they ultimately will hold shameless judges like Kelly and rogue federal officials, like Ballantine and Miller, responsible for the accelerating degradation of the U.S. justice system.

SOURCE: American Greatness

With the ascent of leftism and the loss of meaning in society, more and more people seek purpose in their professions. We see the result with Silicon Valley Bank. 

The primary concern of the people who ran the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB)—the bank that just went bust—was not banking. Nor was it making money for the bank’s shareholders or safeguarding the funds of its depositors.

Their primary concern was social activism—LGBTQIA+, DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion), ESG (environmental, social, and governance), and climate change.

In fact, for nine months—from April 2022 until only eight weeks ago—SVB in America didn’t even have a chief risk officer (CRO). It did have a CRO for Europe, Africa, and the Middle East; but the woman entrusted with that role, Jay Ersapah, was apparently considerably more interested in left-wing activism than in risk assessment.  

The Daily Mail reported that Ersapah—who identifies herself as a “queer person of color”—”organized a host of LGBTQ initiatives including a month-long Pride campaign and implemented ‘safe space’ catch-ups for staff. In a corporate video published just nine months ago, she said she ‘could not be prouder’ to work for SVB serving ‘underrepresented minorities.’”

The professional network Outstanding listed Ersapah as a “Top-100 LGTBQ Future Leader.”

“Jay is a leading figure for the bank’s awareness activities including being a panelist at the SVB’s Global Pride townhall to share her experiences as a lesbian of color, moderating SVB’s EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) Pride townhall and was instrumental in . . . supporting employees in sharing their experiences of coming out,” her bio on the Outstanding website states.

“It adds that she . . . had authored numerous articles to promote LGBTQ awareness. These included ‘Lesbian Visibility Day’ and ‘Trans Awareness Week.’”

How is one to explain SVB’s—and for that matter, virtually every major bank’s—woke activism? 

There are a number of possible reasons, but here is one that explains the left-wing activism of almost every profession.

Beginning in the second half of the 20th century, people in nearly every white-collar profession ceased finding their work inherently meaningful. So, they sought to use their profession to change the world.

Take journalism. For most of American history, reporters understood that their primary job was to report news. And for the most part, reporters believed that was important work. In the second half of the 20th century, more and more of them found reporting the news unexciting and meaningless. So, they sought to use journalism to change the world.

Sports writers are one such example. There is no group more woke, or more sheeplike in its behavior than sports writers. They decided that merely writing about sports was not particularly significant work. So, they decided to use their profession to change the world. It was sports writers who led the idiotic campaign to drop the name “Redskins” from the Washington NFL team—even though the name was adopted as an honorific (no one names their team for an insult) and even though the vast majority of Native Americans, according to the Washington Post itself, could not care less about the issue.

But the hysteria they whipped up over the name “Redskins” gave the lives of these sports writers much more meaning than merely reporting on football games. They were now making the world a better place.

The same holds true for actors. Until about the mid-20th century, few actors spoke out on political issues, let alone devoted their off-screen lives to social activism. Most actors actually found meaning in their profession—as indeed they should. Bringing plays and films to life, making people laugh and cry, distracting people from their troubles for a couple of hours—these things render acting a very meaningful profession. 

But, again, beginning in the second half of the 20th century, Hollywood stars thought they had to “make a difference” by changing the world. One obvious result has been the decimation of the Academy Awards, which have morphed into joyless celebrations not of acting, but of left-wing anger.

The same holds true for academia. If you’re an English professor, why merely teach English literature when you can change the world? Doesn’t that make you feel much more important? And, if that’s true for a college professor, how much more so is it true for an elementary school teacher? What makes you feel more important—teaching third graders how to read and write or fighting racism?

There are two related reasons for these developments.

One is the ascent of leftism, an ideology that regards literally every aspect of life as political. For the Left, there are no nonpolitical spheres. Whether you are a kindergarten teacher, a sports writer, or an oboist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, you are to bring political activism into your work.

The other reason is the loss of meaning in our secular society. Whereas in the past, people derived meaning in life from their religion—their religious community, their house of worship, Bible study—religious sources of meaning have begun to disappear from our secular society. And secularism is rapidly leading to the collapse of the other great source of meaning in people’s lives: marriage and family, as we witness the lowest number of marriages and children in American history.

Therefore, one has had to look elsewhere for meaning.

And where do people look? To career and political activism—and ideally, the merger of the two. Whereas in the past, one’s work was primarily regarded as a means to an end—namely, a way to provide for one’s family—today, work is an end in itself.

That’s why the people running the Silicon Valley Bank were more interested in LGBTQ activism than in making money for its investors and protecting the money of its depositors. The former is way more meaningful.

SOURCE: American Greatness

Russian and Chinese diplomats could cast ballots under new law

Immigration reform advocates are suing the Washington, D.C., government over a law that went into effect on Tuesday that allows illegal immigrants and foreigners to vote in city elections, arguing the policy is a “direct attack on American self-government” that would let Russian and Chinese diplomats cast ballots.

The Immigration Reform Law Institute said the bill designed to give non-citizen residents a voice in local politics “automatically dilutes the votes of U.S. citizens on a massive scale.” Its lawsuit, filed on behalf of a former Republican mayoral candidate, argues that the bill violates the “fundamental constitutional right to vote of the plaintiffs” while denying them “equal protection of the law.”

“This law doesn’t just give foreign citizens a voice in our country’s affairs, it gives them voting power that politicians inevitably will have to respond to,” said Christopher Hajec, IRLI’s director of litigation. “That transfer of power flies in the face of the clear right of the American people to govern themselves.”

The lawsuit is the latest attempt to block the D.C. municipal voting change, which as of this week is the law of the land in the nation’s capital. Republicans in Congress, which has budgetary authority over the city government, unsuccessfully tried to overturn the ordinance in February. It also comes as the D.C. government’s sweeping overhaul to the city’s crime laws—which lowered penalties for carjacking and other crimes—was scuttled by Congress and the Biden administration.

The D.C. city council passed the voting law in October, joining a handful of nearby cities in Maryland that also allow non-citizen voting. Under the change, any resident who lives in the district for at least 30 days will have the right to vote in municipal elections—but not federal—regardless of U.S. citizenship status.

IRLI said that the law allows voting for all non-citizens, “even foreign diplomats.”

“By the language of the law, the only requirement is 30 days of residence in the city, so that is the concern by critics,” said a spokesman for IRLI.

The D.C. Board of Elections did not respond to a request for comment on the legal challenge, or on whether foreign diplomats would be permitted to vote under the law. The Chinese and Russian embassies did not respond to requests for comment.

The law could extend the vote to 42,000 non-citizens, according to an estimate from the Center for Immigration Studies, which cited 2021 Census data.

Opponents of the D.C. law say that non-citizens make up over 10 percent of the city population and could have a significant impact on elections.

Similar laws have faced legal challenges in other states. New York’s Supreme Court struck down a New York City ordinance last summer after determining that it violated the state’s constitution.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

New York City police officers are resigning in record numbers, the New York Post reported last week, with January and February seeing the highest number of resignations in over a decade.

In January and February, 239 cops quit, according to data analyzed by the Post—a 36 percent increase from this period last year and an enormous 117 percent spike from two years ago. This year’s figures show the highest number of cop departures since a contract dispute in 2007.

The New York Police Department “needs to be rebuilt from the ground up,” a longtime Manhattan cop told the Post. “It’s unfixable in its current state.”

The news comes as New York City faces a crime spike under Democratic mayor Eric Adams. Robberies, burglaries, felony assaults, grand larcenies, and other crimes have all shot up 22 percent since last year.

Many officers are fleeing the force because of deep-blue New York’s “anti-cop politics” following the last three years’ “Defund the Police” movement, particularly “woke bail reform policies that make criminal justice a revolving door,” the Post reported. New York governor Kathy Hochul (D.) has attempted to pivot to appearing tough on crime, a far cry from her posture last year, when she handwaved the state’s crime wave.

The Manhattan cop also blasted NYPD leadership, saying officers are “penalized for minor uniform and administrative infractions” while “precincts barely have enough personnel to meet the minimum required to safely answer 911 calls.”

Other police sources told the Post that “almost every precinct in New York City is understaffed.”

The department has also seen an increase in retirements, up 3 percent from January and February 2022 and 7 percent from 2021.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Sen. Jon Tester (D., Mont.), who bills himself as a “strong advocate for rural America,” attended a fundraiser Monday cohosted by a partner at the law firm that represents Silicon Valley Bank.

Michael Danaher, a cohost for Tester’s Palo Alto, Calif., fundraiser, is a partner at the firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati, which represents the bank and other Silicon Valley ventures, the New York Post reported. Other cohosts for the event—which cost between $250 and $6,600 to attend—included Greg Avis, the founder of venture capital firm Summit Partners, and Matt Glickman, a tech entrepreneur who cohosted a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton with disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes in 2016.

Tester’s attendance will likely draw unwelcome scrutiny as he prepares for a contentious reelection campaign. Tester, considered one of the most vulnerable Senate Democrats in the 2024 cycle, has faced criticism from liberals for his vote for a 2018 bill that cut regulations for mid-sized banks like Silicon Valley Bank, whose collapse last week is the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history. Tester, a member of the Senate Banking Committee, has not addressed his vote for the bill.

The Biden administration is under fire for bailing out depositors in the bank, which had more than $200 billion in assets. The Treasury Department said it will fully cover deposits at the bank, even above the $250,000 covered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The administration claims that taxpayers will not foot the bill, but it is widely expected that banks will jack up fees on customers in order to pay for higher insurance premiums brought on by the bailout, which has been described as “socialism for the rich.”

The fundraiser is the latest example of Tester’s campaign activity contradicting his image as a champion of rural values and “Montana’s unique way of life.” The Washington Free Beacon reported that Tester’s campaign spent $1.2 million since 2006 on catered events and restaurants, including a Beltway haunt that caters to “celebrities” and “powerbrokers,” and another that enforces a “strict upscale dress code” for its patrons.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

After the Labor Department on Tuesday released its monthly inflation report, Joe Biden declared it a victory, pointing to a decrease in the inflation rate from its record peak last summer as proof of his success in “working to lower costs for hard-working Americans.” That point may be of little relief for many Americans, however, as February’s inflation report showed prices of many essential goods up more than 10 percent from a year ago and general inflation outpacing wages.

The price of grocery store food surged 10.2 percent in February from the year before. Several energy services were also elevated from last year, with electricity up 12.9 percent and utility gas up 14.3 percent.

Instead of addressing the explosion in prices of those goods over the last year, Biden highlighted the decrease in the inflation rate from months ago, saying in a statement that “annual inflation is down by a third from this summer … the slowest annual increase since September 2021.”

While inflation has fallen to 6 percent since the summer, when it exceeded 9 percent and reached 40-year highs, price increases are still outpacing wage growth. According to the Labor Department, real average earnings in February decreased by an annual rate of 1.3 percent.

While Biden has touted his efforts to rein in inflation, some experts have pointed to the president’s policies, including his $2 trillion American Rescue Plan, as playing a major role in creating record inflation. Rep. Jim Clyburn (S.C.), then the Democratic House majority whip, in October said the Democratic caucus knew Biden’s legislation would lead to inflation when they passed them.

As annual inflation has eased slightly in recent months, Americans remain pessimistic about the economy. A February Gallup poll found 68 percent of Americans believe the economy is getting worse.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Transportation secretary has faced criticism over department’s response to East Palestine train disaster

The majority of American voters want embattled transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg to quit his post following his department’s bungled response to the East Palestine train derailment and toxic chemical release.

Fifty-one percent of voters said they want Buttigieg out of the job, according to a new Rasmussen Reports poll, compared with just 36 percent who say he should stay. Forty-one percent said they believe Buttigieg is doing a worse job than past transportation secretaries.

After the Feb. 3 derailment of a Norfolk Southern train in East Palestine, Ohio, and authorities’ subsequent release of toxic chemicals into the town’s air and water, Buttigieg failed to mention the crisis for nearly two weeks. His in-person visit came three weeks after the crash, and one day after former president Donald Trump visited the devastated town.

In recent weeks, Buttigieg has fumed over criticism he has faced over his handling of the crisis, calling the claim that he only visited the town because of Trump “bullshit.” He spent his East Palestine visit blaming others, especially Republicans.

“It’s really rich to see some of these folks—the former president, these Fox hosts—who are literally lifelong card-carrying members of the East Coast elite,” Buttigieg told CNN.

In light of the blowback from his response, Buttigieg told CNN the controversy has taught him to do “performative work.”

“Sometimes people need policy work, and sometimes people need performative work,” Buttigieg said. “And to get to this level, you’ve got to be ready to serve up both.”

Buttigieg is also under investigation for his use of private government jets.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Failed bank has funneled cash to top Democrats

California governor Gavin Newsom (D.) helped persuade Joe Biden to bail out Silicon Valley Bank and was one of the first politicians to praise the move. His assistance comes years after the failed bank began lobbying California’s government and donating to Newsom’s wife.

Newsom helped convince Biden during a Saturday meeting that a bailout was necessary. In 2021, Silicon Valley Bank quietly gave $100,000 to Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s California Partners Project as it was gearing up to lobby the state’s university, pension, and teachers’ retirement systems. The gift was the California’s bank’s largest contribution to any California entity that year.

It seems to have been a wise investment. Newsom issued a statement hours after the White House announced its bailout decision, lauding the Biden administration for acting “swiftly and decisively to protect the American economy” and praising the bailout as having “profoundly positive impacts on California.” While what came of the bank’s California lobbying campaign is unclear, both the state workers’ and teachers’ pensions are invested in the Silicon Valley Bank to the tune of $67 million and $11 million respectively, according to spokesmen.

Silicon Valley Bank and the Newsoms were a perfect match. California’s first couple has come under fire for their ethically dubious relationships with donors, who have a habit of donating to one of Siebel Newsom’s nonprofits whenever they need something from her husband’s office. And the bank, which collapsed last week after announcing it did not have enough cash to cover withdrawals, has a history of making large financial donations to potential political allies.

The same year the bank donated to Siebel Newsom, its CEO, Greg Becker, maxed out campaign contributions to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.). He also maxed out contributions to Sen. Mark Warner (D., Va.).

These are just a few instances of the Democratic-leaning bank’s habit of donating to powerful Democratic politicians. Employees of the collapsed financial institution have given over $100,000 to Democrats since 2016, including more than $39,000 to Biden’s presidential campaign, financial disclosures show. In that same window, the firm’s employees gave just around $7,000 to Republicans.

Newsom is not the only recipient of Silicon Valley Bank donations to support Biden’s bailout. Warner, now a member of the Senate Banking Committee, on Sunday issued a statement commending the Biden administration’s move. Schumer on Monday issued a joint statement with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.) praising the Biden administration for taking “swift action to safeguard depositors and maintain confidence in the banking system.”

California Rep. Ro Khanna (D.), who took $500 from Becker in 2018, was a vocal proponent of the Biden administration’s bailout. Silicon Valley Bank employees have also given $550 since 2016 to the Lincoln Project, the scandal-plagued “Never Trump” PAC.

Newsom personally solicited the donation to his wife’s nonprofit through a California program that allows public officials to raise funds from corporate backers for their favored charities. Silicon Valley Bank executive John China sits on the board of Siebel Newsom’s California Partners Project, which pressures corporations to appoint women to their boards.

California leaders are eager to rescue the Silicon Valley Bank’s wealthiest depositors, as the state’s top 1 percent of earners pay nearly half of its taxes. If the bank’s biggest customers lose millions and write off those losses, California’s budget—already facing a major deficit—could suffer a major blow.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Florida governor says United States must avoid becoming further entangled in European conflict

Florida governor Ron DeSantis (R.) called for less U.S. involvement in the “territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia,” an apparent break from traditional Republican foreign policy voices who have urged staunch United States support for Ukraine.

DeSantis, in a statement provided to Fox News host Tucker Carlson, said that “while the U.S. has many vital national interests … becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them.” DeSantis stopped short of calling for a freeze on U.S. military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine but said the United States cannot provide advanced weapons like missiles and aircraft.

“F-16s and long-range missiles should therefore be off the table,” DeSantis said. “These moves would risk explicitly drawing the United States into the conflict and drawing us closer to a hot war between the world’s two largest nuclear powers. That risk is unacceptable.”

DeSantis’s call for less U.S. involvement in Ukraine has set up an early showdown between 2024 Republican presidential candidates as they attempt to set themselves apart on the foreign policy front. The governor’s remarks appear to put him somewhere between former president Donald Trump, who has also opposed intervention in Ukraine, and declared presidential candidate Nikki Haley, who has been a strong supporter of aid for Ukraine—and are similar to the Biden administration’s position of support for Ukraine that stops short of F-16s and long-range missiles.

Trump, who is widely seen as the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, said earlier this week that instead of sending military equipment to Ukraine, he would be pushing both sides to accept a deal, even if that means Russia ultimately wins parts of Ukraine.

“I could have negotiated,” Trump told Sean Hannity on his radio show. “At worst, I could have made a deal to take over something, you know, there are certain areas that are Russian-speaking areas, right, like, but you could have worked a deal. And now Ukraine is just being blown to smithereens.”

Trump and DeSantis are at odds with the rest of the declared and likely-to-announce Republican field, including Haley, former vice president Mike Pence, and former secretary of state Mike Pompeo.

Haley, who has already begun campaigning, is a strong proponent of U.S. aid to Ukraine.

Haley, in comments also provided to Carlson, called “opposing Russia in Ukraine a vital American national strategic interest.” She made clear that the United States cannot stop supporting Ukraine until the war has ended.

“Russia’s objective is to take over all of Ukraine by military force. Our objective should be to help the Ukrainians prevent that from happening,” she said. “If Russia stopped fighting and left Ukraine, the war would end instantly, and America would no longer need to play a role. If Ukraine stopped fighting, Ukraine would no longer exist, and other countries would legitimately fear they would be next.”

This support, however, should not include “blank checks” or “American troops,” according to Haley.

Pence, who served under Trump and has not yet officially announced his candidacy, has taken aim at GOP isolationists like his former boss and a small cadre of Republican members of Congress.

“While some in my party have taken a somewhat different view, let me be clear: There can be no room in the leadership of the Republican Party for apologists for Putin,” Pence said. “There can only be room for champions of freedom.”

Pompeo, who also has not formally declared his candidacy, has been a vocal advocate for Ukraine. He said in late January that the United States should do “everything the Ukrainians are asking us to do. They haven’t asked us to send our soldiers. They haven’t asked for the 82nd Airborne. They’ve simply said, provide us the stuff we need. And it is their lives that are at risk.”

Tech executive Vivek Ramaswamy, who threw his hat into the race last month and has virtually no foreign policy experience, described the war in Ukraine as a distraction from efforts to counter China.

“The main thing should be the main thing: focus on China,” Ramaswamy said on Twitter in late February. “China wants the Ukraine war to last as long as possible to deplete Western military capacity before invading Taiwan. It’s working: we think we *look* stronger by helping Ukraine, but we actually *become* weaker vs. China.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

A health teacher at an Oregon high school instructed students to write a short story about their sexual fantasies and publicly identify which classmates they would have sex with.

Students at Winston Churchill High School in Eugene, Ore., who missed class earlier this month were tasked with writing a sexually explicit story as a makeup assignment, KEZI 9 News reported. The assignment prompt instructed students to write a “Fantasy Story” with “NO penetration of any kind or oral sex” in order to “show that you can show and receive loving physical affection without having sex.”

“You will choose 3 items (romantic music, candles, massage oil, feather, feather boa, flavored syrup, etc.) to use in the story,” the prompt read.

After a Churchill High parent shared the prompt on Facebook, other parents raised concerns about the same class, which in February required students to play a game called “With Whom Would You Do It?”

During the game, a spinning wheel labeled with sexual acts, including anal penetration and oral sex, was projected in the classroom. When the wheel stopped on a category, students were supposed to mark the initials of a male and female student with whom they would want to perform the act.

“My daughter was very, very, very uncomfortable in the classroom,” Justin McCall told KEZI 9 News. McCall noted that his daughter and her friend opted out of the activity, but “still got graded.”

Both sexually explicit assignments are part of a health curriculum adopted by the Eugene School Board in 2016. While the district has agreed to drop the curriculum following parent outcry, the teacher, who is also a football coach, has not been disciplined.

Oregon is the latest blue state to embrace sexually explicit curricula. Thousands of Massachusetts parents in 2021 pulled children from sex education classes in which kindergartners learned about genitalia. Hundreds of Illinois school districts last year opted out of statewide sex education standards that directed teachers to instruct students about a number of controversial topics, including hormone blockers.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Comes as Anthony Fauci is under heightened scrutiny for downplaying lab leak theory

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) may have made duplicate payments totaling in the tens of millions to the Wuhan, China, lab suspected of leaking the COVID-19 virus, according to CBS News.

“What I’ve found so far is evidence that points to double billing, potential theft of government funds,” said Diane Cutler, a former federal investigator hired by Republican Sen. Roger Marshall (R., Kan.) to look at the spending records. “It is concerning, especially since it involves dangerous pathogens and risky research.”

Cutler looked at more than 50,000 documents pertaining to government grants that went to high-risk research in China before the pandemic. The investigator discovered duplicate payments for equipment, travel, and salaries, and Marshall turned the findings over to USAID, which launched a probe.

The report comes as Anthony Fauci comes under heightened scrutiny over his conduct as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a subagency of the NIH that funded coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Recent reports show Fauci commissioned and reviewed a paper in February 2020 to dispel the so-called lab leak theory. Fauci referred to the paper, titled “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2,” during a White House press conference on April 17, 2020, during which he acted unfamiliar with the authors.

Yet Fauci held a phone call with the paper’s four authors in February 2020 to discuss evidence that surfaced suggesting China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology as the virus’s origin. He then reviewed the paper, which claimed COVID likely emerged from an animal-to-human infection, the New York Post reported.

Both the Energy Department and FBI have publicly concluded the coronavirus likely originated from a lab in China.

Federal investigators in January called out egregious errors made in the research at the Wuhan lab that Fauci and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases funded through the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance.

In recent days, Fauci lashed out at Elon Musk for calling for his prosecution after the Twitter CEO tweeted that his pronouns were “Prosecute/Fauci.”

“There’s no response to that craziness,” Fauci said on Saturday. “I wish I could figure out what the heck they’re talking about. I think they’re just going off the deep end.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Bill allows Biden admin to delay action on TikTok despite national security concerns

White House-backed legislation to “ban” TikTok is toothless and includes a loophole that will let the Biden administration avoid taking real action against the Chinese social media app, according to congressional China hawks pushing for more direct action.

The behind-the-scenes pushback from lawmakers could end up sinking the Senate bill, known as the RESTRICT Act, which would give the president new authorities to restrict social media applications run by foreign adversaries. But the bill does not make any specific mention of TikTok, and critics say the White House is backing the legislation precisely because it doesn’t require the administration to ban the social media platform, which has been deemed a national security threat.

“Congress already has produced multiple bills that would finish what the Trump administration started and ban TikTok,” Rep. Jim Banks (R., Ind.) told the Washington Free Beacon. “The Biden administration is endorsing this half-measure to avoid confronting their biggest benefactors—China and Big Tech.”

The bill does not include a ban on the TikTok app itself, but it allows the Commerce Department to identify and potentially prohibit any technology that “poses undue or unacceptable risk to national security.” TikTok has lent its support to the bill, praising it for addressing “national security concerns” without “censoring millions of Americans” who use the app.

Amid allegations that China uses the app to spy on Americans and push Communist propaganda, Democrats have been hesitant to support an outright ban on the platform, which is popular with its progressive base and which Biden has used as a voter outreach tool. TikTok recently hired Democratic lobbying powerhouse SKDK, a firm with deep ties to the White House and Democratic Senate leadership. Anita Dunn, a founding partner of SKDK, is a senior adviser to Biden.

China hawks say the RESTRICT Act, drafted by Republican senator John Thune (S.D.) and Democratic senator Mark Warner (Va.), is well intentioned but includes a provision that would allow the Department of Commerce to delay action until the conclusion of a long-running national security review of TikTok, which is being conducted by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) last week publicly came out against the RESTRICT Act, saying it “gives the illusion of action, but it’s not action.”

“I think [Warner’s] intentions are good in terms of how he views the whole thing, but his bill will not ban TikTok,” Rubio said. “I think that’s what the White House wants. I think he’s trying to offer a bill that the White House will be supportive of and that he thinks can get passed.”

Experts warn that the bill could actually insulate TikTok from any concrete action.

“There’s a risk that the Biden administration could use provisions within the Warner-Thune bill as justification for not touching TikTok, and further delaying action,” said Michael Sobolik, a China expert with the American Foreign Policy Council. Sobolik points to the provision allowing for the conclusion of the national security review, which he says is “stuck” in government bureaucracy.

The Thune-Warner bill gives the Biden administration more leeway than other proposed TikTok legislation.

One bill, spearheaded by House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Michael McCaul (R., Texas), would force the administration to make a decision on banning TikTok by a specific deadline, while another championed by Rubio and Rep. Mike Gallagher (R., Wis.) would institute an outright ban. Increased attention on these bills has reportedly forced TikTok’s leadership to consider severing its American arm from Chinese Communist Party control.

Capitol Hill sources expressed concerns about the Thune-Warner bill, which they described as a TikTok ban in name only.

“The White House isn’t fooling anyone,” said one senior Republican aide.

Another senior Republican aide argued that the White House’s track record on TikTok and China makes it hard to believe the administration will take action unless Congress forces it to do so.

“This is the same administration that invites TikTok influencers to the White House,” said the aide. “It has shown no inclination to actually take action on TikTok.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Tester said pipeline would have ensured ‘energy independence,’ created ‘big benefits for our state’

Montana senator Jon Tester, who mourned the death of the Keystone XL pipeline and the hundreds of rural jobs it would have created, held a big-ticket Silicon Valley fundraiser with a green energy activist who helped kill the pipeline.

Tester’s Monday night Silicon Valley soirée—which cost up to $6,600 to attend—counted Natural Resources Defense Council board member Nicole Lederer as a sponsor. The council repeatedly sued the Trump administration to delay the Keystone pipeline project until President Joe Biden canceled it within days of taking office in January 2021. The council’s successful “takedown” of Keystone, its website says, “will go down as one of this generation’s most monumental environmental victories.” Lederer also personally trashed the project, writing in a Huffington Post column that Keystone “is against the best interest of our country” and would create “very few jobs.”

Tester’s willingness to rub elbows with Lederer contradicts the Democrat’s public support for the pipeline, which would have created hundreds of construction jobs in Big Sky Country—jobs that Tester himself said “would have yielded big benefits for our state.” And while Tester pledged to “keep fighting to create jobs in rural Montana” after the pipeline was killed, the Natural Resources Defense Council openly touts its work to kill oil and gas extraction in Montana and other northwestern states. That industry supports more than 29,000 Montana jobs, according to the Montana Petroleum Association.

The Tester campaign did not return a request for comment. Lederer, who is based in Palo Alto, Calif., and serves as chair of an environmental nonprofit that is a Natural Resources Defense Council partner, contributed more than $11,000 to Tester’s campaign prior to the Monday fundraiser, campaign finance records show. Lederer’s nonprofit said it was not involved with the fundraiser “in any way, shape, or form” and did not comment further.

Lederer was far from the only politically controversial attendee at the posh Palo Alto event. A partner at Silicon Valley Bank’s legal firm also sponsored the fundraiser, which took place just three days after the bank collapsed in the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history. Tester, who sits on the Senate Banking Committee, has faced criticism from liberals for his vote for a 2018 bill that cut regulations for mid-sized banks like Silicon Valley Bank. Tester has not addressed the vote.

Tester’s Silicon Valley fundraiser also comes days after the Washington Free Beacon found that the Democrat has spent more than a million dollars at swanky restaurants, including one Washington, D.C., establishment that boasts of its “ambiance and luxury” and status as a meeting place for “senators, congressmen, celebrities, and powerbrokers.” Tester, who bills himself as a “tireless defender of rural America,” insisted in 2012 he would rather eat meat from his Montana farm than go out to dinner. “At the end of the long day, I am happier not going out [to eat],” Tester said. “Taking meat with us is just something that we do. We like our own meat.”

Tester, who launched his 2024 reelection bid last month, is considered a top target for Senate Republicans as they try to earn a majority in the upper chamber. The party performed well in statewide Montana races in 2020, with Republicans Steve Daines and Greg Gianforte cruising to double-digit wins in their respective campaigns for senator and governor.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

The White House is adamant that the government money spent to prop up Silicon Valley Bank didn’t amount to a “bailout,” but very few economists, lawmakers, and political commentators appear to be buying the administration’s argument.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Monday that “this is not a bailout,” and President Joe Biden during his morning remarks that same day insisted that “no losses will be borne by the taxpayers.” But Biden appears to be on an island with that interpretation of the federal government’s extraordinary actions, which protected all of the bank’s depositors.

Financial journalists Sebastian Mallaby of the Washington Post, Andrew Ross Sorkin of the New York Times, and Emily Stewart of Vox all categorized the government actions as a bailout. Two economists interviewed by NPR said the same.

And lawmakers from both sides of the aisle agreed on something for once: Biden’s actions constituted a bailout. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) released a statement that said, “Now is not the time for U.S. taxpayers to bail out Silicon Valley Bank,” while Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R., Wyo.) said in a Monday interview the Biden administration’s “bailout” could “encourage risky behaviors by similar institutions down the road.”

The White House’s word games reportedly stem from concerns about optics. Politico reported on Monday that Biden was initially hesitant to order anything that “could be labeled a taxpayer-funded bailout,” recalling the political firestorm Washington faced in 2009 following the passage of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act and Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), which provided loans and liquidity to financial institutions at the height of the Great Recession.

But following pleas from advisers, and reportedly California governor Gavin Newsom (D.), Biden, in the words of one economist, decided to set “a crazy precedent.” Under the federal government’s emergency program, all of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank’s depositors will have complete access to their deposits—even those above the $250,000 insurance limit covered by the FDIC. The Federal Reserve also created an emergency lending program—backed by taxpayer funds and unmentioned during Biden’s Monday remarks—to keep other financial institutions afloat should they run low on cash.

Richard Squire, a Fordham University law professor and banking expert, told NPR that “the venture capital firms and the startups are being bailed out. There is no doubt about that.”

Biden’s “rescue” is “like if you pay a bond for someone to get out of jail, rescuing someone when they’re in trouble,” he added. “If you don’t want to use the b-word, that is fine, but that is what is happening here.”

“If your definition [of a bailout] is government intervention to prevent private losses, then this is certainly a bailout,” Neil Barofsky, who oversaw TARP under both the Bush and Obama administrations, told NPR.

Critics say the federal government’s actions set a precedent that depositors, particularly wealthy ones, will pay even less attention about where they store their money, also known as a “moral hazard.” An insurance limit exists for a reason, critics allege, and dispersing with it during a panic raises questions over the purpose of the insurance policy.

In short, Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank—and potentially other institutions, if they draw from the Fed’s emergency program—were bailed out. Without the federal government’s intervention, those banks would have entered some form of bankruptcy, and depositors with funds above the FDIC insurance limit, mostly venture capitalists and tech firms in the case of Silicon Valley Bank, would have likely taken some losses when the banks’ customers were sold to another institution.

Biden’s assertion that “no losses will be borne by the taxpayers” is specious as well. Aside from the Federal Reserve’s emergency lending system, Americans will be on the hook for the FDIC’s actions. Most states require federal insurance for banks to operate, which they pay through fees to a federal insurance company. Those costs are ultimately borne by depositors or those who do business with the vast majority of banks, both of which are taxpayers. Moreover, the FDIC will need to recuperate the funds it used to make depositors whole.

The FDIC’s deposit insurance fund is roughly $130 billion, far less than the $22 trillion deposited in all U.S. banks. Roughly 42 percent of deposits in the United States are covered by insurance. Should the FDIC’s fund run out, it would be up to the Department of Treasury—i.e., taxpayers—to make up the difference.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Facebook parent Meta has announced that it’s slashing another 10,000 jobs and won’t fill 5,000 open position, as the beleaguered social media giant struggles to cut costs amid profit pressure.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg broke the bad news to staff in a statement on Tuesday, in which he gave an update on the company’s “Year of Efficiency” efforts to slash costs.

“As I’ve talked about efficiency this year, I’ve said that part of our work will involve removing jobs—and that will be in service of both building a leaner, more technical company,” Zuckerberg said.

The widely anticipated job cuts are part of a broader restructuring at Meta that includes canceling lower-priority projects, flattening layers of middle management, and “dramatically” boosting developer productivity.

“This will be tough, and there’s no way around that. It will mean saying goodbye to talented and passionate colleagues who have been part of our success,” Zuckerberg said.

The Facebook founder said U.S.-based tech workers will start seeing pink slips in late April, while in late May staff in the company’s business units can expect to be let go.

“With less hiring, I’ve made the difficult decision to further reduce the size of our recruiting team,” Zuckerberg continued, adding that recruiting team members will be notified over the next few days whether they still have jobs.

In a small number of cases, it could take until the end of the year to complete the terminations, Zuckerberg said, while job cut timelines for Meta’s international staff members will differ.

Shares of Meta jumped 6 percent on the news.

‘New Economic Reality’

Meta said in February that its profits were declining as it announced its third consecutive quarter of falling revenue. At the time, Zuckerberg said Meta would be laying off 11,000 workers, or around 13 percent of its workforce.

He blamed those job cuts on aggressive hiring during the pandemic, when business was booming as people spent more time on social media while locked down in their homes. But as lockdowns became a thing of the past and normal life resumed, the company’s revenue growth began to fade.

“Last year was a humbling wake-up call. The world economy changed, competitive pressures grew, and our growth slowed considerably,” Zuckerberg said in Tuesday’s message.

Meta responded to the changing market dynamics by scaling back budgets, getting rid of some office space, and cutting staff—with more on the way.

“I think we should prepare ourselves for the possibility that this new economic reality will continue for many years,” Zuckerberg said, pointing to factors like high interest rates putting an end to the easy money era that flooded businesses—tech companies in particular—with cash.

Heightened geopolitical instability means more volatility and a less predictable operating environment, he said, while blaming increased regulation for slower growth and higher innovation costs.

“Given this outlook, we’ll need to operate more efficiently than our previous headcount reduction to ensure success,” Zuckerberg said.

The Menlo Park, California, company has invested billions of dollars to realign its focus on its virtual reality “metaverse” and is looking to move aggressively into artificial intelligence.

“This work is incredibly important and the stakes are high,” Zuckerberg said, adding that Meta’s top investment priority is in artificial intelligence and building it into every single one of its products.

Tech Layoffs Soar

Roughly 128,000 technology industry employees from 483 companies have been laid off since the start of the year, according to the industry employment tracking website Layoffs.Fyi.

At the current pace of around 51,200 job losses per month, about 614,000 tech employees could lose their current jobs through the end of the year. That would represent around a 280 percent increase from 2022, when 160,997 people got pink slips, according to Layoffs.Fyi.

In January, Google began layoffs of 12,000 workers, or about 6 percent of its workforce, while Microsoft also started cutting about 10,000 jobs that same month.

In February, the computer maker Dell announced plans to cut about 6,650 employees in a plan to reduce its workforce by about 5 percent.

“Market conditions continue to erode with an uncertain future,” Dell co-chief operating officer Jeff Clarke said as he announced the job cuts. Clarke said the steps the company had taken to that point to stay ahead of the economic downturn were “no longer enough.”

Amazon also announced plans to cut 8,000 jobs, on top of the roughly 10,000 it slashed at the end of last year.

Twitter CEO Elon Musk, too, slashed around half of the social media platform’s workforce.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The Biden administration’s new “energy-efficiency standards” for refrigerators and washing machines have sparked concern among industry experts who say the rules could end up costing manufacturers and consumers more at a time when energy costs have soared.

The Department of Energy (DOE) last month proposed new efficiency standards for washing machines, claiming that they would “lower household energy costs” while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and helping to combat the “climate crisis.”

Under the proposed rules (pdf), which would take effect in 2027, washing machines and refrigerators would be required to meet a more stringent set of energy efficiency standards and use considerably less water.

The department would also prevent manufacturers from “undercutting those playing by the rules” by providing “inferior-quality products.”

The new rules are expected to save consumers more than $60 billion over three decades, the DOE estimates, while noting that a majority of products achieving these standards are already commercially available.

However, industry experts and manufacturers have raised concerns over the new standards, claiming that they could reduce the cleaning performance of washers and increase costs for manufacturers and consumers.

“When you’re squeezing all you can out of efficiency in terms of electricity use and water … you by definition either make the appliance worse or slower,” Travis Fisher, a senior research fellow at Heritage Foundation’s Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment, told the Washington Free Beacon. “Why are we so focused on the energy output, as opposed to if it’s helping me wash my clothes?

“That standard has kind of gone off the rails,” Fisher said.

“They keep tightening the standards, and I’m not sure their reasoning makes sense anymore.”

Standards Could ‘Harm Consumers’

Elsewhere, the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers (AHAM) stated that a majority of appliances covered by the program now operate at peak efficiency, meaning that the additional standards are unlikely to result in significant energy gains.

“More stringent federal efficiency standards are likely to increase costs for manufacturers and consumers without providing meaningful energy savings,” the organization stated. “Continuing with the current policy could put product performance at risk as manufacturers are forced to make design changes to accommodate more stringent efficiency standards.”

American Enterprise Institute senior fellow James Coleman told Fox News Digital, “Like many efficiency standards, the government claims that although these standards will raise the cost of appliances, they are justified because they will reduce consumer spending on energy and water even more.

“Of course, if that were true, consumers would likely buy more efficient appliances anyway, given that studies show consumers consider energy and water costs,” he said.

“If consumers do fully consider what they will pay on energy in their individual circumstances, then the standards would, on-net, harm consumers.”

U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said the regulations build on “a decades-long effort with industry to ensure tomorrow’s appliances work more efficiently and save Americans money.”

“Over the last 40 years, at the direction of Congress, DOE has worked to promote innovation, improve consumers’ options, and raise efficiency standards for household appliances without sacrificing the reliability and performance that Americans have come to expect,” she said.

According to the DOE, the proposed rules would save U.S. consumers about $3.5 billion a year on their energy and water bills, while reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 233 million metric tons.

Cleaning Performance May Be Affected

However, it also noted that about 25 percent of top-loading standard-size clothes washer consumers and 24 percent of front-loading (compact and standard-size) clothes washer consumers “would experience a net cost.”

“DOE acknowledges the larger impact on senior-only households as a result of smaller households and lower average annual use, but notes that the average LCC [life-cycle cost] savings are still positive,” the department stated.

Additionally, the DOE stated that it recognizes that generally, “a consumer-acceptable level of cleaning performance can be easier to achieve through the use of higher amounts of energy and water use during the clothes washer cycle.”

“Conversely, maintaining acceptable cleaning performance can be more difficult as energy and water levels are reduced.”

The department also stated that manufacturers would incur $690.8 million in conversion costs to bring the products into compliance with the amended standards.

Still, the department noted that it’s authorized to regulate the energy efficiency of a number of consumer products and certain industrial equipment every six years under the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, which Congress approved in 1975.

The latest regulations come after the DOE proposed a maximum annual gas consumption of 1,204 thousand British thermal units for all gas cooking tops, a rule that, if finalized, would remove up to half the current gas cooking appliances on the U.S. market.

The White House has insisted that President Joe Biden doesn’t support such a ban.

The Department of Energy didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The murders of at least a dozen children in the past three months put a spotlight on a disturbing pattern of a U.S. court system that appears to be deliberately putting custody in the hands of dangerous parents.

According to the Center for Judicial Excellence, a national organization that closely tracks the trend, more than 900 children have been killed by one of their parents in the United States since 2008.

A study of the murders shows that many of the children were killed by a parent who was granted either sole or shared custody by a judge despite there being either strong evidence of or a conviction for child abuse against them.

It also shows that the murders are mostly committed by fathers. Of the 53 children murdered since 2022 after a custody switch to the fathers, seven were committed by mothers.

In Colorado, four children were killed in January and February in murder-suicides carried out by their fathers.

As reported by the Denver Gazette and confirmed by The Epoch Times, in all four cases, court records show that judges, without explanation, disregarded concerns raised by the children’s mothers about their safety if custody were awarded to their fathers.

One of those mothers is Andrea Berry. Her ex-husband, Dan Hollins, is alleged to have killed their 3-year-old daughter, Sophia, and then himself in February.

Berry, from Elizabeth, Colorado, told The Gazette that she spent seven months trying to get the police to investigate him on allegations that he was sexually abusing Sophia and using her in child pornography but that a police commander told her to stop “pestering” the department.

She got an even worse response from Douglas County Family Court Judge Rebecca Moss, who implied that Berry would lose custody if she brought up any allegations of abuse. Moss didn’t respond to a request for comment.

According to court documents, Berry reported that Sophia came home with ligature marks around her ankles after being with Hollins and told stories about sexual encounters with him.

Family Judges Not Following Law

Barry Goldstein, a former attorney and past national research director for Stop Abuse Campaign, told The Epoch Times that one of the major causes of the disturbing trend is that child abuse is treated more like a family problem than a crime, and that family court judges have come to assume the role of therapist rather than someone charged with applying the law.

“If the offender is a stranger, the person is to be brought up on criminal charges and the goal is a conviction,” Goldstein said.

“When the offender is someone the child knows, especially a close relative, the investigation is led by a social worker and the goal is reunification with the offender.”

In the ultimate in gaslighting, the courts, Goldstein said, “do everything to conceal evidence of the abuse and silence the child—and then turn around to say since there is no evidence of abuse, that means the mother is coaching the child.”

Goldstein pointed to two studies on the trend: one on adverse childhood experiences by the CDC’s Division of Violence Prevention and an investigation by professor Daniel Saunders for the National Institute of Justice into the practice of family court judges awarding children to abusive parents.

Both studies, he said, provide overwhelming evidence of family court judges not following the law, putting children in danger, and favoring abusive fathers over protective mothers in custody decisions.

He said judges follow an unscientific theory called “parental alienation.”

Parental Alienation

There is major debate over the term parental alienation, which refers to a child’s estrangement from one parent due to the psychological manipulation of the other.

Groups such as Post Modern Justice Media Project promote the theory; others say it was made up as a cover for well-established abuse.

Both sides agree that it’s usually triggered by events such as divorce and that allegations of abuse should never be dismissed as merely arising from manipulation on the part of the accusing parent.

Grant Wyeth, a writer who tracks the way courts treat domestic violence globally, said that parental alienation is being used as a “gatekeeping device” by judges to create what he called “a repugnant market” around child abuse and domestic violence.

In outlining the market in a recent article titled “The Best Interests of the Abuser,” Wyeth pointed out the league of court appointees who feed off of the parental alienation theory.

These court appointees include counselors, social workers, guardians ad litem (court-appointed people who will protect the interests of someone unable to take care of themselves), reunification therapists, and divorce and custody lawyers.

‘They Don’t Want Evidence’

Attorney Richard Ducote pointed out that this court-appointed work is hand selected by the judge, unlike regular court cases, in which parties choose their own witnesses.

Ducote, who also speaks nationally on the growing trend of family court judges awarding custody to abusive parents, told The Epoch Times that he has represented several mothers stripped of custody after being accused of parental alienation not just for raising claims of child abuse, but for actually providing evidence of it.

“They don’t want the evidence, because it doesn’t serve their customer base,” he said.

Missouri attorney Evita Tolu told The Epoch Times that family court judges, sometimes considered the lowest in the hierarchy of judgeships, use it as a way to “reward colleagues” and gain political, social, and financial favors. Tolu is involved in one of the more horrific cases of a judge using parental alienation to benefit court appointees.

“All judges are after all … just lawyers who won political appointments,” she said.

Tolu is currently representing Cynthia Haynes in the wrongful death lawsuit of her 14-year-old daughter Mikaela, who committed suicide after being forced by the court to spend time with her father, Charles Haynes, despite his past convictions and confession to raping Mikaela’s older sister.

Mikaela repeatedly told Judge John Schok that her father had also molested her, but Shock still ordered her into the custody of Bernice Haynes, Mikaela’s paternal grandmother. Schok didn’t respond to a request for comment.

There is nothing in the hundreds of documents pertaining to the case that show why Cynthia Haynes lost custody of Mikaela with the exception of an allegation of “parental alienation” against her for raising the issue of Charles Haynes’s past abuses.

The U.N. Human Rights Council assembled a special team to study family court corruption globally. It spent a year collecting and studying cases and in October 2022 released its findings and recommendations.

It concluded that the term “parental alienation” and similar concepts is being used systematically to strip mothers of custody and grant it to fathers accused of domestic violence in a way, the report says that “totally disregards the possible risks for the child.”

“Accusations of parental alienation by abusive fathers against mothers must be considered as a continuation of power and control by state agencies and actors, including those deciding on child custody,” the report said.

Solutions Include Retraining Judges

Some efforts have been made to fix the problem, and there is pending legislation in some states to stop family court judges from making rulings that put children in danger.

Goldstein wrote legislation, the Safe Child Act, that he is trying to get adopted in each state.

Under it, family court judges would undergo retraining on domestic violence and child abuse, be barred from excluding evidence, and be prohibited from arbitrarily ordering children into mental health therapy that forces them into a relationship with an abusive parent.

Some states, such as North Carolina, have adopted the Safe Child Act or a version of it, such as Kyra’s Law and Kayden’s Law, each named after a little girl killed by her father after a family court judge ignored warnings that the child wouldn’t be safe with him.

On July 27, 2016, 2-year-old Kyra Franchetti was murdered by her father, who authorities say shot her twice in the back during an unsupervised, court-ordered visit.

In some states, lawmakers have introduced bills aimed at stopping judges from deviating from child abuse laws.

In New Hampshire—where there are several pending Republican-led reform bills against the state’s family courts—two rules raised special concern that the court is deliberately sidestepping constitutional rights.

The first rule, Rule 1.2 of the New Hampshire Family Court Division, states, “As good cause appears and as justice may require, the family division may waive the application of any rule, except where prohibited by law.”

The second, Rule 2.2, states that the New Hampshire Rules of Evidence don’t apply to the actions of the family courts.

“However, the court in its discretion may utilize the New Hampshire Rules of Evidence to enhance the predictable, orderly, fair, and reliable presentation of evidence,” the rule states.

Gender Bias Against Women

Both rules were adopted by the courts themselves. State Rep. J.D. Bernardy, also an attorney, called the rules problematic, saying they interfere with fundamental constitutional rights to due process and a fair trial.

“Discovery, access to witnesses, and timeliness can be totally upended by them,” he said. “A fair and clear process is important in anything, but it is especially crucial when it comes to one’s children on a court docket.”

Ducote and other advocates, such as Goldstein and Wyeth, all emphasize that attitudes also need to be changed throughout the system, starting with a gender bias against women.

“Anyone who calls this issue ‘men bashing’ is practicing denial,” Ducote said.

Anne Marie Weisman told The Epoch Times that right after a veteran police officer testified about the child abuse her daughter had experienced at the hands of her father, a New Hampshire family court judge proceeded to issue a secret order granting the father full custody with permission to take the child from school without Weisman’s knowledge.

Goldstein said the problem is “just that rampant.”

In high-conflict custody cases involving child abuse, the judges “are getting it wrong just about 100 percent of the time,” he said.

Court System Turns It Into a Gender Issue

All these advocates agree that most fathers in custody disputes would never think of harming their children and that there are cases of mothers who are the abusers.

Tolu said the family court system is primarily responsible for turning child abuse into a gender issue. She said she has been accused of promoting false narratives of misogyny simply by representing victims of it.

“It’s funny that this kind of criticism doesn’t come out of the woodwork when it’s a story about a priest or a scout leader molesting little boys,” she said.

Several national organizations have also called for the elimination of absolute immunity for judges.

“Unfortunately, history shows us we can’t rely on the checks and balances to hold judges accountable,” Keith Neely, an attorney for Institute for Justice, told The Epoch Times.

The legal group started a national campaign against judicial immunity earlier this year. Neely said that when judges do something as egregious as sending a child to their death, they barely get a slap on the wrist because of the immunity they enjoy.

Stephen Gillers, a law professor who talks nationally about eliminating absolute immunity for judges, said that the practice of “judges judging judges undermines the system’s ability to prevent misconduct on the bench.”

Some parents are also filing lawsuits against some of the court appointees. Tolu is the first to win a federal judge’s approval to bring a civil suit against a guardian ad litem in a custody dispute.

On March 2, six mothers filed a class action lawsuit against a Colorado evaluator alleging he deliberately concealed evidence of child abuse and recommended custody be granted to abusive fathers.

When Biases Turn Deadly

A Utah father’s alleged recent murder of his five children and their mother is an example of such attitudes.

At first glance, Michael Haight seemed like a distraught dad who inexplicably killed his entire family, then himself. The violent shooting came after his wife, Tausha Haight, filed for divorce.

Haight’s friends described him as a loving family man who coached Little League sports.

However, a closer review of the killings reveals that Haight had a long history of violent assaults on his wife and children and had controlling tendencies. According to police records, reported allegations of the abuse date as far back as 2017.

The Haights’ eldest daughter, Macie, as the records show, recounted her father choking and shaking her and banging her into hard objects such as the wooden back of a couch.

She talked about his verbal assaults on her mother and how he would take her cellphone away from her to review her text messages.

The case was handed over to court prosecutors, but Haight was never charged. Records show that when Haight was asked about the abuse, he simply denied it.

Two weeks after Tausha Haight filed for divorce, Michael Haight allegedly killed her and their children: 17-year-old Macie, 12-year-old Briley, 7-year-old twins Sienna and Ammon, and 4-year-old Gavin.

2 Horrific Cases

A GoFundMe started in Tausha’s name passed $100,000 in January.

Just before the Haight family murders, 12-year-old Angelique was shot by her father, Leonard Ahearn, after a family court judge in Tennessee gave him custody despite past cases of child abuse severe enough to warrant a no-contact order.

Between those two horrific cases came the murder of 8-year-old Cameron Lynn and 6-year-old Audrey Jane by their father, Adam Zipperer, in Fort Collins, Texas.

All three cases were in the same month as a verdict in the murder trial of Michael Valva, who killed his 8-year-old son, Tommy, after a New York family court judge ignored his mother’s warnings and gave the father full custody.

The murder happened only a few months after the federal passage of Kayden’s Law, named after a little girl who was beaten to death with dumbbells by her father, Jeffrey Mancuso.

A family court judge gave Mancuso shared custody despite documented evidence that he was a danger to his daughter.

Children aren’t the only ones in danger.

According to her family, Esmeralda Casillas, 36, informed a family court that her husband repeatedly threatened her and her boys with guns. The judge granted the father shared custody anyway.

In November, in Los Angeles, Salvador Velasquez gunned down Casillas in front of her twin sons.

Corrections: A previous version of this article incorrectly described Goldstein’s background. The article misstated the amount of time Berry spent trying to get the police to help her. The Epoch Times regrets the errors.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The U.S. Treasury Department has reportedly agreed to provide Republican lawmakers access to a set of Suspicious Activity Reports (SAR) relating to transactions by President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden, the president’s brother James Biden, and their business associates.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) issued a statement today announcing the Treasury Department had agreed to provide the committee with an in-camera review of suspicious activity reports related to members of the Biden family and their business associates. Comer said the reports relate to “unusual foreign or high-dollar transactions.”

SARs are records generated by banking and financial institutions and are filed with the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). A FinCEN guide (pdf) lists several activities that could cause banks to generate SARs, such as transactions with no apparent business activity or large volumes of wire transfers.

In a November report (pdf), Comer cited media claims alleging U.S. banks may have generated more than 150 SARs related to Biden family business transactions. Comer formally requested access to these Treasury records in January after Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives.

Last week, Comer issued a subpoena, calling on Treasury Department Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs Jonathan Davidson to appear for a transcribed interview regarding the department’s handling of Republican requests for the Biden family SARs. After announcing that the Treasury Department had agreed to provide access to the SARs, Comer announced that Davidson’s interview would be postponed.

“After two months of dragging their feet, the Treasury Department is finally providing us access to the suspicious activity reports for the Biden family and their associates’ business transactions,” Comer said. “It should never have taken us threatening to hold a hearing and conduct a transcribed interview with an official under the penalty of perjury for Treasury to finally accommodate part of our request.”

NTD News contacted the Treasury Department for comment but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

Biden Family Investigations

Republicans have raised allegations that Biden family members profited off their access to Joe Biden, enriching themselves by offering investors, including foreign nationals, access to Joe Biden.

The SARs are one of several angles Republican lawmakers have been pursuing in their investigation of the Biden family’s business dealings. Republicans have also been in contact with business partners and affiliates of the Biden family, such as Eric Schwerin and Kathy Chung.

On March 12, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, published a letter (pdf) alleging the Republican majority had also issued subpoenas to Bank of America for the financial records of three of Hunter Biden’s associates.

Comer has indicated he has gained access to at least some business records linked to the Biden family.

“According to bank documents we’ve already obtained, we know one company owned by a Biden associate received a $3 million wire from a Chinese energy company two months after Joe Biden left the vice presidency,” Comer said on Tuesday. “Soon after, hundreds of thousands of dollars in payouts went to members of the Biden family. We are going to continue to use bank documents and suspicious activity reports to follow the money trail to determine the extent of the Biden family’s business schemes, if Joe Biden is compromised by these deals, and if there is a national security threat.”

Republican investigations have overlapped with investigations by federal prosecutors. In December 2020, Hunter Biden also announced he was being investigated by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Delaware over his taxes. The Washington Post reported last October, based on unnamed sources, that prosecutors have enough to charge the president’s son with tax crimes and lying on a federal form while purchasing a firearm.

Hunter Biden has not been charged as a result of the ongoing federal investigation, and Joe Biden has said he has “great confidence” in his son.

Raskin Alleges GOP Blocking Trump Investigation

While the Republicans on the House Oversight Committee have been moving forward with investigations into the Biden family, Raskin has accused them of hindering investigations into former President Donald Trump.

In his March 12 letter, Raskin alleged Comer “may have acted in league with attorneys for former President Donald Trump” to block the committee from receiving subpoenaed records from Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars USA.” Raskin said those records also pertained to evidence that foreign governments “sought to influence the Trump Administration by playing to President Trump’s financial interests.”

“The Committee simply cannot coordinate with former President Trump’s attorneys to obstruct a lawful subpoena investigating his demonstrated corruption, then issue an invasive and overbroad subpoena based on an investigation of the business dealings of his political rival’s son, who has never served in government,” Raskin wrote.

A spokesperson for the House Oversight Committee dismissed Raskin’s allegation as “unfounded and untrue.”

“There has been no coordination or discussion with anyone from the Committee’s majority with anyone about the Mazars documents,” the committee spokesperson told The Epoch Times. “Even Raskin’s own letter, buried in footnote 5, admits there’s no evidence for what he is accusing Chairman Comer of.”

The committee spokesperson said the point of Raskin’s claims was to “try to get ahead” of new developments in the Republican investigation into the Biden family, including documents that “solidified the committee’s understanding of several areas of concern and opened new avenues of investigation about the Biden family’s business schemes.”

From NTD News

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

A federal judge has ruled on a crucial matter affecting the government’s sedition trial against five members of the Proud Boys: Joe Biggs, Ethan Nordean, Dominic Pezzola, Zachary Rehl and Enrique Tarrio.

All face the genuine prospect of a lengthy prison sentence.

The Proud Boys played a significant role in the run-up to the events of Jan. 6 and during the U.S. Capitol riot.

However, the most important trial from that day has moved at a snail’s pace, hindered by delays and legal posturing. (RELATED: Tucker Carlson Jan. 6 Exposé – Partly True and Also Kinda Dumb)

Controversy erupted again last week after defense attorneys stumbled across thousands of inadvertently disclosed internal FBI messages sent and received by FBI Special Agent Nicole Miller about the government’s case against their clients.

The defense received the messages after the prosecution shared a file of exchanges from the FBI’s secure messaging system. Prosecutors argued some messages shouldn’t have been disclosed.

Ultimately, the judge disagreed with the defense lawyers’ assessment of the FBI messages, calling their revelation “much ado about nothing.”

If the prosecution provided an accurate explanation, he added.

Prosecutors submitted a filing on Sunday saying the defense’s allegations of serious misconduct could confuse the jury and form an unfair prejudice against the government.

The judge agreed and proceeded to block the questioning of witnesses related to the messages. The ruling will stand unless the defense successfully challenges the Justice Department’s clarification. (RELATED: Ex-Liberal Icon Apologizes After Tucker Questions J6 Narrative)

The Daily Wire has more:

The messages caused a stir last week after defense attorneys began questioning a witness about several FBI messages that prosecutors say contain classified information, according to POLITICO. Defense attorneys allege that prosecutors may be attempting to hide information damaging to their case behind classification barriers.

…

The unintentional disclosure happened when prosecutors shared a file of messages retrieved from the FBI’s secure messaging system regarding prosecutors’ questioning of Miller. Prosecutors received the messages first from Miller, who obtained the messages through a filter on the FBI system; however, the filter also picked up some messages that prosecutors say are not pertinent to the case and should not have been released. Those messages were accidentally left in “hidden” rows of an Excel spreadsheet turned over to defense attorneys.

The disclosure came to light Thursday after Nordean’s defense attorney, Nicholas Smith, began cross-examining Miller about the messages. Prosecutors objected, and U.S. District Court Judge Tim Kelly dismissed the jury until prosecutors and the defense could work out the disagreement.

The messages, defense attorneys say, suggest serious misconduct by the FBI related to the case against the Proud Boys defendants. Defense attorneys pointed to a conversation Miller and another agent had about one defendant’s decision to fight the government’s charges. Miller had learned about the defendant’s decision from messages the defendant, Rehl, had sent to his attorney, which defense attorneys say suggests a breach of attorney-client privilege.

Other conversations included an FBI agent discussing the strength of the prosecution’s case, an agent who asked to have his name omitted from a report after meeting with a confidential source and an FBI “boss” ordering an agent to destroy “338 items of evidence.”

SOURCE: American Liberty News

ALERT – In yet another glaring example of Joe Biden‘s failed immigration and border policies, a mob of several hundred illegal migrants, mostly Venezuelan, attempted to storm the U.S. border checkpoint in El Paso, Texas, on Sunday.

Customs and Border Patrol (CPB) said in a statement that the aggressive mob, some estimated at over 1,000, made a formation and approached the U.S. checkpoint at El Paso, “posing a potential threat to make a mass entry.”

🚨BREAKING: A massive group of about 1,000 migrants have rushed a port of entry in El Paso trying to enter the U.S.

pic.twitter.com/orqVuRcFBdMarch 12, 2023

As a result, the primary Paso Del Norte International Bridge was temporarily closed when CBP officers “implemented port hardening measures” at the bridge. Two other bridges in El Paso were also blocked off — the Stanton Bridge and the Bridge of the Americas.

The CPB also said it used physical barriers (aka small walls) and concertina (razor) wire to restrict entry.

Large migrant groups also disrupted two other border crossings Sunday, and CPB noted that barricades were used earlier in the day at both the nearby Stanton border crossing and the Bridge of the Americas crossing.

Dozens of CPB agents carrying riot shields, and some with gas masks, reportedly waited behind the barricades and barbed wire. Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) officers also took up positions alongside CBP officers.

CNN reported: “CBP is working to maintain the legal and orderly flow of entry to the U.S. while protecting the safety and security of legitimate trade and travel, CBP facilities and the CBP workforce,” the agency said.

Some of the migrants told AFP they thought they would be allowed entry because of a supposed “day of the migrant” celebration. Others noted they believed Biden would give them “express asylum.”

Recall that in November, video emerged of a violent confrontation between migrants and US authorities along the Mexican border also in El Paso. Then, too, the aggressive mob was mostly Venezuelan.

At that clash, footage captured by the El Paso Times shows Border Patrol agents approaching the belligerent group — which included a man holding a massive Venezuelan flag — crossing the Rio Grande — where the agents fired pepper balls after officers were assaulted with rocks and flagpoles.

Similar to now, those roughly 800 illegal migrants in November crossed the Rio Grande after rumors that Title 42 had been lifted spread through the Venezuelan migrant camp on the south bank of the river.

Republicans blame Team Biden for the increase in violent encounters and ongoing border crisis after rolling back Trump-era policies such as the Remain in Mexico policy, stopping wall construction and limiting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations inside the U.S.

FY 2022 saw a record number (more than 2.3 million) of migrant encounters. This year has been on pace to top those numbers.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

SOURCE: American Liberty News

In 2018, former Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank (D) lobbied heavily for changes to his signature legislative accomplishment — the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

Frank retired from Congress five years before but was still active in the private sector.

As a board member of the now-bankrupt Signature Bank.

After receiving over $1 million as a Signature board member, Frank helped the 2018 bipartisan effort to weaken Dodd-Frank. The banking expert used his curriculum vitae to tear down the regulatory framework he put in place less than a decade before as the House Financial Services Committee chairman.

Reporting at the time on the endeavor’s success, The Washington Post cited Frank, who “denied it would increase the risks of another financial crisis.”

American Liberty News’ Norm Leahy chronicled on Monday how regulators seized control of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank over the weekend, turning both over to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

Former Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) endorsed changes to his own Dodd-Frank law in 2018 that freed mid-sized banks from undergoing stress tests. He sits on Signature Bank’s board, which just collapsed.

I reached him via phone tonight and he declined to comment https://t.co/JY77rtNkHtMarch 13, 2023

Frank’s role in downplaying the risks is receiving fresh scrutiny, as The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reports:

The 2010 Dodd-Frank legislation set tougher regulatory safeguards on banks with more than $50 billion in assets. After leaving office and joining Signature’s board, Mr. Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, publicly advocated for easing those new standards for smaller banks.

Part of what former President Donald Trump signed into law in 2018 raised the asset threshold to $250 billion, meaning Signature and other regional banks no longer needed to comply with the extra regulation set out in Dodd-Frank. 

After the bill was signed, New York-based Signature more than doubled in size to $110 billion in assets, and $88.6 billion in deposits as of the end of 2022. The stricter requirements, had they been in place, might have prompted bank executives and their overseers to move more quickly to place the lender on sounder financial footing, some industry observers say.

Still, the former congressman vigorously denies that the rollback precipitated the debacle.

Mr. Frank, who has earned more than $2.4 million in compensation from Signature Bank since 2015, rejected the idea that the regulatory change abetted Signature’s collapse.

“Nobody has shown me any evidence of systemic or other kinds of fraud that would have been prevented,” Frank said defiantly.

Indeed, he’s supposedly found another culprit.

The Massachusetts Democrat claims there was “no objective reason” for Signature Bank’s seizure other than to sideline the last cryptocurrency-friendly bank to show “crypto is toxic.”

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden reiterated in televised remarks Monday that the federal government would guarantee depositors access to their money.

Seeking to calm fears of a domino effect, officials and agencies issued public statements throughout the weekend with the same underlying message: your money is safe.

Biden went further, proclaiming he would hold those “responsible for this mess fully accountable and to continuing our efforts to strengthen oversight and regulation of larger banks so that we are not in this position again.”

How far the threat of punishment extends or whether it even materializes remains unclear.

Reports show Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) also has close ties to policymakers. WSJ notes that a prominent Treasury Department official under former President Obama served on SVB’s board since 2015.

Jeff Hauser, the executive director at Revolving Door Project, a progressive watchdog that monitors Wall Street and corporate America’s influence in the rulemaking process, told WSJ that Frank’s involvement with deregulation after imposing regulatory safeguards appears to be “a classic case of having your cake and eating it, too.”

READ NEXT: Feds Move To Stop Potential Banking Crisis While Remaining Woefully Ignorant

SOURCE: American Liberty News

In a new piece, Esquire reports that opinion polls show many Americans are woke. Even, that Republicans might do better if they tried to make the lives of the people better. The point they miss is that definitions of what is “woke” differ.

For example:

“Republican presidential hopefuls are vowing to wage a war on ‘woke,’ but a new USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll finds a majority of Americans are inclined to see the word as a positive attribute, not a negative one. Fifty-six percent of those surveyed say the term means ‘to be informed, educated on, and aware of social injustices.‘”

Sure. Now try to define what is the social injustice that people should be informed on. Using the wrong pronouns is a human rights violation akin to fascism? There are woke people out there who would insist that is true. Suggesting that perhaps kids should go through puberty before deciding upon sex and sexuality? There are definitely woke people out there who would insist that that idea is fascism itself.

Equally:

“Americans by close to 3-1, 72%-26%, support teaching “the ongoing effects of slavery and racism in the United States” in public schools, “

That slavery was a ghastly mistake by our forbears, a mistake made by almost every human society in that past, sure we should and do teach that. That the descendant of slaves should get into Harvard on an 800 SAT score might not be something that most would agree with – even though there are those woke enough to insist that should happen.

“But in response to a different question asked of the other half of the sample, those surveyed oppose by 53%-41% the teaching of “critical race theory,” which holds that systemic racism is institutionalized in America to the advantage of white people.”

Again, why is anyone surprised at this? Critical Race Theory is a Marxism-aligned insistence that the entirety of American society must be overturned. The connection with slavery is tenuous at best, it’s just another way of insisting upon the need for revolution.

Americans, rightly, insist upon teaching sensible things in a sensible manner. They don’t insist upon teaching oddities in extremely political ways. That is, Americans are sensible folk desiring a sensible education system – they’re not woke. The little rhetorical trick being employed here by Esquire is to insist that if you want good things sensibly taught then you must want everything taught in the extremist and woke fashion. Which is, while a good rhetorical trick, not good logic nor actually true.

As to Republicans doing better if they make nice for the voters. This is, of course, what is being done. For what is nice for the voters is up to the voters to decide – that is the democratic idea. So, if reasonable and sensible teaching is to be added to the school day then, if parents want reasonable and sensible teaching then providing that is making nice to the voters, isn’t it?

The very proof that CRT and the ongoing effects of slavery are different things is that Americans have opposing views on them. Therefore they are, in the minds of the voters, two different things. Something that rhetorical tricks don’t change.

This article originally appeared in Accuracy in Media. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News. Republished with permission.

SOURCE: American Liberty News

The Department of Treasury has finally agreed to hand over suspicious activity reports (SARs) related to Hunter Biden‘s foreign business deals to the House Oversight Committee.

Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) initially requested information about the Biden family and their associates’ business transactions flagged by U.S. banks in January.

Under federal law, when banks suspect suspicious overseas activity by an account holder, it submits a “suspicious activity report” or “SAR” to the Treasury Department. 

However, the Department’s delay in responding to the requests triggered an investigation into the matter and prompted Comer to hold a March 10 hearing to examine the Treasury Department’s sudden refusal.(RELATED: Why Did Treasury Cover Up Suspicious Activity By Biden Family? Congress Is Now Investigating)

“Biden’s Treasury Department continues to make excuses for its failure to provide the suspicious activity reports that are critical to our investigation of the Biden family’s business schemes,” said Comer in a statement last week.

On Tuesday, the Kentucky Congressman announced the sudden change according to Fox News.

“After two months of dragging their feet, the Treasury Department is finally providing us with access to the suspicious activity reports for the Biden family and their associates’ business transactions,” Comer said. “It should never have taken us threatening to hold a hearing and conduct a transcribed interview with an official under the penalty of perjury for Treasury to finally accommodate part of our request.”

🚨 2 weeks ago, I subpoenaed bank records for 3 Hunter Biden business associates.

One of the associates, Rob Walker, was wired millions from CCP connected individuals. He then sent money to 3 Biden family members.

What were they doing in return for the cash?

I will find out. pic.twitter.com/Mn5mT3NuAHMarch 14, 2023

Hunter Biden is faced federal investigations into his finances since 2018.

Earlier this month, Comer called on Treasury Department official Jonathan Davidson, who serves as assistant secretary for legislative affairs, to appear for a transcribed interview “to explain why “the agency had not provided the requested information.”

However, Davidson’s interview has now been postponed because the Department has fulfilled the request.

Earlier this month, Davidson responded to Comer’s letter explaining the Treasury Department’s process to ensure that the “law enforcement sensitive material is identified and handled appropriately,” but said the process was “well underway” to respond to the committee’s request. 

“The Department has been working to complete all necessary review, including consultation with law enforcement agencies,” Davidson wrote in the March 3 letter to Comer. “These processes ensure that sensitive material extraneous to the Committee’s inquiry is not inadvertently disclosed and that law enforcement sensitive material is identified and handled appropriately.” 

Davidson explained that “review of law enforcement sensitive materials is a standard aspect of the process of providing Congress with access to BSA-protected information.” 

“All of these processes—which are designed to ensure proper protection of potential or ongoing investigations and other law enforcement interests—are already well underway for your request, but they take time,” Davidson wrote. “The Department is working to complete these processes as soon as possible and consistent with the timeframes for processing similar requests in the past, including requests received from committee chairs in the prior Congress that took months to complete.” 

READ NEXT: Report: House Republicans Closing in on Hunter Biden, Set Deadline to Handover Docs

SOURCE: American Liberty News

The nation’s capital has joined jurisdictions in at least five states across the country in allowing noncitizens to vote in local elections. 

The District of Columbia’s law takes effect Tuesday amid bipartisan opposition in Congress. 

As noted in my 2022 book “The Myth of Voter Suppression,” Democrats long have sought to change election laws to gain a political advantage. These noncitizen voting laws mimic a tactic used by Tammany Hall and other political machines that controlled big city politics. 

Rewriting election laws has been part of a national trend among left-leaning jurisdictions.

“The left is attacking what citizenship means,” J. Christian Adams, president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, an election integrity watchdog group, told The Daily Signal in a written statement. 

“When foreign nationals who have no stake in the future of our country are allowed to vote, it undermines the importance of citizenship and the more than century long [struggle] for black Americans to gain the right to vote,” Adams said. “Foreign nationals are diluting the power of black Americans to elect candidates of their choices. We have to stop this real foreign interference in our elections.”

Five states—California, Illinois, Maryland, New York, and Vermont—allow noncitizen voting in local elections for municipal offices or school board, according to the organization Americans for Citizen Voting. 

At least 15 municipalities in those states allow for noncitizen voting, according to Ballotpedia. No state allows noncitizens to vote in statewide races, however. 

A 1996 federal law specifically prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections for president or members of Congress. However, the law doesn’t dictate what local governments can do. 

Here’s more information on the new D.C. law and related laws in other states. 

Washington, D.C.

Unlike the controversial D.C. crime bill, Mayor Muriel Bowser and the D.C. Council were in agreement on the noncitizen voting measure. 

Much like the crime bill, though, the noncitizen voting measure—called the Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2022—faces bipartisan opposition in Congress, which has final say over D.C. laws. 

“Immigrants, whether naturalized citizens, permanent residents, asylum seekers, DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals] recipients, undocumented residents, or otherwise, all contribute to the District and are essential to the fabric of our community,” according to the D.C. Council Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety. “Noncitizens, like citizens, deserve the opportunity to have a voice in the issues that affect them and to participate in electing the representatives who make decisions on their behalf.” 

In February, 42 House Democrats voted with 218 Republicans for HJ 24, a measure to block the District of Columbia from allowing noncitizen voting. It is unlikely to come to a vote in the Democrat-controlled Senate, however. 

Even the liberal editorial board of The Washington Post opposed the D.C. voting law, calling the measure “radical.”  

The Post wrote in an October editorial: “There’s nothing in this measure to prevent employees at embassies of governments that are openly hostile to the United States from casting ballots.”

New York

In 1789, before he became the nation’s third and most sinister vice president, Aaron Burr founded Tammany Hall, a New York machine that lasted well into the early 20th century.

In a move that might make some Democrats proud today, Tammany Hall established a “naturalization mill” to instantly turn immigrants coming off boats into voters. 

The Washington Post, in a different piece, noted: “The machine paid court fees and provided witnesses to testify that immigrants had been in the country the required five years. Sometimes, usually before crucial elections, immigrants were sworn in as citizens the day they arrived.”

Not even bothering with naturalization, New York City passed legislation in late 2021 to allow all noncitizens to vote in city elections for mayor, City Council, and other municipal posts. The law allows any legal residents, such as green card holders, residing in the city for more than 30 days to register to vote, but still bars illegal immigrants. 

Public Interest Legal Foundation filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of four black New York City voters who challenged the law as a violation of both the 15th Amendment and Voting Rights Act of 1965, because it dilutes the votes of citizens. 

Last year, a New York state court blocked the law. 

California

The city of San Francisco, a bastion of liberalism, allows for noncitizen voting in school board elections. 

Voters in San Francisco decided to amend the city charter in 2016 by approving a referendum question that asked: “Shall the city allow a noncitizen resident of San Francisco who is of legal voting age and the parent, legal guardian, or legally recognized caregiver of a child living in the San Francisco Unified School District to vote for members of the Board of Education?”

A total of 54% of voters answered yes.

So if a jurisdiction’s citizen voters approve something, what’s the problem? Well, the change might very well trample on the constitutional voting rights of other citizens. 

Public Interest Legal Foundation filed a brief in support of citizen voters who argue that San Francisco’s law not only dilutes black citizens’ ability to elect candidates of their choice but also undermines the meaning of citizenship. 

In 2022, the city of Oakland followed suit, adopting a measure for school districts similar to San Francisco’s. The Oakland ballot measure was approved with 67% of the vote. 

That ballot question asked Oakland voters: “Shall the measure to amend the city charter to allow the City Council by adopting an ordinance, to authorize voting by noncitizen residents, who are the parents, legal guardians, or legally recognized caregivers of a child, for the office of Oakland School Board director if they are otherwise eligible to vote under state and local law be adopted?”

Maryland 

Eleven jurisdictions in Maryland allow noncitizen voting, the most of any state, according Ballotpedia. 

The Maryland Constitution states that citizens age 18 and older may vote in state elections. However, it gives local governments discretion for local elections. 

Maryland jurisdictions that allow noncitizens to vote include Barnesville, Cheverly, Chevy Chase, Garrett Park, Glen Echo, Hyattsville, Martin’s Additions, Mount Rainier, Riverdale Park, Somerset, and Takoma Park. (Most of these towns are in Montgomery County, which adjoins the District of Columbia.)

Illinois

Only Illinois’ largest city, also one of the largest cities in the United States, allows noncitizen voting. 

Chicago has allowed noncitizens to vote in school board elections since 1989. The city also allows noncitizens to serve on its school board. 

However, noncitizens may not vote in any other city races. 

Vermont

Last year, two jurisdictions in Vermont, one of the least populous states in the country, enacted laws to allow noncitizen voting.

The cities of Montpelier, with about 7,375 residents, and Winooski, with about 7,335, will allow noncitizens to vote in local elections for offices such as mayor, city council, and school board. 

* * *

The political machines of the past favored “naturalization mills” for signing up voters, immediately enfranchising the incarcerated or formerly incarcerated, and of course, smearing every reform from the secret ballot and voter registration to voter ID.

It is remarkable how the arguments and goals of the past have remained the same over the years, even though the language, framing, and selling points have been slightly altered. 

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The post DC Joins Parts of These 5 States in Allowing Noncitizens to Vote appeared first on The Daily Signal.