Viktor Orban kicks off CPAC in Dallas

Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, told hundreds of conservatives in Texas on Thursday that his country defeated communism—and now America must do the same.

Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas, Orban told the crowd that America is fighting for its life against progressives and globalists, which are communists.

“Don’t be afraid to call your enemies by their name,” he said. “They hate me and slander me and my country, as they hate you and slander you and the America you stand for.”

Orban said the Democrats in the United States were not fond of him and wanted Hungary to move away from being a Christian nationalist state.

“They did not want me to be here, and they made every effort to drive a wedge between us,” he said.

Orban has been criticized as a right-wing Christian nationalist. His anti-immigration stance drew condemnation from the United States and the international community recently after he said Hungarians did not want to become “peoples of mixed race.”

Orban later clarified that the issue isn’t as much about race as it is about culture. While not mentioning the controversy directly, he noted that a Christian politician “cannot be racist.”

‘Lone Star State of Europe’

Orban’s anti-immigration policy earned him a warm welcome in Texas, which is overwhelmed with illegal immigrants under Joe Biden’s border policies.

Orban praised CPAC’s host state of Texas for its independence and freedom, calling Hungary the “Lone Star State of Europe,” much to the delight of the crowd.

The prime minister said that massive immigration is a globalist goal. George Soros, a Hungarian by birth, has an army of followers in institutions across the globe who want to create a post-Western world.

In 2015, Orban said 400,000 illegal immigrants came to Hungary’s borders, but Hungary built a wall and reduced illegal immigration to zero.

Orban’s speech outlined how America and Hungary, which he sees as fighting a common enemy on two fronts, can win against the Marxist movement trying to destroy western civilization. For better or worse, the world looks to America as a great power that will lead the world into the future, he said.

“The West is at war with itself,” he said. “The globalists can all go to hell. I have gone to Texas,” he said, prompting wild clapping and cheers.

Orban said the fight against the far-left starts with understanding that they want to drive a wedge between people and their faith and destroy families. Nazi Germany was able to succeed in a godless environment, he said.

“You must play to win. Play by your own rules,” he said. “This war is a culture war.”

Progressives change language to disguise their Marxist agenda, he said. The ideology wants to destroy the family because Marxism sees it as an oppressive patriarchal system.

Gender ideology and the sexualization of children is an idea of the left meant to harm families. In Hungary, a mother is a woman, and a father is a man. Order is necessary for any free country, meaning law enforcement is respected, he said.

In Hungary, large families are encouraged through tax breaks for having more than two children. With those policies in place, Hungary has seen marriages double and abortions cut in half over the past decade, he said.

“We need a strong America with a strong leader,” he said, adding America must lead the world to defeat the globalists.

The path to victory starts with taking back institutions and turning to faith in God. Orban said America has two years to get ready, alluding to the next presidential election.

Enemies in the media would not view his speech in a favorable light, said Orban, who met with former President Donald Trump before his appearance at CPAC.

“I can already see tomorrow’s headlines: Far-right European racist, anti-Semite strongman, the Trojan horse of Putin, holds a speech at the conservative conference,” he said.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

From the heights of the New York Times, a watchman named Tim Gruber has espied out upon the fringes of the liberal-democratic wastes a rowdy band of “Far Right Christians” in a “Quest For Power”. Grubbs intends it as a warning, but this sounds like the beginning of a really rad story. Tim is afraid that the Global American Empire (GAE) is under attack by radical right-wing “christo-fascist” extremists. He’s probably upset that they’re having fun, too. 

I was going to write an article about the contradictions in Grubbers’ piece, but I instead thought it more enjoyable to lean into his fears and mock his alarmism, for the fact that the great Tower of The New York Times even notices our mannerbund of ruddy warriors betrays their weakness. Tim calls us conspiracy theorists – a worn phrase that induces yawns. Such has always been the complaint of critics and skeptics. 

Yet, Christ’s resurrection was the first Christian “conspiracy theory”, in the eyes of the antiChrist Jews and pagan Romans. It was a lie that Jesus was the Christ. It was domestic terrorism that this God-Man was King. And it was an insidious conspiracy that this King had risen from the dead. But it was all true, and Jesus also ascended into heaven and sat down at his Father’s right hand until all enemies will be made as a footstool under his feet. Enemies, like, say Grubbs here. Jesus now bids all men, and especially rulers and kings to bow and kiss the Son, lest he be angry with them and them perish in the way. 

So, do not fear, brothers and sisters, when the world slanders you; for it first did so to your Lord and Savior and his immediate followers long ago. They mean it for evil, but God will use it for good. Very often the thing which brings judgment upon the wicked brings salvation for the righteous. The flood of Noah was salvation to God’s covenant people but judgment on the wicked and their entire world order. The fall of Rome and the rise of Christianity happened simultaneously. Tim Grubbler and the New York Times are just scrawling scribes in a dying empire soon to be replaced by the eternal City Of God. They fear the inevitable collapse of what they call “our American democracy” at the hands of the “Christo-fascists” and “far-right” wackos. The Romans, too, accused the Christians of famine, military defeats, orgies, atheism, and for the fall of their political power. But Augustine of old wrote in his City of God that it was the Romans’ own cosmic wickedness that caused their empire to collapse. 

Sure, all unbelievers incur the wrath of God. But, said Augustine, there is a special evil that rejects even natural order, natural law, moral norms known and honored among all mankind which, when forsaken, bring about cosmic curses. The Canaanites filled up the measure of their sins and the land literally “spewed them out”. Nature itself expelled them. The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah likewise were destroyed with fire for their unnatural desires. Spengler wrote about the moral decline preceding the fall of civilizations: decadence, unnatural desires, and finally a gluttonous lust that devours itself. Yes, there are some sins which Nature itself rectifies. Horace said that if you drive out Nature with a pitchfork, she comes right back in – good and hard. St. Paul said that when people reject God they themselves become rejected by the natural order of things. 

Don’t worry, friends. The meek shall inherit the earth. The wicked will perish from the land. And what shall we do with it once we come into our inheritance? What, indeed, would we do now if the gospel actually won in our land and in our time, and our nation bowed its knee to Christ? Such thoughts scare liberal journalists, not because we would do anything nasty to them, but because they and their world are small and cannot comprehend the greatness of Christian civilization, much less heavenly life. In C.S. Lewis’ “The Great Divorce”, the people in hell couldn’t withstand even the laughter of the people in heaven. Heavenly joy is too heavy and oppressive for devils. The mere political success or domestic flourishing of Christians looks to the pagans like tyranny, fascism, conspiracism. This is why they want to stamp out families raising children. There’s truth to the meme that a man and wife with children in a home minding their business is, to the left, “right wing extremism.” Our laughter is their nightmare. The mere existence of the godly is “terrorism” to the wicked. 

So, the Grubman is more right than he knows or fears: Christianity itself is a grand conspiracy, as C.S. Lewis said, “Christianity is the story of how the rightful King has landed, you might say in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in His great campaign of sabotage.” The enemies of Christ call it “fascism” or whatever but we know it as a holy campaign of sabotage. Christianity is indeed engaged in a quest for power – holy, eternal, and joyful power of the righteous sings over the entire earth. It’s the greatest, most enthralling effort imaginable. Liberals are worried that Christians are plotting to take over the United States. They should be more concerned that Jesus is plotting to take over the United States. 

The correct response to the liberal establishment’s wailing and weeping is that we Christians are going to convert their future kids & teach them to overthrow their own parents’ idols and worship the true God in holiness and righteousness and sing songs of the glory and victory of Christ.

Thomas Achord is the headmaster of a Christian Classical academy, the co-host of Ars Politica Podcast, and the co-author of “Who Is My Neighbor”.

Published in Bold Christian Writing and Christian Nationalism

• American Christianity
• Christian Nationalism
• Thomas Achord

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis this week called for lawsuits against doctors who perform transgender operations.

“They don’t tell you what that is—they are actually giving very young girls double mastectomies, they want to castrate these young boys,” DeSantis said at an event in Florida on Wednesday, referring to such procedures. “Both from the health and children wellbeing perspective, you don’t disfigure 10, 12, 13-year-old kids based on gender dysphoria, 80 percent of it resolves anyways by the time they get older. So why would you be doing this?”

“I think these doctors need to get sued for what’s happening,” DeSantis said in conclusion. He didn’t say whether his administration would be taking steps to make it easier for individuals to file lawsuits against the doctors.

Earlier this year, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo issued statewide public health guidelines to restrict certain treatments for children and adolescents. It came after the Biden administration promoted its own guidelines on “gender-affirming care,” including hormone drugs, puberty blocker drugs, surgeries, and social transitioning for kids.

And in a letter to the Florida Board of Medicine in June, the Republican governor’s administration called on physicians to stop performing medical procedures on children who are said to have gender dysphoria.

“Available medical literature provides insufficient evidence that sex reassignment through medical interventions is a safe and effective treatment for gender dysphoria,” the letter said, adding that the state “must do more to protect children from politics-based medicine.”

Gender Ideology in Schools

More than a week ago, 22 states filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration over a new rule that would threaten to withhold funding to schools for meal programs unless states comply with its policies around the teaching of gender identity and sexual orientation in class.

Republican attorneys general from Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Tennessee, Indiana, and West Virginia have signed the lawsuit.  The challenge was filed (pdf) against the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“The Biden administration’s sweeping rhetoric treats normal practices, such as sex-separated bathrooms and athletics, as ‘discriminatory’ even though DOJ [Justice Department] and the Department of Education treated those as legal, nondiscriminatory practices as recently as last year,” the suit stated.

In Congress, several Republican lawmakers in late June introduced a bill that allows individuals to sue doctors who performed gender transition surgery when they were minors. The measure allows a 30-year statute of limitation in most cases, prohibits federal health funds from going to states that force medical practitioners to perform transition procedures, and makes it clear that federal law cannot be construed to force practitioners to offer such procedures.

“Gender-transition procedures aren’t safe or appropriate for children,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), one of the lawmakers who co-sponsored the bill, said in a news release. “Unfortunately, radical doctors in the United States perform dangerous, experimental, and even sterilizing gender-transition procedures on young kids, who cannot even provide informed consent.”

Naveen Athrappully contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Didn’t he already admit it does not prevent the spread of infection? WTF? [US Patriot]

Dr. Anthony Fauci has once again sounded the warning bell over COVID-19, saying in an interview on Tuesday that those who are not up to date on vaccines will “get into trouble” this fall and winter.

“If they don’t get vaccinated or they don’t get boosted, they’re going to get into trouble,” Fauci told Los Angeles radio station KNX-AM.

A large part of the U.S. population is not up to date on the COVID-19 vaccines.

The Kaiser Family Foundation found that as of July 21, 227.8 million Americans either had not received a primary series of shots or had not gotten a booster dose. That is about 70 percent of the population.

“In each state, at least half the population is not up to date on COVID-19 vaccines. In Alabama, North Carolina, and Virginia, over 80% of people are not yet up to date on COVID-19 vaccines,” KFF noted.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 107,924,198 Americans have gotten the first booster. That makes up 48 percent of vaccinated people.

The number of Americans who have received the second booster shot is even lower.

The CDC recommends that people over the age of 50 receive the second booster. Only 19,935,913 members of that demographic — about 31 percent — have done so.

In the Tuesday radio interview, Fauci called the overall vaccination and booster rates “quite discouraging.”

“If you want to get your arms around — metaphorically, as it were — the outbreak, you want to get as many people in our community — and by community I mean our nation and the world — vaccinated and boosted so you don’t give this virus such ample opportunity to freely circulate,” Fauci said.

He insisted that the only way to get the virus under control and to keep it from continually mutating is to get everyone vaccinated.

Fauci called getting vaccinated and boosted a “communal responsibility.”

“People say, ‘Well, the risk to me is low, so why get it?’ It is about you as an individual, but it’s also about the communal responsibility to get this outbreak under control.”

University has not said whether it will open a full investigation into Kevin Kruse

Princeton University is “reviewing” the plagiarism allegations against progressive history professor Kevin Kruse, the university’s student newspaper reported on Tuesday—over half a year after they were first raised.

“We are carefully reviewing the concerns that have been shared with the University, and will handle them in accordance with University policy,” Princeton University spokesman Michael Hotchkiss told Daily Princetonian. Hotchkiss did not say whether Princeton would open a full investigation into the allegations.

The review follows months of silence by the university, which says it “overlooked” a December 6 email from the economic historian Phil Magness about possible instances of plagiarism in Kruse’s academic work. Magness didn’t receive a substantive reply from the university until June 17, three days after he published an article in Reason outlining the evidence that Kruse repeatedly plagiarized other scholars’ books.

“We take such allegations very seriously, and we will carefully consider the concerns you have raised,” Deputy Dean of the Faculty Toni Turano told Magness in an email reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. “Please feel free to send us any additional information to explain and support your allegations.”

In public, Princeton has been much less solicitous. It has not posted an official statement on any university website, nor did it reply to Reason‘s or the Free Beacon‘s requests for comment when the story first broke.

The hushed delays accentuate the contrast between Princeton’s treatment of Kruse and its treatment of Joshua Katz, the star classics professor who criticized the school’s racial politics. University officials condemned Katz—and implied publicly they were investigating him—days after he published his criticisms in a July 2020 essay for Quillette. When they received “new information” about a consensual relationship he’d had with a student over a decade earlier, it took them less than a month to launch a formal investigation, which resulted in his dismissal in May.

The contrast between Katz and Kruse has raised eyebrows among alumni and current students, who say it suggests a political double standard at the Ivy League school.

“​​Will Professor Kruse face Katz’s fate—stripped of tenure and fired?” Princeton senior Abigail Anthony asked in National Review. “If so, Princeton students will learn a lesson in whom not to copy from. If not, they will learn instead that the rules don’t apply to the people with power and the ‘correct’ opinions.”

Kruse has made a name for himself by accusing conservatives—especially Christian conservatives—of distorting history, prompting the Chronicle of Higher Education to dub him “history’s attack dog.” Those attacks became less frequent after the plagiarism allegations came to light: Kruse, who would regularly post Twitter threads attacking Republicans, has not been active on the platform since June 14.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Gabriel Nadales and Barrington Martin II say young Americans should ‘speak confidently about why they love this country’

After turning away from left-wing politics, a former Antifa activist and Democratic politician are launching a new campaign to challenge what they see as pervasive anti-Americanism among the country’s youth.

Gabriel Nadales, an Antifa protester turned conservative activist, and Barrington Martin II, a former Democratic congressional candidate, launched a half-million-dollar ad buy last week through their new group Our America, aimed at empowering young people across the United States to “celebrate a pride in, connection to, and a responsibility for our community and country.” The organization, whose advisory team includes conservative commentator Deroy Murdock, will also spend $2 million to produce online content that promotes what they say are America’s unifying values: patriotism, freedom of expression, respect, dignity, and equal opportunity.

“Our America is specifically here to give people the full faith and confidence to be able to speak confidently about why they love this country,” Martin, who primaried the late Democratic congressman John Lewis (Ga.) in 2020, told the Washington Free Beacon. “When I say ‘I love this country, it’s one of the greatest gifts in the world,’ you shouldn’t scoff at me when we are all Americans.”

Just 58 percent of Americans ages 18-29 believe the United States is “one of the greatest countries” in the world, according to a Pew Research survey in December, compared with 75 percent of Americans across all age groups. Nadales and Martin aim to bolster patriotic views among young Americans by challenging the narrative, promoted by left-wing media, politicians, and activists, that America is systemically racist and oppressive. Left-wing pundits like MSNBC host Al Sharpton, for example, spent Independence Day criticizing the United States, saying, “We’ve gone from Jim Crow to Jane Crow.” Wisconsin Democratic Senate candidate Mandela Barnes that same month called the founding of the United States “awful.”

Still, almost 90 percent of Americans of all races “love” the United States, Our America polling shared with the Free Beacon shows. Yet the minority of the population who believe America is racist and evil are the loudest voices in the room, Martin said.

Nadales, who came to the United States from Mexico as a child, said his public school education encouraged him to believe that America hates immigrants like himself. Nadales said he was recruited by the left-wing movement Antifa, known for its violent rioting and looting in cities such as Portland during the Trump administration, before he graduated high school.

After he became disillusioned with the group’s political extremism, however, he said he realized the far-left movement is a symptom of the division plaguing America.

“They’re incredibly dangerous, and they represent what is wrong with America today that people are so divided that they’re willing to go fight on the streets and recommend violence against one another,” Nadales said.

Nadales said Our America hopes to provide an uplifting message about the United States, bridging political differences with peaceful civil discourse.

“The American dream is not about having a fancy car,” Nadales said. “It’s the idea that we are not subject to the government. We are free people who are masters of our destinies. We can make our choices and we have the ability to choose to succeed. Your life is up to you and no one can take that away from you.”

Our America, which has 125,000 email subscribers after launching two months ago, will air its ads on TBS, TNT, BET, Univision, and MTV.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Two doctors and a former Harvard Medical School professor have signed onto the lawsuit that alleges the U.S. government and Big Tech colluded to censor dissenting voices.

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff, who authored the Great Barrington Declaration, on Aug. 2 joined the states of Missouri and Louisiana in the case, which is moving forward with discovery after a recent ruling.

Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, who was fired for refusing to get a COVID-19 vaccine, also joined the legal action.

All three say they have been affected by Big Tech censorship, and believe the punitive measures have been influenced or directed by government officials.

In April 2021, for instance, Google-owned YouTube deleted a video of Bhattacharya and Kulldorff questioning whether masks were effective in stopping the spread of SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19.

Kulldorff, a former Harvard Medical School professor who now works at the Brownstone Institute, was also suspended by Twitter for several weeks after positing that masks give people a false sense of security, which makes them more likely to expose themselves to the illness. That’s the same theory put forth by top U.S. officials until they pivoted to endorsing widespread mask-wearing months after the pandemic started.

Kheriaty also says he was censored by Twitter.

“I have always shared peer-reviewed research findings as well as my own opinions and perspectives on Twitter and LinkedIn. It was not until I began posting information about COVID and our COVID response policies, however, that I encountered censorship on the Twitter platform,” he wrote in a declaration filed in the new case.

Multiple platforms, meanwhile, took action against the declaration, which called for focused protection of the elderly while letting the rest of society live their lives normally and was vociferously opposed by top U.S. health officials, including then-National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins.

Search results on Google initially placed the declaration’s website near the top but soon ranked it lower than articles that were critical of the document, according to declarations from Bhattacharya and Kulldorff. Reddit removed links to the declaration and Facebook removed a page dedicated to the document, though it later restored it.

‘Self-Censor’

The scientists say they’ve had to “self-censor” in order to try to remain on the platforms.

That has sometimes meant not posting at all, and other times posting by using “imaginative phrasing,” Kulldorff said.

They also say the timing of the censorship decisions support the assertion that the moves were induced by the government, including how censorship of the declaration happened soon after Collins called for a “quick and devastating … take-down” of the document in private and disparaged it in public.

“These are clear indications to me that government is in collaboration with Big Tech to suppress scientific dissent,” Bhattacharya told The Epoch Times.

Government officials such as former White House press secretary Jen Psaki have openly admitted to flagging “problematic posts” for Facebook and raising issues with posts on Twitter, the complaint notes, while some of the platforms have acknowledged consulting with government officials on content moderation.

“The government’s sweeping campaign to suppress the perspectives of the plaintiffs, and others like them, represents the most severe abrogation of the First Amendment in modern times, and we look forward to seeing this constitutional atrocity rectified in a court of law,” Jenin Younes, a lawyer for the New Civil Liberties Alliance, which is representing the new plaintiffs, said in a statement.

The plaintiffs were added in an amended complaint, filed in response to the government’s motion to dismiss.

More Defendants

The revised effort drops one defendant, Psaki, who is no longer with the federal government, and adds a number of others.

Carol Crawford with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); the U.S. Census Bureau; Jennifer Shopkorn, a senior adviser for the bureau; the Department of Commerce; Robert Silvers and Samantha Vinograd, Department of Homeland Security officials; the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency; Jen Easterly, director of the agency; and Gina McCarthy, a White House national climate adviser were named as defendants.

None were named in the original filing.

Joe Biden, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas were among the defendants named in both complaints.

The additions came after new information came to light, including emails between the CDC and top executives at Big Tech companies like Twitter.

The messages show Crawford and colleagues met with and discussed taking action against alleged COVID-19 misinformation.

The Census Bureau was involved in the coordination, according to the missives.

The messages, the amended filing states, “confirm the allegations of collusion between [government] officials and social-media platforms to censor disfavored speech, speakers, and viewpoints, as alleged herein.”

Source: The Epoch Times

Finally…a bit of truth about black culture. Stop blaming; start listening; start learning. [US Patriot]

Black Americans in urban areas are suffering the consequences of the progressive Democrats’ anti-police “soft on crime” policies, despite the fact that these are the communities the policies were supposedly going to help, said Horace Cooper, senior fellow with the National Center for Public Policy Research, in a recent NTD interview.

Cooper told NTD that because progressives Democrats are too soft on crime and conservatives are afraid of being called racist by the left, crime has come to an all-time high in urban areas and is disproportionately harming black people.

The black community wants criminals to be prosecuted, said Cooper.

“I would argue that it would be smart to stand up, find out where black Americans are, and champion the kinds of policies and issues that interest them,” he said. “On the issue of crime, black Americans are ready to bring in law enforcement, are ready to increase penalties, and they are ready to stop the violent wave of crime that we see.”

Cooper is also chairman of the board for Project 21, which established a network of black conservative and libertarian leaders in 1992 to highlight the diversity of viewpoints within the black community.

Project 21 has identified 10 key areas for reform that, if accomplished, would help black Americans reach their potential and attain the American dream.

Black Americans Want Less Crime

Cooper said that out of the 10 areas, one of the key issues that need to be addressed is the crime in black communities.

“We have a ‘Blueprint for a Better Deal for Black America’ that we’re releasing this fall, and one of the core issues is going to be the idea of crime control,” said Cooper.

Crime disproportionality affects black communities, and the people who live there don’t support policies like “Defund the Police,” he said.

“During the Rodney King riots, during George H.W. Bush’s presidency, there were a lot of voices that came out that said when you saw this violence, when you saw this mayhem, that it was justifiable. It was a natural outworking. ‘This is what blacks just do,’” Cooper said.

“In fact, most black Americans don’t believe that this kind of behavior is acceptable.”

In a Gallup poll conducted in June 2020 at the height of the George Floyd riots, 61 percent of black people surveyed said they wanted to keep the same level of policing in their neighborhoods, and another 20 percent said they wanted more police presence.

In late 2021, a consortium of news organizations surveyed 800 voters in Minneapolis, where George Floyd died in police custody, and asked them what they thought of the city’s police department. Three-quarters of the black respondents said the city shouldn’t reduce its police force.

Cooper said that Democrats and the Biden administration do not understand what the black community really wants, and instead perpetuate racist ideas about blacks.

“We’re seeing the outworking of that during the Biden administration, this tacit idea that it’s criminals who are the victims, and if you really want to support blacks, you’ve got to support criminals.”

In addition, Democrats install radical prosecutors who double-down on this narrative in Democrat-run inner cities, he said.

“We’re seeing what I would call the ‘woke prosecutors’ who actively say to criminals, ‘there will be no accountability. There will be no punishment.’”

‘Woke’ Prosecutors Won’t Punish Criminals

Cooper said that while black men make up just 7.5 percent of the American population, they commit 40 percent of all violent crime.

“That’s staggering,” he said. “But these woke prosecutors and their supporters, they say, ‘Well, the truth is just America’s unfair, America is bigoted, America systematically mistreats,’ and that these people who prey on the rest of us, ‘They’re not predators. They’re just fighting back.’”

The problem with this narrative is that there is no evidence to support those claims, Cooper said. The way to stop this type of predatory behavior is to punish it, he added.

“Increase the penalty, increase punishment, decrease bad behavior,” he said.

Cooper said that under President Donald Trump, black Americans were doing much better economically, and the number one issue for the community as a whole is not racism, but inflation, and how to give their families a great quality of life, “kitchen table issues,” said Cooper.

Under Trump, black Americans prospered, Cooper said, adding that as a whole, they were able to purchase new vehicles, open new businesses, put aside money for savings, and even take real vacations.

“In the last 18 months, all those trends have reversed,” he said. “And black Americans are being the hardest hit.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

• Leaked document is labelled as “Unclassified/Law Enforcement Sensitive” that is for “FBI Internal Use Only.”
• Under the “Symbols” category of the document, “2A” is listed with the following explanation: “MVEs justify their existence with the Second Amendment, due to the mention of a ‘well regulated Militia,’ as well as the right to bear arms.”
• “Revolutionary War imagery” such as the “Gadsden Flag” and the “Betsy Ross Flag” are cited in the document under “Commonly Referenced Historical Imagery or Quotes.”

[WASHINGTON, D.C. – Aug. 2, 2022] Project Veritas released a newly leaked document today provided by an FBI whistleblower, which shows how the Bureau classifies American citizens it deems to be potential “Militia Violent Extremists” [MVEs].

In the document, the FBI cites symbols, images, phrases, events, and individuals that agents should look out for when identifying alleged domestic terrorists.

The “Unclassified/Law Enforcement Sensitive” document says it is for “FBI Internal Use Only.”

Of note, under the “Symbols” section, is a prominent citation of the Second Amendment, where it explains that “MVEs justify their existence with the Second Amendment, due to the mention of a ‘well regulated Militia,’ as well as the right to bear arms.”

Right below that, under the “Commonly Referenced Historical Imagery and Quotes” section, Revolutionary War images such as the Gadsden Flag and the Betsy Ross Flag are listed. Each flag displayed in the document comes with a brief description of what it means.

Under the “Common Phrases and References” section of the leaked document, Ashli Babbitt is cited as a person that MVEs consider to be a Martyr.

The same document also refers to Ruby Ridge, Waco, and even Timothy McVeigh, tying in traditional American ideas and symbols with radical and/or violent events in the past.

About Project Veritas

James O’Keefe established Project Veritas in 2010 as a non-profit journalism enterprise to continue his undercover reporting work. Today, Project Veritas investigates and exposes corruption, dishonesty, self-dealing, waste, fraud, and other misconduct in both public and private institutions to achieve a more ethical and transparent society and to engage in litigation to: protect, defend and expand human and civil rights secured by law, specifically First Amendment rights including promoting the free exchange of ideas in a digital world; combat and defeat censorship of any ideology; promote truthful reporting; and defend freedom of speech and association issues including the right to anonymity. O’Keefe serves as the CEO and Chairman of the Board so that he can continue to lead and teach his fellow journalists, as well as protect and nurture the Project Veritas culture. 

Project Veritas is a registered 501(c)3 organization. Project Veritas does not advocate specific resolutions to the issues raised through its investigations.

SOURCE: Project Veritas

WAIT UNTIL THE ‘FACT CHECKERS’ HAVE TO TRY AND FIND A WAY AROUND THIS ONE.

A study on the efficacy of shutting down bars and restaurants to stop the spread of COVID-19 found that the restrictions were “not an efficient way” to decrease virus transmission, concluding that it “does not contribute to the suppression of SARS-CoV-2.”

“Using a large-scale nationally representative longitudinal survey, we found that the early closure of restaurants and bars decreased the utilization rate among young persons and those who visited these places before the pandemic. However, symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 did not decrease in these active and high-risk subpopulations,” explains a summary of the research paper.

The study – SARS-CoV-2 Suppression and Early Closure of Bars and Restaurants: A Longitudinal Natural Experiment – was conducted by researchers in Japan and published in the peer-reviewed journal Scientific Reports. 

Researchers used Japan as a case study because during the first two months of 2021, the early closure of restaurants and bars was the only mitigation strategy adopted by officials. This gave researchers the unique opportunity to isolate the closure of restaurants and bars as variables they could assess the efficacy of.

Data for the study was provided through a large-scale nationally representative survey.

“From the perspective of public policy implications, our study suggests that the early closure of full-service restaurants and bars, without any other concurrent policies, is not an efficient way to suppress SARS-CoV-2. Given the large detrimental effects on employment, alternative measures for full-service restaurants and bars should be considered before they are closed completely,” summarized the paper.

Despite the data showing a reduction in the use rate of restaurants and bars among Japanese people, researchers found “no discernible decrease in the symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 except the reduction of “cough” among college graduates.”

MUST READ: New England Journal of Medicine: Unvaccinated COVID Patients Are Contagious for LESS Time Than those Vaxed or Boosted.

The other symptoms tracked by researchers included high fever, sore throat, headache, and smell and taste disorder.

“These results suggest that the early closure of restaurants and bars without any other concurrent measures does not contribute to the suppression of SARS-CoV-2,” posit researchers.

The study follows months of mandated closures of restaurants and businesses throughout the world, with health officials floating the measure as a potential solution to combat supposedly new variants of COVID-19. Dr. Birx, in her book Silent Invasion, professes to be the leader of the mass lockdown measures in the United States. She claims to have been supported by President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and Vice President Mike Pence.

A survey published by the Small Business Roundtable found that 31 percent of small businesses were not operating as a result of the lockdowns.

IT’S ALL ADDS UP NOW.

Writing in her book Silent Invasion, former White House COVID task force member Ambassador Deborah Birx admits that her “go to” connections to push pro-lockdown policies in the White House were none other than Vice President Mike Pence, and President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

The National Pulse has previously reported from Birx’s book how she admitted to “subterfuge” in the White House, going so far as to implement changes in policy without authorization, and contrary to the Trump White House’s instructions.

Chapter 10 of her book further explains:

Just as I knew that in a pandemic getting people to change their behavior was very hard, that was true of those shaping the pandemic response as well. Better to leverage those who could help me impact the response than those who resisted me. There was Jared and there was the vice president, and those two men would be my go-to people in the White House, then and for the next nine months, to move the pandemic response forward.

Throughout the book Birx explains how she was pro-lockdown to the extreme, even refusing to attend meetings with those who opposed her perspective. In Chapter 13, Birx admits to her petulance:

Somehow, I had to cut [Dr. Scott] Atlas off from any degree of influence he might try to exert on anyone short of the president, whether during my absence or while I was still there. Individually, I contacted Marc Short, Mark Meadows, and Jared Kushner. I communicated clearly to everyone: “I won’t be in any meetings any longer if Scott Atlas is present at them. If that means a meeting in the Oval Office[,] it doesn’t matter. If it’s at the task force, it doesn’t matter. If it’s at the Covid Huddle, I don’t want him there.”

The news comes as the former Vice President increasingly attempts to carve out a role for himself in the conservative movement, with many speculating he intends to challenge President Trump for the Republican nomination for 2024.

MUST READ: New England Journal of Medicine: Unvaccinated COVID Patients Are Contagious for LESS Time Than those Vaxed or Boosted.

Earlier in the book, Birx admitted to “devis[ing] a work-around for the governor’s reports,” where she claims she would “reinsert what [the White House] had objected to, but place it in… different locations. I’d also reorder and restructure the bullet points so the most salient—the points the administration objected to most—no longer fell at the start of the bullet points. I shared these strategies with the three members of the data team also writing these reports. Our Saturday and Sunday report-writing routine soon became: write, submit, revise, hide, resubmit. Fortunately, this strategic sleight-of-hand worked. That they never seemed to catch this subterfuge left me to conclude that, either they read the finished reports too quickly or they neglected to do the word search that would have revealed the language to which they objected.”

Ambassador Birx says she was recruited into her role by National Security Advisor Matt Pottinger, and was championed for the position by New Hampshire congressional hopeful Matt Mowers.

My blood is boiling.

The Deep State Cabal inside the DOJ and FBI went out of their way to hinder the investigation of Hunter Biden’s laptop just weeks before the 2020 Presidential election. By blocking the disastrous news, it kept America in the dark and aided Biden’s so-called victory.

When America was being distracted with COVID, mandates, lockdowns, and BLM riots, our freedom was being taken away without most people noticing because our government was conspiring against us.

How can we trust our so-called “top law-enforcement” agency to do their job when they actively hid Hunter’s investigation in a RESTRICTED SUBFOLDER on their network?

Now Biden’s handpicked Attorney General has no problem turning a blind eye to the actions of the Biden family. This isn’t just refusing to investigate Hunter’s laptop, this is ACTIVELY HIDING EVIDENCE so no one else would investigate.

That’s why you and I must continue to stand up to them.

If you want to see Hunter investigated and the Big Guy impeached, then I need your URGENT Contribution of $25, $50, or $100 today!

We need to let these Deep State hooligans know that we’re going to do the job they were supposed to do. I’m opening up a congressional investigation into the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop and exposing the criminality of Hunter and the Big Guy. I told you my blood is boiling, right?

If the DOJ didn’t cover up Hunter’s crimes and the intelligence officials didn’t peddle the lie that Hunter’s Laptop was “Russian Disinformation,” Donald Trump might still be President.

The 18-month-long nightmare we all have been living under Biden’s illegitimate reign would not have happened.

No hyper-inflation. No borrowing trillions of dollars to pay for Marxist social programs. No baby formula shortages or selling of oil reserves to Hunter’s friends in China.

That’s what the DOJ took away from us when they covered for the Biden family’s criminal enterprise.

If you’re as upset as I am, then chip in $50, $100, or $250 today to help me investigate and expose the truth behind Hunter’s and the Big Guy’s criminal enterprise… and those who helped cover it up!

Here’s the problem. The Swamp knows I’m a woman of my word. They know that I will not rest until Congress finally investigates Hunter and impeaches Joe Biden.

That’s why they have been working overtime to make sure I’m not in Congress after November. From filing lawsuits to kick me off the ballot to donating millions to my Democrat opponent, I’m having everything AND the kitchen sink thrown at me.

Do you really think Nancy Pelosi has ignored the behavior from AOC and the Jihad Squad by mistake?

Do you think the Democrats accidentally forgot to sanction their own member who gave the middle finger on National TV to GOP Members of Congress at the Congressional Baseball game the other day?

Somehow no one is being held accountable for their actions… except me. Because in Washington, some people do as they’re told while I’m fighting to do what Americans expect from their duly elected Representatives—SERVE THE PEOPLE!

That’s why I URGENTLY need your help to fight back and win this November with your $100, $500, or $1,000 donation today. Otherwise, Hunter and Brandon are going to keep enriching themselves off the backs of the U.S. government and no one will stop them.

But if I win in November, all bets are off.

That’s why we can’t let Hunter and Brandon get away with it simply because I wasn’t there to lead the charge in Congress. Help me win so I can investigate Hunter and impeach Joe Biden! Please donate today.

Thank you. God Bless America.
Marjorie Taylor Greene
Congresswoman (R-GA)

Executives at CNN’s parent company are struggling to set a new direction for the network amid declining viewership and the lowest profits in years, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

With former President Donald Trump mostly out of the political picture, CNN has struggled to retain an audience that tuned in for a reliable stream of partisan content directed against Trump.

It has had an average primetime viewership of 639,000 this quarter, a 27 percent drop from a year ago.

The network’s ratings trail even those of MSNBC, which itself has seen a decline in primetime viewership of 23 percent, according to the Times.

Meanwhile, Fox News — the only large media company in the United States generally critical of Joe Biden — has increased its viewership, with a primetime increase of 1 percent relative to 2021.

Executives now expect CNN to make a profit of $950 million this year, well short of the original goal of $1.1 billion, the Times reported.

That would be the network’s lowest yearly profit since before the network reinvented itself with 24/7 criticism of Trump in 2016.

Executives of the media company Discovery have sought to set a new course for CNN after merging with the network’s former parent company, WarnerMedia, earlier this year.

Warner Bros. Discovery management wanted CNN to eschew the network’s “red-hot liberal opining” and instead focus on hard news, Axios reported in February.

Some of the network’s most partisan commentators, such as Brian Stelter and Jim Acosta, are on shaky ground, according to a report in June.

Chris Licht, an experienced television news executive appointed as CNN’s chairman after the departure of Jeff Zucker, has faced questions about his long-term plans for the network.

Some of Licht’s advisers have suggested that CNN sell sponsorships to tech corporations and other advertisers, potentially jeopardizing the network’s claims of editorial independence free of corporate influences, the Times reported.

CNN also is considering expanding its operations in China, a country where freedom of speech is severely curtailed by the communist government.

The collapse of failed streaming service CNN+ has taken a chunk out of the network’s profits. Some personalities the company hired for the service came at a significant expense.

Related:

Former CNN Cameraman Sentenced for Threatening to ‘Put a Bullet’ in Rep. Matt Gaetz, Harm His Family

The Times said the network “finds itself facing big questions about how it can continue to expand its business with its moonshot streaming service dead and the traditional TV business in structural decline.”

Warner Bros. Discovery could implement wide-ranging cuts at CNN if the network’s bottom line doesn’t improve.

Licht emphasized at a recent meeting that the network wasn’t considering job layoffs.

“No one has said to me, ‘You’re going to have to go cut this,’” he told employees, according to the Times.

“I think there’s an acute understanding that they don’t know our business,” Licht said of Warner Bros. Discovery executives.

Thomas Friedman criticized Nancy Pelosi’s Taiwan trip

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman last month hosted a delegation from a think tank helmed by a Chinese government adviser deeply enmeshed in Beijing’s propaganda operations.

Friedman met in July with Wang Huiyao, the president of the Center for China and Globalization, to discuss “megatrends and the transformation of globalization in the post-pandemic era.” Friedman also hosted the group at Planet Word, a Washington, D.C.-based language museum run by his wife, Ann.

Wang advises the Chinese government, is an official at two united front organizations, and helped develop China’s controversial “Thousand Talents” program, which the FBI says Beijing uses to steal trade secrets from American companies and create national security risks for the U.S. government. The think tank has been linked to China’s united front system, which the Communist Party uses to influence “universities, think tanks, scholars, journalists,” and government officials, according to a Trump administration report.

Friedman, reportedly one of Joe Biden’s favorite newspaper columnists, wrote in a Times column on Tuesday that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D., Calif.) trip to Taiwan is “utterly reckless.” The columnist has repeatedly urged government officials to take a softer stance toward Beijing. Chinese state media last year touted Friedman’s remarks in an interview with Wang that America could not succeed without a “healthy relationship with China.” He conducted a glowing interview in 2019 with the head of the Chinese tech giant Huawei, in which he asked what “America loses” by blocking the company from building 5G infrastructure because of its links to Chinese intelligence.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist has also made inaccurate claims about China’s efforts to deter Russia’s actions in Ukraine. While criticizing Pelosi’s trip in an interview last week, Friedman said that “China is helping us” in Ukraine and cautioned against “poking the bear right now.” But U.S. officials have publicly criticized Beijing for supporting Russia, as the Times reported last month. The State Department said in May that Chinese Communist Party media outlets “routinely amplify Kremlin propaganda, conspiracy theories, and disinformation.”

Like Friedman, Wang also criticized Pelosi for her Taiwan visit, calling it a “very, very bad move” in an interview with Bloomberg News over the weekend. And he portrayed China as a potential peacemaker in Ukraine in a Times op-ed in March. The Gray Lady came under fire for the piece for failing to disclose that Wang is a Chinese government adviser.

The Center for China and Globalization has downplayed its links to the Chinese government, saying that it is “independent from direct government control.” But the organization acknowledges that Wang advises several Chinese government agencies and serves on two organizations—Western Returned Scholars Association and the China Overseas Friendship Association—that are both part of the CCP’s united front.

The Biden administration in an intelligence memo last month sounded the alarm about the united front. The director of national intelligence called the united front “a coalition of entities working towards CCP goals” that plays a leading role in China’s “foreign influence efforts.”

The center touted the stateside trips as an overseas think tank “engagement mission … filled with productive meetings.” Wang met with leaders of several groups known for sympathetic views toward China, including the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, the Asia Society, and the U.S.-China Business Council. After meeting with Friedman, Wang visited with the head of CGTN America, a TV station controlled by the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda department.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

News Analysis

Mass shootings are extremely rare in America. But you wouldn’t know that if you listened to politicians and much of the media. Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said in a recent Senate hearing on gun control that there had been 309 mass shootings in America so far this year. CNN reported that “U.S. mass shootings are on pace to match last year—the worst ever.”

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said on the floor that there were 13 mass shootings across the country in just one weekend. Major media outlets like The New York Times, NBC News, and ABC News all reported on the—allegedly—“hundreds” of mass shootings this year.

All of this sounds like a national crisis and terrifying to the public, but fewer than 100 people a year are killed in mass shootings in America. While the horrific murder of young children in their school in Uvalde and the innocent people killed in a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park are terrible tragedies, those events do not mean people are at a high risk of being mass shooting victims.

The way in which politicians who want more gun control bills deliberately scare people about mass shootings is by citing a made-up definition and using statistics from an unofficial database called the Gun Violence Archive.

“Obviously, they are trying to broaden the definition to get as large a number as they can to scare the public,” said Alan M. Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, said in an interview. “But the public cares more about stopping these incidents before they happen. The way to prevent them is not to take away people’s Second Amendment rights, but to make sure those people don’t get the guns to start with—and that is where we are failing.”

Defining ‘Mass Shooting’

The standard government definition of “mass shooting” is four or more people killed in a public place who are chosen indiscriminately.

This definition, crafted by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Center (CRS) in 2013 (pdf), doesn’t count domestic violence and gang or drug-related violence because CRS explained those crime activities already have “federal policies, law enforcement structures, and laws tailored in many instances to specifically address them.” The definition matters for law enforcement and others who study and report on crime and look for solutions.

But then unofficial groups started making up new definitions for “mass shootings” that changed the methodology for counting them, which made the numbers higher. Mass shootings leads to more gun control legislation and increased media attention, according to a Harvard University study.

The left-wing magazine “Mother Jones” has a widely cited database, and it made the definition as three or more killed, which of course increases the data. It also includes domestic violence killings, which CRS explained should not be included because “a killer’s relationship to his or her victims is important” when “driven by a desire for revenge and/or power.” Those two changes in the definition have doubled its count for 2022.

“This oversimplification of ‘mass shootings’ treats all incidents as the same problem when they are different issues that require different solutions,” said Mark Oliva, managing director of public affairs for the National Shootings Sports Foundation, which lobbies for gun companies, told The Epoch Times. “This is what is seized upon by those calling for bans and complete disarmament of law-abiding citizens. The answer they turn to is getting rid of all guns, even for those who obey the law.”

Gun Violence Archive

The biggest change came when the Gun Violence Archive (GVA) changed the definition in its widely cited online database. It considers a “mass shooting” any incident in which there are “four victims shot”—not killed.

Also, it includes the crime categories the CRS said are not relevant.

“The Gun Violence Archive’s definition of ‘mass shooting’ can be misleading since it counts among their numbers gang-related crimes, officer-involved cases, and self-defense usages,” said Oliva. “That leads to a much larger figure being used by Gun Violence Archive, but presents the information without context. This can be confusing for readers since many accept the information as an instance of a lone individual preying on multiple people. That isn’t always the case, especially when looking at gang-related and drug-related incidents.”

GVA did not respond to a request for comment about its methodology. However, when the group’s executive director, Mark Bryant, was asked by the Second Amendment Foundation about the media’s “overhyping and misuse of his data,” Bryant responded, “If the numbers are misleading, the journalist didn’t do their homework.” He added that “When a journalist uses the mass-shooting numbers as their lead, they’re not looking at the whole situation.”

Mass Shooting Statistics

The Rand Corporation did a study on the various groups that count mass shootings and looked at how their definitions changed the results. In 2019, the seven main trackers reported mass shootings for the year ranged wildly from six to 503. Those same groups reported victims of mass shootings that year were as far apart as 60 and 628.

The government does not track mass shootings every year. The FBI releases an annual report on “active shooters” which it defines as one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area. There were 61 active shooter incidents in 2021 and 40 in 2020.

But for mass shootings, the first statistics came from the CRS report in 2013. It looked at the previous three decades and identified a total of 78 public mass shootings that claimed 547 lives.

This year, the Department of Justice released a database of mass shootings in a report from the National Institute of Justice and a group called “The Violence Project.” The database, which can be downloaded by request, shows a total of 176 mass shootings from 1966 to 2021 with a total of 1,259 people killed. That is an annual mean of 23 victims of mass shootings in 55 years.

This graphic shows the data for the most recent 10 years from DoJ and the Violence Project. You can see there have been a total of 55 mass shootings and 516 victims in a decade. (The total number of victims was 108 in 2017 because of the horrific mass shooting in Las Vegas in which 58 people were killed.)

Then there are the GVA statistics. It says there have been 369 mass shootings so far in 2022. It reports there were 692 mass shootings in 2021, 610 in 2020, and 417 in 2019. Even if you were to take all the fatal homicides that the GVA calls “mass shootings” for 2022, there were 379 victims.

Now that so much of the media use the GVA numbers, there is more political and media attention on the rare events. Mass shootings get drastically more focus than the bigger issue of the enormous homicide and crime spike in America. Victims of mass shootings are a tiny percentage of all people killed by firearms each year, as seen in the following graphic.

Media Hype Over Mass Shootings

“It bleeds, it leads” is a common saying in the news business to describe how crime is good for ratings. This is partly why the media has been doing such extensive coverage of the three mass shootings this year in Buffalo, Texas, and Illinois.

While major TV networks use the GVA statistics now, the print media is not as sold into the new system.

The Washington Post is seemingly split on whether it will spin the statistics to create a more dramatic narrative or be accurate. Its Fact Checker column recently wrote that mass shootings occur six times a year on average (based on a 2021 study), but then the paper published a news story with the headline “300 mass shootings so far this year”—based on the GVA.

The “more than 300 mass shootings this year” story has been run repeatedly by media around the country because it sounds terrifying. But the stories don’t say how many victims are involved.

Before the GVA existed, the 2013 congressional report concluded that “While tragic and shocking, public mass shootings account for few of the murders related to firearms that occur annually in the United States.”

Mass shootings are horrible and terrifying for the communities where they occur. The Rand study said the impact of mass shootings is damaging to citizens’ mental health, anxiety, and perception of safety. However, the fact is that the risk of dying in one is extremely unlikely.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with a citation to the 2021 study.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

CURIOUS TIMING, WOULDN’T YOU SAY?

Major U.S. news outlets including CNN, CNBC, and the Associated Press recently met with Chinese Communist Party propagandists flagged by the U.S. government for seeking to “malignly influence” U.S. politics, The National Pulse can reveal.

Bureau chiefs for the Associated Press, CNN, and CNBC took a meeting with the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC), which is part of China’s billion-dollar “United Front” effort.

The United Front aims to “to co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition to the policies and authority of its ruling Chinese Communist Party” and “influence foreign governments to take actions or adopt positions supportive of Beijing’s preferred policies,” according to the federal U.S.-China Security and Economic Review Commission – U.S. government initiative from 2018.

United Front groups such as the China United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF) have used tactics including free trips to China to garner “favorable coverage” from mainstream media outlets according to Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) filings.

The CPAFFC has been dubbed the “public face” of the United Front Work Department and “avowedly an arm of the party-state” in addition to being flagged by the U.S. State Department for its campaigns to “directly and malignly influence” American officials and business leaders.

Journalists met with the President, Lin Songtian, at the group’s Beijing headquarters on July 26th, 2022.

As a press release from the group’s Chinese-language website reveals, the meeting “enhanced mutual understanding and friendship”:

“On July 26, President Lin Songtian met with Mori Tsijian, Director of the Greater China News Department of the Associated Press (AP), Jiang Xin, the Beijing Bureau Chief of CNN, and American Consumers at the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries. Representative of mainstream American media in Beijing, including CNBC. The two sides had a candid and friendly exchange of views on China’s domestic and foreign policies, China-US relations, non-governmental exchanges between the two countries and issues of common concern, which enhanced mutual understanding and friendship.”

The CPAFFC President appeared to instruct the media representatives to portray China as an ally as opposed to a “major competitor” to avoid “misjudgment and misleading public opinion”:

“In today’s era of political multi-polarization, economic globalization, and democratization of international relations, the United States still views China from the outdated perspective of “you lose, we win, and either friend or enemy is an enemy”. Positioning China as a major competitor will inevitably lead to strategic misunderstandings, misjudgment and misleading public opinion.”

The unearthed webpage follows The National Pulse linking other individuals and organizations, who are often publicly soft on China, affiliating with the CPAFFC. Similarly, mainstream media outlets have repeatedly published stories lauding the Chinese Communist Party and uncritically echoing the regime’s propaganda and talking points.

Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, former head of military intelligence and national security adviser, will file a motion against a penalty imposed on him by the Pentagon for allegedly violating the Emolument Clause by giving a paid speech in Russia in 2015.

“I’m fighting back against that,” Flynn told EpochTV’s “Facts Matter” host Roman Balmakov during a recent interview.

The Department of Defense decided to charge Flynn’s retirement account for nearly $40,000 he was paid in cash and in-kind services for attending and giving an on-stage interview at a 2015 anniversary event of the Russian state-sponsored RT television.

Flynn previously said his attendance was arranged by his speakers bureau. The Pentagon acknowledged that Flynn informed the department of his attendance, was briefed before, and debriefed after.

“I went and did a classified briefing prior. I did a classified briefing after, which means, you go get a counterintelligence assessment,” he told Balmakov, explaining that people from the relevant government agencies would convey what kind of information they’re looking for from the people he might talk to during the trip.

“Then you try to get the answers for those people. And you come back and you give those answers back,” he said. “That’s normal, you know. Diplomats, retired government officials, like me, would do stuff like that routinely.”

Now, the Pentagon says Flynn violated the Constitution’s Emolument Clause, which prohibits military members from receiving anything of value from foreign governments without authorization.

Flynn said he’s planning to file a motion against the penalty.

“We’ve got to do things by letter, right? And it comes at a legal cost. I mean, this is what they do. They tried to wear us out—all of us. They’re going to try to wear the American people out,” he said.

The RT event was visited by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who briefly sat next to Flynn at a table before giving his speech and leaving, several other attendees previously told The Epoch Times.

Flynn’s attendance was later used by the FBI to open a counterintelligence case against him as part of the Crossfire Hurricane probe of alleged collusion between Russia and the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump. The probe failed to establish any such collusion. The FBI used false information paid for by the campaign of Trump’s opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to get spying warrants on Trump campaign aide Carter Page. At least two of the warrants were invalid and resulted in illegal surveillance, the bureau acknowledged.

The Flynn case was riddled with contradictions and inconsistencies. FBI agents had already decided to close his case by early January 2017, but higher-ups intervened to keep it open on the justification that Flynn may have violated the Logan Act by discussing with foreign diplomats the priorities of the incoming administration during the transition period. DOJ officials at the time rejected the legal theory. The 1799 Logan Act, which prohibits unauthorized diplomacy, has never been successfully prosecuted. The government had only used it twice, more than a century ago.

Flynn was charged in 2017 with lying to the FBI during a January 2017 interview. He pleaded guilty later that year, but then withdrew his plea. The DOJ dropped the charge in 2020, after Attorney General William Barr ordered an outside prosecutor to review the case. Then-head of the District of Columbia U.S. Attorney’s Office, Timothy Shea, concluded that it seemed the FBI’s purpose for interviewing Flynn was to “elicit … false statements and thereby criminalize Mr. Flynn,” which isn’t a legitimate investigative purpose.

Then, in an unusual move, the judge trying the case refused to grant the dismissal, only dropping the case after Trump pardoned Flynn.

Flynn is now suing the FBI and the Department of Justice for their alleged efforts to oust him as Trump’s national security adviser.

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly identified the prosecutor who made the conclusion regarding the dismissal of Michael Flynn’s case. The prosecutor was Timothy Shea. The Epoch Times regrets the error.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

So, using a gay man’s disease to lock down a city/state/etc. and force mail-in voting and fraud. How fitting for democrat-controlled entities. [US Patriot]

The governors of blue states California, and Illinois on Monday joined New York state in issuing proclamations declaring states of emergency in response to the 2022 monkeypox virus outbreak currently spreading primarily among the LGBT population.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, also a Democrat, cited similar reasons when he declared a State of Emergency “to bolster the state’s vaccination efforts.”

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, declared the monkeypox virus a public health emergency and the state a “disaster area” in a bid to unlock resources to “aid in the distribution of vaccines.”

New York City Mayor Eric Adams also issued an emergency executive order on Monday declaring a local state of emergency to bolster “efforts to educate, vaccinate, test, and treat as many New Yorkers as possible.”

It comes a day after New York Gov. Kathy Hochul issued a statewide executive order to declare a disaster. She said that “more than one in four monkeypox cases” are in New York state. Among other issues, the order provides more leeway on which individuals can administer the monkeypox vaccine, including pharmacists, EMS workers, and midwives.

There are currently over 5,800 monkeypox cases in the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

In confirmed or presumptive case numbers, Illinois is ranked third most, with 520 cases; California is ranked second, with 827 cases; and New York is ranked first, with more than 1,300 cases. Florida and Georgia both have over 400 monkeypox cases as well.

Read More

Monkeypox Declared Public Health Emergency in New York City

Illinois

“[Monkeypox virus] is a rare, but potentially serious disease that requires the full mobilization of all available public health resources to prevent the spread,” Pritzker said in a statement.

“That’s why I am declaring a state of emergency to ensure smooth coordination between state agencies and all levels of government, thereby increasing our ability to prevent and treat the disease quickly.

“We have seen this virus disproportionately impact the LGBTQ+ community in its initial spread. Here in Illinois we will ensure our LGBTQ+ community has the resources they need to stay safe while ensuring members are not stigmatized as they access critical health care,” he said.

pic.twitter.com/C4lNHWZG4r

— Governor J.B. Pritzker (@GovPritzker) August 1, 2022

On July 23, the World Health Organization declared the monkeypox outbreak a public health “emergency.” Since then, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevent (CDC) has been monitoring the outbreak across the United States and consulting with states.

Pritzker’s office said that declaring a “state of disaster” will expand the resources and coordination efforts of state agencies to respond, treat, and attempt to prevent the spread of monkeypox.

California

California is making use of infrastructure developed during the COVID-19 pandemic to deploy monkeypox vaccine clinics in an outreach effort targeting the LGBT community.

Newsom’s office said the governor’s proclamation will support a “whole-of-government” response to monkeypox, including getting more vaccines and outreach to the LGBT community on accessing vaccines and treatment.

“California is working urgently across all levels of government to slow the spread of monkeypox, leveraging our robust testing, contact tracing, and community partnerships strengthened during the pandemic to ensure that those most at risk are our focus for vaccines, treatment and outreach,” Newsom said in a statement.

“We’ll continue to work with the federal government to secure more vaccines, raise awareness about reducing risk, and stand with the LGBTQ community fighting stigmatization.”

Newsom’s declaration will expand permission already given to pharmacists to Emergency Medical Services personnel to administer FDA-approved monkeypox vaccines.

Virus Spread, Vaccines

The LGBT community and public health experts have expressed concerns around stigmatization, wanting to avoid issues that occurred around the HIV/AIDs virus in the 1980s.

The monkeypox virus is primarily being spread through the sexual activity of gay and bisexual men, a major peer-reviewed study found. But the virus is expected to eventually spread beyond the LGBT community, a World Health Organization official has said.

Monkeypox cases have been reported in a female health care worker and in an infant and a toddler who separately have LGBT parents.

The LGBT community has been resistant to monkeypox being characterized as a sexually transmitted disease. The virus can be transmitted through close but non-intimate contact and through infected bedding and clothing.

However, the current outbreak has primarily been transmitted during sexual activity and is theorized by experts to have emerged at two large-scale LGTB events held in Europe—a rave in Spain and a festival in Belgium oriented around a sex-based subculture.

The Biden administration has delivered more than 7,000 doses of vaccine to Illinois, with 13,000 additional doses expected in the near future, according to Pritzker’s office.

Pritzker called on the Biden administration last month to send more vaccines to Illinois.

“A comprehensive and swift response is key when containing a disease outbreak,” said IDPH Director Sameer Vohra. “These measures will allow the state to deploy all our resources in fighting this disease and will open efficient lines of communication and cooperation across state lines, an essential step in tracking monkeypox and improving tools and processes to prevent and address it.”

There has been a limited supply of the FDA-approved Jynneos monkeypox vaccine in the United States, but the CDC said more supply is expected in the coming weeks. Jynneos is also known as Imvanex or Imvamune.

There is a larger supply of a smallpox vaccine known as ACAM2000 that can be used, but the CDC has warned against its use in people with weakened immune systems and certain skin conditions, and by pregnant women.

Pritzker’s office said that proclaiming the “state of disaster” allows the Illinois Department of Public Health to expand vaccine and testing capacities with the help of the Illinois Emergency Management Agency and via state and federal recovery and assistance funds.

“This proclamation will aid in facilitating the complicated logistics and transportation of vaccines across the state to reach the most impacted communities efficiently,” Pritzker’s office said.

“The declaration also authorizes emergency procurements to facilitate the state’s response. The proclamation takes effect immediately and is in place for 30 days.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Elected officials are often in the spotlight, so when they do something that’s blatantly wrong – and it’s caught on camera – their careers hit a serious roadblock.

New Jersey councilwoman Amy DeGise was involved in a hit-and-run incident on July 19, which involved plowing into a bicyclist and speeding away from the scene of the crime.

That might’ve been the mistake that cost her everything — because now her colleagues are demanding that she resign.

DeGise’s black Nissan Rogue rammed into the bicycle of UberEats delivery man Andrew Black at 8 a.m. The accident happened at an intersection and the impact was so intense, Black’s shoes came off.

His bicycle was obviously wrecked as well, and he flipped painfully onto the pavement.

Despite this, however, DeGise didn’t stick around and see if Black was okay. She fled the scene and the situation has gotten plenty of attention on social media networks.

The video is also making the rounds; traffic cameras caught the disturbing incident clearly:

It seems as if DeGise didn’t even try to slow down, and then she never stopped.

As for Black, he explains the accident as follows to HudPost:

I come up to a light, and I have the right-of-way, and right before I get hit, I look left, suddenly I just hear ‘Ba!’

And then I just get hit, and then I hit the hood, and I roll over, and I’m in such pain.

However, it looks like Black isn’t correct in this case, as it appears DeGise had the right of way. Even so, it’s certainly not a good idea to leave the scene of an accident, especially when personal injury is involved.

Afterward, she was reportedly given a summons for leaving the scene and failing to report it, so this has all the makings of a definite scandal.

DeGise’s colleagues are also calling for her to step down. As Councilman Frank Gilmore told WNBC:

Past being elected, it’s a living human being – it was really hard for me to witness that.

It’s a matter of public trust, it’s a matter of respect, it’s a matter of human decency.

Jersey City councilmember James Solomon went a step further and said he was “horrified” watching the video. He added that DeGise is an elected official and “we’re supposed to hold ourselves to a higher standard.”

Solomon agreed that she should resign, as did former Councilman Chris Gadsden, who said on Twitter that “we have no other choice but to ask her to step down.”

Strangely, this isn’t DeGise’s first brush with the law.

Back in November, she parked illegally and was caught driving with a registration that had expired in 2019. Her car was ultimately hit because it was parked in the wrong place.

Police body cam footage came out shortly after, and it shows DeGise trying to get out of it by saying she had a relative who was “an officer,” and then saying she “was endorsed by the police in Jersey City.”

Unfortunately for DeGise, the officer wasn’t buying any of it, and he impounded the vehicle and gave her the ticket.

Chances are, she’s not going to get off lightly after this hit-and-run incident, either. And no matter what happens, it seems likely that her career as a councilwoman is coming to a close.

Key Takeaways:

• New Jersey Councilwoman Amy DeGise was involved in a hit-and-run incident on July 19, where she left the scene.
• After the footage came out, several of her fellow elected officials in the state called for her to resign.
• It isn’t the first time DeGise was involved in a traffic violation, either.

Source: The Blaze

‘Nation’ correspondent Elie Mystal says Georgia candidate Herschel Walker is ‘what Republicans want from their Negroes’

Far-left political commentator Elie Mystal, a correspondent at The Nation, said in an interview Saturday that Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker (Ga.), who is black, is “what Republicans want from their Negroes.”

Mystal, who is also black, said in an MSNBC interview that Walker is “so clearly unintelligent” and “so clearly doesn’t have independent thoughts” that, if elected, he will “do what he’s told.”

“That’s what Republicans like,” Mystal went on. “That’s what Republicans want from their Negroes.”

This is not the first time Mystal, who has said the Constitution is “actually trash,” has attacked Walker on the basis of race. In an April essay published in The Nation, Mystal called Walker’s candidacy “an insult to Black people” and a “political minstrel show” and said the candidate himself is “an animated caricature of a Black person drawn by white conservatives.”

Mystal is not the first high-profile liberal to take jabs at minorities for going against the Democratic party line. Joe Biden said on the 2020 campaign trail any African American undecided between voting for him or Donald Trump “ain’t black.” Multiple Democrats launched racist attacks against Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas following his concurrence in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade.

More black voters say they “somewhat” or “strongly” disapprove of Biden than say they “approve strongly,” a Washington Post-Ipsos poll found in June.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Several pathogenic microbes were identified and quantified on masks worn during the pandemic, according to a Japanese study that was published in Scientific Reports.

The study is one of the first to address the probable hygiene issues caused by bacterial and fungal growth on masks worn daily in the community.

“Since masks can be a direct source of infection to the respiratory tract, digestive tract, and skin, it is crucial to maintain their hygiene to prevent bacterial and fungal infections that can exacerbate COVID-19,” the authors wrote.

The study involved 109 participants aged 21 to 22 years who were asked about the type and duration of mask used and their lifestyle habits. Bacteria and fungi were collected from the three types of masks—gauze, polyurethane, and non-woven—worn between September and October 2020.

The researchers found that the face side of the masks had more bacteria, whereas the outer side of the masks contained more fungi.

In addition, longer use of the mask resulted in an increase in fungi but not in bacteria because “fungi and their spores are resistant to drying, they can survive under the condition where masks dry out.”

Non-woven masks were found to have fewer fungal colony counts on the outer side compared to the other two mask types. Non-woven masks have three layers, two-layer fabric with a non-woven middle layer filter.

Researchers said they were surprised to find that there were no significant differences in the numbers of bacteria or fungi on washable or reusable masks that had been washed.

“The proper cleaning method for cotton face masks has been recommended to reduce the microbial load on the masks,” the authors wrote. “However, in the current experiments, we did not find significant differences in bacterial or fungal colony numbers on the masks based on washing.”

Lifestyle Habits

The researchers also examined whether certain lifestyle habits such as gargling, consumption of natto, and use of the different modes of transportation—public transportation, personal vehicle, and walking or biking— had any effect on the microbial counts on the masks.

“We found no differences in the bacterial or fungal colony counts on both sides of the masks among the three transportation systems,” the authors wrote.

There were also no differences in microbial counts on masks of participants who gargled once a day. Gargling is a Japanese custom believed to prevent respiratory infections. The practice is often recommended by the Japanese health authority alongside hand washing as a preventative measure against influenza.

A study from Penn State College of Medicine published in the Journal of Medical Virology in September 2020 found that several types of mouthwash and nasal rinses were effective at neutralizing human coronaviruses, suggesting that the products may have the potential to lessen the amount of SARS-CoV-2 load, or the amount of virus inside the mouth. SARS-CoV-2 is the virus that causes COVID-19.

A small pilot study is currently being conducted by the University of California, San Francisco on whether gargling with certain mouthwash or gargling solutions will reduce viral load in patients diagnosed with COVID-19. The study is expected to complete this September.

Gargling with antiseptic mouthwashes is part of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care (FLCCC) Alliance’s protocol for “both chronic (ongoing) prevention as well as to avoid getting sick” after an individual has been exposed to the virus.

FLCCC Alliance is a nonprofit organization consisting of critical care specialists who’ve dedicated their time to developing treatment protocols to “prevent the transmission of COVID-19 and to improve the outcomes for patients ill with the disease.”

As for the consumption of natto, soybeans that are fermented with a bacterium called bacillus subtillis or B. subtilliss, the researchers said that the participants who consumed the sticky soybeans, “had a significantly higher incidence of large white B. subtillis colonies on both sides of the masks than those who did not.”

B. subtillis is a bacterium found in soil, water, decomposing plant residue, and air. It is used for “industrial production of proteases, amylases, antibiotics, and specialty chemicals” and is “not considered pathogenic or toxigenic to humans, animals, or plants,” according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (pdf).

Pathogenic Microbes

While most of the bacteria and fungi cultured from the masks were not harmful to humans, some were opportunist pathogens, while others were found to cause diseases like bacteria that cause food poisoning and staph infections, and a fungus that causes ringworm, athlete’s foot, and jock itch.

From their findings, the authors of the study suggest that people with a weakened immune system should “avoid repeated use of masks to prevent microbial infection.”

The CDC says that immunocompromised people or those at high risk for severe disease should wear a mask or respirator when there is a high community level of COVID-19.

The health agency did not respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment on the findings of the Japanese study.

Supporters of universal masking during the pandemic say that masks help to prevent or reduce transmission of SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Scientific Evidence

Epidemiologist and researcher Dr. Paul Alexander disagree. He says that there are over 150 studies and articles that conclude cloth and surgical masks are not effective in slowing the spread of COVID-19 and does more harm.

“To date, the evidence has been stable and clear that masks do not work to control the virus and they can be harmful and especially to children,” Alexander wrote in a February op-ed for The Epoch Times.

In a critical review (pdf) of cloth masks used during the pandemic, the authors stated that evidence does not support community masking with cloth masks to limit the spread of the virus.

“The available clinical evidence of facemask efficacy is of low quality and the best available clinical evidence has mostly failed to show efficacy, with fourteen of sixteen identified randomized controlled trials comparing face masks to no mask controls failing to find statistically significant benefit in the intent-to-treat populations,” the authors wrote.

“Although weak evidence should not preclude precautionary actions in the face of unprecedented events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, ethical principles require that the strength of the evidence and best estimates of amount of benefit be truthfully communicated to the public,” they added.

Prior to the pandemic, researchers conducted a small randomized controlled study in 2008 among health care workers in Japan to examine whether surgical masks reduced the incidence of the common cold.

They found that participants in the mask group “were significantly more likely to experience headache during the study period” and concluded that “face mask use in health care workers has not been demonstrated to provide benefit in terms of cold symptoms or getting colds.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The subpoenas and discovery requests sent out as part of a lawsuit against the federal government are going to bring back reams of information, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry says.

Landry and Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, both Republicans, sued the Biden administration in May, arguing the government colluded with Big tech companies to violate the constitutional rights of Americans.

U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump appointee, recently ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. Government officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci and companies including Facebook were served soon after.

“We’ve got a treasure trove of information that we think are going to come to us here shortly,” Landry said on EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders.”

“The subpoenas have gone out. They’re being served. I think Dr. Fauci got served, and he and other members of the president’s Cabinet, and they’re gonna have to send us communications between them and the platforms. And what we believe we’ll find is communications between them telling them what they should and shouldn’t put out or what they should suppress, and what they should amplify,” he added.

Government officials have said they have not acted improperly.

Officials have for years commented on how social media platforms operate, and the federal government is not responsible for how platforms moderate content, U.S. lawyers said in a filing in the case, Missouri and Louisiana v. President Biden et al.

“Those companies independently chose to combat misinformation years ago, before this administration took office, and before the federal officials sued here made the comments at issue. Indeed, although the Complaint cites numerous statements by government officials, it does not identify how those statements are connected to the moderation decisions that purportedly harmed their resident,” they said.

The government is seeking to dismiss the case.

Violating Rights

Landry said that the government is violating citizens’ rights by pressuring companies to ban or take other punitive action against users. In a separate case, documents released this month showed U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials highlighting specific posts in messages to Twitter executives while complaining about alleged misinformation from those users. Whistleblower documents released by two U.S. senators in June, meanwhile, showed that U.S. officials had been in touch with Twitter over purported disinformation.

“I think what we found, and what the whistleblowers put out, was that the government was actually engaged, and the White House, in directly communicating with Big Tech on stories and information that they either wanted suppressed or put out,” Landry said.

Related Coverage

‘This Is the Government Colluding With Big Tech’—AG Jeff Landry on the First Amendment Lawsuits He’s Leading

His office, after putting out a call for information from people who have been censored in some way by platforms, has also collected a number of examples. Those may be used in the suit in question, as well as other suits with which he’s involved.

Landry himself has witnessed censorship from Big Tech, with his posts initially drawing many shares, but engagement quickly falling off.

“We’re trying to get information out to our constituency in a medium—I guess you would say, in a new medium—under which everyone is using more than the other, traditional mediums,” Landry said. “And they are creating a filter between us and our constituents.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

AS PELOSI STAYS MUM ON TAIWAN, HER NETWORK IS LOBBYING FOR CCP SOCIAL CREDIT COMPANIES.

Ant Group – a payment platform used to implement “vaccine passports” and a “social credit” system in China – has retained a number of American lobbying firms, including some with ties to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former President Barack Obama, and failed presidential candidate Senator Mitt Romney.

Ant Group is an offshoot of the Chinese company Alibaba, previously flagged by the U.S. State Department as a “tool” of the Chinese Communist Party and crucial to the regime’s build-up of “technology-facilitated surveillance and social control.” Ant Group also owns AliPay, a digital payment platform used by Beijing to institute vaccine passports, which have been used to render citizens unable to leave their houses and forced into quarantine.Ant Group is a key component of China’s broader “social credit” system, sharing the data it collects on users’ spending habits and online activity with Chinese Communist Party regulators.

Social credit systems have raised concern in the West, with many fearing the weaponization of government and business surveillance to restrict individuals’ access to the economy and services based on specific behaviors – or even ideologies.

Despite these fears, several American lobbyists are working on behalf of Ant Group, appearing to help broaden the company’s operations and reach inside of the U.S.

Throughout 2021 and 2022, Ant Group hired four external lobbying and public affairs firms to help with objectives including “outreach regarding corporate profile and operations of Ant Group and its subsidiary Alipay US.”

The OB-C Group has been representing Ant Group since January 1st, 2022 on “matters regarding regulatory issues for ANT Group and its subsidiaries.”

MUST READ: REVEALED: CNN, CNBC, AP Met With Chinese Communist Party Propagandists in July.

Among the firm’s consultants working for Ant Group is Larry O’Brien, who has been described by the Washington Post as a “major Democratic operative.”

“Mr. O’Brien has been a long-standing participant in the House Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s (DCCC) maximum level individual donor program, the Speaker’s Cabinet, and in the “Pelosi Team 100” program.  Over a period of two decades, Mr. O’Brien has had an extensive degree of involvement and interaction with the House Democratic leadership, with myriad Democratic members across a wide array of House committees and with the leadership of the DCCC,” explains his professional bio.

He has also worked “at the most elevated participation level with the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee (DSCC),” charging its “premier individual donor group, the Legacy Circle, since the inception of the program in 2006.”

“He was designated a “Lifetime Member” of the Legacy Circle in 2014. In addition, he is the recipient of what the DSCC describes as one of the highest honors it can bestow, an award of lifetime membership in its “Majority Trust” program. In the award letter to Mr. O’Brien, Senator Schumer, then Chair of the DSCC, stated, “I can’t think of a more qualified Democrat to receive this honor,” his bio continues.

Another Ant Group lobbyist on behalf of the OB-C Group, Thomas J. Keating, served in the House of Representatives in the Office of Sergeant at Arms for over 13 years, with his most recent role as Director of Police Services.

Several other establishment D.C. figures – including advisors to the campaigns of George H.W. Bush and Mitt Romney – are also working on behalf of Ant Group according to the OB-C Group’s lobbying registration. For three months of work, the firm received a retainer of $60,000.

MUST READ: EXC: Anthony Fauci Is STILL Funding China’s Military-Run Labs With U.S. Taxpayer Cash.

Lobbying firm Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld is also currently representing Ant Group, beginning its work for the Chinese company on January 27th, 2022.

In addition to Democratic congressional staffers and advisors to George W. Bush, Ed Pagano, who served as Senate Liaison and Deputy Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs in the Obama administration, is also working on behalf of AliPay.

Another government affairs firm – Rich Feuer Anderson – began lobbying for AliPay on January 1st, 2022, conducting “outreach regarding corporate profile and operations of Ant Group and its subsidiary Alipay US.”

Among the consultants working on behalf of Rich Feuer Anderson are alumni of the U.S. Treasury Department, Senate finance committees, and Democratic officials.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has made much of her trip to Asia this week, though upon landing in Singapore, appeared to intentionally leave out references to China or Taiwan.

The federal government is one more of transgenderism’s many online promoters.

A help page on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) website lists resources from government agencies and community organizations that seek to protect and support LGBT children and their networks by providing online advice on sexuality, with content that promotes transgenderism, anal and oral sex, and occult superstition.

“It is critical for the parents, guardians, and other family members of LGBT youth to have access to the resources they need to ensure their LGBT children are protected and supported,” the CDC’s website reads.

The CDC page for “LGBT Youth Resources” offers young people and their friends and families links to websites that promote questioning of gender and sex, as well as to sites with age-inappropriate advice.

One of the links listed by the CDC is the website Q Chat Space, which is designed to be hidden. A green banner across the bottom of the site reads “Click/tap here for a quick escape.” It immediately transfers site users to the Google Search page.

The Q Chat Space website hosts live chats for teens aged 13 to 19 that are “facilitated by experienced staff who work at LGBTQ+ centers around the United States,” the website reads. But the staff aren’t mental health professionals. They are “verified” facilitators.

The CDC’s website describes Q Chat Space as a “digital LGBTQ+ center where teens join live-chat, professionally facilitated, online support groups.”

Q Chat Space’s Instagram page provides the schedule for the live chats, along with the subjects to be discussed with the facilitators.

These subjects include sex change surgeries, a transgender and “nonbinary” sex ed night, an introduction to drag culture, a chat on “having multiple genders,” as well as oral and anal sex advice.

Other chats discuss binge drinking and how teens can drink safely.

“If you do choose to drink underage, it is important to be as safe as possible, have a trusted adult nearby and or the potential to contact emergency services if needed,” Q Chat Space’s post reads.

Still other chats discuss the use of condoms, oral contraceptives, intrauterine devices, preexposure prophylaxis against HIV, as well as other devices.

Many chats promote astrology, tarot cards, and other occult ideas. The site recommends “Self Discovery in Astrology,” “Queering Tarot,” and “vibes + auras.”

A disclaimer at the bottom of the CDS’s webpage states, “These links do not constitute an endorsement of these organizations or their programs.”

The nation’s health protection agency explains further: “Links to non-Federal organizations found at this site are provided solely as a service to our users. … CDC is not responsible for the content of the individual organization Web pages found at these links.”

Directions for Parents

Another website on the CDC’s help page is HealthyChildren.org. This site encourages parents to accept a child’s claim of sexual identity without question.

“Some children have a gender identity that is different from their gender assigned at birth, and many have interests and hobbies that may align with the other gender,” the site reads. “It is natural for parents to ask if it is ‘just a phase.’ But, there is no easy answer.”

The website states that research shows gender identity can’t be changed and that parents must accept the gender identity that children announce.

“When your child discloses their identity to you, respond in an affirming, supportive way,” the site states.

The CDC website states that some young people who identify as LGBT are more likely to experience “negative health and life outcomes.” It then recommends that parents protect and “support” children who identify as LGBT.

The CDC also links to the Trevor Project. This website also announces that users can leave it quickly by pressing the “escape” key three times.

“When someone shares their gender identity with you, it’s inappropriate to assume or try to deduce that person’s sex assigned at birth,” the Trevor Project’s site reads.

The site states that doctors typically “decide” biological sex “based solely on one’s genitals.” Sex might not correspond to gender, the site says.

Using the right words around transgender youth can save lives, the Trevor Project says. It quotes a study that found that people who identify as transgender get less suicidal when referred to with different pronouns.

The site listed several pronouns people could use, including “they,” “ze,” “xe,” and “ve.”

The CDC didn’t respond to a request for comment.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Vera Sharav was only 3 years old when her world collapsed.

She and her family were chased out of Romania and herded into a concentration camp in Ukraine during World War II, where they were left to wait, and starve.

“The cloud of death was always there,” Sharav told The Epoch Times.

Weekly, a list determined who would be sent where; whether it be a death or slave labor camp, she said.

While at the camp, she said her father died of typhus when she was 5, which had been widespread throughout the camps because of the cold and malnutrition.

After three years at the camp, she was rescued in 1944, she said.

“My mother got wind that a few orphans would be transported out of the camp, so she lied and said I was an orphan to save my life, and that’s how I wound up leaving,” Sharav said.

This began what she called her odyssey as a child without parents, left to her own intuition and keen critical assessment of others’ intentions.

“I had to assess who I could trust to take care of me,” she said.

While on a train to the Port of Constanta, Romania, where there were three boats awaiting to take groups of people to Palestine, she befriended a family. However, upon arrival, she found herself assigned a boat with other orphan children that would separate her from the family with whom she felt she could trust. So she rebelled.

“No matter what, I could not be convinced to get on that boat,” she said. “Miraculously, in the end, they gave in to me.”

Seasick, she fell asleep that night, only to wake up to find that the boat with the orphans had been torpedoed by who she said she found out decades later to have been the Russians.

Though she carried guilt for having survived, she was grateful she resisted because that resistance kept her alive, she said.

“I do not obey authority, and it saved my life.”

Weaponized Medicine

These memories returned in 2020 during the web of COVID-19 restrictions that spun out of control with the help of media propaganda, she said.

“So now, when people are obeying authority mindlessly, giving up their rights to make decisions about their own lives and what goes into their own bodies, I think back to that time,” she said.

Today, Sharav is a medical activist and founder of the Alliance for Human Research Protection, a network of lay people and professionals who work to uphold humanitarian values and ethical standards established in the Hippocratic Oath, the Nuremberg Code, and the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights.

Most recently, she’s joined with Scott Schara, co-founder of Our Amazing Grace’s Light Shines On, Inc.

Both Sharav and Schara discussed with The Epoch Times what they saw as parallels between the National Socialist regime in Germany and the current medical directives being carried out in the United States through government funding.

Since the death of his 19-year-old daughter Grace in a hospital in 2021, after having been injected with a combination of drugs that he found out later was part of a federal hospital protocol, Schara called what was happening “genocide.” He has been crusading to tell his daughter’s story and network with others who have had a similar experience while bringing attention to the protocols that he believes amounted to the murder of his daughter, who had Down syndrome.

Under the Nazi regime, Sharav said, medicine was weaponized, as it has been today.

Though the Jews were the primary target, she said, the first medically murdered victims were disabled German infants and children under the age of 3.

This later expanded the operation—titled T4 for the street address of the program’s central office in Berlin—to the disabled of all ages, including the mentally ill and senior citizens, Sharav said.

“The Nazis called them worthless eaters,” she said. “T4 was a concerted effort to be rid of what their propaganda called the ‘economic burden.’”

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Schara pointed to a 2021 Medicare Trustee’s Report, which evaluates the cost of keeping the elderly and disabled federally funded.

“Thirty-nine percent of that federal budget goes to those two groups right now, which is $2.2 trillion a year,” Schara said.

On page 11 of the report (pdf), there is a call for “substantial changes” to address financial challenges.

“The sooner solutions are enacted, the more flexible and gradual they can be,” the report states.

For Schara, the implication, while not overtly stated, suggests a call for eugenics that was supported by academic elites early in U.S. history, and later adopted by Nazi Germany.

Ten years after he took power, Adolph Hitler launched his genocide program that had been introduced in incremental steps with the help of propaganda portraying the regime as heroes, Sharav said.

“What happened to Grace, and what happened to many disabled and elderly in Western Europe, Australia, Canada, and the United States in March and April of 2020 was medical murder,” Sharav said.

‘Built on a Lie’

Genocide isn’t new to the United States, Sharav said, as it was Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Oliver Wendell Holmes who voted in favor of the 8-1 majority opinion in the 1921 case Buck v. Bell, which upheld the Virginia Sterilization Act of 1924 and the forced sterilization of Carrie Buck, who was alleged to be mentally defective.

Holmes said it would be better to prevent the mentally disabled from being born than to allow them to “sap the strength of the state” or “let them starve for their imbecility.”

“The principle that sustains compulsory vaccinations is broad enough to cover cutting Fallopian tubes,” the justice wrote in his opinion. “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

Carrie Buck, however, was never actually mentally disabled, Sharav said.

“Arguments for eugenics are always built on a lie,” Sharav said. “But it’s an ideology that continues to poison public health policies.” And he blames this type of thinking for the medical decisions that ultimately contributed to Grace’s death.

‘The Banality of Evil’

As he continues to try to wrap his mind around what happened to his daughter, Schara says he gained some insight from the writings of Holocaust survivor Hannah Arendt and her concept of the “banality of evil.”

“It opened up a whole different view of the world for me,” Schara said.

Sharav’s experience made her familiar with the concept. The banality of evil is the normalization of mass murder by making it a bureaucratic routine that is handed down as orders through the chain of command to the person who pulls the switch, gives the injection, or turns on the gas, she said.

“No one called it murder,” Sharav said. “The Nazis were very adept at propaganda and language. The Jews were called ‘spreaders of disease,’ not unlike the epithets thrown at those who didn’t take the jab.”

Throughout 2021, the spread of COVID-19 was blamed on “the pandemic of the unvaccinated,” a phrase that was used by Joe Biden and governors such as North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper.

“The whole language of it is dehumanizing,” Sharav said.

‘A Slippery Slope’

Schara applies the concept to the fact that 67 percent of Down syndrome children are aborted in the United States, he said.

“Doctors encourage the mother to get an amnio (amniocentesis) test, and if the test shows Down syndrome or another disability that would complicate the parent’s life, he encourages an abortion,” Schara said.

What Sharav said she’s seen in an unholy union when medicine gets into bed with the government.

“The Hippocratic Oath goes out the window,” she said.

The pledge to “do no harm” got replaced with allegiance to “the greater good,” Sharav said.

The question then remains, who has the authority to decide what’s best for the greater good, Sharav challenged.

What supports the greater good is having respect for the individual, Sharav said, and to pursue policies that advocate for the many over the individual is to open the door to medical practices that will cause harm.

“Look at what Big Pharma is doing now to children, aggressively pursuing them to be jabbed when they aren’t at risk at all from COVID-19,” she said.

It’s a slippery slope that—with the help of advanced technology—society is sliding down rapidly compared to the snail’s pace that it took for Hitler to implement his “Final Solution,” Schara said.

“We’re headed there exceptionally fast,” Schara said. “Today, the ‘Final Solution’ is the reduction of the entire human population under the ‘Sustainable Agenda’ of Agenda 2030.”

Unlike the physical camps that required ink tattoos for identification and guards to manage the prisoners, the new prisons are digital, Sharav said, managed remotely by surveillance through smartphones and cities.

“With smart technology, you can manage billions all at once,” she said. “It’s chilling.”

It’s hard for many to fathom that an elite few would conspire to cause widespread harm, Sharav said.

“People will say, ‘They made a mistake; it was an accident.’ But no, the elite, just like the Nazis, have this arrogance in which they believe they are superior and therefore entitled to rule the rest of us because they think we are inferior,” Sharav said.

Control vs. Faith

Schara said his concern is with an elite ruling class that is godless, believing only in what is measurable and controllable.

He emphasizes his faith in God as a powerful weapon to combat the dark agendas that have escalated beyond the comprehension of the average person, working 60 hours a week just to make ends meet.

“We should not fall trap to the false light that Satan will eventually ride in on to steal more souls. God’s true light protects those who believe,” he said.

“We the People” can reclaim sovereignty by learning to trust in intuition, experience, and the ability to assess lies from truth, Sharav said.

“Stop watching mainstream media,” Sharav said. “They’re all reading from the same script. They have bombarded people with fearmongering, which is exactly the same thing that the Nazis did. That’s how they controlled the population: through fear.”

For Sharav, the mission that has been laid at the feet of people throughout the world is the same as it was for her as a child: “Resist. Wake up. Stop obeying.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

New York Times columnist and economist Paul Krugman insists the United States is not in a recession, that the term is essentially meaningless, and current efforts to apply the label to the U.S. economy amount to “vitriolic” partisanship.

Krugman made the remarks in an interview on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” program that aired on July 31, days after the U.S. economy met the rule-of-thumb definition for a recession, with GDP coming in negative for two quarters in a row.

Host Brian Stelter kicked off the segment by asking Krugman whether the United States is in a recession and whether the term “recession” even matters.

“No, we aren’t, and no, it doesn’t,” Krugman replied.

“None of the usual criteria that real experts use says we’re in a recession right now,” Krugman continued.

“What does matter? The state of the economy is what it is. Jobs are abundant, although maybe the job market is weakening. Inflation is high, though maybe inflation is coming down. What does it matter whether you use the ‘r-word’ or not?” the economist added.

Recession?

Debate has swirled around whether the U.S. economy has fallen into a recession after a 0.9 percent contraction in the second-quarter GDP, which followed a 1.6 percent decline in the first quarter.

Two negative back-to-back quarterly GDP prints are a common practical definition for a recession, according to numerous experts and economists.

Formally, however, recessions in the United States are declared by a committee of economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), who use a broader definition than the two-quarter rule that considers a range of indicators—including employment—which has continued to grow.

The Biden administration has seized on the NBER’s criteria for declaring a downturn, insisting the economy isn’t in a recession.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said recently that that “most economists and most Americans” define a recession as a “broad-based weakening” of the U.S. economy that includes businesses shuttering in significant numbers and mass layoffs.

“That is not what we’re seeing right now when you look at the economy. Job creation is continuing, household finances remain strong, consumers are spending, and businesses are growing,” Yellen said.

A number of experts and economists disagree with the White House view.

‘We’re in a Recession. Full Stop’

Asked whether he accepts the Biden administration’s insistence that the country hasn’t yet slipped into a recession, Jim Bianco, founder of Bianco Research, told the Real Vision Finance program in a recent interview that, while it may be “shallow,” it’s a recession.

“Let me try and be clear here. Yes, we’re in a recession. Full stop, question over—a recession,” Bianco said.

Bianco said it may be reasonable to call the recession “shallow,” though he warned that the downturn could soon get ugly.

“Sure, alright, it’s a shallow recession. Check back Jan. 1 and let’s see if it’s still a shallow recession,” he added, while arguing that what the White House is doing with its messaging on the economic slowdown is nothing new.

Bianco spoke of White House pushback during the Carter administration in the late 1970s against economists warning that soaring inflation could lead to a depression. Out of that controversy, the word “recession” was born as a softer way to refer to an economic slump, Bianco said, adding that current administration efforts to deny that the economy is in a recession amount to more of the same.

“We used to call them depressions. In the 1930s, the Hoover administration went crazy because we used to call them ‘panics,’” Bianco said.

“Don’t call it a ‘panic,’ what we’re seeing, so they invented the word depression. So we went from ‘panic’ … the White House didn’t like that word, so we invented the word ‘depression.’ Then in 1978 they didn’t like the word ‘depression’ so we invented the word ‘recession.’”

“It seems like we’re now in the process of finding a new word to mean exactly the same thing,” Bianco said. “This is not new. We’ve done this now for 90 years between White Houses and recessions. So yes, it’s a recession.”

‘Especially Vitriolic’

In the CNN interview with Krugman, Stelter suggested that the debate between whether the economy is in a recession or not basically amounts to the White House following a time-worn strategy to downplay bad economic data while the administration’s political opponents do the opposite.

Replying, Krugman said that efforts to call the current slowdown a recession fall into a different category than standard debates.

“I would say that this is especially vitriolic,” Krugman asserted.

“I’ve been in this business for a couple of decades, and I get lots of hate mail and see stuff. I’ve never seen anything as bad as this. The determination of a lot of people to say it’s a recession is above and beyond anything I’ve ever seen,” he continued.

Asked what he thinks is driving this, Krugman chalked it up to partisan divisions.

“It’s partisanship. People want it. It’s the ‘Biden recession.’ They want their Biden recession. They’re going to have it, never mind the fact that … it’s not a recession in any technical sense,” he added.

Krugman’s remarks were met with a critical response by some prominent voices on Twitter.

‘Deja Vu’

British broadcaster Piers Morgan posted a message on Twitter saying that “[i]f Trump was still President, Krugman would definitely be saying it’s a recession,” suggesting that partisan spin around economic performance cuts both ways.

Cameron Winklevoss, founder of Winklevoss Capital Management, said in a post on Twitter: “I’m having deja vu watching Mr. ‘I was wrong about inflation’ dismiss the recession. Krugman is perhaps the most intellectually dishonest ‘real expert’ out there. Of course corporate media continues to give him a platform to spread misinformation.”

Krugman, who earlier predicted that the current inflationary wave would be a short-lived “transitory” phenomenon, admitted in the interview on CNN that he was “wrong about inflation,” which has remained stubbornly high in the United States and in June hit a 40-plus year high of 9.1 percent.

Still, the economist doesn’t believe he’s making another mistake by insisting the U.S. economy isn’t in a recession. Krugman took to Twitter to defend the view that the U.S. economy isn’t contracting, citing data on Gross Domestic Income (GDI) that suggests the U.S. economy has been growing continuously since the end of 2021, and other “inconsistencies” in the data.

“The inconsistencies have been especially large lately: GDP falling but GDI, which should be exactly the same, rising along with employment; industrial production up when the economy is supposedly down,” Krugman said in one of the posts.

“This kind of noise in the data explains why the NBER doesn’t rush to make recession calls, and relies on multiple indicators, not just GDP,” he continued.

“There’s a pretty good chance that we’ll eventually conclude that the economy, while slowing, actually grew” in the first half of 2022, Krugman argued.

‘Inflationary Depression’

By contrast, economist and investor Peter Schiff, founder of Euro Pacific Capital, told The Epoch Times in an earlier interview that he believes the United States is slumping into an “inflationary depression.”

“I think that the economic weakness is going to be so pronounced and over such a long period of time that it would not even do it justice to call a recession,” he said. “I think depression is going to be a more accurate description of what we’re going to go through.”

Schiff argued that the United States will spend most of this decade in a state of depression while, at the same time, “prices are going to rise much more in this decade than they did in the 1970s.”

Former President Donald Trump recently predicted that, under Joe Biden’s watch, the U.S. economy is heading for not just a recession, but a full-blown depression.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

A man who allegedly pistol-whipped a 70-year-old Asian man earlier this month met his match in a California martial arts center.

According to KXTV, 30-year-old Omari Garland of Faifield, California, allegedly assaulted an elderly man on July 7. Police said he eventually robbed the man at gunpoint and stole his cell phone.

In a video captured by a Ring doorbell camera at the victim’s house, he can be seen unlocking the door and trying to enter his house.

WARNING: The following video contains vulgar language that some viewers may find offensive.

Omari garland the man who pistol whipped a senior citizen at his own front door and robbed him in Fairfield is not as tough as he appears in his video at a local gym where he picks on the smallest person there and then asks for a timeout for himself. pic.twitter.com/p6RV7L2XvA

— Vallejo Crime and Safety (@VallejoCrime) July 29, 2022

A masked man ran up behind him and insisted he “take it out of your pockets.”

As the victim screamed for help, the suspect, identified as Garland, hit him multiple times in the head with the butt of his pistol. He took what police said was a cell phone from the victim and ran off.

Police were able to locate Garland and arrest him, and he was charged with felony robbery. Officers also recovered the victim’s phone, KXTV reported.

According to the Daily Republic, Garland posted his $45,000 bail on July 8, and his initial court appearance for early arraignment was set for Aug. 5.

This fact is important because it means Garland was walking free on Friday when a California martial arts gym called Train 4 Life Center said he entered and signed a waiver to train with them.

In a post on Instagram, the gym said Garland threatened a “much smaller man” and said, “I’ll beat you down.”

The gym said the man who was threatened was a coach, and he agreed to spar Garland for “spar week,” which takes place during the last week of the month.

“So, we let them spar and [Garland] quickly learned he messed with the wrong one, called Time-Out in the 1st round with 1:30 left on the clock…” the post said. “Gym justice served.”

In the video that accompanied the post, Garland can be seen calling timeout, at which point the person taking the video began to chastise him.

Related:

Fearless Woman Confronts Gang Breaking Into Her Car, Suspect Ends Up Riding Off in Ambulance Instead

“You come into my gym, you call out the smallest guy in my gym, and now you want to call a time out?” he said. He demanded Garland leave the gym.

In the post, Train 4 Life gym said it found through an internal investigation that Garland was the same man accused of assaulting a 70-year-old man on July 7.

While the identity of the man in the video has not been independently verified, the gym said it had a signed waiver proving it was Garland.

“How does Omari Garland FREELY WALK INTO OUR TRAINING FACILITY A MONTH AFTER ASSAULTING AN ELDERLY ASIAN MAN AT GUNPOINT?!” the gym wrote. “Then threaten a much smaller asian man at our facility?!?! Unacceptable.”

Train 4 Life is absolutely correct that Garland had no business walking free after allegedly assaulting an elderly man. He was charged with felony robbery, and there is no reason he should be allowed to walk the streets after posting a relatively low bail.

If the man in the video truly was Garland, he appears to have gotten what he deserved. The smaller coach landed some strong punches on him, and the fact that he called timeout indicated he was certainly not dominating the fight.

Since the Democrat-run state government in California seems unable to hold criminals accountable, it is refreshing to see another citizen teach Garland a lesson in a legal way.

REVIEW: ‘Any Given Tuesday’ by Lis Smith

Lis Smith’s relationship with politics is a lot like Hunter Biden’s relationship with crack cocaine. The high highs, the low lows. The seedy tabloid headlines. The “psychodialed” phone numbers. Addiction is hard to shake, especially when failing has no real consequences.

Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story is Smith’s account of her evolution from Dartmouth nerd dating her politics professor to full-blown campaign crackhead, from a lowly John Edwards volunteer to “one of the top communications aides in the Democratic Party.” (Her words.) The book also chronicles her search for love along the way. Spoiler alert: She has a thing for flawed older men.

Smith is certainly one of the least boring political consultants working today, and probably one of the least insane individuals advising Democratic politicians on how to win elections. That’s not a particularly high bar to clear, but still. Credit where credit is due. As evidenced by her starring role in the Mayor Pete documentary, in which she berates the failed presidential candidate for sounding like “the fucking Tin Man” “reading a fucking shopping list,” Smith is at her best when talking shit about her clients.

The several paragraphs Smith devotes to trashing former New York City mayor Bill de Blasio are particularly inspired. She absolutely roasts the gangly freak as a “childish, intellectually lazy, overconfident … and annoyingly condescending” weirdo with a penchant for “pseudo-intellectual, leftist, ooey-gooey mantras.” Smith recalls that, while interviewing for the job of campaign spokesperson, de Blasio was less interested in her résumé than he was with her “spiritual journey.” He reminded her of the “gross, unshowered guy in college who showed up to Philosophy 101 and hogged 10 minutes of class time to yell about the necessity of seizing the means of production because he’d read one line of a Communism for Dummies book.”

Smith, by contrast, is the foul-mouthed female frat star who pees in parking lots, goes to strip clubs with the boys, and threatens to shove balls down throats.  She’s also a tragic figure. The twitching junkie who can’t stop checking her phone at her twin brother’s wedding to find out “what the fuck is going on with Benghazi.” She is, somewhat refreshingly, an unrepentant DINO squish who has no patience for the woke libs and ascendant socialists gunning for the Democratic establishment. She rejects the “dogma of ideological purity pushed by some on the far-left wing of the party” as “arrogant and close-minded.” She accurately describes Louis Farrakhan as an anti-Semitic “hate monger”—an increasingly taboo opinion among party activists.

Any Given Tuesday is a story about how to succeed by failing. Smith honed her crisis communications skills by navigating her fair share of crises, both political and personal, and becoming “addicted to the drama.” She helped Claire McCaskill win her U.S. Senate race in 2006 despite being the target of a ruthless intraparty retribution scheme. After McCaskill said she didn’t want Bill Clinton near her daughter, Smith recalls, the Clintons literally made the candidate cry by pressuring top party donors to shun her. She worked for former governor Jon Corzine (D., N.J.), whose 2009 reelection bid ended in failure after being tainted by a massive corruption scandal. She fell in love with her boss—Eliot Spitzer, the disgraced former governor of New York.

In recounting the highs and lows of her career in political communications, Smith peels back the curtain on the cozy relationship between Democratic operatives and mainstream journalists. For example, before the right-leaning New York Post could report that she was dating the much older Spitzer, the couple deliberately leaked the story to a friendly outlet, the New York Daily News, which agreed to abide by the strict terms Smith dictated. (Years later, George Stephanopoulos pulled this same stunt on the Washington Free Beacon.) Smith recounts with glee how proud she was to have persuaded a journalist friend to ask Mitt Romney a hard question that elicited an inevitable gaffe.

At the same time, Smith offers a thoughtful critique of the mainstream media—that they’re more interested in viral soundbites and petty personal attacks than they are in substantive policy debates. Yet she triumphantly recalls her success in boosting Pete Buttigieg’s profile during the 2020 presidential campaign using the “unconventional” strategy of engineering viral soundbites and petty personal attacks aimed at then-vice president Mike Pence. Does anyone remember a single detail about Buttigieg’s policy platform? (Me neither.) Maybe that’s just how the game is played these days. Nevertheless, Smith’s borderline fanatical infatuation with Buttigieg—”one of the Democratic Party’s biggest stars”—raises serious doubts about her political instincts.

Meeting the former South Bend mayor was a disorienting experience, Smith writes, like the “day I heard Radiohead for the first time … [their] look, their vibe, and their sound was so different from what I was used to, but it was captivating.” She’d found “the one.” It’s a fitting analogy, given Buttigieg’s appeal to Radiohead’s core demographic: white nerds. For example, Smith recalls how Buttigieg supporters “created an intense online army that would welcome new Pete supporters with ‘digital hugs’ and swarm any Pete detractors with fact checks.” Fun!

Working for Buttigieg, who vastly exceeded expectations, helped restore Smith’s faith in the political process. “Pete … reaffirmed why I’d chosen this line of work in the first place,” she writes. Yet her suggestion that Buttigieg’s campaign was a political triumph as well is borderline delusional. At a time when Democrats are hemorrhaging minority voters, touting a candidate who barely registered a statistically significant level of support among black voters as the future of the party seems ill-advised. The same could be said about Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.), another failed candidate beloved by white professionals but hardly anyone else. It’s almost as if the Democratic elites are out of touch with the average Democratic voter.

That is certainly the impression one gets reading Smith’s anecdotes about the early days of the campaign. Far from bolstering her case for why Buttigieg is “the one,” they reveal what most Americans already know. The overeducated professionals who comprise the Democratic Party establishment and mainstream media are a bunch of self-obsessed weirdos easily infatuated with politicians who remind them of themselves. “He’s like JFK. He’s like Obama. He’s a once-in-a-generation talent,” one reporter told Smith after interviewing Buttigieg in 2017. She recalls that during a meeting with Buttigieg and MSNBC executives, she watched as network president Phil Griffin’s “eyes widened as he brought his hand to his mouth to hide the smile forming on his face.”

Smith will almost certainly get her chance to prove the Buttigieg skeptics (i.e., most Americans) wrong, perhaps as early as 2024. She could use another shot at redemption. The 2020 campaign must have felt like “riding bareback on a rocket,” as crack aficionado Hunter Biden so eloquently put it in his own memoir. That high was soon followed by the political equivalent of being held at gunpoint while trying to buy crack in Skid Row: helping disgraced then-governor Andrew Cuomo (D., N.Y.) navigate the sexual harassment scandal that led to his resignation. Smith sounds a regretful tone in the book, but her text messages at the time tell a difference story. “I’m texting w[ith] [MSNBC host] Katy Tur,” she bragged to a group of Cuomo aides and allies in March 2021. “Katy is saying my spin live. Like verbatim.”

It’s a hell of a drug.

Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story
by Lis Smith
Harper, 304 pp., $27.99

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

As an independent news organization dedicated to reporting the truth, The Epoch Times has been subjected to excessive censorship by Big Tech. 

In the latest such incident, Twitter on July 28 censored all of our content by putting up a blockade to our website, describing it as “unsafe,” and encouraging users not to proceed. 

Twitter’s actions—just like those by other tech giants such as Facebook and YouTube—specifically targeted the reach of our independent news and video content.

Twitter hasn’t responded to multiple requests for comment and appeal, nor has the company explained what led it to censor our content or what caused it to lift its blockage two days later following a public outcry.

The move by the social media giant came less than a week after we published our new documentary “The Real Story of January 6” and on the same day posted an interview with sex trafficking survivor Eliza Bleu, on our program “American Thought Leaders.”

While it remains unclear why Twitter targeted us, what is clear is that The Epoch Times is different from most other major news organizations, in that we dare to follow the stories where the facts lead.

In our Jan. 6 documentary, our reporters take an unvarnished look at the events of that day and present new witnesses and evidence that challenge the prevailing narratives. It provides extensive evidence of excessive use of force by police that broke protocol and policy, and raises questions on the lack of security that day. So far, the documentary has received more than half a million views on our EpochTV platform.

In recent years, there have been other major stories on which The Epoch Times, because of our independence and adherence to traditional journalism, has differed from other major news organizations, only to be proven right.

For example, The Epoch Times reported accurately on events surrounding allegations that then-candidate and later President Donald Trump had colluded with Russia. From day one, The Epoch Times reported on the facts and through our reporting uncovered significant problems with the FBI’s probe of Trump’s campaign, which included problematic conduct involving surveillance. 

While other news organizations won Pulitzers for their articles suggesting collusion between the president and Russia, The Epoch Times was, in fact, correct in reporting that the allegations had no support—as confirmed through investigations by special counsel Robert Mueller and the Department of Justice inspector general, as well as the ongoing probe of the origins of the FBI’s investigation by special counsel John Durham.

The Epoch Times was also among the first to report on the possibility that the novel coronavirus was leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. Our April 2020 documentary on the subject was censored by Facebook. Today, a lab leak is now held as the most likely explanation for the spread of the virus, by both media organizations and many government officials. 

The dangers of allowing platforms such as Twitter to take on the role of arbiter of the truth is that they, in many cases, are plainly wrong. The most prominent example was Twitter’s suppression of the New York Post over its reporting on a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden, the son of then-presidential candidate Joe Biden.

This censorship behavior, which is antithetical to the protections Big Tech receives under Section 230, has also raised concerns about social media platforms censoring content on behalf of the government. Most recently, a federal judge ordered the government to cooperate in a lawsuit that alleges behind-the-scenes efforts to target the dissemination of information of stories related to COVID-19—including its possible origins and alternative treatments—that didn’t fit the government’s narrative.

“Government can’t outsource its censorship to Big Tech,” Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt said.

Public Outcry

The public outcry against Twitter’s censorship of The Epoch Times was swift, with three U.S. senators publicly questioning the platform—which in recent years has repeatedly found itself in hot water for acts of censorship—over its targeting of the news organization. 

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) demanded that Twitter “explain itself for this outrageous act of censorship.”

Meanwhile, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) asked, “Where’s the respect for free speech and freedom of press, Twitter?”

“We all remember your biased censorship of [the New York Post] and how that ended for you,” Scott said.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) described the action by Twitter as “alarming.”

“Twitter is censoring [The Epoch Times] under the guise of ‘unsafe’ speech. Remember what happened the last time corporate media and big tech tried to censor my investigation on Hunter Biden corruption?” he wrote. “The truth always prevails.”

Kevin Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation, described Twitter’s action as “an outrageous act of censorship.”

Stanford professor Jay Bhattacharya called out Twitter’s suppression, writing: “It is perfectly safe to click through to the [Epoch Times] site in the quote tweet. For some reason, Twitter decided that today was a good day to suppress access to Epoch Times.”

Sex trafficking survivor Bleu, who was among the first to notice the censorship by Twitter due to its blockage of her interview with EpochTV’s program “American Thought Leaders,” posted a video condemning the platform’s actions that went viral. 

It also created a stir among Twitter users, with many condemning the platform’s actions. 

The Epoch Times wants to thank everyone who spoke out against this latest instance of censorship.

We will keep reporting the only way we know how, rooted in our tagline Truth & Tradition, without favor or fear. The fight for truth is one that has no shore and that is as old as the ages. We believe that only with brave individuals going the distance and striving to record the truth of what happens, can the world have an accurate picture of events and history.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Over the past week the entire mainstream media complex has launched an immense attack on my character, Gab, and Christianity itself–calling it a “toxic religion.” Echoing this hateful sentiment Jonathan Greenblatt–head of the Jewish Nationalist organization the ADL–called me “one of the most toxic people in public life right now” on national television. It’s interesting that his organization explicitly endorses, promotes, and defends Zionism, or Jewish Nationalism, while attacking me and others for promoting Christian Nationalism. Do as I say, not as I do. Unfortunately for Jonathan, Christians don’t answer to Jewish Nationalist organizations like the ADL and Godless media outlets. We answer to Jesus Christ. 

VIDEO: GAB Response to ADL

Discussion starts at 2 minutes 30 seconds in.

Naturally I responded to this media onslaught and defended the Gospel of Jesus Christ as well as my personal character. I said we are forming a Christian Nationalist movement and in order to be in any position of influence or leadership in the movement you must be a Christian. I said we are no longer going to answer to people who do not share our values and represent a diametrically different worldview that only 2% of the country holds. We are the 70%+ super majority in this country and we are going to do everything we can to take dominion and disciple this nation for the glory of Jesus Christ our King. 

In typical fashion the media machine has taken short clips from my 30-45 minute long show and twisted them into something that they are not to fit their narrative. What are they so afraid of? Certainly not me. The answer is Jesus Christ and the awakening of hundreds of millions of Christians across this country and around the world. As I have said in my previous articles and videos they have pushed us too far by locking down our churches, masking our children, and forcing us to inject a foreign substance in our bodies in order to keep our jobs. We are no longer being silent. The silent majority is getting loud and speaking the Truth of God’s Word and the Biblical worldview boldly. The Jonathan Greenblatts of the world are not going to tell us how to live our lives, run our businesses, or practive our faith ever again. 

What I hope to show to the millions of you who will read this is that if you double down and do not bend the knee when the mainstream media and our enemies call you a silly name, you win. That’s it. That’s the secret to surviving and thriving against their attacks. The weapons forged against you will not prevail if you stand strong in Truth. These people have great power, but we serve an all powerful God. We need to remember that and start acting like it. 

We need your help to fight back against this attack. For almost six years now Gab has been fully funded and kept online from support by people like you. We can’t do this without you. We ask for your prayers. We ask that you let your friends and family know about Gab to help us grow our community which has grown exclusively through word-of-mouth advertising since 2016.

Finally we ask that you prayerfully consider supporting us by upgrading to GabPRO, purchasing some merchandise from our shop, or running ads on Gab for your business to reach an audience of people who share your values. We don’t have big corporate investors or special interests funding this platform. It’s the grassroots support from people like you that keeps Gab online and we need your support now more than ever. 

To God Be The Glory,

Andrew Torba
CEO, Gab.com
Jesus Christ is King of Kings

Published in Christian Nationalism

TURNS OUT IT HAS BEEN THE RADICAL LEFT TAKING INSTRUCTION FROM THE KREMLIN.

The only demonstrable evidence of Russian interference in U.S. politics came quietly out of the U.S. Department of Justice today, with the unsealing of an indictment charging a Russian national with “orchestrating a years-long foreign malign influence campaign that used various U.S. political groups to sow discord, spread pro-Russian propaganda, and interfere in elections within the United States.”

The New York Times report on the subject buries the names of the groups allegedly utilized by the Russian government in the scheme, namely the “Uhuru Movement” of St. Petersburg, Florida, which is part of a wider entity known as the African People’s Socialist Party.

Joe Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) alleges that from “at least December 2014 until March 2022, Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov, a resident of Moscow, together with at least three Russian officials, engaged in a years-long foreign malign influence campaign targeting the United States. Ionov is the founder and president of the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia (AGMR), an organization headquartered in Moscow and funded by the Russian government. Ionov utilized AGMR to carry out Russia’s influence campaign.”

“Ionov allegedly orchestrated a brazen influence campaign, turning U.S. political groups and U.S. citizens into instruments of the Russian government,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division. “The Department of Justice will not allow Russia to unlawfully sow division and spread misinformation inside the United States.”

Ionov is alleged to have used his control over a handful of groups such as the Uhuru movement, in order “to spread pro-Russian propaganda under the guise of a domestic political organization, and to interfere in local elections,” the DOJ says.

One example cited stems from January 2016, when Ionov apparently guaranteed “financing for — and ultimately funded — a four-city protest tour undertaken by U.S. Political Group 1 in support of a ‘Petition on Crime of Genocide against African People in the United States’.”

In 2017 and 2019, Ionov is alleged to have supported two St. Petersburg, Florida, political campaigns, as well as further instructing Russian handlers of his campaigns. He is charged with conspiring to have U.S. citizens act as illegal agents of the Russian government – a crime with a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

Meanwhile, on a Facebook live post, Uhuru movement chairman Omali Yeshitela divulged that police had “handcuffed me and my wife,” before going on to discuss potential funding from “anyone else who wants to support the struggles for Black people.”

Ionov has previously been accused of raising funds for convicted Russian spy Maria Butina, who is now a Member of the State Duma in Russia. Butina targeted conservative groups like the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) having been given a student visa by the Obama administration.

The Pennsylvania Department of State counts 4 million registered Democratic voters in the state and 3.5 million Republicans as of May 2022. But even with 550,000 more Democrats than Republicans, Pennsylvania is not quite a blue state. It is more purple, with 1.3 million registered voters who call themselves libertarian, Green, or “other.” These are the less predictable voters, who make Pennsylvania a swing state, capable of going Democratic or Republican.

And with 19 electoral votes, it is a must-win for presidential hopefuls.

Many, but not all Pennsylvania Republicans, believe Donald Trump is still the person for the job. They say it is vital to regaining the power of the Oval Office.

“It’s absolutely central to our survival,” Schuylkill county author Russell S. Hepler told The Epoch Times. “And 2022 as well. I don’t want to underemphasize this upcoming election, because that’s going to lay the foundation for 2024, for good, or for bad.”

Hepler, a pastor was speaking as an individual, not for his congregation. His book is titled “Yes! We Can Turn This Nation Around!: A Practical Guide for Christian Political Involvement.”

Hepler says the United States is going in the wrong direction.

“If they keep pushing this radical leftist, economic, environmental, and cultural agenda, there isn’t going to be much left to America. When you’ve got a Supreme Court nominee who can’t even define a woman, we know this nation is in serious trouble,” Hepler said. “You can’t survive if you deny reality. That has been the basis for Marxism since its beginning. It’s always based on lies. It’s based on, ‘whatever I say the truth is,’ as the government, as the party, as the big brother.’”

Rick Rathfon, chairman of Clarion County Republican party, agrees that winning is critical for Republicans.

“Look at the mess that Biden has got us into in just 18 months. I mean, we need to take both the House and Senate back in November and to try to restore sanity and dignity in Washington,” Rathfon told The Epoch Times adding that if former President Donald Trump runs, he would support him.

But it will be ugly.

One Party, Two Views

Democrats will be out to destroy Trump from day one, Rathfon said. “They’ve never quit trying to destroy him. Trump did a lot of good things for our country. He absolutely did. But I think it would be a mistake for him to run, just because of the hatred that the Democrats and the mainstream media have for him.”

“I love Governor Ron DeSantis from Florida. I hear that in my travels, and from a lot of state committee people.”

The Pennsylvania Republican Party did not respond to requests for comment in this story.

Sam Faddis is a retired CIA operations officer and author of “Beyond Repair: The Decline and Fall of the CIA” and “Willful Neglect: The Dangerous Illusion of Homeland Security.” Faddis has spoken to many Republicans as an organizer of a coalition of more than 75 patriot groups across Pennsylvania that are working together on election reform and other issues.

The majority of Pennsylvania’s Republican voters consider themselves “Make America Great Again/America first” people Faddis said, and they are 100 percent behind Donald Trump on the issues, even if they sometimes have questions about his tactics.

Issues are the center of gravity overwhelmingly for the Republican Party in Pennsylvania, he says.

“There is a gap about the size of the Grand Canyon between those [MAGA] people and a very large number of established Republican politicians sitting in Harrisburg,” Faddis told The Epoch Times.

“While I know the establishment does not want to recognize that fact—they want to continue to pretend like that issue doesn’t exist—for the base, that is kind of the issue.”

The base does not feel like establishment Republicans are representing people and what they stand for, he said.

“We’re over here with Donald Trump again, at least on all of the issues, and you guys want to pretend like 2016 never happened.”

Trump is Different

The problem is that Trump is fundamentally different from any president that came before him in recent memory, Republican or Democrat, Faddis said.

“He’s totally outside the system. He’s not part of the uni-party.”

The establishment in both parties have a general consensus on how America’s government is going to be run, Faddis said. That is, always bigger, always more expensive.

“Donald Trump is a wrecking ball, so of course he has to be destroyed as far as the establishment is concerned,” Faddis said.

If the Republican who runs is not MAGA, their campaign is dead-on-arrival in Pennsylvania, Faddis said. And he believes it would be a waste of time for another MAGA-minded candidate to challenge Trump.

“If Donald Trump runs, he will, head and shoulders, without any question, be the choice,” Faddis said. “There’s no question. I can’t imagine that another MAGA-type person could challenge him in the primary in Pennsylvania and have any hope of winning. That’s not possible.”

If Trump decides not to run, Faddis believes DeSantis would be the number one person that the most voters would instantaneously coalesce around.

“I think that, frankly, would be a smart political move, because in some ways, I think DeSantis is a less controversial guy than Trump, for the middle,” Faddis said.

“I can’t conceive of anybody, even a dyed-in-the-wool guy like Ron DeSantis, beating Trump in Pennsylvania. I mean, DeSantis is very popular here. And I love his policies. But you could not possibly convince the base to walk away from Donald Trump as it stands.”

Primary Fight

Several Republicans indicated that they don’t want to see DeSantis and Trump battle in a primary. For many, it would be like watching parents fight when you love them both and don’t want to choose a favorite.

Toni Shuppe, founder and CEO of Audit the Vote PA, has been investigating anomalies in the 2020 election since right after it happened.

“I personally believe, based on what I found through Audit the Vote, that Donald Trump won in 2020,” Shuppe told The Epoch Times. “I feel like he won the first time, he deserves his second term. I would vote for him if he runs. But I also really like Ron DeSantis.”

For most folks in this story, the dream ticket would be Trump and DeSantis, although not everyone is convinced DeSantis would be willing to take a vice presidential role when he could govern Florida instead.

For Shuppe, the dream ticket would be Trump and South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem. “DeSantis is young. He’s doing such a good job in Florida. I would like to see Trump and Kristi, and then potentially, eight years of DeSantis,” Shuppe said. “I think, in order to get the country back on track, restoring our constitutional republic, it’s going to take a long time. And I think that that is why a Trump-and-somebody-else ticket makes sense first, followed by eight years of someone like Ron DeSantis. That could really get things moving in the right direction.”

Kurt Dock, a Lancaster Township Republican Committee member, would like to see Trump run, but if he doesn’t, Dock believes the Republican party has strong candidates in Noem and DeSantis.

He says the Democrats have moved too far left.

“When the pendulum swings one way and goes so extreme, it usually comes back just that hard the other way,” Dock said.

“I would like to see someone a little bit more centrist. Not so much to the right. Instead of continuing the alienation, try to get some of the people that are very center, or center-left to come to our side. I don’t think it would be that tough to do.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Veteran Dem political consultant Mandy Grunwald received thousands of dollars for virtual sessions

The administration directing taxpayer funds to political consulting firms is not the scandal it used to be.

A Politico report this week on the Biden administration spending tens of thousands of dollars for a Democratic political consultant to do media training for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Rochelle Walensky was treated as a non-scandal. The spending was revealed by the outlet in its Wednesday night West Wing Playbook newsletter, with two experts quoted who both credited Walensky for enlisting help.

“Kudos to her for understanding that that is actually important to prioritize,” said one, with the other noting that, while the spending “seems extravagant to most lay people,” it’s really quite reasonable.

The previous administration wasn’t given the same pass. When the Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services paid a consulting firm run by Republican operatives for “strategic communications” support, Politico in March 2019 published 2,000 words on the spending and said it raised “ethical questions.” The coverage pushed the Trump administration to suspend the contract in question. Critics of Trump said the spending was an example of the administration’s “routine corruption.”

The Biden administration’s payments for Walensky’s media training were for explicitly political purposes. It brought in veteran liberal operative Mandy Grunwald’s firm to virtually train Walensky after she faced criticism in liberal media for “messaging missteps,” including one instance in which she said vaccinated people “do not carry” COVID-19. The missteps were hurting the flailing Biden administration in the polls amid the coronavirus pandemic.

In addition to Grunwald’s work with Clinton, the Democratic consultant has also worked with Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.), Tammy Baldwin (D., Wis.), Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.), and John Hickenlooper (D., Colo.). Grunwald also served as director of advertising on Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign. She has contributed more than $36,000 to liberal politicians and groups since 1993, federal campaign finance disclosures show.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

The word is conspicuously absent from media coverage of the monkeypox outbreak

HIV part 2. Thank you butt buddies!! [US Patriot]

Mainstream journalists have adopted what critics are calling a “don’t say gay” approach to covering the monkeypox outbreak in the United States. The media’s coverage of monkeypox, which officials in New York and California have declared a threat to public health amid rising case numbers, has studiously avoided using the word “gay” when discussing the individuals who are most at risk of contracting the viral disease.

Journalists insist on using the phrase “men who have sex with men”—decades-old terminology often used during the AIDS epidemic—to explain the fact that gay and bisexual men comprise about 98 percent of more than 18,000 monkeypox cases worldwide. Some left-wing activists have argued that even pointing this out is “stigmatizing,” while more sane individuals have suggested this is “particularly important information for gay men to know.”

Some “don’t say gay” advocates want to go even further. Earlier this week, New York City health commissioner Ashwin Vasan called on the World Health Organization to rename the monkeypox virus due to “a growing concern for the potentially stigmatizing effects that the messaging around the ‘monkeypox’ virus can have on vulnerable communities.”

It is unclear whether the media’s refusal to say “gay” is related to Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Law, known to mainstream journalists and other critics as the “don’t say gay” law.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

The social media company ‘must explain itself for this outrageous act of censorship,’ Senator Marco Rubio says

Twitter on July 28 imposed a blockade on all content from The Epoch Times without explanation, raising further concerns about freedom of speech on the platform and drawing ire from three U.S. senators.

The platform enforced a warning on all links from The Epoch Times. A click on a link directs users to a page titled “Warning: this link may be unsafe,” which prompts users to return to the previous page.

“The link you are trying to access has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially spammy or unsafe,” the warning stated, citing Twitter’s URL policy.

We are aware that Twitter has marked all links to https://t.co/copOc5TSA6 as “unsafe.” We believe this is a mistake and we have submitted a review to @TwitterSupport. pic.twitter.com/UyFqoiaUkq

— The Epoch Times (@EpochTimes) July 29, 2022

The notice said that the link could fall into any of four categories: “malicious links that could steal personal information or harm electronic devices”; “spammy links that mislead people or disrupt their experience”; “violent or misleading content that could lead to real-world harm”; or content that “if posted directly on Twitter, are a violation of the Twitter Rules.”

Twitter’s warning page allows users to proceed to the Epoch Times link if they click on the word “continue” at the very bottom of the page.

The platform has not responded to multiple requests from The Epoch Times for clarification.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), vice chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who serves on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who serves on the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs,  decried the move as an act of censorship.

“Twitter is blocking all links to @EpochTimes, including a story about a human trafficking survivor, and labeling them as ‘spammy’ and ‘unsafe.’ Twitter must explain itself for this outrageous act of censorship,” Rubio wrote in a July 29 tweet.

Johnson described Twitter’s action as “alarming.”

“Twitter is censoring @EpochTimes under the guise of ‘unsafe’ speech. Remember what happened the last time corporate media and big tech tried to censor my investigation on Hunter Biden corruption?” he wrote. “The truth always prevails.”

Scott asked Twitter in a July 29 tweet “where’s the respect for free speech and freedom of press, Twitter.”

“We all remember your biased censorship of [The New York Post] and how that ended for you,” Scott said.

Human Trafficking Interview Censored

Among the first to be affected by Twitter’s blockade was Eliza Bleu, a human trafficking survivor. In an interview that premiered at 7:30 p.m. ET on Thursday, Bleu shared about how abusers groomed her by preying on her vulnerabilities.

Bleu tried to repost the link after watching the interview, and to her surprise and dismay, found that she “couldn’t even click on the link.”

“I’m pretty disheartened that the interview link was labeled as unsafe, because it’s not unsafe,” she told The Epoch Times.

“By watching the interview, anyone can tell it’s pretty educational,” she said. “I wasn’t talking about anything that wasn’t factual. I was just really just trying to educate, raise awareness, and bring attention to the issue.”

She added that the link seemed to be accessible when the interview first aired but became blocked sometime afterward.

Twitter Targets American Media, Not Chinese State Media

The Epoch Times was founded in 2000 by Chinese Americans who fled communist China and sought to create an independent media outlet to bring uncensored and truthful information to the world.

At least 10 staff members for The Epoch Times were arrested that year in China, with one editor-in-chief spending a decade in prison.

While operating outside of China, the media outlet has remained a consistent target of attacks from the Chinese regime over the past two decades.

The printing press of the Hong Kong edition of The Epoch Times has suffered a series of violent break-ins, including arson, over the years, viewed as attempts by Beijing to intimidate the publication. In an official statement last year, resident Joe Biden’s State Department condemnded an attack on an Epoch Times reporter in Hong Kong.

Major Chinese state media, by contrast, remain accessible on the platform as of press time.

Jeffrey Tucker, founder of the Brownstone Institute think tank and a contributor for The Epoch Times, also expressed his shock.

“The @EpochTimes, the entire media complex, has been declared by Twitter to be unsafe. This stuns me, even though I thought I was beyond shock at this point,” he wrote.

Ivan Pentchoukov contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

With an expected GOP takeover of the U.S. House of Representatives following November’s midterm elections, Republicans in the chamber are poised to launch a slew of investigations aimed at dialing up the pressure on the Biden administration over a range of issues—from border security to Hunter Biden to the origins of the pandemic.

Domestic concerns faced by everyday Americans—most notably a historic inflation rate—will be key priorities, according to Chair of the House Republican Conference Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.).

House Republicans will take the administration to task on alleged “policy failures that have created an inflation crisis, energy crisis, border crisis, and crime crisis impacting every American family,” Stefanik told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.

Big Tech’s censorship of conservative voices will also be scrutinized, she added.

On the foreign policy front, the Biden administration’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Chinese Communist Party’s influence in the United States and abroad, and U.S. strategy toward Iran are set to come under focus.

Republicans are already laying the groundwork to take on “an aggressive oversight role” next year by issuing preservation notices and document requests so a potential GOP majority “will be ready to hold the Biden administration accountable from day one,” a House GOP leadership aide told The Epoch Times in an email.

Oversight Committee

Many of the inquiries are expected to be spearheaded by the powerful House Committee on Oversight and Reform, the chamber’s main investigative panel that has broad authority to scrutinize various facets of the administration.

The committee’s ranking member James Comer (R-Ky.), who is poised to take the chair should the Republicans flip the House, foreshadowed an ambitious agenda by a GOP-led panel.

“[W]e will return the House Oversight and Reform Committee to its core mission of rooting out waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in the federal government and holding the Executive Branch accountable,” Comer told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.

Another committee member Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Texas) had a clear message for the Biden administration via email to The Epoch Times: “Their days of corruption, fraud, and abuse will no longer be met with blind eyes.”

Hunter Biden

Chief among a GOP-led House Oversight Committee’s priorities is an investigation into Hunter Biden and his foreign business dealings.

For more than two years, the president’s son has been at the center of growing controversy over his overseas business activities, including in Ukraine, Russia, and China, conducted while Biden was vice president in the Obama administration.

Hunter is currently the subject of a federal investigation being run out of Delaware and, according to a recent CNN report citing unnamed sources, it is “nearing a critical juncture.”

Hunter has previously denied wrongdoing, and the elder Biden has maintained that he has never discussed Hunter’s business activities with his son.

The president’s son’s extensive financial dealings with foreign individuals and businesses, raise concerns about conflicts of interests, illegal lobbying, and whether his ties influenced U.S. foreign policy during the Obama administration, critics say.

Republicans have honed in on Hunter’s work for Ukrainian gas firm Burisma, while his father was the Obama administration’s point-man on Ukraine, and Hunter’s dealings with several Chinese companies and businessmen with links to the Chinese Communist Party.

“We will continue to conduct oversight of Hunter Biden and the Biden Family’s pattern of peddling access to the highest levels of government to enrich themselves,” Comer said.

“They have racked up over 150 suspicious activity reports for their foreign business deals, which is a national security threat,” the lawmaker said, referring to a CBS report saying that U.S. banks had flagged more than 150 financial transactions involving Hunter or the president’s brother, James, for further review by the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. Some of the transactions involved large wire transfers, the report said.

“We need to know if resident Biden benefited financially from these deals and if he is beholden to the interests of foreign adversaries,” Comer said.

COVID-19 Origins

The ranking member highlighted that the committee would continue to investigate the origins of COVID-19, focusing on the possibility that the pandemic was the result of a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China.

“Growing evidence shows COVID-19 likely originated from the Wuhan Lab and the Communist Party of China covered it up,” Comer said.

An array of circumstantial evidence has prompted some officials and scientists to point to the WIV as the most likely source of the pandemic. These include the WIV’s gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses, reports that staff members became sick with symptoms consistent with both seasonal flu and COVID-19 in the fall of 2019, before the Chinese regime acknowledged the outbreak, and that a WIV public database of 22,000 samples and viral sequences was taken offline in September 2019 before the onset of the pandemic.

The Chinese regime’s persistent refusal to allow outside access to the lab and its data has made it nearly impossible to fully investigate the lab leak theory.

Domestically, the potential role of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in aiding WIV’s activities has been viewed with particular alarm by Republicans, who are looking to intensify the inquiry. The NIH has previously funded WIV via New York-based health nonprofit EcoHealth, including one grant that amounted to what experts have described as gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses.

“We will seek to hold U.S. government officials accountable for any wrongdoing, and ensure Americans’ tax dollars aren’t being used on risky research at unsecure labs,” Comer said.

Other Key Priorities

The ongoing struggle by the administration to control the flow of illegal immigration at the U.S.–Mexico border is set to become another focal point for Republicans serving on the House Oversight Committee, and other panels.

“We will also continue our oversight of Biden’s border crisis that has led to historic illegal immigration, a surge of deadly drugs pouring across the border, and mismanagement of taxpayer dollars,” Comer said.

With a GOP-led House Energy and Commerce Committee, Biden’s energy policies amid a deepening global squeeze on oil and gas are expected to come under close scrutiny.

“We will build on our robust oversight over how the administration is censoring conservative speech, shutting down American energy and increasing gas prices, abusing its public health emergency powers, [and] colluding with political allies like teacher’s unions,” a spokesperson for Energy and Commerce Republicans told The Epoch Times in an email.

Meanwhile, a Republican-led House Financial Services Committee would focus on probing regulatory agencies’ alleged efforts to impose a “far-left agenda” on the U.S. financial system, as well as the Biden administration’s implementation of the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus package known as the American Rescue Plan, said Laura Peavey, communications director for the House Financial Services GOP, in an email to The Epoch Times.

The Epoch Times has reached out to the White House for comment.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The ‘harm reduction’ clinics allow addicts to use illicit drugs under supervision

The Biden administration is considering federal support for legalized injection sites, according to a report.

Dr. Rahul Gupta, the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, said the White House is “enthusiastically waiting” for the Department of Justice to rule on the legality of clinics that allow people to use illicit drugs with supervision. The New York Times reported Tuesday that Gupta’s “eyes lit up” when asked about injection sites, which are illegal under federal law. The comments came in response to questions about a 2019 Justice Department ruling that shut down a Philadelphia injection site.

Gupta’s reported openness to legalized injection sites is emblematic of the White House’s focus on “harm reduction,” an ideology that aims to make drug use safer for addicts, rather than prevent consumption. The Washington Free Beacon in February reported that the Biden administration was set to fund the distribution of crack pipes through its $30 million harm reduction program. The Times later reported that the Free Beacon story “derailed” the Biden administration’s drug policy in response to public backlash.

New York City in November opened the country’s first injection sites, which the Biden administration allowed to operate. The privately run centers supervise drug users to prevent and treat overdoses. The Justice Department’s forthcoming decision on the Philadelphia injection site could lead to a boost in sites around the country and allow federal funding.

Gupta spoke to the Times in Manchester, N.H., a city that has pushed back against privately run needle exchange programs. Elected city officials criticized the New Hampshire Harm Reduction Coalition for a lack of coordination with its government. The city council last year banned needle exchanges in parks by a 12-1 vote.

Paul Lessard, 58, grew up in Manchester and worked for the New Hampshire Department of Transportation before he retired and later found himself homeless last year. Lessard said he has seen drug addicts on several occasions rush to grab used needles out of the exchange boxes that are intended to be discarded. The city’s drug addicts, he said, have become increasingly violent.

“I was in the alleyway the other day and some girl stripped down totally naked and she was freaking out and going through the motions,” Lessard told the Free Beacon. “I walked by her and said, ‘Please don’t touch me.’ She was fucked up on something.”

Federal support for injection sites would likely face backlash in Congress. Although the Biden administration continues to claim crack pipes are not funded through its harm reduction programs, Congress advanced two bipartisan bills this year that ban federal funding for crack pipes. The Daily Caller in July obtained crack pipes at a harm reduction center in New York City that received funding through the Biden administration’s $30 million harm reduction grant program that launched in May. A Caller journalist was reportedly asked to smoke crack in a supervised room in the New York Harm Reduction Educators center.

Before he joined the Biden administration, Gupta expressed skepticism about harm reduction sites. As West Virginia’s public health commissioner, Gupta supported the decertification of a harm reduction program in Charleston described by the city’s mayor as a “needle mill” that increased crime.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Navi Pillay is standing by Miloon Kothari after anti-Semitic comments

The United Nations official in charge of an investigation into Israel is standing by a colleague who came under fire this week for claiming social media platforms are controlled by a “Jewish lobby.”

Navi Pillay, chairwoman of the U.N. investigation into alleged Israeli human rights crimes, says her colleague, Miloon Kothari, is being unfairly accused of anti-Semitism after he stated in an interview this week that social media are controlled by an all-powerful “Jewish lobby” that throws around “a lot of money.”

Pillay defended the remarks, saying in a letter sent Thursday to the president of the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC), which helms the Israel investigation, that Kothari was “deliberately misquoted.” A copy of the letter, which was written after the UNHRC’s president raised concerns about the comments, was provided to the Washington Free Beacon by U.N. officials.

Kothari was “deliberately misquoted to imply that ‘social media’ was controlled by the Jewish lobby,” Pillay says in the letter, though she does not specify how Kothari was misquoted. Pillay also said that those critical of Kothari’s comments are attempting to discredit the U.N. investigation into Israel, which has been dogged by accusations it is biased and fueled by animosity toward the Jewish state.

“The commission takes great exception to personal attacks against individual commissioners appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council. Such attacks have been continuously directed against all three commissioners throughout our tenure, and it is to this that Commissioner Kothari was making reference,” Pillay wrote.

Kothari in an interview with the anti-Zionist website Mondoweiss said the “Jewish lobby” is behind social media efforts attempting to discredit the ongoing probe into Israel.

“We are very disheartened by the social media that is controlled largely by whether it’s the Jewish lobby or it’s the specific [nonprofit groups],” Kothari said. “A lot of money is being thrown into trying to discredit us.”

Kothari also questioned Israel’s membership in the United Nations.

“I would go as far as to raise the question of why [Israel is] even a member of the United Nations,” he said. “The Israeli government does not respect its own obligations as a U.N. member state. They, in fact, consistently, either directly or through the United States, try to undermine U.N. mechanisms.”

Kothari’s comments were labeled anti-Semitic by pro-Israel groups, the Free Beacon reported on Wednesday.

Pillay in her letter launched attacks on the Israeli government for its refusal to cooperate with the investigation, which Israel is boycotting due to concerns the commission is trying to demonize the Jewish state.

“The commission continues to highlight the refusal of Israel to cooperate with the Commission of Inquiry as well as abide by its international obligations to end the occupation and fulfill the right of Palestinians to self-determination,” Pillay wrote.

“Commissioner Kothari’s comments reflect the commission’s disappointment with the continued lack of cooperation and address the issue that as a member of the United Nations, Israel is under an obligation to abide by the international legal framework, as well as independent bodies set up by the United Nations,” Pillay wrote.

Pillay also defended Commissioner Christopher Sidoti, who came under fire in recent weeks for comments that Israeli officials called anti-Semitic.

A U.N. Human Rights Council spokesman told the Free Beacon that it has a zero-tolerance policy on anti-Semitism.

“The Human Rights Council takes a vigilant stance against anti-Semitism, including any comments or actions seen as stigmatizing the Jewish people,” the official said. “The council has a long track record speaking out against all forms of discrimination and racism and vehemently condemns such abhorrent acts.”

U.S. officials at the United Nations, including Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism Deborah Lipstadt, said on Thursday that Kothari’s comments represent a “persistent venom” that has “poisoned” the international body.

“Anti-Semitism and anti-Israel bias are a persistent venom that for far too long has poisoned international discourse and polluted international organizations, including the United Nations,” Lipstadt said in a joint statement with Michèle Taylor, the U.S. permanent representative to the U.N. Human Rights Council.  “The United States condemns it unequivocally.”

Kothari’s comments, Lipstadt and Taylor said, echo “age-old anti-Semitic tropes” and are “outrageous, inappropriate, and corrosive.”

Anne Bayefsky, president of Human Rights Voices and director of Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, which combats anti-Semitism, said Pillay’s letter demonstrates the entire Israel commission is biased.

“The letter of Navi Pillay defending the clearly outrageous anti-Semitic remarks of her colleague on the U.N. Human Rights Council inquiry makes one thing abundantly clear: The problem isn’t just Kothari,” Bayefsky said. “The problem is the inquiry itself and all three of its members starting with Pillay herself. The very reason that Pillay, Kothari, and Chris Sidoti were chosen for the job was because they are all well-known wildly anti-Israel militants. Their appointments were totally at odds with U.N. requirements of impartiality and objectivity.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

After a video published by the White House made its way online Monday, Twitter users noticed some strange things about the video’s editing and resident Joe Biden’s appearance.

In the 11-minute video, multiple cuts interrupted Biden’s speech, giving the impression he must have messed up repeatedly during the recording. Additionally, Biden rarely blinked and his voice sounded hoarse the longer he continued talking.

Delivered virtual, pre-recorded remarks to the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives Conference, the president discussed his administration’s efforts to support police officers and ban assault weapons.

“To me, it’s simple. If you can’t support banning weapons of war on American streets, you’re not on the side of police,” Biden said.

Many cuts were used to stitch the White House video together, an editing choice of which conservatives gladly made fun.

More jump-cuts than an Edgar Wright film https://t.co/EBR7noCOqY

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) July 27, 2022

The Daily Wire’s official Twitter account also mocked the president’s lack of blinking, while one of the outlet’s hosts suggested Biden could have consumed a stimulant drug before the recording.

White House: If you don’t blink for the whole video, we’ll give you ice cream
Biden:pic.twitter.com/5v8n4t5PBC

— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) July 26, 2022

Joe Biden would not be the first Democrat president to be injected with uppers in the White House. And it would make sense considering Biden was already 21 years old when it was happening to this guy: pic.twitter.com/e39mwAYI4Z

— Michael Knowles (@michaeljknowles) July 27, 2022

Another user posted two back-to-back clips of Biden, contrasting his physical appearance and voice. The first showed the president supposedly looking normal, while the aforementioned second video looked off.

Here’s the two videos back and forth. Pay attention to his physical appearance and his voice. Again, both supposedly from today, both only a few hours apart. What the hell is happening here? 🧐 pic.twitter.com/VjB2pjJZPn

— Five Times August (@FiveTimesAugust) July 27, 2022

US GDP Shrinks Again – Unofficial Definition Indicates Recession Just 2 Years After the Last One

In the video addressed to the NOBLE conference, Biden bragged about his 2021 American Rescue Plan, which provided upwards of $350 billion to cities and states struggling economically after the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.

The stimulus package bill cost a total of $1.9 trillion, according to SmartAsset.

“Over $10 billion of that money, of that funding, is being used to keep cops on the job, build new training facilities, enhance gun investigations and prosecutions and violence intervention programs,” Biden said.

He also used his praise for the police as a political opportunity to double down on Democratic criticism of Donald Trump’s alleged role on Jan. 6, saying the former president “lacked the courage to act.”

“The Capitol police, the D.C. metropolitan police, other law enforcement agencies were attacked and assaulted before our very eyes, speared, sprayed, stomped on, brutalized and lives were lost,” Biden said. “And for three hours, the defeated former president of the United States watched it all happen as he sat in the comfort of the private dining room next to the Oval Office.”

“You can’t be pro insurrection and pro cop. You can’t be pro insurrection and pro democracy. You can’t be pro insurrection and pro American.”

After a long week of constant violence, the Portland, Oregon, police chief took to Twitter with what amounted to a plea to criminals in the community to stop their behavior.

“The violence shown last night toward officers and over the weekend is shocking and reprehensible. In the last four days, officers have been shot at, had suspects fight with them, run over by a vehicle and another almost run over,” Chief of Portland Police Chuck Lovell posted to Twitter on Tuesday.

Several violent acts overwhelmed the city’s police department last week, Fox News reported.

One such incident involved a suspect hitting two police cruisers with his truck and almost running over a cop. The suspect, who was confronted by police for reports of gunshots nearby, escaped in his vehicle.

A separate incident saw an officer get hit by a vehicle during a stolen vehicle investigation. The officer was rushed to the hospital for their wounds, according to KGW-TV.

Portland cops were also involved in an altercation with a domestic violence suspect, resulting in the criminal’s death after he pulled out a gun.

Lovell continued his Twitter post by trying to remind the city — including its criminals — that his officers “deserve to go home at night” alive. Law-abiding citizens don’t need to be told that.

Officers are answering 911 emergency calls trying to help people. They deserve to go home at night to their loved ones. They deserve and need the community’s support as they continue to help make a difference in this city.

— Chief Chuck Lovell (@ChiefCLovell) July 26, 2022

Rank-and-file members of the department aren’t happy either.

“It’s beginning to get frustrating for the officers and hopefully members of the community are getting frustrated, as well,” Portland police Officer Derek Carmon told KGW.

Crime in the liberal city has gotten worse over the past two years, especially after the death of George Floyd in May 2020. Because of this, Portland has seen its fair share of “defund the police” and other social justice movements.

The coronavirus pandemic did not help matters either as citizens were told by the federal and state governments to coop up inside their homes for several weeks.

Despite the City Council’s attempt to appease activists by cutting funding for the Portland Police Bureau in 2020, the city did not see a decrease in violence.

In fact, continued violence forced the city council to add $5.2 million worth of funds back into the police department in November 2021, PBS reported.

Just a month ago, the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling led riotous protesters to damage local businesses.

Worst Rioter of 2020 Busted After Leaving the Price Tag on His Own Botched Molotov Cocktail

Last week’s incidents only added to this ongoing issue for the Oregonian city.

Miloon Kothari is part of a commission to investigate alleged Israeli crimes

A United Nations official investigating alleged Israeli crimes said in an interview that social media platforms are controlled by an all-powerful “Jewish lobby.”

Miloon Kothari, a member of a U.N. Commission of Inquiry that is leading what critics say is a biased investigation against Israel, made the comments during an interview this week with Mondoweiss, an anti-Zionist blog that has been dogged by accusations it amplifies anti-Semitic hatred of Israel and Jews.

“We are very disheartened by the social media that is controlled largely by whether it’s the Jewish lobby or it’s the specific [nonprofit groups],” Kothari said. “A lot of money is being thrown into trying to discredit us.”

Pro-Israel organizations say the investigation into Israel is biased due to its broad mandate and open-ended nature and that Kothari’s comments are another sign the investigation will be unfair to Israel. The commission is tasked with identifying the root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It already has concluded in one report that “Israel has no intention of ending the occupation”—language that critics of the probe say reveals the inquiry’s implicit bias against the Jewish state.

“There really is no way to avoid describing this outburst by Mr. Kothari as anything but a grotesque display of anti-Semitism,” Anne Bayefsky, president of Human Rights Voices and director of Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, which combats anti-Semitism, told the Washington Free Beacon. “The legitimacy of this U.N inquiry is shot. It is an ‘inquiry’ supposedly about ‘systematic discrimination’ whose purpose and practice is to engage in systematic discrimination—against the Jewish state and Jews.”

Arsen Ostrovsky, a human rights attorney and CEO of the pro-Israel International Legal Forum, said the comments mark “a despicable new low, even for the U.N. Kothari’s accusations, which are replete with age-old antisemitic tropes and unhinged Jew hatred, only underscore the gross illegitimacy and bias of this one-sided Commission of Inquiry assault on Israel.”

Ostrovsky’s legal group issued an independent report in May highlighting what it said is prevalent anti-Israel bias in the U.N. investigation of Israel.

Kothari in the interview indicated that he views Israel as an apartheid state but said that term is “not sufficient” to characterize the whole situation.

“We don’t think it’s sufficient to capture the enormity of what has happened in the area,” Kothari said when asked about the subject. The commission “will get to the apartheid question, at some point in the future, because we will be looking at discrimination in general, from the River to the Sea.” The term “from the river to the sea” is often employed by Palestinian leaders who believe Israel has no right to exist and that a Palestinian nation should extend through all parts of the modern-day Jewish state.

Israel’s claim on disputed areas has “been illegal from the beginning,” according to Kothari, who also said Israel does not deserve to be a member of the United Nations.

“I would go as far as to raise the question of why [Israel is] even a member of the United Nations,” he said. “The Israeli government does not respect its own obligations as a U.N. member state. They, in fact, consistently, either directly or through the United States, try to undermine U.N. mechanisms.”

The U.N. commission on which Kothari serves was established in the wake of Israel’s 2021 war with Palestinian terror groups, including Hamas. The inquiry was ordered by the U.N. Human Rights Council, a hotbed for anti-Israel activity. The Trump administration pulled the United States out of the council as a result of this bias, but resident Joe Biden rejoined soon after taking office. The Israel commission, which the Biden administration helps to fund, is scheduled in the next several months to report its finding to the organization’s General Assembly.

Kothari disclosed that members of the Israeli inquiry are planning travel to the United States so that they can rally support for their cause with members of Congress. They also are hoping to persuade the Biden administration to drop its opposition to the probe.

Bayefsky, who has been closely tracking the commission’s investigation, said it is unprecedented for members of a U.N. probe to lobby U.S. lawmakers on the issue.

“It needs to be asked who authorized this visit, and in light of this outrageous statement, such authorization needs to be immediately rescinded,” she said. “The official mandate of this U.N. inquiry does not include becoming congressional lobbyists. No member of a U.N. country-specific inquiry on official business can waltz into the United States without permission.”

In light of Kothari’s comment, Bayefsky said, “The right thing to do is to defund and disband a mission that brings the U.N. and its top human rights body into deep disrepute.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Disney confirmed in a statement to Axios it will change Hulu’s advertising policies to allow political advertising. The decision comes only two days after the company denied ads created by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Governors Association. The denial had sparked online outrage among Democrats.

The ads that prompted internet outcry depict congressional Republicans and former president Donald Trump as unfeeling about gun violence toward children and accuses them of a “coordinated Republican attack” on abortion.

This is the latest political controversy in which Disney has caved to Democratic pressure. Last March, Disney opposed Governor Ron DeSantis’s (R., Fla.) Florida Parental Rights in Education bill after the Democrats characterized it as the “Don’t Say Gay Bill.”

“Hulu’s censorship of the truth is outrageous, offensive, and another step down a dangerous path for our country,” the directors of three Democratic committees responsible for the ads said in a statement to the Washington Post. “Voters have the right to know the facts about MAGA Republicans’ agenda on issues like abortion—and Hulu is doing a huge disservice to the American people by blocking voters from learning the truth about the GOP record or denying these issues from even being discussed.”

Hulu’s policy used to allow candidate ads but not issue ads. Political ads were permitted on a case-by-case basis. Now, Hulu will allow a large variety of political ads and reserves the right to request edits.

Disney said the change is motivated by the desire for their streaming platforms to be consistent in advertising rules, with the exception of Disney+, which will offer a plan with “family-friendly” ads later this year. ESPN+, another of Disney’s subscription-streaming services, already allows political ads.

Disney has come under fire recently for promoting a “not-at-all-secret gay agenda” in its children’s programming and parks and expressing opposition for Florida’s Parental Rights in Education bill.

Netflix, Hulu’s chief competitor in streaming, has suffered major subscriber and market blows following the release of Cuties, a film sexualizing young girls, and other political messaging that has failed to strike a chord among consumers.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention coordinated with social media companies and Google to censor users who expressed skepticism or criticism of COVID-19 vaccines, according to a trove of internal communications obtained by America First Legal and shared exclusively with the Washington Free Beacon.

Over the course of at least six months, starting in December 2020, CDC officials regularly communicated with personnel at Twitter, Facebook, and Google over “vaccine misinformation.” At various times, CDC officials would flag specific posts by users on social media platforms such as Twitter as “example posts.”

In one email to a CDC staffer, a Twitter employee said he is “looking forward to setting up regular chats” with the agency. Other emails show the scheduling of meetings with the CDC over how to best police alleged misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines.

Although many of the posts flagged by the CDC contained false information about the COVID-19 vaccines, the efforts to police misinformation also resulted in mistaken acts of censorship. An April 2021 email from a CDC staffer to Facebook states that the “algorithms that Facebook and other social media networks are apparently using to screen out posting by sources of vaccine misinformation are also apparently screening out valid public health messaging, including [Wyoming] Health communications.”

The communications reveal a high level of coordination between the government and tech industry during the pandemic and raise questions about the extent to which other private companies are working with the federal government to censor the public. The Biden administration has faced criticism for engaging in what some have called “Orwellian” practices, such as the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security Disinformation Governance Board. The Free Beacon reported that the now-shuttered disinformation board arranged a meeting with a Twitter executive who blocked users from sharing stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop.

The CDC’s effort to police alleged disinformation expanded to other federal agencies as well. An internal March 2021 email from a senior CDC staffer states “we are working on [sic] project with Census to leverage their infrastructure to identify and monitor social media for vaccine misinformation.”

One email shows a senior CDC official appeared at Google’s 2020 “Trusted Media Summit.” The conference, according to its website, was “for journalists, fact-checkers, educators, researchers and others who work in the area of fact-checking, verification, media literacy, and otherwise fighting misinformation.”

One of the organizers of the conference asked the senior CDC official for permission to post her remarks on YouTube. That official declined, saying she was not authorized to speak publicly.

In the same email chain with a senior CDC official, a Google staffer offers to promote an initiative from the World Health Organization about “addressing the COVID-19 infodemic and strengthen community resilience against misinformation.” That same Google staffer offers to introduce the CDC official to a Google colleague who is “working on programs to counter immunization misinfo.”

Facebook also awarded the CDC with $15 million in ad credits for the company’s platforms in April 2021, according to several emails.

“This gift will be used by CDC’s COVID-19 response to support the agency’s messages on Facebook, and extend the reach of COVID-19-related Facebook content, including messages on vaccines, social distancing, travel, and other priority communication messages,” an internal CDC memo reads.

A Facebook official says the platform has been transparent about its work with public health organizations “to address health misinformation.” The platform also says it has asked its internal oversight board to assess whether its “current COVID-19 misinformation policy is still appropriate now that the pandemic has evolved.”

Twitter and Google declined to comment. The CDC did not respond to a request for comment.

Tensions between the CDC’s powers and protecting the public’s civil liberties have arisen since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci called a judge overruling the CDC’s mask mandate “disturbing.”

Concerns about the CDC’s judgment has also led the Democratic-controlled cities of New York and San Francisco to ignore the agency’s guidance on monkeypox vaccinations.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

The Biden administration is being slammed for attempting to change the definition of an economic recession, just ahead of the upcoming second-quarter GDP data that are expected to show contraction.

An economy is usually considered to be in a recession if it registers two consecutive quarters of GDP declines. A July 21 White House statement insisted that this “is neither the official definition nor the way economists evaluate the state of the business cycle.” In an interview with Fox News, Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, called out the White House attempt to change the definition of a recession as “ridiculous.”

“They have to say ridiculous things like that, even have an argument with a dictionary… Sitting around the table with Biden are all the interest groups in the modern Democratic Party,” Norquist said, pointing to “big city political machines,” labor unions, and environmental activists as the “interest groups.”

He also blamed progressive ideologues for having policy agendas that are “disassociated from reality.”

The White House statement argues that recession is to be defined based on a “holistic look” at the data, including such factors as incomes, business spending, consumer spending, and the labor market. Based on these data, “it is unlikely” that a second-quarter economic contraction following the first-quarter decline indicates a recession, the White House said.

U.S. GDP already contracted in the first quarter, with the Atlanta Fed expecting second-quarter GDP to contract once more. The second-quarter GDP data are due on July 28.

The Epoch Times has reached out to the White House.

Norquist also raised concerns about the plan by 15 states to hand out inflation relief checks to citizens as a way to combat the financial pressure of rising prices.

Pointing to 10 states run by Republican governors that are aiming to phase their income taxes to zero, he said that sending a check is “just spending” and “not a tax cut.”

US Recession

A Reuters poll of economists, conducted between July 14 and 20, found that median predictions point to a 40 percent probability of a recession in the United States in the coming year, with a 50 percent chance of it happening within two years.

This is a big jump from the 25 percent probability this year and 40 percent within two years as reported in June. More than 90 percent said that any recession would be mild or very mild. Four respondents expect the recession to be severe.

In a July 22 tweet, Chris Williamson, chief business economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence, warned that the American economy is contracting at a rate “not seen since the global financial crisis in 2009.”

It is not just the United States that is at risk of recession but the entire global economy. In an interview with Reuters, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said that the agency will soon downgrade its 2022 global economic growth forecast for the third time this year.

“The outlook since our last update in April has darkened significantly,” she said. “We are in very choppy waters … The risk [of recession] has gone up. So, we cannot rule it out … It’s going to be a tough ’22, but maybe even a tougher 2023.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Jill Biden’s longtime press secretary Michael LaRosa is leaving the White House, he confirmed Tuesday.

“For a kid from Easton, Pennsylvania, who only ever dreamed of stepping foot into this history-rich residence for a tour, working for First Lady Jill Biden in the White House has been the proudest and most rewarding experience of my life,” LaRosa said in a statement to The Washington Post about his departure. His last day is Friday.

LaRosa, a former MSNBC producer, joined Joe Biden’s campaign in 2019 as Jill Biden’s spokesman before he was named press secretary to the first lady in January of last year.

“I am forever grateful to her for taking a chance on me nearly three years ago, bringing me on this journey with her around the country, and the privilege of being a small part of the history,” he added to the paper.

Reports say LaRosa is planning to join Hamilton Place Strategies, a Washington-based public affairs company. It’s not clear who will be named to replace him as the first lady’s spokesperson.

“For nearly three years, from the campaign to the White House, Michael has brought an encyclopedic knowledge of politics and media to my team as my spokesperson and adviser,” Jill Biden told CNN. “On a small team, loyalty and friendship are lifelong—we will miss Michael. However, we are excited for him to begin a new chapter in his career.”

Other Departures

In recent months, the White House has seen a number of top communications officials leave. Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki left earlier this year before she was replaced by current press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

Vice President Kamala Harris’s chief spokesperson Symone Sanders left her position in late 2021. And later, top Harris aides Tina Flournoy, Ashley Etienne, and Vincent Evans quickly followed Sanders.

Earlier in July, it was confirmed that White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield would be stepping down from her position. In confirming her exit, White House chief of staff Ron Klan said that Bedingfield “played a huge role” at the White House but will now “spend more time with her husband and young children.”

Before that, Cedric Richmond, a former congressman from Louisiana, had led Biden’s Office of Public Engagement but recently departed to work with the Democratic National Committee. Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms replaced him in the administration.

LaRosa’s departure comes several weeks after Jill Biden drew controversy for comparing Hispanic voters to breakfast tacos and mispronouncing the word bodega at an event in San Antonio, Texas. LaRosa later apologized on her behalf.

“The First Lady apologizes that her words conveyed anything but pure admiration and love for the Latino community,” he wrote on Twitter on July 12.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

BUT REMEMBER: IT’S ALL A “CONSPIRACY THEORY,” ACCORDING TO THE BIG PHARMA SALESPEOPLE LIKE FAUCI.

Nearly half of women receiving a COVID-19 vaccine reported heavier menstrual bleeding, according to new research from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The figures come from a survey of over 35,000 women who were fully vaccinated, with the majority of the cohort receiving a Pfizer jab followed by Moderna.

“In this sample, 42% of people with regular menstrual cycles bled more heavily than usual, while 44% reported no change after being vaccinated,” summarized researchers, which counted funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for the study.

“Respondents reported noticing changes to their period 1 to 7 days after vaccines (dose 1: 31.4%; dose 2: 37.0%), 8 to 14 days after vaccines (dose 1: 25.9%; dose 2: 23.6%), or more than 14 days after receiving their vaccines (dose 1: 29.9%; dose 2: 26.8%), with the rest of respondents reporting that they were menstruating when they received the vaccine (dose 1: 12.7%; dose 2: 12.5%),” explained the study.

In sum, 42.1 percent of women reported experiencing a heavier menstrual flow after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, 14.3 percent reported a mix of lighter or no change, and 43.6 percent reported no change in flow.

The new study, “Investigating Trends in Those who Experience Menstrual Bleeding Changes After SARS-CoV-2 Vaccination,” was published in the journal Science Advances. Another study funded by the NIH found that COVID-19 vaccines had the potential to lengthen women’s menstrual cycles, as well.

The side effects of the “vaccines” – which have been dismissed by mainstream media outlets and social media fact-checkers as untrue – follows lobbying efforts on behalf of pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Moderna reaching record-high levels of spending and overall personnel hired. The massive lobbying campaigns are likely responsible for nationwide vaccine mandates, which have subsequently been struck down by district courts.

MUST READ: Bill Gates-Funded Lab, Less Than 2 Miles From Wuhan Institute, Reports Cholera Case.

Similarly, posing another conflict of interest, the chairman and former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Thomson Reuters Foundation – James C. Smith – is a top investor and board member for pharmaceuticals giant Pfizer.

At the time of publication, Reuters has not covered the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign study.

The outlet, however, has run stories titled “Vaccines not linked to menstrual changes; COVID, flu shots can go together” and “No link found between menstrual changes and COVID vaccines.”

The study also follows researchers concluding that Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine resulted in a sustained loss in sperm count and could pose a risk to heart health, especially among young men, despite mockery by mainstream media outlets over the concerns.

Anti-Republican super PAC the Lincoln Project congratulated resident Joe Biden for creating “one of the strongest economies in American history” even as the nation approaches its second consecutive quarter of negative growth in gross domestic product. 

Biden has had an “enormously successful first 18 months in office,” the Lincoln Project claimed on Monday in a rosy assessment of the president’s performance that’s at odds with the majority of Americans who blame Biden for record inflation.

“Resident Biden is a decent human being who exhibits the qualities we should cherish in a resident: he’s a strong leader with clear moral standards and empathizes with Americans for the challenges they face every day,” Lincoln Project cofounder Reed Galen said. “Resident Biden shows what American greatness looks like.”

The Lincoln Project cited job growth, wage increases, and historically low unemployment as proof of Biden’s success. But nearly a million-and-a-half Americans could lose their jobs next year, according to a report last month from the Federal Reserve. Around two-thirds of Americans say Biden is either “responsible” or “very responsible” for inflation, polling shows. 

Formed in 2019 to oppose former president Donald Trump, the Lincoln Project is known for spending millions of dollars to oppose Republicans such as Gov. Glenn Youngkin (Va.) while achieving little electoral success. The anti-Republican organization gained notoriety last year after it was revealed that founding member John Weaver sent suggestive messages to dozens of young men and at least one 14-year-old child.

The White House last week redefined the term “recession,” which is commonly understood as two consecutive quarters of shrinking GDP, ahead of a Thursday GDP report that will likely reveal the economy shrunk for the second quarter in a row. The White House said a recession is determined through “a holistic look at the data,” leading critics to accuse the Biden administration of covering its tracks so it won’t have to call the economic crisis a recession.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

‘You cannot call him Uncle f—ing Tom on my watch!’

Glenn Loury is sick and tired of the racially charged assault on Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas. The Brown University professor ranted on his podcast last week about the virulence of left-wing attacks on Thomas following the justice’s vote to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Loury, who is black, was particularly outraged at Samuel L. Jackson and others who invoked the racist “Uncle Tom” trope to denigrate the justice as a traitor to black Americans—an egregiously offensive thing to say, Loury argued, about a black man who grew up “a step from slavery” and rose to become one of the most accomplished jurists in the country. By defining Thomas solely by his conservative political views, his critics were denigrating “the value of this man’s contribution” to black history.

“Come on, man. Let’s stay in touch with reality,” Loury said. “I’m sorry, you cannot call him an Uncle fucking Tom on my watch!”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

In a 10-page executive order issued on June 15, resident Joe Biden declared war on conversion therapy and pledged to defend the LGBT community from various forms of discrimination.

The order, which was accompanied by a seven-page explanation, is one more salvo in the clash of rights that has arisen in recent years over transgender issues.

The order describes conversion therapy as “efforts to suppress or change an individual’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.”

Keeping a campaign promise he made to the LGBT community, Biden called for an administration-wide push to eliminate the use of conversion therapy by therapists across the nation. He described it as a “harmful” and “discredited practice that research indicates can cause significant harm, including higher suicide rates…”

“My administration must safeguard LGBTQI+ youth from dangerous practices like so-called ‘conversion therapy,’” said Biden.

The Williams Institute at UCLA estimates that there were two million Americans identifying themselves as transgender in 2021—about six-tenths of one percent of the nation’s population.

Twenty states and over 100 municipalities have banned conversion therapy for minors.

To further protect the rights of LGBT individuals from encroachment by other states, Biden is marshaling the resources of 10 departments of the federal government, along with numerous supporting agencies. The list includes the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, Justice, and Housing and Urban Development.

Biden said in his order that the Federal Trade Commission “is encouraged to consider whether conversion therapy constitutes an unfair and deceptive trade practice, and to issue such consumer warnings or notices as may be appropriate.”

Such a designation by the FTC could expose therapists to prosecution.

The aggressive promotion of these and other LGBT policies has provoked a backlash around the country.

In the first quarter of 2022, 238 bills that would “limit the rights” of LGBT  individuals were proposed by legislatures across America—half of which involved transgender people, according to NBC News.

The state proposals aim to limit LGBT curriculum in schools, affirm parental rights, defend religious liberties, and restrict Gender Affirming Care (GAC).

The World Health Organization defines GAC as psychological, behavioral, and medical interventions designed to support and affirm an individual’s gender identity when it conflicts with the gender the person was assigned at birth.

Biden’s order has aroused strong opposition from former gays and lesbians, clients and their therapists, and civil liberty legal foundations, who say that individuals have the right to voluntarily seek help to be free of unwanted same-sex attraction and gender dysphoria (an uncomfortable state of confusion).

Brothers Road is a Virginia peer support fellowship made up primarily of men seeking to align their sexual thoughts, feelings, and behaviors with their personal values, beliefs, faith, commitments, and life goals.

Rick Wyler, the group’s founder, told The Epoch Times, “Many of us have been harmed, sometimes deeply, by therapists who demand that we embrace a gay identity and engage in gay relationships as, supposedly, the only possible path to peace, even if doing so would mean leaving otherwise satisfying marriages or cutting ourselves off from faith communities, beliefs, and traditions that we greatly value.”

Elizabeth Woning of California is a co-founder of the Changed Movement, an international network of people who no longer identify as LGBT.

Woning told The Epoch Times, “So-called ‘conversion therapy’ is a pejorative phrase that is being used to promote state-sanctioned viewpoint discrimination. LGBTQ-identifying people deserve the right to follow their conscience, even when it means receiving support to diminish unwanted sexual feelings.

“Such bans dramatically oversimplify the lived experience of anyone who identifies as LGBTQ. They offer only one route for people to follow, no matter their faith or conscience.

“And so, anyone who doesn’t endorse Gay Pride for their own life is disallowed counseling that addresses trauma and emotional distress related to their sexual identity,” she said.

“In the end, counseling bans cause harm and simply limit everyone’s freedom.”

Nevada therapist Robert Vazzo told The Epoch Times, “Don’t ban anything that is poorly defined and can lead to a witch hunt among therapists whose world view regarding homosexuality is different from the mainstream.”

Vazzo questioned the ability to determine at what point during a counseling session the therapist can be said to be actually practicing therapy and attempting to change a client’s sexual orientation.

“The desire to change one’s sexual orientation is often linked to one’s religious views and having thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that are congruent with those views,” he said.

“How a person expresses their sexuality and deals with attractions is a very personal thing, and we especially don’t need Joe Biden and the federal government telling us what we should like, dislike, or try to change in ourselves.”

Vazzo said the courts have consistently affirmed a therapist’s right to give his opinion during a session as part of free speech.

He described Biden’s order as “an assault on both personal and religious freedom.”

Tampa, Florida, recently lost a case that challenged the city’s ordinance banning conversion therapy on First Amendment grounds.

New York City recently ended its ban on conversion therapy because of a civil rights lawsuit.

In a July 13, 2022, statement to The Epoch Times, Family Watch International, an organization which promotes and defends marriage and family values, said of Biden’s executive order, “Elite leftists are seeking to prohibit parents and children from obtaining necessary, and demonstrably successful, care [while] the Biden administration is pushing ‘gender-affirming therapy’ as normative treatment. This ‘therapy’ includes such horrifying procedures as blocking normal adolescent development, administering cross-sex hormones, and performing mutilating surgeries that result in permanent sterilization.

“Federal bureaucrats should not be micromanaging matters of health and wellness, especially as it relates to children. It is the role, responsibility, and right of all parents to determine the upbringing of their children, especially as it relates to their healthy development,” the organization said.

Attorney Mathew D. Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, a non-profit organization that provides legal assistance in cases dealing with religious liberty and family issues, told The Epoch Times in an email, “I am confident that litigation will eventually doom these counseling bans … To deny a client the right of self-determination is both unconstitutional and dangerous.”

“The ultimate goal of this movement is to prohibit change-exploring therapies and counsel, and to abolish the Judeo-Christian ethic regarding human sexuality, and even the very understanding of God,” he said.

He pointed out the irony in a system of laws where it is not considered harmful to take puberty blockers, opposite sex hormones, or undergo life-changing surgeries,  yet it is regarded as harmful to learn about the causes of gender dysphoria and how to become comfortable with one’s birth sex.

Staver said that, under some laws banning conversion therapy, or what he calls “change counsel,” a counselor must either tell the client the type of counseling he may desire is not permitted; or even though the client wants to change, the counselor must, by law, override the client’s decision and counsel the client to accept unwanted attractions, behaviors, and identities.

“These laws unconstitutionally restrict only one viewpoint—change—on the subject matter of same-sex attractions, behavior, or identity. The U.S. Supreme Court has never upheld viewpoint discrimination. … Such viewpoint discrimination violates both First Amendment rights of the client and the counselor … [the] government must not censor the viewpoint of any subject matter the client wishes to receive and what the counselor or therapist may provide.”

California therapist Joseph Nicolosi told The Epoch Times in an email, “In a client-therapist relationship, the client is in the driver’s seat. They set their own goals, which the therapist helps them achieve. Politicians have no business telling people that their therapy goals are illegal.

“Everyone should be free to choose a life consistent with their values … no government should bar access to another person’s choice to live consistent with their faith and their values.”

Medical Experts Divided

The American Psychological Association, in a report released in 2009, said therapies used to try to change sexual orientation can be harmful and that most do not succeed.

In a 2018 position statement on conversion therapy and LGBTQ patients, the American Psychiatric Association recommended that “ethical practitioners refrain from attempts to change individuals’ sexual orientation” and “respect the identities of those with diverse gender expressions.”

The psychiatric association said it encourages “psychotherapies which affirm individuals’ sexual orientations and gender identities.”

In a 2018 policy statement, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) stated, “Conversion therapies’ (or ‘reparative therapies’) are interventions purported to alter same-sex attractions or an individual’s gender expression with the specific aim to promote heterosexuality as a preferable outcome…

“These interventions are provided under the false premise that homosexuality and gender diverse identities are pathological. They are not; the absence of pathology means there is no need for conversion or any other like interventions.”

The American Psychiatric Association ceased classifying homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1973.

The AACAP statement warned that “there is evidence that ‘conversion therapies’ increase risk of causing or exacerbating mental health conditions in the very youth they purport to treat.”

Biden’s executive order and the current narrative of the professional psychiatric and psychological guilds upon which it is based; have received strong criticism from other medical quarters.

“The habitually misquoted American Psychological Association’s Task Force’s 2009 report (on page 43) stated specifically that modern change-allowing therapy ‘since 1978’ was ‘nonaversive,’ meaning free of infliction of pain or shame,” wrote Dr. Andre Van Mol, MD. in an email to The Epoch Times.

Van Mol, a Board-certified family physician and co-chair of the Committee on Adolescent Sexuality of the American College of Pediatricians, said the Task Force’s report explicitly states on pages 43 and 82, that research meeting scientific standards did not allow attributing harm or help, inefficacy or efficacy, to change-allowing therapy.

“Banning counseling choice for gender dysphoria condemns already at-risk sexual minority youth to experimental and unproven hormonal and surgical gender-affirming therapy (GAT), which permanently and prematurely medicalizes children for a condition that overwhelmingly resolves by adulthood,” he said.

Van Mol stated that GAT has not been proven safe and effective. It does not reduce suicides and is not the international standard of care for gender dysphoric minors.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) have introduced legislation that would allow adults who undergo body-altering gender-transition surgeries as minors to sue surgeons for damages for up to 30 years after the procedure.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

COVID-19 injections may damage the innate immune system in children from properly developing and functioning, according to epidemiologist and researcher Paul Alexander.

People are born with an innate immune system, which is the body’s first line of defense against the many pathogens they encounter.

Alexander says that while the innate immune system in young children is broadly effective and potent, it is still “antigenically naive,” and it is exposure to germs and foreign substances that helps train their innate immune system to function.

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Genetic COVID Vaccines May Damage Children’s Innate Immunity—Dr. Paul Alexander

“The children have a window of opportunity to train the innate immune system properly, and principally, they’re trying to train the innate antibodies and the innate NK [natural killer] cells,” Alexander told EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program. “They get that training, those cells of the innate immune system, get training by the exposure to a pathogen.”

“Why the training of the antibodies is so key is because in that period of time in young childhood, once the innate immune antibodies and the innate immune system can be trained and you allow it to be trained, it functions,” he added.

This training may be disrupted when children are administered the messenger RNA shots based on the initial virus strain. That is because the vaccine antibodies are highly specific in targeting the spike protein and prevent the innate antibodies from doing their job.

“The vaccinal antibodies would bind to the spike antigen, [and] first block the innate antibodies from its functional capacity, which is binding,” Alexander said.

He also says that proper training helps the immune system differentiate a normal cell from a non-self pathogen. If the immune system is not able to do that, it can lead to autoimmune disease as a result of the immune system attacking the body.

“So it is absolutely critical that the innate immune system, and particularly the innate antibodies very early on in childhood, be allowed this training,” he said.

Strong Innate Immunity

Without being vaccinated, healthy children are able to eliminate and sterilize the virus to prevent infection, replication, and transmission, Alexander says. That is why children, for the most part, do not show any symptoms or have mild symptoms, especially against the Omicron variant that is dominant in the United States and other countries.

“Children come with this innate immune system, it’s their first line of defense … That is critical and that is why young people, normally young children, do so well against pathogen[s] and they survive in the environment, not having a copious number of years of existence, they’ve not had exposure to a bunch of stuff, to pathogen. Yet, they bump up against these things in the environment and they do well,” Alexander said.

Studies have shown that children have a robust innate immune system that can effectively eliminate the virus.

In September 2020, researchers compared blood samples from pediatric (children and youths younger than 24 years old) and adult COVID-19 patients to try to understand why children had milder disease compared to adults. They found that the pediatric group had certain proteins (IFN-gamma and interleukin-17A) that were not present in the adult cohorts. These proteins play important roles in the innate immune response.

The same researchers provided evidence in a different study in April 2021 on why children fared better when infected with the virus, saying that it was because children’s innate immune response stopped the virus in its tracks before it had a chance to spread.

The study, published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation Insight, involved 27 adults and 12 children who tested positive for COVID-19 at Montefiore Medical Center’s emergency department. The authors found that, compared to adults, children had larger quantities of genes associated with immune cells, including several proteins secreted by immune cells.

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None of the children in the study required oxygen, whereas seven adults did and four adults died.

Data also show that the immune system in infants is a “vigilant establishment” that is flexible and can respond to many stimulants.

The authors of a 2018 study wrote that “mounting evidence supports the concept that infantile immunity is in fact a highly regulated, but intellect, orchestrated, functional, and dynamic network of competent molecular and cellular components.

“This wakeful immune scheme plays pivotal roles in protecting the growing and developing infants from pathologic conditions (e.g., inflammatory situations) as well as providing adequate and appropriate defense against infections by promoting immature or deviant to highly mature responses,” they added.

The Push for Vaccination

Although children are generally at low risk for severe disease when they contract the virus and have a robust innate immunity to fight it, health authorities say that children as young as 6 months are recommended for the COVID-19 vaccines.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) authorized and recommended the shots for young children last month although the CDC’s own data and several other studies indicated that the vaccinated were more likely to get infected with COVID-19, including Pfizer’s clinical trial in children (pdf).

The FDA also stated in a press release on June 17 that the estimate of the efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine was unreliable “due to the low number of COVID-19 cases that occurred in study participants,” which was based on 10 cases, three in the vaccinated and seven in the unvaccinated.

Alexander says that a governmental health authority that makes a recommendation for vaccination based on a small number of events is concerning and says that there is no data to support vaccinating very young children.

“We know from a scientific point of view, a methodological point of view, that that is a red flag for high risk of overestimating the treatment effect,” Alexander said. “We don’t make policy decisions or any kind of decision on two events or three events in a study.”

“There’s so much uncertainty in terms of what is beneficial or not. And we found when you read the submission, you see that at some point, they reported that children who got multiple infections of COVID were vaccinated. That’s a red flag. We also read that the children who got the most severe adverse events were vaccinated,” he added.

The Danish health authority is taking a different course from the CDC, as it put out guidance in June 2022 that children aged 5 to 17 would not be offered primary vaccination, acknowledging that children “only very rarely have a serious course of COVID-19.” The vaccine would only be administered “after specific medical assessment.”

‘Risk-Benefit Analysis Has Changed’

Real-world data from Singapore shows that nearly two dozen children suffered serious adverse events from an mRNA shot.

A new study from Singapore examining the effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine against Omicron in over 250,000 children aged 5 to 11 between January to April 2022 found that 288 children were hospitalized and 22 suffered a serious adverse reaction to the vaccine.

A serious adverse reaction, according to the Singaporean Health Sciences Authority (pdf), is if it results in hospitalization or an extended hospital stay, a significant reduction in disability or functioning level, a life-threatening illness or death, birth defects, or a medically important event.

Of the 288 hospitalized children, five were given supplemental oxygen. And of the five on oxygen, four were admitted to the intensive care unit, two were fully vaccinated, two were partially vaccinated, and one was unvaccinated. No deaths were attributed to COVID-19.

“In terms of admission to intensive care, there’s no evidence here that vaccination provides protection, there’s no evidence that vaccination provides protection against oxygenation here,” John Campbell, a retired nurse educator said in a video on July 21.

The authors of the study did not give more information on the adverse events other than mentioning that 22 children (0.005 percent of all doses administered) experienced them.

“The risk of adverse events is roughly more than four times the risk of the child requiring oxygenation or indeed being admitted to intensive care,” Campbell said, adding that “the risk-benefit analysis has changed.”

Prolonging Pandemic

Vaccinologist and virologist Geert Vanden Bossche claimed in early 2021 that the mass vaccination of people during a pandemic would likely drive the propagation of more infectious variants of the original strain of the virus, thus prolonging the pandemic.

“I mean, in their own right [the vaccines] are of course excellent, but to use them in the midst of a pandemic and do mass vaccination. Because then you provide, within a very short period of time, the population with high antibody titers so the virus comes under enormous pressure,” Bossche said in an interview in March 2021.

“That wouldn’t matter if you can eradicate the fire, if you can prevent infection, but these vaccines don’t prevent infection, they protect against disease.”

The vaccines initially provided over 90 percent protection against symptomatic infection, but after the emergence of Omicron, they became less than 50 percent effective against infection after a short period of time, even after booster doses.

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Genetic COVID Vaccines May Damage Children’s Innate Immunity—Dr. Paul Alexander

Alexander states that with the continued administration of mRNA vaccines that produce non-neutralizing antibodies that can’t eliminate the virus and stop transmission, the pandemic will not end.

“In other words, if you keep vaccinating with these vaccines, you can never ever stop this pandemic. This pandemic can go on for 100 years, it will never end. And what we’re seeing is, it’s infectious variant after infectious variant, more infectious, each iteration that is coming is more infectious. So it’s a terrible situation,” he said.

For the pandemic to end, Alexander explains that herd immunity must be reached, and “to get to herd immunity, you need to cut the chain of transmission.”

The FDA, the CDC, Pfizer, and Moderna did not reply to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

A coalition of 17 attorneys general is threatening Google with an anti-trust investigation if it censors pregnancy crisis centers from search results related to abortion.

Pregnancy crisis centers are different from abortion centers in that they provide resources for women who choose to carry their babies to full term.

The attorneys general of Virginia and Kentucky, Jason Miyares and Daniel Cameron, respectively, are leading the group, which sent a letter to Google on July 21.

In the letter, the group asks whether the tech giant has taken any steps to treat crisis pregnancy centers differently in search results since Roe v Wade was overturned.

Google, Miyares, and Cameron did not respond to requests for comment. Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt said he joined the effort because he did not want to see Google succumb to political pressure.

The AGs’ joint correspondence was in response to Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Congresswoman Elissa Slotnick’s (D-Mich.) June 17th letter asking what steps Google CEO Sundar Pichai will take to limit the appearance of anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers in Google search results when users search for “abortion clinics” or “abortion pills.”

“Google should not be displaying anti-abortion fake clinics or crisis pregnancy centers in search results for users that are searching for an abortion clinic or abortion pill,” Warner and Slotnik wrote. “If Google must continue showing these misleading search results and in Google Maps, the results should at the very least be appropriately labeled.”

An additional 12 Senators and nine members of Congress, including Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), signed the letter.

“Senator Warner believes that users who search for “abortion services” should receive results that are relevant to their searches,” said Valeria Rivadeneira, a Warner spokesperson. “Crisis pregnancy centers—which routinely misinform and mislead clients about their reproductive health—make every effort to appear in these search results in order to deceive individuals into thinking they offer a full range of reproductive health services.”

Rivadeneira added that Warner has not yet received a response to his June 17th communication to Google and that Google should apply appropriate labels to all organic search and map results.

Curtis Hill, former Attorney General of Indiana, said the cadre of Democratic politicians want Google to act as an arm of the government in suppressing information.

“It’s a typical sidestep that some government officials try to create, and we’ve seen it in other areas,” he said. “So, it’s highly appropriate for the state’s attorneys general to call it for what it is…possible antitrust violations for which they would face sanctions.”

Because Google operates in all their states, the company falls under the jurisdiction of each AG’s consumer advocacy responsibilities.

“They have the right to investigate companies that are operating within their state on information that consumers are being duped or otherwise are having difficulty being treated fairly,” Hill told The Epoch Times.

He commended his former colleagues for demanding to know whether Google intends to comply with the request made by members of the Senate and Congress.

“I’d want to know if the algorithms had been changed by a particular date and if any differences or distinctions seem to be in compliance with the request that was made,” Hill added. “It’s been suggested that some of the searches be limited. So, I would want to see the searches.”

Pregnancy crisis centers like the Crisis Pregnancy Support Center (CPSC) in Texas City, Texas, don’t just rely on Google for clients.

Instead, it’s word of mouth that brings pregnant women to their doorstep, according to Christy Anne Collins, CPSC executive director.

“Most of our referrals come from people in the community who are involved in social service type of work and know the services we offer,” she said. “We’re not competing with the abortion listings, and we don’t want to.”

Collins thinks it’s appropriate that Texas AG Ken Paxton is among the Generals who signed the letter.

“Google or anybody else shouldn’t be stifling free speech, not on this issue or any other issue,” she said.

Serving up to 170 individuals per month ranging in age from 9 to 52 years old, CPSC has been in existence since 1992.

“If somebody is interested in alternative information or they are interested in crisis pregnancy centers, we shouldn’t be blocked out,” Collins told The Epoch Times. “I’m very concerned that that kind of thing could happen very easily.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

With The Washington Post blaring that “Big Tech is bracing for a possible recession,” the Biden White House is redefining the word.

A recession is traditionally defined as two consecutive quarters in which the nation’s Gross Domestic Product shrinks. A new report Thursday will assess the results of the second quarter. Shrinkage took place in the first quarter, and with inflation running at 9.1 percent, there’s not a lot of hope for economic good news.

As noted by Business Insider, economists Bloomberg surveyed believe growth will be a paltry 0.9 percent, but the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s GDPNow model pegs shrinkage at 1.6 percent.

“The big headwinds for consumers are price inflation and higher interest rates. And inflation could erode the excess savings consumers accumulated through the pandemic, especially if price increases continue to run ahead of wage growth,” Capital One CEO Richard Fairbank said Thursday, according to CNN.

“We’re seeing an increase in bad debt to slightly higher than pre-pandemic levels as well as extended cash collection cycles,”  AT&T CEO John Stankey said the same day.

Yellen: There’s an org called the National Bureau of Economic Research that looks at a broad range of data…I will be would be amazed if the NBER would declare this period to be a recession

FLASHBACK: in ’08, NBER didn’t announce until Dec the recession had begun A YEAR EARLIER

— Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) July 24, 2022

But consumer pain does not make a recession, according to a White House handout,

“What is a recession? While some maintain that two consecutive quarters of falling real GDP constitute a recession, that is neither the official definition nor the way economists evaluate the state of the business cycle. Instead, both official determinations of recessions and economists’ assessment of economic activity are based on a holistic look at the data,” the handout said, listing labor market, consumer and business spending, industrial production and income data will all be mined.

The White then offered a prediction: “Based on these data, it is unlikely that the decline in GDP in the first quarter of this year — even if followed by another GDP decline in the second quarter — indicates a recession.”

Despite the growing mountain of gloomy economic forecasts, the handout said, “Recession probabilities are never zero, but trends in the data through the first half of this year used to determine a recession are not indicating a downturn.”

In fact, it said, “There is a good chance that the strength of the labor market and of consumer balance sheets help the economy transition from the rapid growth of the last year to steadier and more stable growth.”

Biden owns this recession. He is the WORST resident in American history.

— Proud Elephant 🇺🇸 (@ProudElephantUS) July 21, 2022

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Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers was not as chipper. In a Sunday interview, he called chances of coming out of the battle against inflation without a scarred economy “very unlikely,” according to Bloomberg.

“There’s a very high likelihood of recession when we’ve been in this kind of situation before,” he said.

“Recession has essentially always followed when inflation has been high and our employment has been low,” he said.

Summers said new policies are needed.

“There’s a lot we can do to contain or control inflation,” he said. “But if we continue with the kind of ostrich policies we had in 2021, there’s going to be much, much more pain later.”

David Jakubonis, the man facing federal charges for getting on stage with a weapon in his hand last week and moving toward Republican New York gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin, has told investigators who was behind his actions:

And it turns out it was Jakubonis alone — with some fuel from the whiskey he’d been drinking, according to Fox News.

Jakubonis told investigators he didn’t even know who was speaking when he confronted Zeldin, according to Fox, which cited a criminal complaint.

Video from Thursday’s event at a Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Fairpoint, New York, shows Jakubonis calmly walk on stage as U.S. Rep. Zeldin was speaking.

Jakubonis can be heard saying “you’re done” several times in the video as he moved toward Zeldin.

The video also shows Jakubonis holding in his right hand with his index and middle finger what appears to be a “self-defense keychain” that looks like a cartoon cat’s head, with ears protruding as two points.

The two men got into a minor scuffle before others rushed to tackle the intruder and he was taken into custody.

Zeldin then got back on stage and continued his speech.

Jakubonis was initially released on his own recognizance after the incident, but on Saturday was arrested by federal authorities and charged with assaulting a member of Congress with a deadly weapon.

The man accused of attempting to stab New York gubernatorial nominee Rep. Lee Zeldin on stage at a campaign event has been arrested on a federal assault chargehttps://t.co/vSa8eumQC7

— CNN (@CNN) July 24, 2022

If convicted, Jakubonis faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, according to a Justice Department news release.

In the immediate aftermath of the incident, some Republicans accused Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul of encouraging opponents of the GOP to “stalk” Zeldin.

On Thursday, hours before the confrontation occurred, according to the New York Post, Hochul’s campaign put out a news release listing the dates and times of some upcoming Zeldin events and encouraging liberals to “RSVP” the Zeldin campaign.

“The Hochul campaign is encouraging people to stalk Lee Zeldin,” Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman said, according to the New York Post. “This is what the liberals have done to our Supreme Court justices.”

That’s a reference to the Justice Department charging a California man who was arrested near U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s house in Maryland last month with attempting or threatening to kidnap or murder a U.S. judge.

Blakeman went on to say, “It’s wrong. Kathy Hochul should have known better.”

State Republican Party spokeswoman Jessica Proud agreed.

Watch: Crowd Gasps as Woman Collapses During Lee Zeldin’s Live Press Conference

“The Hochul campaign’s rhetoric was incendiary and over the top,” she told the Post. “They ginned this up.”

Politicians are likely on edge about security breaches for another reason.

Earlier this month, Shinzo Abe, Japan’s former prime minister, was shot twice and killed while giving a speech on a street in the city of Nara, Japan.

Hochul used social media to express relief that Zeldin was okay, while also denouncing political violence.

My team has informed me about the incident at Lee Zeldin’s campaign event tonight. Relieved to hear that Congressman Zeldin was not injured and that the suspect is in custody. I condemn this violent behavior in the strongest terms possible — it has no place in New York.

— Kathy Hochul (@KathyHochul) July 22, 2022

“My team has informed me about the incident at Lee Zeldin’s campaign event tonight,” Hochul wrote in a Thursday night tweet. “Relieved to hear that Congressman Zeldin was not injured and that the suspect is in custody.

“I condemn this violent behavior in the strongest terms possible – it has no place in New York.”

Branch says it ‘derives its strength from the diversity of its force’

The Minnesota Army National Guard paid tens of thousands of dollars to advertise in an LGBT publication that has promoted transgenderism and “queer” identities among children.

The National Guard, which operates through the Department of Defense, between 2019 and 2022 awarded $76,951 to Minneapolis-based Lavender magazine, paying for advertising campaigns in an effort to “reach the LGBTQ community” and “lend credibility to the National Guard.” Between May 2021 and May 2022 alone, it paid $22,224 to the LGBT magazine, according to a federal government contract disclosure. The advertising campaign appears to be related to the Minnesota National Guard’s “LGBT Special Emphasis Council.”

The magazine focuses on LGBT issues, and has published multiple profiles on children who identify as transgender. As the National Guard was paying for advertising in October 2021, for example, Lavender published a profile of 11-year-old boy Hildie Edwards, who identifies as “trans nonbinary.” The magazine also publishes a monthly column written by transgender activist Ellie Krug, who in a 2016 piece compared using bathrooms that align with biological sex to the Holocaust. Krug ends the piece by offering to speak at the schools of “trans youth in Minnesota.”

The National Guard is not the only military organization to promote transgenderism under the Biden administration. Republican senators found that the military has subjected service members to nearly six million hours of diversity, equity, and inclusion training. The Army this year coached officers on “when to offer soldiers gender transition surgery,” while the Navy in May published a video that instructs sailors on “proper gender pronouns,” the Washington Free Beacon reported. After combat veterans criticized what they consider the military’s “woke” posturing, left-wing pundits called them racists.

Stephen Rocheford, the president of Lavender magazine, told the Free Beacon that “the reason the MN National Guard and Lavender magazine have a good relationship is because of statistics.” Rocheford pointed to a study commissioned by the magazine that indicated that LGBTQ individuals are overrepresented among the Minnesota National Guard. He said that the magazine has “received positive feedback from Minnesota National Guard leaders” and “from the LGBTQ+ community.”

A spokesperson for the Minnesota National Guard in a statement told the Free Beacon the branch “derives its strength from the diversity of its force” and “has seen an increase in LGBT+ service members.”

In addition to the paid advertisements, Lavender has provided extensive positive coverage for the Minnesota National Guard. The positive coverage is not part of the advertising contract.

The Free Beacon contacted the magazine to inquire as to whether their coverage of the guard was related to their business relationship.

In its 2021 contract with Lavender, the National Guard requires the magazine to ensure the branch is “not associated with drugs, alcohol, adult content, or sites that may damage brand reputation.”

The magazine has run pieces that allege a connection between BDSM sex and Christianity, positively portrayed an organization that distributes LGBT books to kindergartners, and promoted a group that pairs children with LGBT “mentors” without notifying their parents.

Another article in the June 2022 Pride Month issue of Lavender states, “I have been thinking about younger queer kids.” The piece, also by Krug, details the author’s experience as a transgender woman mentoring “queer” middle and high school students on gender and sexuality through a local school district. Krug called the activities “holy work.”

“We need to protect the kids,” Krug’s essay concludes. “It always has to be about the kids.”

The National Guard shares advertising space in Lavender with Planned Parenthood and “gaymortgage.com,” among other advertisers.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Several individuals connected to a 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign plot to cast Donald Trump as a covert Kremlin collaborator are working in high-level jobs within the Biden administration—including at least two senior Biden appointees cited by Special Counsel John Durham in his “active (and) ongoing” criminal investigation of the scheme, according to recently filed court documents.

Jake Sullivan, who now serves as Biden’s national security adviser, and Caroline Krass, a top lawyer at the Pentagon, were involved in efforts in 2016 and 2017 to advance the Clinton campaign’s false claims about Trump through the media and the federal government, documents show. Other evidence shows that two other Biden officials—senior State Department official Dafna Rand and Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler—also are entangled in the so-called Russiagate scandal.

It’s not known whether these Biden appointees have been interviewed by Durham’s investigators. But as the probe widens, some government ethics watchdogs anticipate that Biden’s presidency could be pulled into the scandal, which saw the FBI abuse its surveillance powers to spy on a Trump campaign adviser based on Clinton opposition research.

Just as the Democrats have used their control of Congress to cast President Trump and the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol as threats to American democracy, Republicans are vowing if they regain power after November’s congressional elections to investigate the years-long effort to question Trump’s 2016 victory and undermine his presidency.

The top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Mike Turner, recently pledged to hold hearings and issue subpoenas “to get to the bottom of [Russiagate] so this never happens again, so we never have Americans having to distrust their own government because of the politicization of the FBI [and] of our intelligence community.”

RealClearInvestigations has learned that Congress has referred to the Special Counsel’s Office at least a dozen cases of potential perjury involving former Clinton campaign officials and Obama administration officials who have testified behind closed doors about their involvement in Russiagate. Hill lawyers and investigators have met with Durham’s staff about the criminal referrals stemming from the sworn depositions.

Republican sources say that the roles played in Russiagate by Krass, Sullivan, Rand, and Gensler may be among the first to draw attention in hearings. Although the full range of their efforts has not been made public, here’s what is known so far.

Caroline Krass: Clinton Donor and Top CIA Lawyer

Krass, 54—whom Biden appointed as general counsel of the Defense Department early last year—is the former top CIA lawyer cited by Durham as “General Counsel of Agency-2” in his indictment of former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann.

Durham alleged Sussmann first tried to plant a fabricated report with the FBI’s general counsel about a secret cyber-link between Trump and Russia-based Alfa Bank in order to set in motion an investigation of Trump before the 2016 election. Then, after the election, Sussmann filed a similar report with Krass’ legal shop at the CIA, the prosecutor said.

Although a Washington, D.C. jury in May acquitted Sussmann of lying about who was paying him to approach the FBI, the trial revealed that FBI field agents specializing in cyber crimes debunked his report within days of receiving it, and even suspected some of the evidence was cooked up. “We think it’s a set-up,” one agent warned in an internal FBI email. FBI brass working under then-Director James Comey, however, prolonged the investigation for several months.

Nevertheless, after Trump won the election, Sussmann brought the same Trump-Alfa Bank ruse to Krass—a Clinton donor and Obama appointee, then working under CIA Director John Brennan. Durham has found evidence that Krass welcomed the tip.

“We’re interested,” he said Krass told him in their December 2016 phone call. “We’re doing this review and I’ll speak to someone here, and someone will get back to you to arrange a meeting.”

Krass allegedly told Sussmann she would consider the information for inclusion in the intelligence review of alleged Russian interference in the election that Obama had ordered at the time. A declassified version of the review, known as the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), was released to the public the next month and accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of meddling in the election to help Trump win. A classified version included an annex with several unfounded and since-debunked allegations against Trump developed by the Clinton campaign as part of the so-called Steele dossier. It’s not known if the two-page annex, which claimed the allegations were “consistent with the judgments in this assessment,” included the Alfa Bank canard, since several sections remained blacked out when it was made public in 2020.

The ICA became a foundational document for subsequent Trump-Russia probes and has been used by Democrats and the media to suggest the 2016 election was stolen from Clinton.

“The greatest concern with the role of Krass is her ‘interest’ [in Sussmann’s tip] despite the lack of foundational support [for it],” George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley told RCI. “As with the FBI, the Clinton campaign found eager [Obama] officials to move on any such allegation [against Trump].”

On Feb. 9, 2017, Sussmann secured a sit-down meeting at CIA headquarters with “a representative from the Office of General Counsel,” according to documents reviewed by RCI, where he turned over more dubious material allegedly linking Trump to Russia. The CIA lawyer he met with worked under Krass, who did not leave the agency until several months later, despite the change in administrations.

The attorney, identified at trial only as “Steve M.,” said he would pass the tips on to CIA technical experts, as well as an FBI liaison officer, but they too dismissed the data as “self-generated,” meaning they appeared to be designed to arrive at a predetermined conclusion of a nefarious cyber-link. Complete datasets were withheld from the CIA.

Apparently, the CIA did not even ask for the source of Sussmann’s walk-in tip, including where he got the data files he gave the agency. The FBI exhibited a similar lack of curiosity when Sussmann reported the false Trump-Alfa Bank connection.

However, like FBI brass, Krass and her boss at the time, CIA chief Brennan, were aware of Clinton campaign efforts to portray Trump as a Kremlin agent, and it was no secret that Sussmann’s Perkins Coie law firm represented her campaign.

“As Brennan’s top lawyer, she would know everything about that,” said Kash Patel, the former House Intelligence Committee investigator who interviewed Sussmann in a closed-door deposition in December 2017, and was the first to discover the Alfa Bank smear operation he ran at the FBI and CIA on behalf of Clinton campaign operatives.

Evidence shows that Krass had other reasons to be skeptical of Sussmann’s claims. As legal adviser to Brennan, she was involved in the referral her boss made to the FBI in 2016 to open a counterespionage case to find out how Russian intelligence intercepted information about Hillary Clinton’s plan to tie up Trump in a Kremlin scandal. The intercept revealed the Russians were on to a plot by Clinton and her then-foreign policy adviser Jake Sullivan to “stir up” a scandal on Trump about Russia during the Democratic convention in late July 2016.

Brennan appears to have been less concerned about the Clinton campaign’s disinformation campaign than the fact Moscow knew about it. This so alarmed Brennan that he briefed Obama about it, according to a summary of his handwritten notes, declassified in 2020.

The referral, known as a counterintelligence operational lead (CIOL), was sent to Comey, who in turn forwarded it to then-FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok to investigate.

Strzok—who was fired by the FBI after his anti-Trump views became public—opened an investigation, not of Clinton but the Trump campaign. Krass’ chief of staff at the time, Brian Greer, confirmed that the purpose of the CIOL was not to investigate the Clinton campaign’s dirty tricks, but to run a counter-spying probe to see if the Russians had penetrated the Clinton camp. The concern, he said, was that Clinton “may have been spied on by a hostile intelligence service.”

Seemingly reflecting the attitude of his former boss at the spy agency, Greer opined that “there’s nothing illegal about” what Clinton did to Trump. “Even if it’s unsavory,” he shrugged, “that’s just politics.”

Federal campaign records reveal that Krass donated at least $3,575 to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 and 2008 campaigns for president. Before Obama appointed her to the CIA in 2014, she served as his special counsel for national security affairs in the White House.

Brennan’s handwritten notes were turned up by Durham and opened a new track in his investigation, which early on had appeared to clear the CIA of wrongdoing. But now Durham is actively investigating this CIA front, according to one of his pre-trial filings. His grand jury has interviewed at least eight current and former CIA employees, and he is seeking out other agency employees who may have attended the meeting with Sussmann.

“The government has been undertaking additional steps to determine if additional personnel were, in fact, present at this [Feb. 9] meeting with [CIA] employees,” Durham noted. “In addition, the Special Counsel’s Office maintains an active, ongoing criminal investigation of these and other matters that is not limited to the offense charged in the [Sussmann] indictment.”

It could not be determined if Krass is among former CIA employees interviewed by Durham’s team. Durham’s office remains tight-lipped, and neither the CIA nor Pentagon responded to requests for comment. Attempts to reach Krass were also unsuccessful.

During his 2017 House Intelligence Committee interview, Sussmann and his lawyer promised to provide the committee copies of all the documents he gave to the CIA, but Patel said they failed to turn them over. The former staff counsel said he is confident Durham has obtained them.

Meanwhile, Judicial Watch is suing the CIA for all its records of contacts with Sussmann under the Freedom of Information Act. The Washington-based watchdog group recently filed the lawsuit after the CIA failed last year to reply to a request for the records, including notes, related to agency phone conversations and meetings with the Clinton campaign attorney.

“The CIA is in cover-up mode about its communications with the [Clinton] lawyer implicated in a shady spy operation against President Trump,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said. “What is the CIA hiding about its role in this plot against Trump?”

Fitton maintains that what happened at the CIA could be an even bigger scandal than what happened at the FBI.

As one of the Intelligence Community’s top attorneys, Krass also was involved in Obama’s sudden decision after Trump won to make it easier for the CIA and FBI to root through raw personal communications intercepted globally by the National Security Agency, according to sources familiar with high-level legal consultations regarding the revision to spying rules at the time.

The departing president’s executive order relaxing rules for mining the NSA’s highly classified databases went into effect less than three weeks before Trump took office. At the same time, the White House rushed to preserve all intelligence related to Trump and Russia and disseminate it across U.S. agencies.

The order, known as “12 Triple 3,” allowed the FBI for the first time to sift through large troves of incidental communications—including phone calls and emails—involving U.S. citizens, without NSA filtering or even wiretap warrants. In effect, agents could put advisers and appointees of Trump, along with their family members and friends, under warrantless surveillance.

The easing of longstanding restrictions on intelligence-sharing set off a massive fishing expedition.

The FBI didn’t have much time to exploit the raw intercepts before Trump put his own people in place. So in a last-minute scramble, it asked both the CIA and NSA to search their holdings and collect as much information as possible on Russian oligarchs and other figures for any links to Trump and his advisers—namely, Gen. Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, and Carter Page.

The information was hastily processed and compiled into analytical reports and shared with other agencies, as well as Congress, putting Trump and his presidency under suspicion before he could even take the oath of office. Some of the material also was leaked to the New York Times, CNN, the Washington Post, and other major media—even though it was largely unsubstantiated.

In short, the new rules that Krass, along with other intelligence agency lawyers, helped draft making it easier to share raw streams of communications also made it easier to frame Trump as a Russian stooge before Obama left office.

Although Brennan’s appointment ended the day Trump was inaugurated, Krass stayed behind in her CIA job through the end of April 2017. When she finally resigned, she left behind a team of around 150 attorneys in her legal shop at Langley. They all remained in their positions in spite of the change in administrations.

Krass is not the only Russiagate-tied official who has resurfaced in the Biden administration.

Jake Sullivan: Potentially False Testimony

Sullivan, 45, played a pivotal role in the baseless Alfa Bank story as the Clinton campaign’s foreign policy adviser.

He is the “foreign policy adviser” referenced in the Sussmann indictment as one of the campaign officials who was briefed on the scheme to cook up the debunked rumor that Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin were secretly communicating through Alfa Bank’s computer servers. Sullivan promoted the “secret hotline” hoax in a campaign statement via Twitter just days before the November 2016 election, claiming, “This could be the most direct link yet between Donald Trump and Moscow.” He even called on “federal authorities” to investigate.

Former Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook testified at Sussmann’s trial that he discussed the Alfa Bank project with Sullivan before going to Clinton herself for approval to publicize it.

Sullivan is also the “foreign policy adviser” cited in U.S. and Russian intelligence as the mastermind behind the Clinton campaign plot to “stir up” a Trump-Russia scandal ahead of the Democratic National Convention in July 2016. During the party’s gathering in Philadelphia, Sullivan drove a golf cart from one TV network news tent in the parking lot to another, pitching producers and anchors the fable that Trump was conspiring with Putin to steal the election.

Now operating out of the West Wing as Biden’s national security adviser, Sullivan is under scrutiny for potentially false testimony he gave to Congress regarding his knowledge of, and role in, the campaign’s opposition research efforts against Trump. Lying to Congress is a felony, although it’s rarely prosecuted.

“He has the gall to come into Congress—I took so many of those depositions—and say he had no idea how the [Clinton-funded Steele] dossier was created, or who the $10 million [that] Jake Sullivan and the DNC were paying was being utilized [by] to collect fraudulent information [on Trump and his advisers],” said Patel, a former federal prosecutor, who had worked for GOP intelligence chair Devin Nunes when he took the depositions. ”So, I think John Durham’s on his case.”

An attorney for Sullivan did not respond to questions, while a spokeswoman for the National Security Council declined comment.

Prosecutors say the Clinton campaign operation to tar Trump continued even after the election, with Sullivan again taking a prominent role.

In February 2017, Sullivan met with another central figure in the plot to plant the Trump-Alfa smear with investigators—Daniel Jones, a former FBI analyst and Democratic staffer on the Hill, whose goal was to reignite the investigation and put Trump’s fledgling presidency under a cloud of suspicion.

On Feb. 10, 2017—one day after Sussmann met with a member of Krass’ staff at the CIA—Sullivan secretly huddled with Jones and his partners at FusionGPS, an opposition research firm that worked for the Clinton campaign, to hatch the post-election plan to resurrect rumors Trump was a tool of the Kremlin. As RCI first reported, the meeting—which lasted about an hour and took place in a Washington office building—also included former Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. The group discussed raising money to finance a multimillion-dollar opposition research project headed by Jones to target the new president. They ended up raising several million dollars for the effort, organized under a nonprofit called The Democracy Integrity Project. In effect, Jones’ operation would replace the Clinton campaign’s operation, continuing the effort to undermine Trump.

It’s not known whether Sussmann also attended the Feb. 10 meeting, but he had paid a visit to CIA headquarters that same week to peddle new disinformation about the supposed secret server.

At the time, the FBI closed its Alfa Bank probe, finding nothing sinister. ”The FBI’s investigation revealed that the email server at issue was not owned or operated by the Trump Organization but, rather, had been administrated by a mass-marketing email company that sent advertisements for Trump hotels and hundreds of other clients,” Durham wrote in his indictment.

Nonetheless, Jones and Sullivan kept promoting the canard as true. Jones reached out to old bureau colleagues to pass on supposedly fresh leads, and the FBI looked into the new leads, while Sullivan went on national media to give the impression there was still something to the rumors.

In a March 2017 interview with CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer, for example, Sullivan discussed a story leaked to CNN by unnamed sources that the FBI was continuing to investigate the rumors of “a secret hotline between Trump and Russia.”

“How surprised were you to hear last week that this investigation is still ongoing?” Blitzer asked.

“I wasn’t surprised,” Sullivan said, “because what we learned during the campaign was that very serious computer science experts—people who work closely with the United States government—had uncovered this secret hotline between the Alfa Bank, the Russian bank, and the Trump organization.”

Sullivan insisted that the computer scientists “weren’t just making up crackpot theories.”

In fact, Durham is actively investigating their leader for potential fraud and conspiracy: computer contractor Rodney Joffe, who was offered a top post in a future Clinton administration, according to recent court filings. Joffe, who recently was terminated for cause as a longtime FBI informant, has invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and refused to cooperate with grand jury subpoenas. His lawyer did not respond to phone calls and email messages.

Dafna Rand: An Anti-Trump Outfit Called TDIP

A longtime Clinton aide currently serving in the Biden administration as the director of the Office of Foreign Assistance, Rand also played a key role in spreading the Alfa Bank hoax.

In early 2017, Jones recruited Rand, a former Senate Intelligence Committee colleague, to sit on the board of The Democracy Integrity Project to help dig up new dirt on Trump, according to incorporation papers, while continuing to push the debunked Trump-Alfa Bank allegations.

In October 2018, TDIP blasted out an email to top Washington journalists with the subject line, “TDIP News Brief,” which attempted to keep the Alfa Bank hoax alive. The three-page bulletin, a copy of which was obtained by RCI, rehashed the alleged “connections between a computer server associated with the Trump Organization and servers associated with Russia’s Alfa Bank.” It speculated Democrats would subpoena information from “the server in question” if they regained control of Congress in the midterm elections the following month.

Rand’s resume on LinkedIn omits her role at TDIP (pronounced T-DIP), which is revealed only in the nonprofit’s IRS tax filings. A Democratic Party donor, Rand previously worked as a top aide to Clinton at the State Department. Before that, she served in the White House as a national security adviser to Obama.

Responding to grand jury subpoenas, her old colleague Jones reportedly has cooperated with Durham’s investigation.

Rand did not return requests for comment.

Gary Gensler: At SEC, Still After Trump

Biden nominated the longtime Clinton operative to head the Securities and Exchange Commission in February 2021, and Gensler was confirmed by the Senate and then sworn in as chairman of the Wall Street regulatory agency two months later.

Notably, the SEC press release announcing his appointment and detailing his personal biography omitted his prior role as chief financial officer for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 election team, where he managed the campaign budget, including expenditures that weren’t properly reported.

In March of this year, the Federal Election Commission fined both the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee for violating campaign finance laws by falsely claiming that more than $1 million used for the Steele dossier and other opposition research against candidate Trump was for “legal advice and services.”

Durham has sought these and other financial records as part of his investigation and has interviewed several former Clinton campaign officials including Mook, who handled opposition-researching spending and other budget matters and consulted with Gensler’s office during the campaign.

Patel said investigators would be wise to continue following the money trail. He maintained that he and other lawyers on the House Intelligence Committee found that the Clinton campaign failed to report the proper purpose of millions of dollars in additional funding.

“They need to keep digging, because there’s at least $10 million and maybe $20 million more that went directly into opposition research,” Patel said, adding that the Clinton effort to frame Trump as a Russian agent was ”massive.”

Last year, Gensler named Melissa Hodgman his associate director of enforcement. She happens to be married to disgraced former FBI official Peter Strzok, who’s also implicated in Durham’s probe. Strzok led the investigation of Trump and his campaign, codenamed “Crossfire Hurricane,” before he was fired in 2018 over anti-Trump texts he exchanged with his mistress, former FBI lawyer Lisa Page.

As adviser to the head of the SEC’s enforcement division, Hodgman currently is helping oversee an investigation into Trump’s social media start-up, Truth Social. According to regulatory filings, the SEC last month served Trump Media & Technology Group with a federal subpoena for records. The company owns Truth Social, Trump’s answer to left-leaning Twitter, which kicked him off its platform last year over remarks he made concerning the Jan. 6 riot.

The SEC reportedly wants to know more about merger talks between Trump’s parent company and Digital World Acquisition Corp., a publicly traded company regulated by the SEC. RCI contacted the SEC about the investigation and Gensler’s previous work for the Clinton campaign, but did not hear back.

Patel warned that too many of the people who “abused their power” in the Russiagate conspiracy to frame Trump have returned to power.

“A lot of these Russiagate conspirators are back recycled in the Biden administration,” said Patel, who recently published a book related to the Russiagate scandal, “The Plot Against the King.” “They must be held accountable or they’ll only abuse their power again.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Carrie Sheffield, senior policy analyst at the Independent Women’s Forum, said her organization has had to introduce a Women’s Bill of Rights, which defines what a woman is, in response to transgender ideology and a larger Marxist agenda that aims to destroy Western culture.

“Gender ideology is just one strand of a much bigger, radical, Marxist agenda, and that is critical theory,” she said. “So you’ve got critical race theory, critical gender theory, [and] critical class theory. That’s a bigger assault on freedom,” Sheffield told NTD on July 15 during Freedom Fest 2022.

“[Critical theory] originated in Germany at the Frankfurt School and it was to indoctrinate and to basically destroy Western civilization,” said Sheffield.

The Women’s Bill of Rights was necessary because basic scientific truths are under attack, said Sheffield, pointing to when the recently appointed Supreme Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson would not define the word “woman.”

“I’m not a biologist,” Jackson said during her confirmation hearing.

“[Jackson] knew it was a hornet’s nest, no matter what she said, that it would be just torn to shreds. So she played it very cautiously. And I think that that’s unfortunate because it just showed how the left has cowed anyone from being able to just speak the most basic commonsense,” said Sheffield.

“The polling is overwhelmingly in our favor, that people say, ‘we reject allowing biological men to compete in biological female sports,’” added Sheffield.

Sheffield said she is not against anyone identifying as they wish in their personal life, but there are biological differences that should be respected, especially in law.

“There are biological realities for women, and they put us at a physical disadvantage to biological men. And the fact that we have to spell this out, I think, is unfortunate,” said Sheffield.

“The definition of what it means to be a woman is under attack, the definition of what it means to be a mother is under attack, in terms of the protections for women and girls that we have been fighting for,” said Sheffield.

Proposed Laws Could Have Opposite Results

Laws under Title IX were created to protect women but are now in jeopardy, she said.

“And now they’re under assault because some people want to allow biological men to come in and take away scholarships and championships and opportunities, and we believe that it’s counter to science and it’s counter to the law,” said Sheffield.

The transgender issue is bringing conservatives and some on the left together, said Sheffield, with the progressive Women’s Liberation Front working with Sheffield’s conservative Independent Women’s Forum.

Because transgender male prison inmates are allowed to self-identify as women and have carried out assaults, Sheffield said, “We see this as an assault on the basic safety and the civil rights of biological women to have places where we are protected, where we have equal protection under the law where civil rights were not violated.”

Democrats in Congress led by Chairwoman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) are once again pushing to change the Constitution and add the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) that they say would ensure women’s rights. But conservatives like Sheffield say the move will harm biological women and create unfairness in areas including sports and reproduction, giving transgender males an advantage.

“As women leaders in Congress, we are here today—all these decades later—still fighting this same battle. We won’t stop until we win, when the ERA is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution,” said Maloney during a speech on the anniversary of the ERA on March 22.

However, Sheffield said attorney and Eagle Forum founder, Phyllis Schlafly, fought against the ERA when it was first introduced because it would achieve the opposite of what it proposes.

“What Phyllis and conservatives said at that time was that if you put this into place, you’re actually going to erase women, you’re going to force biological women into the draft, you’re going to allow men into women’s bathrooms, because it’s not going to recognize that there are actual biological distinctions,” said Sheffield.

Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

‘Freedom is under attack everywhere’: CloutHub CEO

Jeff Brain, CEO of the CloutHub social networking application, told The Epoch Times that freedom and liberty are being crushed in the United States, the Netherlands, Australia, and other countries across the planet.

“There are those that want to push for socialism and tyranny against those that believe in individual freedom and liberty. And that’s the struggle we live in right now,” he said in a July 21 telephone interview.

Spurred by a shadow ban

Brain was inspired by his own frustrations with social media to start a new platform.

Like many other users, he suspected he was being shadow-banned. In other words, his posts were partly or completely concealed from other users.

“I was being censored, and I just found that outrageous,” he said.

Even apart from censorship, Brain saw many problems with existing social media platforms.

“Many people acknowledge that they’re toxic. They invade people’s privacy, and they’re addiction mills,” he said.

Brain thinks that many alternatives to Big Tech share those same flaws. He wanted CloutHub to be different.

For one, when you click on a CloutHub user’s profile, you can’t see how many friends and followers it has. In addition, the site does not show how many views a user’s post has received.

Articles in its “News” section do, however, display views. (Full disclosure: The Epoch Times’ articles appear in the app’s news section, alongside sources ranging from The New York Times and Vox to The Washington Times and Breitbart News.)

Brain believes the constant exposure to metrics like post views can make people anxious while undermining civil conversation.

He aspires to create a “virtual kitchen table”—a network of Facebook Group-like Hubs where users can forge deep bonds around common interests.

Groups are organized into categories such as Faith, Politics, Music, Technology, and Health.

What Brain sees as a less-addictive design may translate to less user engagement. But, in his view, that is not necessarily a weakness.

“On our platform, people experience a little less interaction, but they’re doing real things,” he said.

CloutHub’s Google Play app ranks 4,316 in usage among all apps and 87 among social apps, according to SimilarWeb. (There is an iOS version as well.)

Brain said CloutHub has 4.5 million total users.

The platform, though open, is not wholly unregulated.

CloutHub prohibits doxing, harassment, and hundreds of words and phrases—mostly racial slurs and crude sexual language.

“We all know that the intention of Facebook and Twitter is not really about those [community standards]. It’s just a façade to silence people. But on my platform, hate is hate,” Brain said.

Users can also join anonymously, though they must prove their identity to become “Verified” users.

“We don’t believe in cancel culture, and we have to recognize that people are concerned, so if people want to use pseudonyms, they can use pseudonyms as their name,” Brain said.

Standing behind ‘global freedom coalition’

Brain says he connected Canadians protesting against COVID-19 mandates to GiveSendGo, an alternative to GoFundMe, because of the possibility that GoFundMe would not disburse donations to those protesters.

On Feb. 4, 2022, GoFundMe seized C$10 million ($8 million) in donations, stating that the fundraiser violated its Terms of Service. It pledged to “work with organizers to send all remaining funds to credible and established charities chosen by the Freedom Convoy 2022 organizers and verified by GoFundMe.”

Ontario’s government moved to freeze millions in donations to the truckers through GiveSendGo on Feb. 10.

GiveSendGo’s website was hacked on Feb. 13, and the group Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoS) leaked a list of donors.

On Feb. 14, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act against the protests, the first use of that law in that country’s history.

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland announced the same day that the government would freeze bank accounts and halt crowdfunding linked to the protests through “anti-money laundering and terrorist financing rules.”

After the GiveSendGo hack, Brain has started to build an alternative to the alternative: FundFreely.com, which he sees as “the counter to George Soros.”

He has also connected with farmers protesting climate mandates in the Netherlands.

Brain estimates he has spoken with 18 farm leaders on the phone, warning them that “the opposition is plotting against you while you’re sleeping, and you need to move fast, faster than you think.”

Canada and the Netherlands are just the start of what Brain sees as an emerging “global freedom coalition,” modeled on the non-violent resistance of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

He ticks off other examples: in Brazil, leftist factions in the government, the opponents of President Jair Bolsonaro, making it impossible for their enemies to get jobs or even to travel; in Portugal, Italy, and Germany, farmers rising in solidarity with the Dutch; in Australia, truckers slow-rolling in protest of vaccination mandates.

The Canadians have regrouped to continue their fight. On July 23, they will join a global protest in solidarity with the Dutch, including through a demonstration at the Consulate General of the Netherlands in Toronto.

“I believe that people everywhere should unite. I think freedom is under attack everywhere, including the United States,” Brain said.

Yet for all his concern about incursions on liberty, Brain radiates optimism about the future.

“I think they [the other side] overreached. I think you’re going to see the biggest push for individual freedom around the word that we’ve ever seen.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Advocacy group Judicial Watch has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) alleging that the agency is slow-rolling a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to turn over records tied to resident Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.

Judicial Watch filed the FOIA suit against DHS on July 17 at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, asking the court to force the agency to turn over all non-exempt records concerning government-provided security services to Hunter Biden or companions on any international trips from 2010 to 2013.

The advocacy group said in a July 20 statement that the Secret Service, which is part of DHS, had “failed to respond adequately” to three FOIA requests in March and April demanding records of security services—and related use of taxpayer funds—provided to Hunter Biden and companions.

“The Secret Service is violating FOIA law by slow-rolling and hiding Hunter Biden records,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in the statement. “What is the Secret Service trying to hide about Hunter Biden?”

DHS didn’t respond by press time to an Epoch Times request for comment on the lawsuit.

‘Questions Have Been Raised’

The backdrop for the lawsuit is Secret Service records obtained by Judicial Watch in 2020 showing hundreds of international trips taken by Hunter Biden during the first several years of the presidency of Barack Obama while receiving Secret Service protection.

“While it is typical for the families of the president and vice president to travel with them, questions have been raised about whether Hunter Biden used the government trip to further his business interests,” Judicial Watch stated.

Missing from the records the advocacy group obtained in 2020 was information on whether Hunter Biden’s travel was on Air Force One, Air Force Two, or other government aircraft or whether other family members were present.

Judicial Watch’s complaint indicates that the Secret Service had acknowledged the group’s FOIA request and by April 19 had “located potentially responsive records, was processing the records, and would send them” to Judicial Watch “upon completion of the processing.”

But those records haven’t been handed over to Judicial Watch, nor has DHS explained why it hasn’t yet transmitted the documents, the complaint alleges.

Other Hunter Probe

Besides Judicial Watch, Republicans in Congress have also sought Secret Service records tied to Hunter Biden’s travels while his father was vice president.

While the Secret Service turned over 259 pages of records (pdf) to Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the pair of senators objected to what they said were “extensive” and “improper” redactions that impede their ability to “understand the full scope of the interactions between Hunter Biden, his associates,” and the Secret Service.

Grassley and Johnson have been probing Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings. The senators released a report in 2020 (pdf) that said Hunter Biden’s job with Ukrainian energy firm Burisma created a “potential conflict of interest” for his father, who was heavily involved in U.S. policy toward Ukraine.

In 2019, Hunter Biden sat for an interview with ABC News, in which he insisted he hadn’t done anything “improper” in his business dealings, although he acknowledged “poor judgment.”

Hunter Biden told the media outlet that he “did nothing wrong at all,” but conceded that it was “poor judgment to be in the middle of something that is … a swamp … in many ways.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is saying it has performed vaccine safety data mining and analyses since early 2021, a reversal from a recent letter.

The CDC said in an operating procedures document dated Jan. 29, 2021, that it “will perform” a type of data mining analysis of vaccine safety data called Proportional Reporting Ratio (PRR).

The public health agency also said it would conduct routine surveillance of the data, which is being logged into the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System.

The data mining and surveillance were aimed at detecting adverse events occurring at higher-than-expected rates.

But little of what the agency said it would perform has actually been performed, according to a June 16 letter to the Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit.

The group had asked, in a Freedom of Information Act request, for all data generated in connection with the data mining, as well as copies of other data.

In response, CDC records officer Roger Andoh said that staff within the CDC’s Immunization and Safety Office “inform me that no PRRS were conducted by CDC.”

“Furthermore, data mining is outside of th[e] agency’s purview; staff suggest you inquire with the FDA,” or the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, he wrote.

The FDA was tasked with conducting a different method of data mining, according to the procedures document.

The CDC also failed to produce other information it said it would be producing, such as weekly tables of all reports of adverse events following COVID-19 vaccines.

Confusion

The reaction to the disclosure was swift. Joshua Guetzkow, a senior lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem who has been applying his training in statistics to examine vaccine safety, said it showed the CDC “lied” about its efforts to monitor the safety database, known as VAERS.

“In their own document on their own website, they state unambiguously what their plans were to monitor VAERS for safety signals. They failed to do that,” Guetzkow, who has been working with Children’s Health Defense, told The Epoch Times via email.

“Another thing: in their FOIA response, they said that data mining is outside the CDC’s purview. Then why did they say they were going to do data mining with PRRs in the SOP briefing document?” he wondered.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who has been attempting to get answers from federal agencies throughout the pandemic, told CDC Director Rochelle Walensky in a letter that the disclosure “raises questions about whether CDC ever collected the information on vaccine safety it originally claimed it would” in the operating procedures document.

The request for information that triggered the CDC’s response was for data from Feb. 1, 2021, through Sept. 30, 2021.

Dr. John Su, of the CDC’s Immunization and Safety Office, heads the CDC’s VAERS team, which authored the operating procedures.

“CDC has been performing PRRs since Feb 2021, and continues to do so to date,” Su told The Epoch Times via email.

Hope That CDC Is ‘More Forthcoming’

In its response to the Freedom of Information Act request, the CDC “was unequivocal: the agency said it hasn’t done PRR and has no responsibility to do so,” Risa Evans, with Children’s Health Defense (CHD), told The Epoch Times in an email.

“Now the CDC states that it has in fact been conducting PRR since February 2021. CHD will certainly follow up with the CDC to obtain those records, and hopefully, the agency will be more forthcoming this time around in light of its legal obligations under FOIA and its stated commitment to ‘openness and accountability,’” she added.

The Epoch Times has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for all PRR analyses the CDC has conducted, as well as other information. The VAERS team told The Epoch Times that the information “will be provided to you,” though a date has not been given.

The FDA, meanwhile, says that it has conducted a different type of analysis, called Empirical Bayesian data mining.

“FDA does perform Empirical Bayesian data mining periodically on data from VAERS as part of its vaccine safety monitoring efforts,” a spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email.

Asked for the results, the spokesperson did not respond.

The Epoch Times has filed a FOIA request with the FDA for the results.

Guetzkow in 2021 performed his own analysis of data from VAERS. That analysis uncovered safety signals for a number of events, including severe allergic shock, Bell’s palsy, heart inflammation, and stroke. Some of the events have been confirmed to be connected, or described as likely connected, to one or more of the COVID-19 vaccines by the CDC and other U.S. authorities.

“CDC and FDA have been actively engaged in vaccine safety surveillance ever since COVID-19 vaccines have been in use. During the first month of their availability, data on anaphylaxis after [the Pfizer and Moderna] COVID-19 vaccines were published (including in highly visible journals, like the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), indicating an observed incidence comparable to data after other vaccines. VAERS detected what would become known as thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS) after Janssen’s vaccine, leading to a pause in the use of the vaccine mere weeks after its use was initiated. VAERS reviewed reports of myocarditis after mRNA COVID-19 vaccines during Summer 2021, providing a highly thorough characterization of such reports,” Martha Sharan, a spokeswoman for the CDC, told The Epoch Times in an email.

“These examples indicate that the vaccine safety surveillance systems in use by CDC and FDA identify potential vaccine safety concerns in a timely and effective manner.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The U.S. Supreme Court gave Texas and Louisiana a temporary legal victory in the border states’ attempt to strike down a September 2021 Biden administration immigration guideline.

The Supreme Court, in a ruling without explanation on Thursday, allowed a federal judge in Texas to block the Biden Administration’s immigration guideline that, according to the border states’ prosecutors, limits the ability of border agents to detain and deport illegal aliens.

The ruling is a political setback for the Biden administration as it tries to juggle an unprecedented surge in illegal immigration, overburdened Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and an agenda to replace the Trump administration’s more stringent border policy amid bipartisan criticism.

Dissenting justices include Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Justice Elena Kagan, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson—marking Jackson’s first vote since the start of her tenure last month.

DHS Guidelines

The DHS issued the new immigration enforcement guidelines in late September 2021, directing immigration authorities to exercise “discretion” and prioritize detaining or deporting illegal aliens who “pose a threat to national security, public safety, and border security.”

Put into practice, the September 2021 guideline designates that an illegal alien’s lack of legal authorization to stay in the United States “should not alone be the basis of an enforcement action against them.”

This guidance is in direct contrast with the Trump-era DHS policy, which guides immigration authorities to detain and deport illegal aliens in a non-discriminatory manner, except in certain limited cases, such as those who came to the United States as children or are parents of U.S. citizens or permanent residents.

The high court’s ruling, which upheld a federal court’s ruling in June 2022 vacating the Biden administration’s September 2021 DHS guidance, gives Texas and Louisiana a temporary victory, at least until the Supreme Court hears the case in the December 2022 argument session.

‘Uncontroverted Evidence’

According to Trump-nominated Judge Drew Tipton from the Texas District Court for the Southern District, it is “difficult to deny” that the DHS’s September 2021 memo inflicted harm on the state of Texas.

Tipton sided with the border states in saying that “uncontroverted evidence” shows that the September 2021 memo led to an increase in the flow of illegal immigrants into Texas, with the state needing to spend more money on prosecution, detainment, healthcare, and administration. 

The district court continued by saying that while the DHS argues that some immigration data showed an increase in the number of arrests and expulsions following its guidance to “prioritize” criminally convicted aliens, the increase is disproportionate considering the “unprecedented surge of illegal aliens pouring over the border.”

“Given that the number of encounters with illegal border-crossers is ten times what it was in April 2020 … an increase in arrests and expulsions is far from impressive, especially if … roughly three-fourths of the illegal aliens that cross the border go undetected by DHS entirely,” Tipton wrote.

Border States Sue

The ever-escalating legal clash between the border states and the Biden Administration began two days after Biden took office.

Texas, on Jan. 22, 2021, sought a court injunction on a January 20 DHS memorandum that the state attorney general said suspended the deportation of the “vast majority of illegal aliens without any consideration for individual circumstances.”

As the case spiraled in the courts, the DHS issued a new set of immigration guidelines in February 2021 and yet another in September 2021—the last of which Texas and Louisiana sued in Texas’s District Court for the Southern District.

Tipton sided with the border state attorneys general and ruled in June 2022 that the federal government may not “require its officials to act in a manner that conflicts with a statutory mandate imposed by Congress.

Texas and Louisiana showed that the DHS’s September 2021 guidance, Tipton continued, is “contrary to law,” “arbitrary and capricious,” and “failed to observe” necessary government procedure.

“Using the words ‘discretion’ and ‘prioritization,’ the Executive Branch claims the authority to suspend statutory mandates,” Tipton wrote. “The law does not sanction this approach.” 

Split Courts

After Tipton’s ruling, the Biden administration appealed to a three-judge panel—unsuccessfully.

The judges at the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in an unsigned opinion dated July 6, 2022, wrote that some of the Biden administration’s concerns advanced in its September 2021 guidelines—particularly those replacing “Congress’s statutory mandates—are “extralegal” and “plainly outside of the bounds of power” conferred to Congress by the Immigration and Nationality Act. 

“For example, it provides that the guidelines ‘are essential to advancing this administration’s stated commitment to advancing equity for all, including people of color and others who have been historically underserved, marginalized and adversely affected by persistent poverty and inequality,’” the panel wrote.

The Fifth Circuit ruling came a day after a polar opposite ruling by the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit on a similar case, in which Arizona, Ohio, and Montana sued the Biden administration on the same grounds.

Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton, a Bush-appointed judge, sided with the Biden administration, opining in the ruling that the Biden administration, like previous governments, is given “considerable authority” by federal law to shape immigration policy and, therefore, guidelines for detention and removal of illegal immigrants.

The Fifth Circuit court, in explaining its differing opinion with the Sixth Circuit, said that precedent supports its conclusions and that “fulsome fact-findings” from the lower court support Texas’s and Louisiana’s standing.

In an email statement to The Epoch Times, a spokesperson from the DHS said it “is obligated to and will continue to abide” by the Texas District Court’s decision regarding its September 2021 guidelines “as long as the decision remains in effect.”

“In the interim, ICE officers will make enforcement decisions on a case-by-case basis in a professional and responsible manner, informed by their experience as law enforcement officials and in a way that best protects against the greatest threats to the homeland,” the spokesperson added.

The Texas attorney general celebrated the Supreme Court’s ruling as “another win” for Texas and border security. 

“Yesterday the Supreme Court made clear that, while we prepare for oral argument this winter, the Biden Administration must detain illegal aliens with criminal convictions,” Paxton said in a July 22 press release.

“It’s the right legal decision, and it’s what’s best for Texas and our nation.”

Source: The Epoch Times

For followers of “Star Trek,” one of the most memorable antagonists is the Borg, a race of beings composed of organic and biomechanic body parts linked together in a hive mind called the “Collective.”

In their quest to achieve perfection, the Borg travel through the galaxy extending their power and control by integrating the knowledge and technology of other alien species through a process called “assimilation,” whereby individuals are forcibly injected with nanoparticles that alter their cellular DNA and transform them into drones for the Collective. Each Borg has no individual thoughts or will. They are part of a group consciousness where all are constantly supervised, guided and controlled.

In an example of life imitating art, the World Economic Forum is a major player in world affairs today.

Klaus Schwab, a German economist and mechanical engineer, founded this non-governmental organization in 1971. The WEF is best known for the annual conferences it holds in Davos, Switzerland, which bring together hundreds of political and business leaders from around the world to discuss international issues. Funded by approximately 1,000 multinational corporations, private donors and government contributions, it is one of the most important networks in the world for the globalist power elite.

In 1992, Schwab began a parallel organization called the Global Leaders for Tomorrow (the name changed in 2004 to the Forum of Young Global Leaders). Applicants to this program are subjected to a very rigorous selection process. The more than 1,200 graduates include some of the most powerful presidents, prime ministers, senior government advisers, health bureaucrats and business leaders in the world.

In June 2020, at its 50th annual meeting, the WEF announced the launch of the “Great Reset,” an initiative to reimagine the world and transform the global economy.

This effort involves transhumanism, the development of technologies across digital and biological worlds to improve human mental and physical capabilities — that is, to make disabilities, suffering, disease, aging and involuntary death a thing of the past. Schwab described this in more detail in his 2016 book “The Fourth Industrial Revolution.” According to him, this revolution will change not only what we do but also who we are.

In a 2016 Swiss television interview, the interviewer asked when he thought implantable microchips would be implemented on humanity. Schwab said, “Certainly in the next 10 years. And at first we will implant them in our clothes. And then we could imagine that we will implant them in our brains, or in our skin.”

In a 2020 book co-authored with Thierry Malleret, “COVID-19: The Great Reset,” Schwab declared that the COVID-19 crisis represented an unprecedented opportunity to reimagine the world — that is, to implement the Great Reset. This includes genetic engineering involving making people part-synthetic, incorporating them into the Internet of Bodies (an evolution of the Internet of Things), and merging them into a required global digital identification regime in order to participate in this reimagined world.

Schwab’s top adviser and transhumanist Dr. Yuval Noah Harari openly admits that the gathering of enormous amounts of data on individuals would enable global elites to build a digital dictatorship that tyrants of the past could only have imagined.

Here are a few more ideas expressed by Dr. Harari that illustrate his worldview:

“By hacking organisms, elites may gain the power to re-engineer the future of life itself.”

“Science is replacing evolution by natural selection with evolution by intelligent design. Not the intelligent design of some god above the clouds, but our intelligent design, and the intelligent design of our clouds — the IBM cloud, the Microsoft cloud. These are the new driving forces of evolution.”

“Humans are now hackable animals. The whole idea that humans have this soul or spirit and they have free will, and nobody knows what’s happening inside me, so whatever I choose, whether in the election or whether in the supermarket, this is my free will — that’s over.”

Sacrificial Sam

“Now, humans are developing even bigger powers than ever before. We are really acquiring divine powers of creation and destruction. We are really upgrading humans into gods. We are acquiring, for instance, the power to re-engineer life.”

“Fake news has been with us for thousands of years. Just think of the Bible.”

“All these stories about Jesus rising from the dead and being the Son of God — this is fake news.”

To be continued in Part 2.

The views expressed in this opinion article are those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by the owners of this website. If you are interested in contributing an Op-Ed to The Western Journal, you can learn about our submission guidelines and process here.

Former First Lady Melania Trump said Thursday that she was not aware of the events taking place during the U.S. Capitol breach on Jan. 6, 2021.

“On January 6, 2021, I was fulfilling one of my duties as First Lady of the United States of America, and accordingly, I was unaware of what was simultaneously transpiring at the U.S. Capitol Building,” Trump told Fox News.

She added that “it was my obligation to record the contents of the White House’s historic rooms, including taking archival photographs of all the renovations.”

“Several months in advance, I organized a qualified team of photographers, archivists, and designers to work with me in the White House to ensure perfect execution,” she continued. “As required, we scheduled January 6, 2021, to complete the work on behalf of our Nation.”

Trump also cast doubt on claims made by her former press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, who has often criticized former President Donald Trump and the former first lady after they left office.

“Ms. Grisham was not in the White House on January 6, and her behavior in her role as Chief of Staff ultimately amounts to dereliction of duty,” Trump said, while adding that normally, the first lady’s chief of staff “provides detailed briefings surrounding our Nation’s important issues.”

“In fact, Ms. Grisham failed to provide insight and information into the events surrounding January 6 as she had abandoned her post in Washington, D.C.,” she said. “Shamefully, this behavior has only partially become public knowledge; yet was consistent for Ms. Grisham.”

Trump added: “It is evident that Grisham’s recent betrayals are a last-ditch attempt to resuscitate her ruined career and reputation.”

Text Message

Grisham responded to Trump’s statement Thursday with a cryptic Twitter message that read: “Lol. That’s truly all I’ve got.” The Epoch Times has contacted her for comment.

Last month, she posted on Twitter a screenshot of a conversation she allegedly had with Trump on Jan. 6.

“Do you want to tweet that peaceful protests are the right of every American, but there is no place for lawlessness & violence?” Grisham allegedly texted Trump, who was listed as “MT,” with the response in the conversation being simply “No.”

The screenshot text message that was posted by Grisham, who also served as the White House press secretary, has not been confirmed by Trump or an official source.

Grisham also issued a response Thursday speculation she doctored the screenshot, writing: “I’m actually not smart enough to do that.”

Adding to Fox News, Trump said that if she was “fully informed of all the details … I would have immediately denounced the violence that occurred at the Capitol Building.”

“And while Ms. Grisham’s behavior is disappointing, it is not surprising or an isolated incident,” she continued.

Her statement comes as the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 incident is continuing to hold public hearings on the Jan. 6 breach. Some Republicans and former President Trump say the panel is an attempt to distract Americans from more pressing issues such as the economy, inflation, gas prices, and illegal immigration.

On Wednesday, Attorney General Merrick Garland weighed in the Jan. 6 hearing, saying that “no person is above the law.” That comment came in response to a question about a memo the Justice Department reportedly sent out noting a longstanding agency practice of not making politically contentious prosecutions in the lead-up to federal elections.

“I can’t say it any more clearly than that. There is nothing in the principles of prosecution, in any other factors, which prevent us from investigating anyone who is criminally responsible for an attempt to undo a democratic election,” Garland told reporters at the Department of Justice headquarters in Washington.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for sustainable development informs government policies to restrict farming and transform the food systems in different parts of the world, said Alex Newman, an award-winning international journalist who has covered this issue for over a decade.

The 2030 Agenda is a plan of action devised by the United Nations (U.N.) to achieve 17 sustainable development goals (SDG). The goals and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development were adopted by all UN member states in 2015.

Then-Secretary General of the U.N. Ban Ki-moon called the 2030 Agenda “the global declaration of interdependence,” (pdf) Newman said in a recent interview on EpochTV’s “Crossroads” program.

“In my opinion, [it] was a direct swipe at our Declaration of Independence … So instead of being independent nations, we will all be now interdependent.”

The 2030 Agenda “covers every element of human life, every element of the economy,” including global wealth redistribution not only within the nations but also among the nations, Newman commented. The Agenda “specifically says that we need to change the way that we consume and produce goods,” he added.

Goal number two on the 2030 Agenda deals specifically with food, Newman said.

In September 2021, the U.N. held the Food Systems Summit, which emphasized the need “to leverage the power of food systems” for the purpose of achieving all 17 sustainable development goals by 2030, according to a U.N. statement.

“Everyone, everywhere, must take action and work together to transform the way the world produces, consumes, and thinks about food,” the statement said.

Taking Over Farmland

The sustainable development agenda emerged in the 1970s when the United Nations tried to define it at a conference in Vancouver, Canada, in 1976. Newman said.

The conference, which was the first U.N. Conference on Human Settlements known as Habitat I, adopted the Vancouver Declaration (pdf), a report that provided recommendations for U.N. member states.

Newman quoted an excerpt from this report: “Land cannot be treated as an ordinary asset controlled by individuals and subject to the pressures and inefficiencies of the market. Private land ownership is also a principal instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth, therefore contributes to social injustice.”

Newman said that, in his view, the U.N. ultimately wants to get rid of private land ownership. “We see this all over the world. This is not just happening in the Netherlands.”

He thinks that a war is taking place against farmers and ranchers, especially those who are independent or those who are not part of the system. “They want to remove small farmers, even medium farmers, from their land, and they want to bring it all under the control of these—I think there’s no other term to describe it—fascistic public-private partnerships.”

Newman noted some examples to illustrate his opinion: The Chinese regime forces peasants to move to megacities, farmers are killed in South Africa, and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the United States proposed a new rule that could bankrupt small and medium farmers.

In March 2022, the SEC proposed a regulation that “would mandate publicly traded companies to report on their carbon emissions and other climate-related information,” as well as report similar information from any companies with which they do business, according to an SEC statement.

As a consequence, all companies in the business supply chain of a publicly traded entity would have to report their carbon emission and climate-related data.

U.S. Sens. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and John Hoeven (R-N.D.) led 30 lawmakers to urge SEC to repeal its proposal, calling it a “regulatory overreach.”

”Imposing regulatory overreach on farmers and ranchers falls outside of the SEC’s congressionally provided authority,” the senators said in a statement. “This substantial reporting requirement would significantly burden small, family-owned farms.”

The American Farm Bureau Federation said in a statement that the proposed rule could create “substantial costs” for farmers because they do not have teams of compliance officers or attorneys like large corporations. Moreover, it may push out of business small and medium-sized farmers and force food-processing companies to look for agricultural raw products outside of the United States, the statement asserted.

Centralizing Food Supply

 “If you control the food supply, you control everything,” Newman said.

“One of the things that the communists loved to do is create scarcity and create dependents. As long as you have independent people who are able to take care of themselves, there really is no need for the government to run your life and to control everything that you do,” Newman said.

“Americans are good examples,” Newman continued. “As long as the food production is widely diffused, and it’s in the hands of independent producers, it becomes very difficult to get people to bend to your will.”

The whole idea of using food as a weapon has been a hallmark of communist regimes for 100 years, Newman explained. “It’s also been a hallmark of the very same people who are openly promoting the U.N. Agenda 2030, the sustainable development goals, and even the World Economic Forum.”

Those who contrived “the controlled demolition of our food supply … want to completely restructure it,” in order to gain total centralized control of that because it gives them absolute power over everybody under their jurisdiction, Newman said.

For example, the Chinese regime and the mega-corporations formed a public-private partnership to centralize control of the food supply, Newman said.

It’s similar to what occurred in Nazi Germany, where on paper private companies own the business and ostensibly manage their businesses, but, ultimately, the private companies will be taking their orders from the government, Newman explained.

In the United States, the ESG metrics are used to “hijack control of the business sector, of the individual companies, and put them at the service of the goals of what I call the predator class—the people behind the World Economic Forum, behind the United Nations,” Newman said. (ESG stands for environmental, social, and governance criteria that are used to evaluate companies on how compliant they are with sustainability.)

The food supply centralization is just one component of their agenda, but it is a very critical one, which along with energy and other things, allows them to control humanity, he added.

World Economic Forum Involvement

In January 2021, the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the government of the Netherlands launched a new initiative called Food Innovation Hub, according to a WEF statement. The Hub, joined by several public and private sector partners, is a key platform that will use technology and innovations for food systems transformation, the statement said.

The Food Innovation Hub secured “multiyear funding “ from the Netherlands’ government and established its Global Coordinating Secretariat that would coordinate the efforts of the regional food hubs as well as align with global food processes and initiatives such as the UN Food Systems Summit, the statement read.

The global food Secretariat would be located in Wageningen, Netherlands, at the heart of the Dutch agrifood ecosystem, and would direct the development of global, regional Food Innovation Hubs, according to the “Invest in Holland” website.

“The work of these regional hubs is already underway, with more than 20 organizations leading the initiative across Africa, ASEAN [Association of Southeast Asian Nations], Colombia, and India, and the European hub,” the website said.

Ramon Laguarta, CEO of PepsiCo, said in the WEF statement: “Food is one of the main levers we can pull to improve environmental and societal health. With the right investment, innovation, and robust collaboration, agriculture could become the world’s first sector to become carbon negative. … Unlocking this potential will take ambitious multi-stakeholder, pre-competitive collaborations to transform the food system—exactly what these Hubs are designed to cultivate.”

Among the solutions advocated by the WEF to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions is replacing livestock-derived foods with alternative forms of protein, such as insects, and lab-cultured proteins, according to a 2019 white paper (pdf) commissioned by the WEF.

In response to this recommendation, several indoor agriculture start-ups have emerged, including Ÿnsect, “the first fully automated vertical insect farm in the world, able to produce 100,000 tons of insect products a year,” a WEF report said.

In March, France-based Ÿnsect acquired Jord Producers, a U.S. mealworm manufacturer, to expand its operations in the United States by entering the American chicken feed market, said a company statement.

How People Can Stop Food Takeover

If people want to prevent food supply from being used as a tool to control them, they need to find alternative sources of food locally, Newman said. “You need to have a relationship with the local farmers in your community, get to the local farmers market, deal with the local farmers, come up with some agreement,” such as getting delivery of fresh, seasonal produce from the local farms for 100 bucks a week, he said.

“We need to really start providing an alternative economic structure, because if we let them get control of the entire food supply, I guarantee you, it will be used as a weapon to take your freedom, to get you to do things you otherwise wouldn’t want to do, to undermine the sovereignty of your nation, whether you’re in the United States or another country, and ultimately to dispossess people of their private land and of their freedom.”

“If you have agricultural land, do not sell out to these people. They’re trying to bribe the farmers to leave their land.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Ruling against EPA sets precedent for a series of lawsuits against agency overreach

As the Biden administration reels from a string of recent legal defeats, political analysts hail the U.S. Supreme Court’s latest ruling, West Virginia v. EPA, as but one component of a new, broad-based approach that the courts are taking to halt a century-long effort by progressives to empower the administrative state and rule Americans by bureaucratic decree.

Dating back to President Woodrow Wilson 100 years ago, progressive presidents, including Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden, have worked to transfer law-making authority from Congress to their executive agencies. Wilson, the father of modern-day progressives, believed the Constitution, with its separation of powers, was an outdated document and that professional bureaucrats were superior at decision-making, compared to the time-consuming and compromise-ridden process of passing laws through elected representatives.

Wilson wrote in the 1887 article “The Study of Administration” that “the many, the people, who are sovereign [under the Constitution] have no single ear which one can approach, and are selfish, ignorant, timid, stubborn or foolish.”

“The greatest revolution since the Constitution in many ways has been this movement away from legislatures into agencies,” Matthew Spalding, Dean of Hillsdale College’s Graduate School of Government, told The Epoch Times. “The crisis here is the movement away from consent,” as Americans increasingly lose their right to have a voice in setting the laws and regulations that control their lives.

In 1984, for example, the Supreme Court handed down a decision that came to be known as the Chevron Doctrine, ruling that federal agencies had the authority to decide the scope of their power in situations where congressional authorization was ambiguous. Since this ruling, Chevron v. National Resources Defense Council, the courts have sided with federal agencies in cases where the authority of agencies was challenged.

Now, for the first time in a century, a series of rulings from federal courts have put up a roadblock to halt administrative encroachment. Two factors have brought about this change. First, the appointment by the Trump administration of 234 federal judges, including three Supreme Court justices. And second, the Biden administration’s unusually brazen attempts to push federal agencies well beyond their legal authority in order to impose a left-wing agenda on the United States without popular consent.

West Virginia Ruling

In the case of West Virginia v. EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) attempted to force America’s electric utilities to switch from fossil fuels to wind and solar. On June 30, the Supreme Court ruled that the Biden administration had no authority to do so.

“For years, unelected bureaucrats in the administrative state have been trying to destroy our fossil fuel industries by transforming the EPA into a communist-style central planning authority because they know they can’t get their radical environmental policies passed through Congress,” said West Virginia State Treasurer Riley Moore in an official statement, lauding the decision as “a victory for the rule of law.”

“Part of the problem is Congress writing these broad laws that leave a lot of room for interpretation by the agencies that are supposed to execute the laws,” William Shughart, senior fellow at the Independent Institute, told the Epoch Times. “That has led to this explosive growth in the administrative state. The West Virginia ruling applies the brakes to that growth.”

‘Major Questions Doctrine’

One of the key components of this Supreme Court ruling is the “major questions doctrine.” This is the concept that agencies, which are unelected by and unaccountable to the public, cannot make up rules on issues of major importance to Americans without clear authorization from elected representatives.

“The Supreme Court decision speaks to the legal flaws with trying to mark an entire industry for termination,” Jonathan Berry, a partner at Boyden Gray & Associates, told The Epoch Times. “What the Supreme Court is saying is that when you take on initiatives of major economic or political significance, those measures have to be authorized by a clear statement from Congress.”

“One of the most profound aspects of this ruling is its portability across regulatory regimes,” Berry said. In rendering its West Virginia decision, the Supreme Court looked at prior rulings, including those against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). “The common thread across those cases is the executive branch using an administrative agency to wade into policy areas beyond what Congress authorized,” Berry added.

In August 2021, the Supreme Court ruled that the CDC did not have legal authority to ban landlords from evicting non-paying tenants. In January of this year, the Court ruled that OSHA did not have authority to force employees of large companies to take the Covid-19 vaccine.

“What we’re seeing here is extremely significant,” Spalding said. “The way the Court works is they do these things in different cases here and there, but they’re putting a doctrine together that ultimately builds up to a larger case. The heart of the matter is the unconstitutionality of essentially shifting legislative authority outside of the legislative branch into these agencies.”

“There are already tons of lawsuits out there that have been winding their way through the legal system for years,” Bonner Cohen, senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research, told The Epoch Times. “Some of those lawsuits will eventually make it to the Supreme Court, but a lot of them may be dealt with at lower court level simply because people can now point to the precedent that was set in West Virginia v. EPA.”

Administrative Overreach

Last week, a Trump-appointed federal judge temporarily blocked orders by the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) that attempted to force states to, among other things, allow transgender children to compete in sports in schools according to their gender identity rather than their gender at birth. Twenty state attorneys general brought a suit against the DOE directive, arguing that the authority to decide such policies “properly belongs to Congress, the States, and the people.”

Two other areas where administrative overreach by the Biden administration will likely be challenged next are a directive from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regarding “green accounting” (that is, accounting that factors environmental costs in the financial results of operations) and gun control initiatives from the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF).

In a case that closely parallels West Virginia v. EPA, the SEC issued a directive that all listed companies must provide audited reports on the greenhouse gas emissions of their operations, as well as those of their suppliers and customers. In addition, companies must detail their strategies to reduce such emissions. Critics believe this will open companies up to a rash of environmental lawsuits and actions by activist asset managers like BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard. West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey was among the first state officials to threaten legal action in response.

The ATF has been attempting to expand the legal definition of which gun parts constitute a firearm in an effort to implement a Biden administration initiative, which failed to pass Congress, against unregistered homemade guns, thus turning a formerly legal practice into a felony. A lawsuit against this has already been filed by the Gun Owners of America. In addition, the ATF was found to be keeping records of “several hundred million” gun purchases, despite the fact that Congress explicitly outlawed a federal gun registry.

Loss of Public Trust

Such attempts to circumvent public consent by legislating through unelected federal agencies inevitably lead to a loss of public trust in government.

“If there’s no consent, no responsibility, no check-back system, then you really are undermining public confidence in that process,” Spalding said. Regarding the ATF and gun control measures, a June poll by NPR/Ipsos found that, while most gun owners said they would accept universal background checks, they “harbored a deep distrust of government.”

“The more that this administration steps over the line and claims for itself powers that the peoples’ representatives in Congress have not given it, the more we should expect a decline in trust and in legitimacy,” Berry said.

As the courts begin to push back against administrative overreach, however, the backlash from the political left has been escalating, including demands for “packing” the Supreme Court with more left-leaning judges, or even abolishing the Court altogether.

Following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, President Biden stated, “We cannot allow an out-of-control Supreme Court, working in conjunction with extremist elements of the Republican Party, to take away our freedoms and our personal autonomy.” A recent survey by Rasmussen and the Heartland Institute found that, in the wake of the EPA decision, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and the pro-Second Amendment Bruen decision (regarding concealed weapons), most Democrats and younger voters see the Court as a racist and sexist institution and want to pack it with progressive judges, remove it, or replace it.

“These findings clearly show that most Democrats and young Americans do not respect the sanctity of the Supreme Court when it issues decisions that run counter to their agenda,” Heartland Institute Research Fellow Chris Talgo told The Epoch Times. “As a former U.S. history and American government teacher, I can say without a doubt that our education system is not teaching the basics when it comes to civics. Most American students cannot name the three branches of government, let alone understand the role of separation of powers. This does not bode well for the future of freedom, seeing as how young voters are hostile to the very institutions that preserve our freedom.”

The Justice Department, for example, permitted weeks of intimidating protests outside the homes of conservative Supreme Court justices after the opinion to overturn Roe v. Wade was prematurely leaked prior to the formal ruling. Following the arrest in June of an armed man who was charged with attempted murder at the home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) demanded that U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland “detail the steps the Department of Justice is taking to protect our Supreme Court Justices in the wake of an unprecedented harassment and intimidation campaign.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was criticized for taking weeks to bring a bill protecting Supreme Court justices and their families to a vote, even after the alleged assassination attempt against Justice Kavanaugh. When the bill was put to a vote, 27 Democrats voted against it.

Granting Power to Experts

Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, who disagreed with the majority in the West Virginia case, argued that the courts must defer to the EPA, which she deemed the “expert agency,” and allow the agency to interpret the scope of its own power. Critics of this approach, however, remain skeptical of granting too much power to experts and question whether administrators are in fact experts when it comes to issues like national energy policy or making personal medical decisions.

“These are career government employees,” Cohen said. “They are not experts.”

“Look at the experience the country had during the pandemic, where we had such experts as Dr. [Anthony] Fauci and Dr. [Deborah] Birx and others throughout the federal government who completely mishandled the public health response to COVID-19,” Cohen said. “If these are the experts, we need to free ourselves from experts, because they got it spectacularly wrong.”

One of the methods used to expand administrative power has been the declaration of government health emergencies, including the pandemic health emergency, the climate health emergency, the racism health emergency, and the “gun violence” health crisis.

“Anytime you encounter the word ‘emergency,’ anytime you encounter the word ‘crisis,’ be careful,” Cohen said. “It may in fact be a crisis because those things happen, but it may be nothing more than a pretext for a power grab.”

“The invocation of an emergency is not a justification for combining the powers of government into a single person,” Berry said. “That’s the definition of tyranny.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The Washington Post sternly condemned President Joe Biden for his “shameful” greeting of Saudi Arabian royalty, but has remained mum on its owner’s extensive business dealings with the Saudis.

The paper—which is owned by Amazon executive chairman Jeff Bezos—led the charge following video of Biden fist-bumping the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. The Post’s publisher, Fred Ryan, wrote that Biden’s trip “erodes” the “moral authority” of the United States. In his piece—which is topped with an artistic rendering of Biden shaking a blood-covered hand—Ryan criticizes the president for “turning a blind eye” to the Saudi regime’s alleged murder of Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi. Ryan said Biden was sending the “message that the United States is willing to look the other way when its commercial interests are at stake.”

Just four months before Biden’s trip, however, it was Amazon traveling to the oil kingdom for commercial interests. A senior Amazon executive was photographed shaking hands with high-ranking Saudi officials to finalize an economic partnership between the multinational conglomerate and the Islamic theocracy. The Post did not cover Amazon’s Saudi agreement, according to a review of the paper’s archive.

Since Bezos’s 2013 purchase of the Post, experts have speculated that his substantial Amazon holdings may influence the paper’s coverage. A 2018 piece in HuffPost featured anonymous statements from several Washington Post employees who said they felt uncomfortable criticizing Amazon given Bezos’s ownership of the paper.

“I tend to do less critical thinking about Amazon than I do, say, about Facebook or Google or Walmart, and the reason is fairly obvious: because I am thankful for the opportunity I have, which wouldn’t exist without Jess [sic] Bezos,” one employee said. “Conflicts of interest are there no matter how well we do our jobs,” another said.

Bezos has a $116 billion stake in Amazon, which has taken major steps to expand its footprint in Saudi Arabia in recent years. During the March 19, 2022, meeting between Amazon officials and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Investment, the company stressed its “commitment to the Kingdom.”

“This partnership underscores our commitment to the Kingdom and our customers in it, and will contribute to accelerating the growth of the e-commerce sector, as well as enabling businesses to take advantage of the great growth opportunities that the Kingdom offers,” said Ronaldo Mouchawar, an Amazon vice president for the Middle East region.

The major deal followed several steps taken last year by Amazon to establish a foothold in Saudi Arabia. In January 2021, Amazon extended its trademark Prime delivery service to Saudi Arabia. Two months later, Amazon announced plans to add 11 new buildings and hire 1,500 new workers in Saudi Arabia. The company also partnered last month with Saudi start-ups to help improve the country’s logistics infrastructure.

None of the developments were covered by the Post, which appears to have last covered Amazon’s business dealings in Saudi Arabia in October 2019, when the company decided to cease operations in the country following Khashoggi’s murder.

Writers at the Washington, D.C.-based liberal news outlet have not shied away from criticizing others for involving themselves with the Saudis. The Post denounced entertainment companies such as Disney for allowing their shares to be purchased by the Saudi government, criticized influencers for attending a Saudi-sponsored music festival, and attacked performers like Mariah Carey for doing shows in the country.

The paper did not respond to a request for comment on its coverage of Amazon, which also did not respond to request for comment.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

ANALYSIS: Does wearing a fancy top hat indoors to conceal your unsightly bald dome make you dumber?

Washington Post columnist Max Boot wears a fancy top hat—indoors and outdoors—to conceal his freakish bald head. It may or may not be making him dumber, given the profoundly stupid tweet he posted while attempting to insult a group of veterans who actually did serve their country in uniform.

“Just imagine how all these right-wingers would have reacted with horror if they had been around when Harry Truman desegregated the military,” Boot wrote on Twitter, the social networking platform. “Now that was woke!”

Boot’s ridiculous and racially charged comment came in response to a New York Post op-ed written by Jason Church, a retired U.S. Army captain. Church argued that our military should focus more on preparing for armed conflict with bad actors around the world and less on embracing the “diversity, equity, and inclusion” ethos of government bureaucrats.

“The Navy is producing instructional videos on gender pronouns while its poorly maintained ships crash at sea,” wrote Church, citing a Washington Free Beacon report. He also suggested—quite reasonably—that lowering the military’s physical fitness standards in the name of “inclusivity” was not a good thing. Other changes designed to make the military more “woke,” Church argued, have “weakened training, lowered morale,” and “diminish[ed] the fighting spirit, cohesiveness, and reputation of America’s Armed Forces.”

Boot, who never served in the military but has written several books about war, had responded with the cerebral heft of a Salon commenter, and Church let him know it. “With respect to @MaxBoot, this is beneath you and the Post,” he wrote. “We are right to be worried about politicizing the military and @VeteransOnDuty will voice these concerns. Smugly dismissing this as bigotry is cheap and wrong.”

Church, who joined the Army in 2011 and received a Purple Heart in Afghanistan, is the chairman of Veterans on Duty, a national membership organization dedicated to “exposing how the woke revolution in the services works” and compelling the military to “get back to basics” by electing like-minded policymakers.

Jeremy C. Hunt, a black Army veteran and member of the Veterans on Duty board, also blasted Boot’s smug commentary. “We care about a military that wins,” he wrote in response to Boot’s tweet. “If you want an example of modern segregation in the military, look no further than the Biden administration’s racist [diversity, equity, and inclusion] protocols that you defend.”

Boot attempted to defend himself, once again channeling the intellectual rigor of the Salon comments section. “Diversity makes the military stronger,” he wrote. “Will you criticize Trump as well as Biden?”

Church, Hunt, and their fellow Veterans on Duty members fought for democracy by defending their country against foreign enemies. Boot “fights for democracy” by writing boring columns in the Post.

On Sunday, for example, Boot defended Biden’s meeting with bone-saw dictator Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, whom the president once pledged to make a “pariah” until flip-flopping as soon as rising gas prices threatened Democratic prospects in the midterm elections.

READ MORE: I Forced a Bot to Read 1,000 Max Boot Columns and Write a Max Boot Column of Its Own

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

South Texas blogger labels Flores “Miss Frijoles” and uses sexually crude language

Republican Congresswoman Mayra Flores responded to racial stereotypes and crude language used to describe her by a South Texas blogger paid with campaign money from Congressman Vicente Gonzales, her Democratic opponent in the Texas District 34 midterm election.

In a Twitter post on Monday, Flores accused the Gonzales campaign of paying for a blogger to “run hateful and racist ads” against her. The posts that appeared in the McHale Report blog referred to her as “Miss Frijoles,” “Miss Menudo,” “Miss Enchiladas,” and a “cotton-pickin’ liar.”

“I am disgusted that Vicente Gonzalez has hired a creepy blogger to attack my Mexican heritage and sexually degrade me, but I won’t let this distract me from my work,” she told The Epoch Times via text. “Vicente Gonzalez is an example of everything that’s wrong with Washington. It’s truly sick,” she said.

Jerry McHale, a longtime South Texas blogger, also used sexually crude language in a May 13 headline about the Congresswoman: “Does Flores Want Trump to Come & Take Her [expletive]???”

Federal Elections Commission data shows Gonzalez made campaign advertising expenditures to Jerry McHale of $1,200 on June 24 and $1,000 on October 27, 2021.

McHale told The Epoch Times that Gonzalez never told him what to write, and he has never spoken to the Congressman. He was unapologetic for the language used in the blog. The self-described ultra-left Democratic blogger said he had no regrets using “satire” to describe Flores or “punching hard” at Republicans. He said Gonzalez and other politicians pay him to run photos with wording akin to a headline.

Colin Steel, campaign manager for Gonzalez, did not return a call seeking comment. However, he told NBC News, which first reported the story, that Gonzalez disapproves of calling Flores names and denied any wrongdoing.

Flores became the first Republican elected in the heavily Hispanic Rio Grande District in more than 100 years. The devout Christian won a special election for the district on a conservative platform of God, family, and country.

The controversial blog is just the latest incident in the rough-and-tumble political race for Texas District 34, which Flores aims to keep red. During her swearing-in ceremony, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi appeared to nudge Flores’ daughter to the side, which prompted Flores to condemn Pelosi on social media.

Pelosi’s camp responded that the speaker was trying to help the child so she wouldn’t be hidden during photos at the event.

Flores, a legal immigrant from Mexico married to a border patrol agent, is convinced that more Democratic voters will realize that their traditional Latino values are more aligned with the Republican Party. Democrats largely ignored the special election, but Republicans saw it as an opportunity to further their efforts to convert South Texas red after a strong showing in 2020.

Flores replaced former Rep. Filemon Vela (D-Texas), who resigned this spring to work for a Washington D.C. lobbying firm. She will only hold the seat until January 2023—unless she can beat Gonzales to serve for a full term by winning in November.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

While Dr. Anthony Fauci on Tuesday amended his Monday retirement announcement, Republicans who have criticized Fauci’s COVID-19 leadership were not changing their tune.

A Tuesday report from The Hill contradicted one from the day before concerning Fauci’s plans. Politico had reported that Fauci would retire by the end of resident Joe Biden’s term.

“I’m not going to retire. No, no, I’m not going to retire. I may step down from my current position at some time,” Fauci said. Fauci, 81, is currently the president’s chief medical adviser, as well as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

As Fauci told the story on Tuesday, he had been asked if he would keep working if former President Donald Trump wins the 2024 presidential election.

“I said a very innocent but true thing. I said whether it’s Donald Trump or it’s Joe Biden’s second term, I don’t intend to be in my current position in January of 2025,” Fauci said.

“What happens between now and then I have not decided, but the one thing I do know is that I have other things that I want to do in a professional way that I want to have the capability — while I still have the energy and the passion to do them,” he said.

Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has sparred with Fauci in Senate hearings, welcomed the change.

“Excellent – because I look forward to ascertaining Fauci’s involvement in the cover-up of the lab origins of COVID — Under Oath!” he tweeted.

Excellent – because I look forward to ascertaining Fauci’s involvement in the cover-up of the lab origins of COVID — Under Oath! https://t.co/LHmpE8QuWs

— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) July 19, 2022

Other Republicans reacted to the possibility of Fauci stepping down by saying that the career bureaucrat does not deserve to happily slip off into the golden years of retirement.

“Whether Fauci retires or not, he still must be investigated and held responsible for his role in Covid-19,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia tweeted.

“Fauci thinks he’s just going to retire and move on with his life. Not on my watch,” Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert said. “He belongs in jail.”

Whether Fauci retires or not, he still must be investigated and held responsible for his role in Covid-19.

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) July 18, 2022

Fauci Announces He Will Be Leaving His Job

Fauci thinks he’s just going to retire and move on with his life.

Not on my watch. He belongs in jail.

— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) July 18, 2022

 In an Op-Ed for The Wall Street Journal, James Freeman linked Fauci’s fading popularity with that of Biden.

“One shuttered the country and the other campaigned as a shut-in. Two Beltway lifers who promoted the disastrous lockdown policies of the Covid era seem to be on their way out of Washington. And even left-leaning media folk seem ready to see them depart,” he wrote.

Glenn Kessler’s bold claims lack context, evidence, credibility

The Washington Post‘s executive fact-checker on Monday made a number of bold assertions involving a fellow journalist. “Always great to hang out with the brilliant and talented @TaylorLorenz,” Glenn Kessler wrote on Twitter, the social networking platform, “a terrific addition to the @washingtonpost staff.” The tweet included a photo of the two journalists posing in pandemic-era face masks and casual business attire.

Kessler’s comments are worth unpacking with an aim toward enlightening readers who rely on our expertise. As the Post‘s chief arbiter of truth, Kessler has established himself as a cultural influencer who drives the conversation both within the Beltway and beyond. His words should be taken seriously as well as literally. Anyone who practices journalism, one of America’s most noble professions, carries a burden of great responsibility.

READ MORE: Fact Checking’s Final Frontier

The Washington Free Beacon will never stop holding members of the media to account. A rigorous standard is necessary to ensure they don’t abuse their power by peddling misinformation to vulnerable American consumers. When no one else has the courage to fact-check the fact-checker, we will. Please enjoy the following thoughtful analysis.

CLAIM #1: “Always great to hang out with … Taylor Lorenz.” 

VERDICT: Not credible. Because in the attached photo we are unable to see the expression on either journalist’s face, a more decisive assessment is not possible at this time. The evidence we do have suggests Kessler is exaggerating at best. Lorenz is obsessed with the internet. She has a history of lying about her age and partying with teens. As several of her colleagues have observed, she says a lot of “cringey” things like “I’m the most online reporter that you can find” and “Younger people recognize the power of having their own brand.” She wears a brand-name N95 mask and keeps the thermostat at 87 degrees. She might be a lizard person. Those aren’t traits one typically associates with a “great” hang.

CLAIM #2: “Brilliant and talented.” 

VERDICT: Insufficient evidence. When making such a bold assertion in a public forum one has a moral obligation to provide supporting evidence. Kessler neglected to do so in this case, which suggests he knows the statement to be false. That’s not necessarily a crime; he wasn’t under oath. Nevertheless, given his role as a professional fact-checker it seems reasonable to assume a nefarious motive. Misinformation is the single greatest threat to our democracy. In this case, Kessler has misrepresented his personal opinion as a statement of objective fact. That’s dangerous. Even if it were technically true—which it’s not—the fact-checker’s words might be seized upon by Facebook grannies and other social media users to promote their political agenda.

CLAIM #3: “A terrific addition to the Washington Post.” 

VERDICT: Missing crucial context. This is another example of Kessler peddling misinformation by exploiting the American’s public inability to distinguish true fact from subjective opinion. He neglected to explain the metrics by which he has assessed Lorenz to be a “terrific addition” to the Post, and declined to consider the dissenting views of other journalists who despise her self-promotional approach to brand-focused influencing.

New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, for example, did not appreciate Lorenz publicly dissing the Times for failing to allow “influencer journalists” to build their brands. “Is there something going on in the world other than the desire of some folks to get more attention?” Haberman wrote in early March, referring to Russia’s recently launched invasion of Ukraine. Lorenz, who worked at the Times before joining the Post earlier this year, reportedly called Haberman a “bitch” for questioning her obsessive coverage of a 15-year-old’s social media posts.

FINAL RATING: 3½ CLINTONS

Source: The Washington Free Beacon

Almost 60 percent of Americans believe that the Chinese-owned short video app TikTok should be removed from app stores after revelations that American user data has been repeatedly accessed in China, according to a new poll.

In a survey conducted by the Convention of States Action and Trafalgar Group, 58.6 percent of respondents said they supported “efforts to remove TikTok from app stores now that the company has revealed American’s user data can be accessed by TikTok employees in China.”

Meanwhile, 17.8 percent of respondents were opposed to such action, and 23.6 percent said they were not sure. The poll was conducted from July 7 to July 10, surveying more than 1,000 likely 2022 election voters with a margin of error of 2.9 percent.

The results came less than a month after leaked recordings of internal company meetings obtained by Buzzfeed News allegedly showed that from least September 2021 to January, engineers in China had access to the app’s U.S. data.

TikTok employees at times had to turn to their colleagues in China to determine how U.S. data was flowing, which the U.S. staff weren’t authorized to independently access, according to the report.

The July survey showed that Independents (56.9 percent) and Republicans (76.8 percent) were more likely to support measures to remove TikTok, while 39.2 percent of Democrats agreed with this proposal.

The recent revelations have renewed scrutiny on the app, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, that officials and experts say may be used by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for espionage and to conduct information operations. They cite national security laws in the country that compel companies to cooperate with Chinese intelligence agencies when asked.

TikTok has repeatedly denied such allegations, saying that it stores U.S. user data on servers outside of China and that it would never allow Beijing to access such information.

“TikTok is just another invasive tool for communist China to infiltrate Americans’ personal and proprietary information,” Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) previously told The Epoch Times.

“This app presents a very real threat to our national security, and the United States should take strong action to stop the CCP’s espionage campaign.”

The Trump administration had sought to ban the social media app, citing data security risks. But resident Joe Biden later reversed the measure, and instead ordered the Commerce Department to evaluate the platform to determine whether it poses a national security risk.

In addition to U.S. user data being accessed by Beijing to conduct espionage operations, TikTok may also be used to shape Americans’ perceptions to be favorable to the Chinese regime, according to Mark Meckler, former interim CEO of social media platform Parler and president of the Convention of States Action, the advocacy group that commissioned the survey.

Meckler described TikTok as one part of the communist regime’s long-running “digital warfare against the United States.” He pointed to the Chinese military’s concept of “total war” that seeks to leverage an array of methods and arenas outside of traditional warfighting domains, such as media and culture, to overcome the enemy.

“This is just one more slice in that pie giving the Chinese Communist Party an opportunity to do damage to the United States by affecting the culture of young people,” Meckler said.

The Epoch Times has reached out to TikTok for comment.

Eva Fu contributed to this report. 

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

A new study published this month revealed that COVID-19 mask mandates in schools have little to no effect.

“Our findings contribute to a growing body of literature which suggests school-based mask mandates have limited to no impact on the case rates of COVID-19 among K-12 students,” researchers at the University of Southern California and the University of California–Davis said in a preprint study published on Research Square.

Researchers evaluated two school districts in Fargo, North Dakota, in which one had a mask mandate and the other did not during the 2021–2022 academic year.

“We observed no significant difference between student case rates while the districts had differing masking policies nor while they had the same mask policies,” they noted, adding that the “impact of school-based mask mandates on COVID-19 transmission in children is not fully established” amid mandates nationwide.

A number of other studies have found no link between mask mandates and a drop in COVID-19 cases.

In one study published in May, researchers found that COVID-19 mask and vaccine rules implemented by Cornell University had limited impact against the transmission of Omicron in late 2021 and 2022.

“Cornell’s experience shows that traditional public health interventions were not a match for Omicron. While vaccination protected against severe illness, it was not sufficient to prevent rapid spread, even when combined with other public health measures including widespread surveillance testing,” the paper said.

And researchers in Spain found that mask mandates for children in Spain weren’t linked to a lower rate of COVID-19 cases or transmission.

In an evaluation of schoolchildren, kids aged 6 and older in Catalonia were required to wear masks once school reopened during the COVID-19 pandemic, the researchers said.

Researchers compared the incidence of COVID-19 in older children to younger children to try to determine whether the mandates had been effective in the aim of reducing transmission of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes COVID-19, in schools.

Their study identified a much lower case rate in preschool, where there were no mandates when compared to older groups who were required to wear masks. Five-year-olds, for instance, had an incidence of 3.1 percent, while 6-year-olds had an incidence of 3.5 percent.

Researchers in Toronto, Canada, and California replicated a 2021 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study of counties in Arizona, published in The Lancet in May, that expanded the number of data points and extended the time period. They discovered that cases quickly declined in the weeks after the CDC cut off its study and decreased more quickly in the counties that didn’t have mask mandates.

“School districts that choose to mandate masks are likely to be systematically different from those that do not in multiple, often unobserved, ways. We failed to establish a relationship between school masking and pediatric cases using the same methods but a larger, more nationally diverse population over a longer interval,” the researchers said.

“It was known long before COVID-19 that face masks don’t do anything,” Former Pfizer VP Michael Yeadon, a toxicologist and allergy research specialist, told The Epoch Times in May.  “Many don’t know that blue medical masks aren’t filters. Your inspired and expired air moves in and out between the mask [and] your face. They are splashguards, that’s all.”

Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Authorities revealed that the 22-year-old Indiana man who stopped a mass shooting at an Indiana mall over the weekend is Elisjsha Dicken.

The suspect was identified as Jonathan Sapirman, 20, who was killed by Dicken. Sapirman killed three people, identified by local officals as Pedro Pineda, 56; Rosa Mirian Rivera de Pineda, 37; and Victor Gomez, 30.

What Happened in the Incident

Dicken was accompanying his girlfriend at the Greenwood Park Mall, located 15 miles south of Indianapolis, when a shooter opened fire after emerging from the mall bathroom, Greenwood Police Chief Jim Ison said.

“I will say his actions were nothing short of heroic,” Ison said of Dicken.

Dicken then “engaged the [shooter] from quite a distance with a handgun, was very proficient in that, very tactically sound, and as he moved to close in on the suspect he was also motioning for people to exit behind him,” Ison explained during a news conference.

Authorities in the news conference said Sapirman’s motive is unknown. Before he opened fire, Sapirman spent more than one hour in the mall bathroom, Ison said.

He had purchased three weapons and brought them to the mall, Ison said, but he only used a Sig Sauer M400 rifle.

Legal Implications

Indiana attorney Guy Relford, who is representing Dicken, said that his client followed the law.

Relford issued a statement saying he’s “a true American hero who saved countless lives during a horrific event that could have been so much worse if not for Eli’s courage, preparedness and willingness to protect others.”

“Because we want to respect the on-going criminal investigation by the Greenwood Police Department and take time to honor the three innocent lives lost, we won’t be making any substantive comments on Sunday’s events until after the authorities’ investigation is closed,” Dicken’s lawyer added.

As of July 1 in Indiana, state law no longer required individuals to have a permit to carry a firearm. Officials said Dicken was armed with a 9mm handgun.

Dicken was not technically allowed to carry a gun inside the mall as the Greenwood Park Mall’s website says it has a no-gun policy.

However, the rule “certainly has no effect whatsoever on his ability to use force to defend himself or to defend the other people in the mall,” Relford told the Indianapolis Star. He said that if Dicken carried the firearm into the mall and was told to leave and he doesn’t, he could be charged with trespassing.

Dicken was praised by local officials for his actions.

“I’m grateful a good guy with a gun was there to prevent further casualties and am praying for the families who lost loved ones in this senseless tragedy,” Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) wrote on Twitter Sunday night.

“Our city, our community and our state is grateful for his heroism in this situation,” Greenwood Mayor Mark Myers said. “He’s a young man processing a lot. I ask that you give him space and time to be able to process what he’s gone through last night.”

“I am 100 percent certain many, many more people would’ve died last night if it was not for his heroism,” Ison told ABC News. “The young man had his wits about him, acted very quickly.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Internal research shows Pfizer’s executives have been announcing the next stage in the fight against the pandemic before government officials can even study the issue, annoying experts and scientists, and leaving the public questioning whom they can trust. Who’s really in charge?

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

• The COVID-19 pandemic has been a real boon to Pfizer. Not only has it doubled Pfizer’s annual revenue, it has also given the drugmaker unique weight in determining U.S. health policy — something that concerns even staunch vaccine-pushers like Dr. Paul Offit
• Pfizer’s revenue in 2021 was $81.3 billion — approximately double that of 2020 — and the COVID shot accounted for $36.78 billion of that
• Pfizer’s COVID jab dominates 70% of the U.S. and European markets, and Paxlovid, its COVID drug, has become a standard treatment choice in hospitals. This despite findings showing the shot doesn’t prevent infection or transmission, and that Paxlovid causes severe rebound and supercharges mutations
• The U.S. had thrown away 82.2 million expired COVID jab doses as of mid-May 2022, yet the Biden administration ordered another 105 million doses at the end of June 2022 for a fall booster campaign that will cost taxpayers $3.2 billion
• Pfizer’s contracts are almost exclusively slanted in Pfizer’s favor. They’re guaranteed payment while having no financial liability for injuries and deaths, and it appears this indemnification applies even if they were to be found guilty of fraud

According to Kaiser Health News (KHN),¹ the COVID-19 pandemic has been a real boon to Pfizer. Not only has it yielded “outsize benefits” in terms of profits, but it has also “given the drugmaker unusual weight in determining U.S. health policy.”

“Based on internal research, the company’s executives have frequently announced the next stage in the fight against the pandemic before government officials have had time to study the issue, annoying many experts in the medical field and leaving some patients unsure whom to trust,” KHN reporter Arthur Allen writes, adding:²

“When last year Bourla suggested that a booster shot would soon be needed, U.S. public health officials later followed, giving the impression that Pfizer was calling the tune.

Some public health experts and scientists worry these decisions were hasty, noting, for example, that although boosters with the mRNA shots produced by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech improve antibody protection initially, it generally doesn’t last.

Since January, Bourla has been saying that U.S. adults will probably all need annual booster shots, and senior FDA officials have indicated since April that they agree … The company’s power worries some vaccinologists, who see its growing influence in a realm of medical decision-making traditionally led by independent experts …

When resident Biden in September 2021 offered boosters to Americans — not long after [Pfizer CEO Albert] Bourla had recommended them — Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia … wondered, ‘Where’s the evidence you are at risk of serious disease when confronted with COVID if you are vaccinated and under 50?’

Policies on booster recommendations for different groups are complex and shifting, Offit said, but the CDC, rather than Bourla and Pfizer, should be making them. ‘We’re being pushed along,’ he said. ‘The pharmaceutical companies are acting like public health agencies.’”

The fact that a vaccine-pusher like Offit — infamous for claiming a baby can safely tolerate 10,000 vaccines at once³ — is questioning and pushing back against Pfizer’s influence over health policy reveals just how brazen, unethical and potentially dangerous that is.

Massive Profits Made From Useless Products

According to Allen, Pfizer’s revenue in 2021 was $81.3 billion⁴ — approximately double that of 2020 — and the COVID shot accounted for $36.78 billion⁵ of that. For comparison, Lipitor, Pfizer’s previous top selling statin, generates roughly $2 billion a year,⁶ while their strep vaccine, Prevnar 13 rakes in $6 billion a year.⁷

Its mRNA gene transfer injection against COVID now dominates 70% of the U.S. and European markets, and Paxlovid, Pfizer’s COVID drug, has become a standard treatment choice in hospitals. This, despite researchers finding Paxlovid (molnupiravir) causes severe rebound and supercharges mutations.

In a rational scenario, that finding would have put a stop to its use, but no. In an official health advisory⁸ to the public, issued May 24, 2022, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention first warns that Paxlovid is associated with “recurrence of COVID-19 or ‘COVID-19 rebound,’” and then in the very next sentence stresses in bold print a narrative supporting its use and enriching Pfizer with instructions saying:

“Paxlovid continues to be recommended for early- stage treatment of mild to moderate COVID-19 among persons at high risk for progression to severe disease.”

Allen also notes that, during an investor call, a Pfizer official highlighted reports of Paxlovid’s failure, but spun it into “good news” for investors, as patients may require multiple courses!⁹ Obviously the objective has long ago shifted from helping humans to raping them for as much profit as possible.

Similarly, while Pfizer’s COVID jab clearly doesn’t prevent infection or spread, and Americans are rejecting the shots in growing numbers — 82.2 million doses had expired and were chucked in the trash as of mid-May 2022¹⁰ — the U.S. government still went ahead and ordered another 105 million doses at the end of June 2022.

These are intended for a fall booster campaign, at a cost to taxpayers of $3.2 billion.¹¹ The U.S. is actually paying about 50% more for each of these new jab boosters this time around — $30.47 per dose compared to $19.50 per dose paid for the first 100 million doses.

The U.S. government has also promised to purchase another 20 million courses of Paxlovid, at an eye-watering cost of $530 per five-day course. Basically, Pfizer is being financially rewarded for producing products that are useless at best and dangerous at worst, and we’re all paying for it. In case you’re curious, that is another $10.6 billion transferred from U.S. taxpayers to Pfizer.

Future Boosters Won’t Undergo Human Clinical Trials

After you likely thought it couldn’t ever get any worse, KHN also touches on, but doesn’t delve into, the fact that Pfizer suggested they skip human trials as they move forward with jabs that are reformulated for newer variants. If this strikes you as crazy, you’d be right. It’s sheer madness, but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration — a clearly captured agency — has already surreptitiously agreed to this egregious miscarriage of science.

How this wicked scheme, known as the “Future Framework,”¹² was adopted by the FDA without formal vote is explained by Toby Rogers, Ph.D. — a political economist whose research focus is on regulatory capture and Big Pharma corruption¹³ — in the video above. He also explained it in a June 29, 2022, Substack article:¹⁴

“Yesterday [June 28], the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee approved a bivalent COVID-19 shot with the Wuhan strain and the Omicron variant … Wait, hold up, I thought the FDA was voting on the Future Framework yesterday?

The policy question was whether reformulated COVID-19 shots would be treated as new molecular entities (which they are) in which case they should be subject to formal review or whether reformulated shots would be treated as ‘biologically similar’ to existing Covid-19 shots and be allowed to skip clinical trials altogether.

Apparently the FDA did not have the votes to just pass this as a policy question. If you ask anyone whether reformulated mRNA represents a new molecular entity, well of course it is, so that would require formal regulatory review.

What the FDA did instead was to smuggle the policy question in disguised as a vote about reformulated ‘boosters’ for the fall.

In essence, the FDA just started doing the Future Framework (picking variants willy nilly, skipping clinical trials) and essentially dared the committee members to turn down a booster dose — knowing that all of the VRBPAC members are hand-picked because they’ve never met a vaccine they did not like.

So of course only two people on the committee had the courage to turn down a booster dose — even though it was based on this preposterous process (that was never formally adopted) where there was literally no data at all … By stealth, the FDA replaced a system based on evidence with a system based entirely on belief.”

Countries Held to Ransom

In 2021, secret details of Pfizer’s contracts came to light, showing they are essentially holding countries hostage to nonnegotiable demands for payment in full AND freedom from liability.¹⁵

In late February 2021, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported¹⁶ that Pfizer was demanding countries put up sovereign assets as collateral for expected vaccine injury lawsuits resulting from its COVID-19 jab.

Several countries, including Brazil, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic and Peru, agreed to this demand, putting up bank reserves, military bases and embassy buildings as collateral. In short, theses governments are guaranteeing Pfizer will be compensated for any expenses resulting from injury lawsuits against it, so the company won’t lose a dime if its COVID shot injures people.

Shockingly, these terms are binding even if those injuries are the result of negligent company practices, fraud or malice!

Government purchasers must acknowledge that the effectiveness and safety of the shots are completely unknown, all while indemnifying Pfizer against any and all financial liability.

In October that same year, Public Citizen published the secret contracts^17,18 between Pfizer and Albania, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Dominican Republic, the European Commission, Peru, the U.S. and the U.K., further revealing the extent to which these countries handed power over to Pfizer. In almost all scenarios, Pfizer’s interests come first.

For example, government purchasers must acknowledge that the effectiveness and safety of the shots are completely unknown, all while indemnifying Pfizer against any and all financial liability. This is the ultimate corporate maleficence, using their leverage to force the kill shot down these countries’ throats and avoiding any personal responsibility for damages.

Even if Pfizer eventually is convicted of fraud in the U.S. and loses all its liability protection from the COVID jabs because of it, that judgment would not impact these foreign contracts. These countries sold their souls to Pfizer and have absolutely no recourse but to pay even if the shots kill everyone.

The contracts for at least four countries also secure Pfizer’s intellectual property rights even if the company is found to have stolen intellectual property rights of others. In such case, the government purchaser becomes the liable party. As explained by Public Citizen:¹⁹

“For example, if another vaccine maker sued Pfizer for patent infringement in Colombia, the contract requires the Colombian government to foot the bill. Pfizer also explicitly says that it does not guarantee that its product does not violate third-party IP, or that it needs additional licenses.

Pfizer takes no responsibility in these contracts for its potential infringement of intellectual property. In a sense, Pfizer has secured an IP waiver for itself. But internationally, Pfizer is fighting similar efforts to waive IP barriers for all manufacturers.”

Equally shocking is that countries are forced to follow through on their vaccine orders even if other drugs or treatments emerge that can prevent, treat or cure COVID-19.²⁰ Is it any wonder, then, that governments around the world have suppressed the use of safe and effective outpatient drugs like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin?

If these drugs were allowed to be used and could be proven to work, the COVID injections would be completely unnecessary and their emergency use authorization would disappear, yet governments are on the hook for hundreds of millions of doses.

Pfizer Has ‘Habitual Offender’ Track Record

The fact that Pfizer has behaved like a criminal who works out a cover story for a planned murder before committing it is not surprising, considering its history. Pfizer, has been sued in multiple venues over unethical behavior, including unethical drug testing and illegal marketing practices.²¹

In his 2010 paper,²² “Tough on Crime? Pfizer and the CIHR,” Robert G. Evans, Ph.D., Emeritus Professor at Vancouver School of Economics, described Pfizer as “a ‘habitual offender,’ persistently engaging in illegal and corrupt marketing practices, bribing physicians and suppressing adverse trial results.”

Between 2002 and 2010 alone, Pfizer and its subsidiaries were fined $3 billion in criminal convictions, civil penalties and jury awards. They are recurrent criminal felons. None of these convictions has deterred their nefarious behavior.

In 2011, Pfizer agreed to pay another $14.5 million to settle federal charges of illegal marketing,²³ and in 2014 they settled federal charges relating to improper marketing of the kidney transplant drug Rapamune to the tune of $35 million,²⁴ as well as $75 million to settle charges relating to its testing of a new broad spectrum antibiotic on critically ill Nigerian children.

As reported by the Independent²⁵ at the time, Pfizer sent a team of doctors into Nigeria in the midst of a meningitis epidemic. For two weeks, the team set up right next to a medical station run by Doctors Without Borders and began dispensing the experimental drug, Trovan. Of the 200 children picked, half got the experimental drug and the other half the already licensed antibiotic Rocephin.

Eleven of the children treated by the Pfizer team died, and many others suffered side effects such as brain damage and organ failure. Pfizer denied wrongdoing. According to the company, only five of the children given Trovan died, compared to six who received Rocephin, so their drug was not to blame.

The problem was they never told the parents that their children were being given an experimental drug. What’s more, while Pfizer produced a permission letter from a Nigerian ethics committee, the letter turned out to have been backdated. The ethics committee itself wasn’t set up until a year after the trial had already taken place. Pfizer’s rap sheet also includes bribery, environmental violations, labor and worker safety violations and more.²⁶

Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing

Now, despite Pfizer being one of the least ethical drug companies, we’re told to trust them with our very lives, and the lives of our precious children. They’re going to put out booster shots this fall that have undergone absolutely no testing whatsoever, and we’re to simply throw caution to the wind because Pfizer — which has no liability whatsoever — says so.

In 2014, Pfizer faced a surge of lawsuits that accused it of hiding known side effects of its anticholesterol drug Lipitor.²⁷ They got off scot-free that time, as a federal judge dismissed thousands of cases alleging the drug caused Type 2 diabetes.^28,29 But at least they had liability and could be sued.

When it comes to the COVID jabs, injured patients and family members of those killed by it won’t even have the ability to sue for damages, as governments around the world have indemnified them completely, and it looks as though they might not even be liable even if they’re found guilty of fraud. But we will have to see what the courts rule on that one. Still, that any nation would agree to a contract like that is just mindboggling.

Meanwhile, mounting evidence shows the COVID shots destroy immune function over time, and Pfizer’s own trial data reveal deaths and serious adverse events numbering in the tens of thousands.

It’s hard to tell who’s more deserving of punishment — Pfizer or the equally captured federal agencies, the FDA and the CDC, that go along with them and do nothing to protect the lives of the youngest members of our society. Clearly, it’s up to us to protect ourselves and our loved ones, because wolves in sheep’s clothing are ruling the roost — they’re making all the decisions, and captured agencies are simply doing their bidding.

Originally published July 18, 2022 on Mercola.com

Sources and References

• ^{1, 2, 4, 9} KHN July 5, 2022
• ³ Science Daily January 10, 2002
• ⁵ Washington Examiner February 8, 2022
• ⁶ Axios October 30, 2019
• ⁷ True Cost of Health Care
• ⁸ CDC Advisory May 24, 2022
• ¹⁰ NBC News June 6, 2022
• ¹¹ Businesswire June 29, 2022
• ¹² FDA Briefing Document June 28, 2022
• ¹³ Brownstone Institute June 22, 2022, Author’s Bio
• ¹⁴ uTobian June 29, 2022
• ¹⁵ STAT News February 23, 2021
• ¹⁶ The Bureau of Investigative Journalism February 23, 2021
• ^17, 19 Public Citizen October 19, 2021
• ¹⁸ Twitter Zain Rizvi October 19, 2021
• ²⁰ COVID19up.org August 17, 2021 (archived)
• ²¹ SGT Report January 7, 2021
• ²² Healthcare Policy 2010 May;5(4):16-25
• ²³ DOJ October 21, 2011
• ²⁴ Reuters August 6, 2014
• ²⁵ The Independent March 23, 2014
• ²⁶ Corporate Research Project Pfizer
• ²⁷ Reuters August 8, 2014
• ²⁸ Drugwatch Lipitor Lawsuits
• ²⁹ Reuters May 12, 2021

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Via this genetic engineering experiment, they’ve literally injected ‘seeds of demise’ into everyday people like a cockroach spray. Based on a 2011 estimate, he believes an extra 700 million will be killed from this bioweapon – and they’ve known about the risks since 2005.

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

• David Martin, Ph.D., presents evidence that COVID-19 injections are not vaccines, but bioweapons that are being used as a form of genocide across the global population
• The spike protein that the COVID-19 shots manufacture is a known biologic agent of concern
• Martin believes the number that may die may have been revealed back in 2011, when the World Health Organization announced their “decade of vaccination”
• The objective for the decade of vaccination was a population reduction of 15% globally, which would be about 700 million people dead; in the U.S., this may amount to between 75 million and 100 million people dying from COVID-19 shots
• When asked what timeframe these people may die in, Martin suggested “there’s a lot of economic reasons why people hope that it’s between now and 2028”
• The projected illiquidity of the Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid programs by 2028 suggests the “fewer people who are recipients of these programs, the better;” Martin believes this may be why people 65 and over were targeted with COVID-19 shots first

In this revealing interview with Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com, David Martin, Ph.D., presents evidence that COVID-19 injections are not vaccines but bioweapons that are being used as a form of genocide across the global population.¹

In March 2022, Martin filed a federal lawsuit against resident Biden, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services alleging that COVID-19 shots turn the body into a biological weapons factory, manufacturing spike protein. Not only is the term “vaccination” misleading when referring to COVID-19 shots, it’s inaccurate since they are actually a form of gene therapy.²

“And we are not only not going to be sued for, you know, any libel or misinformation, we are actually holding people criminally accountable for their domestic terrorism, their crimes against humanity and the story of the coronavirus weaponization that goes back to 1998,” Martin says.³

SARS-CoV-2 Has Been in the Works for Decades

Martin has been in the business of tracking patent applications and approvals since 1998. His company, M-Cam International Innovation Risk Management, is the world’s largest underwriter of intangible assets used in finance in 168 countries. M-Cam has also monitored biological and chemical weapons treaty violations on behalf of the U.S. government, following the anthrax scare in September 2001.⁴

According to Martin, there are more than 4,000 patents relating to the SARS coronavirus. His company has also done a comprehensive review of the financing of research involving the manipulation of coronaviruses that gave rise to SARS as a subclade of the beta coronavirus family.

Much of the research was funded by the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) under the direction of Dr. Anthony Fauci.⁵ Martin explained:⁶

“I think it’s important for your listeners and viewers to remember that it was 1999 when Anthony Fauci and Ralph Baric at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill decided to start weaponizing coronavirus they patented in 2002 — and you heard that date correctly, that’s a year before the SARS outbreak in China.

You know, they knew it was a bioweapon since 2005. They knew it was effective at harming populations, intimidating and coercing populations”

COVID-19 Shots Are an ‘Act of Bioterrorism’

According to Martin, the spike protein that the COVID-19 shots manufacture is a computer simulation of a chimera of the spike protein of coronavirus. “It is, in fact, not a coronavirus vaccine. It is a spike protein instruction to make the human body produce a toxin, and that toxin has been scheduled as a known biologic agent of concern with respect to biological weapons for the last now decade and a half,” he said.⁷

Rather than being a public health measure as they were widely campaigned to be, COVID-19 shots are an act of bioweapons and bioterrorism. Martin shared that in 2015, Dr. Peter Daszak, head of the EcoHealth Alliance that funneled research dollars from the NIAID to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for coronavirus research, stated:⁸

“We need to increase public understanding of the need for medical countermeasures such as a pan-coronavirus vaccine. A key driver is the media and the economics will follow the hype. We need to use that hype to our advantage, to get to the real issues. Investors will respond if they see profit at the end of the process.”

Daszak, who Martin refers to as “the money launderer in chief,” “actually stated that this entire exercise was a campaign of domestic terror to get the public to accept the universal vaccine platform using a known biological weapon. And that is their own words, not my interpretation,” Martin said.⁹

Martin: 100 Million May Die Due to COVID Shots

Both Pfizer and Moderna’s COVID-19 shots contain nucleic acid sequences that are not part of nature and have not been previously introduced to the human body. This amounts to a genetic engineering experiment that did not go through animal studies or clinical trials.

However, already people are dying from the shots and, Martin states, “many more will” due to issues such as blood clots, damage to the cardiovascular system and problems with liver, kidney and pulmonary function.¹⁰

An onslaught of reproductive and cancer cases related to the shots are also anticipated. “The fact of the matter is an enormous number of people who are injected are already carrying the seeds of their own demise,” Martin said.¹¹ As for how many may die, Martin believes the numbers may have been revealed back in 2011, when the World Health Organization announced their “decade of vaccination”:¹²

“Based on their own 2011 estimate, and … this is a chilling estimate, but we just have to put it out there … When the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Chinese CDC, the Jeremy Farrar Wellcome Trust and others published The Decade of Vaccination for the World Health Organization back in 2011 their stated objective was a population reduction of 15% of the world’s population.

Put that in perspective, that’s about 700 million people dead … and that would put the U.S. participation in that certainly as a pro rata of injected population somewhere between 75 and 100 million people.”

When asked what timeframe these people may die in, Martin suggested “there’s a lot of economic reasons why people hope that it’s between now and 2028.”¹³ This is because of “a tiny little glitch on the horizon” — the projected illiquidity of the Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid programs by 2028.

“So the fewer people who are recipients of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the better,” Martin said. “Not surprisingly, it’s probably one of the motivations that led to the recommendation that people over the age of 65 were the first ones getting injected.”¹⁴ Other populations at risk are caregivers, including health care providers, and others in the workforce who were forced to be injected, such as pilots.

“Why is it that we’re suddenly having 700 flights a day being canceled because, allegedly, airlines don’t have pilots? … the dirty secret … is there a lot of pilots who are having microvascular problems and clotting problems, and that keeps them out of the cockpit, which is a good place to not have them if they’re going to throw a clot for a stroke or a heart attack,” Martin said.

“But the problem is we’re going to start seeing that exact same phenomenon in the health care industry and at a much larger scale, which means we now have, in addition to the problem of the actual morbidity and mortality, meaning people getting sick and people dying.

We actually have that targeting the health care industry writ large, which means we are going to have doctors and nurses who are going to be among the sick and the dead. And that means that the sick and the dying also do not get care.”¹⁵

Why COVID Shots May Change Your DNA

It’s been stressed by the media and public health officials that COVID-19 shots do not alter DNA. However, Martin brings attention to a little-known grant from the National Science Foundation, known as Darwinian chemical systems,¹⁶ which involved research to incorporate mRNA into targeted genomes. According to Martin:¹⁷

“Moderna was started … on the back of a 10-year National Science Foundation grant. And that grant was called Darwinian chemical systems … the project that gave rise to the Moderna company itself was a project where they were specifically figuring out how to get mRNA to write itself into the genome of whatever target they were going after.

That could be a single-celled organism, it could be a multi-celled organism or it could be a human. And the fact of the matter is Moderna was started on the back of having proven that mRNA can be transfected and write itself into the human genome.”

It is completely unknown what the short- or long-term effects of the spike protein analog that’s inside people who received COVID-19 injections will be. But with respect to alteration of the genome, Martin states that data show mRNA has the capacity to write into the DNA of humans, and “as such, the long-term effects are not going to merely be symptomatic. The long-term effects are going to be the human genome of injected individuals is going to be altered.”¹⁸

Fraud Removes Big Pharma’s Liability Shield

The 2001 anthrax attack, which came out of medical and defense research, led to the passage of the PREP Act, which removed liability for manufacturers of emergency medical countermeasures.

This means that as long as the U.S. is under a state of emergency, things like COVID-19 “vaccines” are allowed under emergency use authorization. And as long as the emergency use authorization is in effect, the makers of these experimental gene therapies are not financially liable for any harm that comes from their use.

That is, provided they’re “vaccines.” If these injections are NOT vaccines, then the liability shield falls away, because there is no liability shield for a medical emergency countermeasure that is gene therapy. Further, lawsuits that can prove the companies engaged in fraud will also negate the liability shield. Martin states:¹⁹

“One of the convenient things about the PREP Act is the immunity shield from liability actually is only as good as the absence of fraud. Because if there was fraud in the promulgation of the events, leading to an emergency use authorization, then all of the immunity shield gets wiped out.

So the reason why it is so important for conversations like the one we’re having to actually be promoted and be advanced is because the pharmaceutical companies — and this includes Pfizer and Moderna and J&J — know they are perpetuating a fraud. The great thing about this is when that fraud is established, 100% of the liability flows back to them.

… when a fraud was the basis for a fraud, then we actually have a number of other legal remedies that allow you to pierce that veil. So in the end, there’s no question … and it’s quite evident based on the current mortality and morbidity data that given the fact that when it comes to biological weapons and bioterror each count comes with $100 million penalty. That’s what the federal statute gives us.

The penalty for corporate domestic terrorism, when you have per count $100 million a pop liabilities — that is an existential threat that takes a company like Pfizer or takes a company like Moderna out of existence. And that is what we’re working for every day.”

If you’d like to follow the progress of the ongoing legal cases seeking to expose the truth — that a criminal organization is seeking to obtain control over the global population via the creation of patented bioweapons marketed as novel viruses and injections — you can find all the details at ProsecuteNow.io, a website compiled by Martin and colleagues.²⁰

Originally published July 16, 2022 on Mercola.com

Sources and References

• ¹ Rumble, Greg Hunter’s USA Watchdog June 28, 2022
• ² Europe Reloaded March 23, 2022
• ³ Rumble, Greg Hunter’s USA Watchdog June 28, 2022, 1:21
• ^4, 5 Substack July 24, 2021
• ⁶ Rumble, Greg Hunter’s USA Watchdog June 28, 2022, 9:52
• ^7, 8, 9 Rumble, Greg Hunter’s USA Watchdog June 28, 2022, 3:26
• ^10, 11 Rumble, Greg Hunter’s USA Watchdog June 28, 2022, 6:22
• ¹² Rumble, Greg Hunter’s USA Watchdog June 28, 2022, 7:58
• ^13, 14 Rumble, Greg Hunter’s USA Watchdog June 28, 2022, 12:40
• ¹⁵ Rumble, Greg Hunter’s USA Watchdog June 28, 2022, 13:38
• ¹⁶ National Science Foundation, Darwinian Chemical Systems
• ^17, 18 Rumble, Greg Hunter’s USA Watchdog June 28, 2022, 17:21
• ¹⁹ Rumble, Greg Hunter’s USA Watchdog June 28, 2022, 52:01
• ²⁰ Prosecute Now

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Moderate Democrats will play a key role in the coming midterm election and very likely handle the U.S. House to the Republicans, analysts said.

The main reason for the rebelling moderates is President Joe Biden’s policies.

“This [moderate voting] base is becoming increasingly disenchanted with what seems to be the ongoing failures of the Biden administration on major party platforms such as rising inflation, gas prices, and a pretty weak economy,” Jamie Wright, a political pundit at The Wright Law Firm, told The Epoch Times.

Josh Wilson, a political consultant and ex-aide to former Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, shared the view that the state of the economy under Biden is a significant factor in the shift.

Besides this, Wilson also pointed out that the historical pattern of midterm elections for the party of the president will also contribute.

“Simply based on U.S. electoral history, where the president’s political party tends to suffer major losses during the first midterm of the presidential term, it is highly likely that Republicans will see major gains in the House of Representatives,” he said.

Progressive Movement Pushing Moderates Away

For over a decade, progressive activists have been pushing the political spectrum in the United States to the left in various ways, from woke textbooks in the education system to protests on the streets.

As a result, some moderate Democrats found themself isolated and being pushed out.

Elon Musk, the Tesla CEO who was a liberal, shared a meme on April 28 explaining how the progressive movement has made him closer to the conservative side. The meme shows the political left moving away from the centers since 2008 while the center and right remaining stationary. As a result, he falls into the area close to the conservative without even changing his political stance.

The meme was liked by over 1.5 million users after Musk shared it on his Twitter account.

Biden, who mainly posed as a moderate during his campaign, followed the progressive movement closely after he came to the White House and adopted policies from the woke agenda.

That deepened the discontent among moderates.

A major factor was the extreme lockdowns, mask mandates, and vaccine mandates related to the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, also known as the novel coronavirus, outbreak.

“You just have one public official who’s never been elected … no scientific citation for any of these mandates, simply telling Americans: ‘do what you’re told,’” Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent Democrat, criticized the policies during an interview with The Epoch Times’ sister media NTD at the “Defeat the Mandates” rally in Washington on Jan. 23.

The mandates were “all designed to instill fear and confusion in Americans, and it’s just a catastrophic exercise in bad government and manipulation,” he added.

Biden’s Energy Policies and Soaring Gas Price

Another area that moderate Democrats feel upset about is the economic performance during Biden’s presidency, especially the rising inflation and gas prices.

According to CNBC’s All-America Survey, Biden’s economic approval rating dropped 5 points from April’s survey to 30 percent. His approval of the overall handling of the presidency dropped to 36 percent. Of the 800 people across the nation polled by CNBC, 51 percent believe Biden’s efforts to fight inflation are making no difference, and 30 percent think the measures are actually hurting.

The Biden administration has strictly adhered to its climate crisis agenda, rejecting boosting domestic energy production and insisting people should buy electric vehicles as an alternative option amid high gas prices.

However, electric vehicles are unaffordable for many families.

A Consumer Reports survey shows that 52 percent of people say they would not buy an electric vehicle because the costs of buying and maintaining them are too high.

How Moderate Democrats May Act in Midterms

Though the moderates are not as popular in the mainstream media or on some politicians’ priority agendas, they still make up the majority of Democrats, Wright said.

“There is a real power struggle between the moderates and the extreme left within the party. However, moderates still make up the majority,” she said.

She believes it’s important for the Democrat candidates to appeal to the moderate voting base to ensure they don’t leave the party over failed policies.

Wilson believes the moderates will act in two ways—either they won’t show up or vote Republican—and will cost the Democrat Party heavily.

“Democrat members of the Congress seem to be trending more to the left but Democrat voters are not. To be more specific, Democrats in D.C. seem to be putting social issues ahead of economic issues. [However,] most voters want the government to focus on things that impact them daily,” he said.

“It’s more likely that moderate Democrat voters will not vote in the midterm if [they are] extremely fed up, rather than cast a ballot for a Republican,” he said. “If the Republican candidate in those swing districts is also a moderate, they may be able to bring Democrat voters across the line.”

“By not showing up and voting for the Democrat, Democrat voters will absolutely be protesting the current situation and indirectly helping Republicans take control,” he added.

The situation is also likely to put moderate Democrat candidates in harm’s way because “they will be painted as extreme liberals during the campaigns” under the current political climate, Wilson stated.

Masooma Haq and Jack Phillips contributed to the report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

As supply chain woes continue around the world, many car buyers face the possibility of having to drive blind.

According to Fox Business, a shortage of semiconductor chips is forcing some automakers to cut out certain features that have become commonplace in newer vehicles.

These features include not only amenities like heated seats and touchscreens, but also safety features like blind-spot monitors and proximity alerts.

“Automakers are in a tight spot when the materials aren’t available for some of the safety technology,” Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) Jessica Cicchino said.

“It really shifts the burden on the consumers who are already having a hard time shopping for a car.”

Technology experts suggest the chip began with the lockdowns that swept the world at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in early to mid-2020.

“The shortage can be traced back to the first half of 2020, when overall consumer demand for cars declined during the lockdown,” noted IT publication TechRepublic reported.

“This forced chip manufacturers to shift their focus to other areas, such as computer equipment and mobile devices, which spiked in demand with more people working remotely.”

Of course, blind spots are not a new phenomenon. They have been an issue since the invention of automobiles, and side mirrors were invented as a way to help improve a driver’s vision.

Yet even with these mirrors, most cars still have blind spots in which drivers cannot see other vehicles around them without physically turning around and looking over their shoulders.

There are currently no regulations requiring blind-spot monitors, Fox Business reported. However, Cicchino said they are extremely helpful safety features.

“While we don’t test for them in our vehicle ratings programs, these are useful technologies to have, and we do want to see them on as many vehicles as possible,” she said.

A study conducted by IIHS found blind spot monitors could reduce collisions causing injury by 23 percent, Fox Business reported.

In addition, blind spot monitors are often accompanied by rear cross-traffic alerts. These are the systems that notify a driver when a car is approaching as they back up, and the IIHS study found they could reduce backup crashes by 22 percent.

Surveillance Footage Shows Carjackers Steal a Mother’s Car and Run Her Over in Broad Daylight

While cars can still comply with all regulations without having these features, Consumer Reports senior director of automotive testing Jake Fisher said it would be a negative development for fewer vehicles to include them.

“It’s unfortunate that the chip shortage may prevent a new model from coming with the latest safety features that can prevent crashes and injuries,” Fisher told Fox Business.

“After all, better safety is one of the leading reasons people decide to upgrade their car in the first place.”

Fox Business confirmed at least two automakers, Volkswagen and Cadillac, were not offering blind-spot models on certain models as of Sunday. The companies said they could not predict whether this would change in the near future.

If there is one piece of good news, Fisher said it was the fact that many companies have not yet had to resort to cutting safety features.

He assured Fox Business “most automakers have the required chips to keep producing their models without removing equipment — and a smart shopper will avoid the models that do.”

White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci revealed that after about five decades in the federal government, he’s planning on leaving his position by the end of resident Joe Biden’s current term.

“We’re in a pattern now. If somebody says, ‘You’ll leave when we don’t have COVID anymore,’ then I will be 105. I think we’re going to be living with this,” Fauci, 81, told Politico in an interview published on July 18 that he plans to retire by the end of Biden’s current term, which ends in January 2025.

Fauci has been the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he became a household name as the face of the federal government’s response, often generating criticism from Republicans and conservatives about his generally dire predictions about the pandemic.

Of his relationship with former President Donald Trump, Fauci said that “we developed an interesting relationship … two guys from New York, different in their opinions and their ideology, but still, two guys who grew up in the same environments of this city. I think that we are related to each other in that regard.”

And if Republicans win back either the House or Senate in 2022, Fauci noted that he will likely be investigated by GOP lawmakers. But he claimed that regarding those investigations, “I don’t make that a consideration in my career decision.”

In the Politico interview, Fauci continued to defend his public recommendations, including school closures, mask-wearing, vaccination regimes, and lockdowns.

“My telling somebody that it’s important to follow fundamental good public health practices … what are you going to investigate about that?” he asked.

Possible Investigations

However, Fauci has faced public questions from Republicans in Congress about his agency having given funding to third-party groups to carry out research in China. COVID-19, caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, emerged in Wuhan, China, and a significant number of U.S. intelligence officials last year released a report suggesting the virus may be linked to the top-level Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Last month, amid questions from Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), Fauci conceded that he isn’t able to halt federal funding from being doled out to researchers in China.

“The NIH [National Institutes of Health] is still funding research in China, at least $8 million since 2020,” Marshall said. “In the Intelligence Community’s 2022 Annual Threat Assessment, the Chinese Communist Party is presented as one of the top threats to the United States, along with Russia, Iran, Syria, and North Korea. To my knowledge, only China is receiving U.S. research dollars.”

Later, he asked Fauci, “When will you as director of NIAID stop funding research in China?”

Federal health agencies, Fauci said in response, “had very productive peer-reviewed highly regarded research projects with our Chinese colleagues that have led to some major advances in biomedical research.”

“We obviously need to be careful and make sure that when we do fund them we have the proper peer review and we go through all the established guidelines,” he said.

NIAID officials didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The controversial male-to-female transgender swimmer Lia Thomas has been nominated for NCAA’s Woman of the Year.

The award “honors the academic achievements, athletics excellence, community service and leadership of graduating female college athletes,” according to the NCAA’s website. Since it was established in 1991, there has never been a biological male nominee. Thomas beat out around 219,000 biological female competitors for the nomination.

Lia, formerly William, began transitioning in 2019 before the swimmer’s junior year at the University of Pennsylvania after years of competing as a man. Thomas gained national spotlight after winning the Women’s Division I Swimming and Diving Championships 500-yard freestyle event in March, leaping from a 65th ranking as a man to the first place spot as a woman and breaking Ivy League records.

Nearly 60 percent of Americans believe biological males should not be allowed to compete in collegiate or professional women’s sports, according to a June Washington Post poll.

In January, the NCAA Board of Governors mirrored the International Olympic Committee’s guidance on trans athletes, allowing the governing bodies of sports to make their own gender-qualifying rules. FINA, the international water sports federation, had not yet announced their new transgender policies by the time Thomas was permitted to compete and erase records set by outstanding biological women.

The Woman of the Year nominee pool will eventually be narrowed to 30 finalists, with the winner selected in January. Each NCAA member school has the opportunity to nominate up to two athletes for the honor, though a second has to be an “international student-athlete or student-athlete of color.”

The NCAA selects the Woman of the Year based on athletic and academic performance as well as a personal statement and service and leadership work. Thomas holds a national title, so his athletics score is the highest possible on the selection scale.

The service and leadership section asks nominees to list special recognitions received. Thomas has been mentioned in hundreds of news articles since 2019 and was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated earlier this year.

Thomas’s Olympic dreams were dashed last month when FINA banned post-puberty male-to-female transitioners from competing as women. Thomas now plans to attend law school and become a civil rights attorney, citing experiences with gender discrimination.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

JUST AS WASHINGTON BEGINS TO TAKE THE TIKTOK THREAT SERIOUSLY, THE DEMOCRATS JOIN THE PLATFORM.

The Democratic National Committee has officially joined TikTok, a controversial social media platform with deep ties to the Chinese Communist Party, despite advising their own campaigns against joining the Chinese-owned app during the 2020 election cycle.

“We continue to advise campaign staff to refrain from using TikTok on personal devices. If you are using TikTok for campaign work, we recommend using a separate phone and account,” the DNC security team instructed its candidates two years ago.

Despite the warning, the Democratic Party has completed an about-face on the platform, at the same time Washington, D.C. begins to take seriously the threat of spying through the app.

The DNC’s stark reversal comes amidst evidence revealing that the TikTok parent company employs former Chinese Communist Party officials, including individuals with military ties, to executive roles and even grants party members preferential treatment in hiring processes.

The app’s founder also pledged to use ByteDance to “promote socialist core values” and devotion to the Chinese Communist Party in 2018.

TikTok’s threat to national security and data privacy – previously acknowledged by the DNC – prompted the Trump administration to attempt to ban the platform from operating in the U.S. – an effort recently quashed by the Biden White House.

The committee maintains it is employing security precautions such as dedicating individual devices that are isolated from “other DNC assets/processes/businesses as a mitigation to the privacy risk.” The DNC attributed its decision to an effort to reach more voters, particularly younger generations.

The move comes amidst a massive lobbying campaign mounted by TikTok and its parent company ByteDance. Many of the lobbyists and firms hired by the company have ties to Democratic politics and leaders such as Nancy Pelosi.

MUST READ: Would-Be British PM Rishi Sunak’s Family Runs A China-Linked, World Economic Forum Partner Company Pushing Digital ID and Social Credit Scores.

Internally, TikTok has also hired several Democratic Party alumni, including Obama administration National Security Council members to run its Trust and Safety operations.

TikTok also funds several fact-checking organizations used by other social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, which frequently exercise their censorship capabilities against conservative users and stories critical of the Chinese Communist Party.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) still does not have an account on the platform.

“We do not have any plans to give the Chinese Communist Party our data, nor do we plan to use their spyware,” said RNC spokesperson Nathan Brand.

Hunter Biden held dozens of talks with his father from 2008 to 2016, often shortly after returning home from trips abroad on business, according to data from the younger Biden’s abandoned laptop.

At least 30 such talks took place, The New York Post reported on July 16, based on a personal calendar on the laptop. The meetings took place at either the White House or the vice president’s residence at the U.S. Naval Observatory.

The latest revelation comes amid President Joe Biden’s continued claim that the two have never spoken about Hunter Biden’s business dealings, which included transactions with entities and individuals in countries such as Russia and China.

One of the talks occurred in February 2012, when the young Biden met with his father at the Naval Observatory. The meeting came four days after Hunter Biden was wined and dined by billionaire oligarchs in Moscow.

In November 2015, Hunter Biden met with his father again at the Naval Observatory, two days after returning home from a trip to Romania.

On April 15, 2016, Hunter Biden met with Daniel Kablan Duncan, who was at the time the prime minister of Côte d’Ivoire. Less than an hour after the meeting, the young Biden met with his father at the Naval Observatory.

House Republican Conference Chair Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y) told the NY Post that the latest discovery is more evidence of corruption.

“Hardly a day goes by without another revelation about how intimately involved Joe Biden was with his son Hunter Biden’s corrupt foreign business dealings,” Stefanik said. “The fact that Joe was in meetings with senior foreign leaders on behalf of Hunter and his business associates while vice president further proves that Joe has been lying to the American people.”

Cory Mills, who’s seeking the Republican nomination to represent Florida’s 7th Congressional District in the midterm elections, said the Post’s findings warrant legal action against the Bidens.

“Hunter Biden should be arrested and Joe Biden impeached,” Mills wrote on Twitter.

The laptop’s calendar also showed that Eric Schwerin, the former president of Hunter Biden’s now-dissolved investment firm Rosemont Seneca Partners, was an invite recipient on 21 of the 30 meetings between Hunter Biden and his father.

In April, The Epoch Times reported that Schwerin visited the White House at least 19 times from 2009 to 2015, after reviewing White House visitor log records. One of the meetings took place in the West Wing on Nov. 17, 2010.

Read More

White House Doesn’t Dispute Joe Biden Left Voicemail About China Story for Hunter Biden

Biden Spoke to Hunter About China Business Deals, Voicemail Reveals

The Post also revealed that Hunter Biden had set up a meeting between his father and Andrés Pastrana Arango, the former president of Colombia, on March 2, 2012.

Before the March 2012 meeting, Hunter Biden and his partners at Rosemont Seneca Partners were allegedly seeking business with Brazilian construction company OAS, according to emails from the laptop, the Post reported. The Brazilian firm was interested in several projects in Columbia at the time, including a hydroelectric power plant worth $1.8 billion and a renovation project to a subway system in Bogota worth $3 billion.

“If it works, we’ll all be rich,” Schwerin wrote to Hunter Biden in an email in August 2011, according to the Post. Emails showed Hunter Biden traveling to Bogota in November 2011.

It’s unclear if OAS won any of the projects the company was interested in.

Eventually, OAS was involved in a Brazilian government corruption scandal and agreed to pay a total of 1.92 billion Brazilian reais ($461 million) by 2047 as part of a leniency deal the company signed with Brazil’s federal government in 2019, according to Reuters.

White House officials didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.

Recently, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), and Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) wrote an op-ed published by the Post declaring that they aim to investigate the Bidens’ business dealings if Republicans take back the House after the 2022 midterm elections.

“Contrary to Joe Biden’s statement that he never spoke to Hunter about his foreign business dealings, associates state that he was fully aware of his family’s business dealings and influence peddling,” the three lawmakers wrote. “There is evidence of a direct sum of money set aside for ‘the Big Guy’—who witnesses have identified as Joe Biden—from foreign nationals.

“A Republican majority will be committed to uncovering the facts the Democrats, Big Tech, and the legacy media have suppressed.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said it’s “astonishing” that mainstream media is not holding Dr. Anthony Fauci accountable for his remarks on Wednesday that COVID-19 vaccines don’t protect “overly well” against the CCP virus.

“One of the things that’s clear from the data [is] that … vaccines—because of the high degree of transmissibility of this virus—don’t protect overly well, as it were, against infection,” Fauci said.

“It’s astonishing that mainstream media allows [Fauci] to blindly make that statement without any effort to hold him accountable for the costly national policies and the lockdowns that were utterly built upon his initial assertion that the vaccines would prevent transmission and end the pandemic,” Kennedy told The Epoch Times.

The lockdowns initially were imposed to flatten the curve in two weeks. Kennedy asserts that they “were contrary to every previous advisory for pandemic countermeasures by the CDC and the WHO.”

He believes that “the house of cards should be falling” and that the media should be putting pressure on the NIH.

“The national media, which was fooled by all these lies, should be surrounding NIH with pitchforks and torches. And yet it’s like water on a duck,” he said.

Kennedy is the author of the best-selling book “The Real Anthony Fauci,” an encyclopedic work that encompasses Big Pharma’s meddling in public health and people’s liberties.

He’s an attorney, environmental activist, and founder of Children’s Health Defense. He is the son of former U.S. Senator, Attorney General, and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, and the nephew of former Democrat President John F. Kennedy.

“If they don’t prevent transmission, then how does he justify the mandates? Particularly for children?”

The Epoch Times reached out to Fauci’s office for comment.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The protection afforded by surviving COVID-19 was strong against the latest virus subvariants, including the one currently dominant in the United States, scientists in Qatar found.

People who were infected with Omicron, a variant of SARS-CoV-2, had 76.1 percent protection against symptomatic reinfection from BA.4 and BA.5 and 80 percent shielding from any reinfection, regardless of symptoms, according to the preprint study.

SARS-CoV-2, also known as the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, causes COVID-19.

Omicron became the dominant virus strain in many countries in late 2021. Since then, a number of subvariants have taken hold. BA.5 is the strain currently dominant in the United States.

While protection from an Omicron infection provided robust shielding against reinfection, those who contracted a pre-Omicron strain had little protection, according to the Qatari scientists, who were led by Dr. Laith Abu-Raddad with Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar.

Pre-Omicron infection provided just 15.1 percent effectiveness against symptomatic BA.4 and BA.5 reinfection and just 28 percent infection against any reinfection.

The scientists analyzed data from national COVID-19 databases.

Infections before Omicron were those that occurred before Dec. 19, 2021, when the variant wave started in Qatar.

Protection ‘Strong’

“Protection of a previous infection against BA.4/BA.5 reinfection was modest when the previous infection involved a pre-Omicron variant, but strong when the previous infection involved the Omicron BA.1 or BA.2 subvariant,” the scientists wrote.

Natural immunity has long been found to be superior to the protection from COVID-19 vaccines, and the new study is no exception. Vaccines provide little protection against Omicron infection and perform worse against infection and severe illness from the BA.4 and BA. 5 subvariants, studies have shown.

Natural immunity also waned against BA.4 and BA.5, highlighting how the subvariants are better at evading protection, the Qatari researchers found.

The group has been studying natural immunity for years and recently discovered that the protection from prior infection against severe disease showed no signs of waning, regardless of what strain infected the person.

Among the listed limitations for the new study was the young population of Qatar, where just 9 percent of residents are 50 years of age or older. That means the findings “may not be generalizable to other countries where elderly citizens constitute a larger proportion of the total population,” researchers wrote.

Some experts, including Abu-Raddad and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, continue recommending vaccination for people with natural immunity, pointing to studies that indicate one or more doses increase protection, but others say vaccination isn’t needed for people who survive COVID-19, since some research suggests the elevated protection is minimal and that the naturally immune are at higher risk of vaccine side effects.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Who’s the better boy: Hunter Biden or Mohammed bin Salman?

Resident Joe Biden visited oil-rich Saudi Arabia on Friday to grovel before its authoritarian leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), in a desperate attempt to stem the soaring price of gasoline in the United States. The president fist-bumped MBS upon arriving in Jeddah, which was an embarrassing moment. Not quite as embarrassing, however, as Barack H. Obama’s servile bow before the late King Abdullah during his 2009 apology tour.

The trip revealed that Biden’s campaign pledge to make Saudi Arabia “pay the price” for human rights abuses—including the 2018 murder and bone-saw dismemberment of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi—and “make them in fact the pariah that they are” was a blatant lie. (Yes, a lie. The Washington Free Beacon is using that word in contravention of longstanding journalistic norms in an effort to highlight the president’s dangerous dishonesty.)

Above all, Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia provides an opportunity to discuss a topic the American mainstream media too often neglect: fatherhood. One of the reasons why the president’s meeting with MBS is so significant is that the crown prince is merely the country’s de facto leader after gently seizing control from his 86-year-old father, King Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud.

Shortly after Biden took office in 2021, the White House insisted that King Salman—not the 36-year-old MBS—was “the president’s counterpart” in Saudi Arabia. Friday’s fist-bump suggests otherwise. Nevertheless, Biden and King Salman have a lot in common. As of Nov. 20, they will both be octogenarians. More importantly, they both understand what it’s like to be the famous father of an infamous son.

Speaking of which, Hunter Biden and MBS have a fair amount in common as well. They are both fans of prostitutes and cocaine. Hunter’s exploits are legendary, of course, but almost certainly pale in comparison with the debauchery of the crown prince. New York Times reporter Ben Hubbard noted in his 2020 book, MBS: The Rise to Power of Mohammed bin Salman, that MBS once rented out an entire resort in the Maldives and “hosted a string of blowout parties.” Shakira and Pitbull reportedly performed at the gatherings, which also featured “an abundance of prostitutes and cocaine.”

READ MORE: ‘Bareback Rocket Ride’: The Hunter Biden Story

Both sons would presumably have amounted to nothing if not for their powerful dads, who helped finance their lavish and degenerate lifestyles. Just as MBS tapped the royal bank account to pay for his drug-fueled island orgies, Hunter persuaded Joe to keep wiring him money to help cover his $30,000 escort bill. It is safe to say that Hunter is more likely than MBS to film himself having threesomes with crack-addled hookers, but who’s to judge?

Hunter and MBS both have five children, although King Salman probably recognizes all of them, unlike Joe, who continues to deny the existence of the baby girl Hunter sired with a stripper named “Dallas.” To be fair, it is not publicly known how many children MBS has fathered with strippers and prostitutes who may not enjoy the protections granted by the U.S. justice system.

Unlike his Saudi counterpart, the Biden heir has not yet been credibly accused of murdering and dismembering a journalist. Yet Hunter does enjoy some of the same benefits afforded to Saudi royalty. For example, U.S. mainstream media outlets and tech companies actively suppressed negative stories about Hunter during his father’s 2020 presidential campaign. The revelations once denounced as “fake news” have since been largely corroborated.

It is difficult to say, given the facts, which famous father has raised the better boy. Perhaps the most notable difference between Joe Biden and King Salman is that the elderly and infirm Saudi royal knew when it was time to call it quits and hand power to a younger generation. Biden does not appear to share this outlook. This is not to suggest that he should anoint Hunter as his heir apparent, although there’s no question the whore-loving crackhead scion would get more votes than Kamala Harris.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Patrick Byrne met with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Dec. 18, 2020, to urge him to investigate allegations of election fraud. Byrne, the founder and former CEO of online retailer Overstock, is set to testify before the Jan. 6 House Select Committee on July 15.

In an exclusive interview with The Epoch Times, Byrne recounted his meeting with Trump, which included former national security adviser Michael Flynn and Sidney Powell, former attorney to Trump’s campaign and former federal prosecutor, along with a number of White House officials.

The roughly 4.5-hour meeting was “nothing like it has been reported,” Byrne said in an interview with EpochTV’s “Facts Matter” program on July 14.

Byrne said he used a prior invitation from a White House staffer for a tour of the building as a way to gain entry with Flynn and Powell, with the hope of getting to talk to the president about his plan to investigate the widespread allegations of voter fraud.

“We were always after the most minimal on that range of options, which was to do a quick investigation that we said could be done in a few days,” Byrne said of the plan.

‘Perfectly Reasonable Conversation’

Byrne describes a chance encounter with the president as he walked by that enabled the group to meet in the Oval Office. The trio presented to Trump two executive orders—one signed by former President Barack Obama in 2015 and one by Trump in 2018—which, they said, gave Trump the authority to launch an investigation in the event of foreign interference in the election.

“It has nothing to do with the theories of vote flipping from space. It has nothing to do with the alleged South Korean jets, or Germany this, or Italy that, or any of that,” Byrne said.

Instead, Byrne said, “the argument that was made to the president was that under two executive orders … that say if a foreign nation interferes in one of our elections, disrupts an election, the president really gets a range of options.”

According to Byrne, these options ranged from “something very light-handed, like, ‘let’s have a quick investigation’ to something more substantial, like, ‘let’s have a serious investigation.’”

Much of the conversation prior to the arrival of White House attorneys in the room, according to Byrne, centered on the question of whether multiple government documents constituted enough justification to launch an investigation based on the authority given in the executive orders.

The documents included an Oct. 30, 2020, pre-election warning by the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) that Iranian state actors were targeting U.S. state websites to obtain voter registration data, as well as an Oct. 22 warning; an updated notice on Nov. 3 that said the foreign actor was successful in at least one state; and an FBI, CISA, and DNI statement on the SolarWinds Orion vulnerability.

“That was a perfectly reasonable conversation to have,” Byrne said. “Everybody was acutely aware that every word we were saying was historic, could be judged by history, should be judged by history.”

Byrne, who said he didn’t vote for Trump in 2016 and hadn’t ever voted Republican, said he was impressed at “how smart he [Trump] is,” which never came across “from the way he was portrayed in the media.”

‘No Uniforms’

Trump studied the documents in silence as he received them and then made precise comments, Byrne said.

“So what is it you folks are asking me to do?” Trump eventually asked, leaning back, according to Byrne.

Byrne said he laid out several choices that Trump could make to pursue a “very quick and dirty investigation.”

“That’s why I think that if there’s any charges for them, they should come after me” rather than Trump.

The first option Byrne laid out was to investigate “the obvious six counties where the voting record was stopped,” he said.

Or, a more “heavy-handed option,” he added, would be to target 31 counties previously selected by a political scientist.

“He [Trump] said immediately: ‘just go with the six.’”

Byrne then suggested a cyber team could make copies of hard drives to conduct forensic analysis. Alternatively, investigators could travel to the counties and remain on site for several days to count the ballots and livestream the forensic checks.

To lead the investigation, Byrne proposed a joint team composed of cyber analysts from the United States Marshals Service under the Justice Department and the National Guard.

At that point, Pat Cipollone, then-White House counsel—who had joined the meeting at some point and was sitting behind Byrne—stepped forward to raise objections, according to Byrne.

“Mr. President, the nation will go nuts if they see even one uniform around this,” he said, according to Byrne’s recollection. Others, including Flynn, also opposed the idea.

“The DHS [Department of Homeland Security] has teams that are perfectly adequate for this,” Bryne recalled Flynn saying after a second or two of silence.

Byrne made his case again.

“Sir, just to be clear, obviously, it’s your choice, not my choice,” he said. “I think that we’re in this national crisis because we’ve had a complete breakdown of trust, and I’m not sure that doesn’t extend to the FBI and the DHS.”

“If this is all about reinvigorating the system of trust, the U.S. courts are very trusted and the military is very trusted,” and the National Guard, while in uniform, consists of citizen soldiers, making their presence more acceptable, he said he argued.

Trump let him finish “that whole spiel” before voting him down.

“He said, ‘Pat, no uniforms.’ I said, ‘Yes, sir,’” Byrne recalled.

Byrne insists that he’s the only one who ever put the idea of “uniforms” on the table. “It was not Donald Trump, not anyone else.”

“It was on the table for about 28 seconds. And everybody in the room said no. And Donald Trump said no,” he said. “It was robustly put down.”

‘Obstructionists’

Byrne said Trump that evening hinted at least twice that the idea of leaving the White House held an appeal.

“I’ll never spend a night in this town again. I’ve got my golf courses, I’ve got my friends. Trust me Pat, my life’s going to get a lot better,” he said, according to Byrne. “But how can I do that? If I think that this election was stolen and there might be a foreign element involved, how can I really do that?”

“He was anything but some crazed tyrant clutching to power,” Byrne said.

What also became clear, he said, was that Trump “was being completely undermined by everyone around him.”

Trump, at one moment, turned to Cipollone to express his disappointment that he hadn’t been alerted to the executive powers.

“Why didn’t you even tell me about these orders, Pat? … Why did I have to hear it from them? At least they want to fight for me.”

“Mr. President, I’m not your campaign lawyer. I’m your White House lawyer,” Cipollone answered, according to Byrne.

“This man [Cipollone] has been telling staffers systematically … that we have to get you out of here, [that] we have to get the president in the transition mode, just get him to concede,” Byrne said he told Trump, adding that he could get White House staffers to back up his statements within half an hour.

Cipollone’s response according to Byrne was: “Mr. President, you know how hard I’ve been working for you?” according to Byrne, who then watched as Cipollone and several other officials “stormed out.”

“​​They stormed out three different times,” he said. “I was shocked at how they treated the president. I didn’t even vote for the guy. I didn’t even really like him until this meeting, frankly.”

“They were just so clearly being obstructionists,” Byrne said. “I was hearing that they were being told, if you get the president out the door, there’ll be a million dollar job for you in such-and-such lobbying firm. But if you don’t, your kids aren’t getting into Yale and your kids are getting thrown out of the school they’re in.

“This was going on up and down the DOJ and up and down the administration.”

According to Byrne, one of the White House lawyers told Trump that he had the authority to appoint Powell as special counsel if he chose to do so.

“Finally the lawyer said, ‘Mr. President, you don’t have to fight with us. You can just make Sidney Powell that special counsel just by saying it. You don’t have to sign anything,’” Byrne recalled.

About 30 minutes later, Trump was so fed up with his White House attorneys, Byrne said that’s what he did.

“I’m saying it, Sidney Powell is now a special counsel,” Byrne recalled the president saying.

“Another lawyer spoke up and said, ‘you can’t do that, she needs security clearance. It is going to take months to get a security clearance,’” Byrne said. He then said Flynn told the president he had the same authority to grant her a top secret clearance verbally, which he said the president gave.

“It was left sort of with a rough understanding this was going to happen,” Byrne said. The three—Byrne, Powell, and Flynn—left somewhere past midnight with a sense of excitement that they were “clearing up the mystery.”

Over the weekend, though, when Powell tried to get a White House ID and desk, they discovered the arrangement “had all fallen through.”

Byrne said he was later told that lawyer and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani had convinced the president to back out of the plan.

Giuliani on his radio program on July 14 recalled the events at the White House during the meeting.

He said he was called over to the White House by the president and reviewed the documents “purporting to show foreign involvement in the election.”

“I read through them carefully, I came back, and I said it’s clear to me that there’s not enough here,” Giuliani said.

He said the president “didn’t disagree at all” with him and Giuliani thought “it was his sense anyway.”

“Well, then that’s it,” Giuliani said the president said. He added that “at some point, the president made it very clear he wanted them out of the White House, and they were escorted out of the White House, one of them by me.”

Questioning election results and calling for an investigation hadn’t been viewed as controversial until that November, Byrne said.

“I didn’t see that as a huge deal between being in a constitutional crisis that could end the nation—which I knew where we’d be if we tried to choke down the election that nobody had any real confidence in—or getting an answer like that.”

But “it’s different being an entrepreneur than lawyer,” he noted. “I’m just thinking, gee, our country is going to enter this nebulous, awful space or we can in seven days, whatever, we’ll have a total answer to this. That’s how an entrepreneur thinks.”

The Epoch Times has reached out to Trump, Powell, Flynn, Cipollone, and Giuliani for comments.

Click here to watch the full interview.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The Indiana doctor who performed an abortion on a 10-year-old Ohio girl properly reported the procedure to authorities but listed the age of the father as 17 despite the man allegedly being 27, according to documents made public on July 14.

Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an assistant professor of clinical obstetrics and gynecology at Indiana University, performed the abortion at the university’s hospital on June 30, according to the documents, which were obtained by The Epoch Times.

Bernard correctly listed the pregnant mother’s age as 10 but placed the father’s age as 17, the forms show.

The man arrested in Columbus for the rape of the girl is actually 27 and is in the country illegally, according to local and federal authorities.

Bernard’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment. All contact information for Bernard has been removed from her university profile and the university has not responded to inquiries.

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, a Republican, had said this week that he was investigating whether Bernard complied with state law governing reporting by health care providers.

Any abortions performed on a girl younger than 16 in Indiana must be reported by the abortionist to the Indiana Department of Health and child services within three days of the abortion.

Bernard complied with the requirements, according to the documents. She filed the terminated pregnancy report on July 2.

It’s unclear whether Bernard reported the suspected abuse with the Indiana Department of Child Services. The agency declined to comment and has not filled a public records request.

“As we stated, we are gathering evidence from multiple sources and agencies related to these allegations. Our legal review of it remains open,” Rokita told The Epoch Times in an email.

‘Followed All Relevant Policies’

Kathleen DeLaney, a lawyer representing Bernard, told news outlets that the doctor “took every appropriate and proper action in accordance with the law and both her medical and ethical training as a physician.”

“She followed all relevant policies, procedures, and regulations in this case, just as she does every day to provide the best possible care for her patients,” Delaney said, adding that Bernard did not violate any laws and has not been disciplined by her employer.

Rokita had also said that Bernard has a history of failure to report. Indiana Right to Life, a pro-life group, in 2018 filed complaints against Bernard and other doctors who perform abortions for alleged failure to report. It’s unclear if any action was taken. The attorney general’s office declined to say whether it investigated the complaints.

Bernard first spoke about performing the abortion on the 10-year-old to the Indianapolis Star, which included it in a July 1 story about patients from other states needing to go to Indiana to get an abortion.

Ohio law prohibits abortions beyond six weeks of pregnancy but contains an exception for abortions “to prevent a serious risk of the substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman.” Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, a Republican, has said the case would fit within the exception.

The girl’s mother reported the rape to child services in Franklin County, which alerted the Columbus Police Department, a police detective said during the arraignment for Gerson Fuentes, the man accused of raping the girl.

Fuentes is an illegal immigrant, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official told The Epoch Times. He is reportedly from Guatemala.

There are questions about the man’s identity, the police detective said, with no indication Fuentes is in the country legally.

Police say the girl identified Fuentes as the man who impregnated her and that Fuentes confessed.

Fuentes faces life in prison if convicted.

Source: The Epoch Times

After White House adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra issued warnings about a new COVID-19 subvariant, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said they are not providing key facts about the latest strain.

“How come the flu vaccine changes every year and they’re not willing to change this vaccine?” Paul told Fox News on Tuesday. “Now, you might have me with an argument. I’ll listen to you if you tell me, ‘We’ve got a new vaccine that actually has something to do with the current virus,’” he said.

It came after Fauci, who has given hundreds of media interviews since the start of the pandemic, told CNN this week that the Omicron subvariant BA.5 is concerning due to its high transmissibility. People infected in the first COVID-19 waves “really don’t have a lot of good protection” against the latest subvariant, Fauci also said at a White House briefing several days ago.

But Paul, himself a doctor, told Fox that Omicron “was about 90 percent less likely to put you in the hospital than the first variant,” saying that Americans should “discount” what both Fauci and Becerra are saying about the latest subvariant.

“So if no one’s telling you any information, how can you make any judgment other than the emotionalism and the sensationalism of the government?” he asked.

Fauci himself was infected with COVID-19 several weeks ago and confirmed he took Pfizer drug Paxlovid before his symptoms recurred, although he’s received two booster shots.

In a recent interview, Fauci conceded that most COVID-19 vaccines don’t protect “overly well” against the latest variant. However, he used that statement to claim that they are effective at limiting the most severe symptoms.

“At my age, being vaccinated and boosted, even though it didn’t protect me against infection, I feel confident that it made a major role in protecting me from progressing to severe disease,” said Fauci, who is 81 and has worked in various capacities in the federal government since the late 1960s.

In a recent interview with the Washington Post, Fauci suggested that Americans ages 5 to 50 should be allowed to get a second booster shot.

The federal government, he argued, “need[s] to allow people who are under 50 to get their second booster shot, since it may have been months since many of them got their first booster.”

“If I got my third shot [in 2021], it is very likely the immunity is waning,” Fauci proclaimed.

The Epoch Times has contacted the National Institutes of Health for comment.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Christian employee resigned from union after learning her union fees were being spent to promote pro-abortion cause

A federal jury in Texas ordered Southwest Airlines and its union on July 14 to pay a former flight attendant who opposes abortion more than $5.3 million after she was fired for sending pro-life messages to her union’s president.

The jury determined that the airline and Transport Workers Union of America (TWU) Local 556 violated Charlene Carter’s rights as an employee to speak out against the union. The airline was ordered to pay Carter $4.15 million for back pay and pain and suffering. The union was ordered to pay Carter a separate $1.15 million, according to the Dallas Morning News.

Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Foundation, which represented Carter in court, was elated at the verdict.

“It’s a good day for courage and it’s a good day for individual freedom and liberty. It’s exciting. It’s been a five-year odyssey for Charlene, and for our legal team,” Mix told The Epoch Times in an interview.

Carter’s story goes back to 1996 when, as a Southwest employee, she joined TWU Local 556. A pro-life Christian, she resigned from the union in 2013 upon learning her union dues were being spent to promote social causes that violated her conscience and religious beliefs.

Despite exiting the union, Carter was still forced to pay fees in lieu of union dues as a condition of her employment. State-level right-to-work laws don’t exempt her from forced fees because airline and railway employees fall under the federal Railway Labor Act (RLA), which allows union officials to have a worker fired for refusing to pay union dues or fees. Despite this, the RLA protects the rights of employees to remain nonmembers of the union, to criticize the union and its leadership, and to advocate for changing its leadership.

Pro-Abortion Event

When Carter discovered in 2017 that TWU Local 556 President Audrey Stone and other union officials used union dues to attend a pro-abortion event in the nation’s capital and that the company had accommodated local members wishing to attend by rearranging their work schedules, she took to social media to challenge Stone’s leadership. The airline demanded a meeting with Carter, informing her that Stone felt harassed by Carter’s issue advocacy.

A week later, the airline fired Carter. Not long after, Carter sued.

Mix said Carter objected to her forced union fees “being used for political purposes” such as attending a Planned Parenthood rally and the Women’s March. She also didn’t like that the union sent out notices to all union members “saying they should oppose the national right to work law,” which he said she supported.

Sponsored by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) S. 406, the proposed National Right-to-Work Act, is currently pending in Congress. It would repeal provisions of the National Labor Relations Act and the Railway Labor Act that allow employers to make an agreement with a labor union to require employees to join that union as a condition of employment.

In this case, the union complained to the airline about Carter’s political views and got her fired, Mix said. Under current law the employee is represented in grievance proceedings by the union when a firing takes place, he said.

Both the union and the employer are required “to make accommodations for sincere religious beliefs,” Mix said. The union was in breach of the duty of fair representation “and this is the problem with union monopoly bargaining: when you have a dispute against the union, who do you go to to represent yourself in front of your employer?”

“This is one of those cases where Southwest for some reason decided to really go hard against Charlene,” Mix said, adding she had “no blemishes” on her employment record.

“The idea that the money she’s compelled to pay in order to keep her job was used for political and ideological causes that have nothing to do with her workplace is really an injustice.”

“This is a pretty good indication that both companies and unions need to watch out if they’re going to violate employee rights,” Mix said. If the cases go to jury trials, “there is a punishment for that, and today we saw that.”

The Epoch Times reached out to Southwest Airlines repeatedly for comment but had not received a reply as of press time.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Television, movies, news media, universities, sports, nonprofits and even major corporations are increasingly controlled by leftists.

One island of conservative sanity is talk radio, a medium in which leftists have been unable to succeed despite their best efforts and the government funding of NPR, which even some liberals are finding to be too much.

The Hispanic community in South Florida, with its large Cuban-American population, has been right-leaning and pointedly anti-communist. That has made a success of Radio Mambi — WAQI-AM — in Miami, with its conservative Spanish-language programming.

But not for long, if a George Soros-backed sale of the station and others is completed.

The leftist billionaire is a “lender,” as opposed to an investor, in the development of the Latino Radio Network, which will be made up of WAQI and 17 other Hispanic radio stations, Fox News reported.

The purchase of the stations from Univision would include some financing by Lakestar Finance, which is affiliated with a Soros fund management firm.

The Latino Radio Network’s founders both worked for former President Barack Obama.

Stephanie Valencia was deputy director of the Latino Vote Program for Obama’s 2008 campaign and went on to have several positions in the Obama White House’s Office of Public Engagement, according to her LinkedIn page.

Meanwhile, Jess Morales Rocketto, a former senior new media strategist for the AFL-CIO who also worked on Democrat Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, was the engagement program manager for Obama’s 2012 re-election bid.

Valencia is the executive chairwoman of the board for the Latino Radio Network, while Rocketto is a board member.

Neither woman sounds like a good match for Radio Marti. Neither does the inflow of Soros money.

Some on-air personalities have broadcast they will not accept retention bonuses to stay with Radio Mambi.

Lourdes Ubieta announced earlier this month that she’s moving to Americano Media, a SiriusXM radio network that features a conservative Spanish-language perspective.

This week, Dania Alexandrino and Nelson Rubio said they too were leaving WAQI for that venture, Fox News reported.

En vivo a las 11:00 am hora del este, con los tres que presentadores que hacían parte de @radiomambi710 y rechazaron la oferta para continuar, después de la oferta de compra por parte de Latin Network, financiado por el extremista de izquierda George Soros. pic.twitter.com/QB6f4ujKdG

— Americano Media (@AmericanoMedia) July 12, 2022

Soros Gets a Shock When He Tries to Buy Local Radio Station with Conservative Latina Behind the Mic

“They don’t want a dime of Soros money,” said Jorge Bonilla of the Media Research Center.

Some advertisers are planning to leave, too, he said.

Bonilla said the planned purchase “is about controlling the flow of information to a specific community for political purposes.”

“You’re looking at the shutdown or the radical restructuring or the reformatting … of an iconic radio station, a station that for decades has been a beacon to Miami’s Cuban-American community,” he said.

Radio Mambi, according to Bonilla, “has been really the community’s voice politically and culturally. It’s a beacon of anti-communism, and so these are the concerns that emerged as a result of this transaction.”

He said a parallel would have been for Rush Limbaugh to be removed from WABC-AM, his flagship station in New York, in the 1990s and replaced with Air America, the left’s unsuccessful talk radio effort.

Bonilla called the Radio Mambi situation “unprecedented.”

A long-forgotten mandate of the Federal Communications Commission — which must approve the sale of the stations to the Latino Radio Network — is that, according to the Communications Act of 1934 — stations should operate “in the public interest, convenience and necessity.”

Were the FCC operating along those lines, a serious case could be made that Radio Mambi was fulfilling its public mission by its focused service to a specific ethnic community.

But if its past behavior is any indication, it’s unlikely the FCC — its board made up of two Democrats and two Republicans, with one vacancy — will oppose the sale.

There have been some demonstrations against the proposed sale, and Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio has been critical of it.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, also a Republican, tweeted, “The Soros-funded radical Left is running a scheme to manipulate local media in Florida to push their Marxist agenda on voters.”

The Soros-funded radical Left is running a scheme to manipulate local media in Florida to push their Marxist agenda on voters.

In Florida, we reject the professional Left & their attempt to infiltrate our state & will always stand for truth and freedom.https://t.co/OeLbSDpJVh

— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantisFL) June 6, 2022

His campaign has run ads in Spanish that said, “Warning, voters! The left is taking control of our local media. Billionaire George Soros, known for financing extreme leftist causes, is now financing the purchase of Hispanic radio stations right here in Miami,” Fox News reported last month.

And there was an event at Radio Mambi that has a kind of precedent.

Veteran broadcasters know the first two things new owners do when they take over a radio station: First, they say there will be no changes in personnel. Second, they fire everybody.

The loss of current staffers might reduce the value of the station. That may be one reason Valencia went to Miami on July 7 to attempt to calm angry Radio Mambi staffers, according to Fox News.

Under new ownership, she told them, “Nothing will change.”

“Nobody believes her,” an individual at the station told Fox News. “Honestly, they really believe we are that stupid.”

Now more personalities have left WAQI, and Americano Media is poised to carry on the tradition of conservative Hispanic talk radio.

Founder Ivan Garcia-Hidalgo, a supporter of former President Donald Trump, told NBC News the venture, which launched in March, was coming at just the right time.

“Democrats took Hispanics for granted for too long, and no one thought to create a home for us in conservative media,” Garcia-Hidalgo said.

“There is an appetite for this,” he said. “You see it on social media. You see it in elections.”

And that, Comrades Soros, Rocketto and Valencia, is one way we do capitalism.

Herschel Walker is demanding network and cable TV stations pull advertisement that claims he ‘lied’ to vets

Herschel Walker, the Georgia Republican Senate candidate, is threatening to take legal action against a $1.5 million TV attack ad campaign by a liberal group that his lawyers claim is “defamatory” and promotes “false allegations” about Walker’s veterans’ advocacy work.

Walker’s legal team is demanding that network and cable TV stations in Georgia pull the advertisement by left-leaning political action committee VoteVets, according to a letter to the stations obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. The VoteVets ad, which features a Purple Heart recipient, claims Walker “lied” to veterans by promoting a health services program that was linked to allegations of fraud.

The news comes as Democrats are working to hit Walker on character issues, following recent reports that he had three children out of wedlock while criticizing absentee fathers. Walker’s allies are slamming VoteVet’s latest campaign as “gutter politics,” and the letter from his lawyers indicates he is ready to fight back hard against what he perceives as unfair attacks on his background and integrity.

“The advertisement shows zero evidence to substantiate the claim that Herschel Walker lied to veterans,” said Walker attorney Stefan Passantino in the letter. “To construe this as lying to veterans is defamation in its clearest form.”

The VoteVets ad takes aim at Walker’s work for Patriot Support, a health services program for veterans run by Universal Health Services, one of the largest hospital chains in the country. UHS hired Walker as a spokesman for the veterans’ outreach program more than a decade ago, and he left the position last year.

UHS has faced allegations of fraud at some of its facilities. The Department of Justice charged the hospital group with falsifying medical records and billing for unnecessary treatments, in an effort to defraud the government. UHS settled the case for $122 million in 2020, without directly admitting to the claims.

While the VoteVets ad attempted to tie Walker to the malpractice, citing an Associated Press story on the controversy, the AP report said there was “no suggestion [Walker] was directly involved in any wrongdoing at the hospitals.”

Passantino asked that the advertisement “be removed from your airwaves immediately” and warned that the candidate and former NFL star would consider legal action.

“Should such false and defamatory publication occur after receiving information in advance of publication of its falsehood, it can only be undertaken with actual malice and reckless disregard for the truth,” Passantino added. “In that instance, we will act accordingly to protect our clients’ interests.”

This isn’t the first time VoteVets has been hit with pushback against its ads. Fox News and Clear Channel declined to run some of the group’s commercials in past years, with Fox reportedly calling one ad confusing and Clear Channel saying it would conflict with its programming.

VoteVets is spending nearly $1.5 million on the anti-Walker campaign, which is set to run through July 23 across Georgia, including the Atlanta and Savannah markets. The group did not respond to a request for comment.

The Georgia Senate election, which could determine party control of the U.S. Senate next year, is expected to be one of the most contentious races of the midterms. Outside groups are already pouring tens of millions of dollars into the contest, which pits Walker against Democratic senator Raphael Warnock, who won the seat in a special election in 2020.

Walker’s campaign spokeswoman Mallory Blount blasted VoteVets as a “front organization for Chuck Schumer’s left-wing, dark money network” and called the attack ad a “bad faith and a shameful attempt to cover Senator Warnock’s horrible record on veterans.” Blount noted that Warnock was heavily criticized during his 2020 campaign for claiming that “nobody can serve God and the military” at the same time.

Michael Dane Steele, a retired Army colonel who says he has known Walker for over 40 years, dismissed the VoteVets campaign as “nothing but bald-faced lies and gutter politics, made by [Walker’s] opponents.”

“The truth is that over the years Herschel has visited thousands and thousands of our young soldiers to encourage and support them,” Steele told the Free Beacon. “I always know when he’s visited a new installation because I’m inundated with emails, texts, and phone calls from excited troops, who want to express their sincere gratitude that Herschel will take the opportunity to spend time with them.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Resident Joe Biden is losing support from some of his biggest backers.

Bill Kristol, who founded and edited the neoconservative magazine The Weekly Standard, became a fierce critic of Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign and led the NeverTrump movement.

In 2018, Kristol co-founded The Bulwark, whose coverage is largely centered around criticism of Trump.

Two years later, he endorsed Biden in the Democratic primary, calling it a “simple choice,” and in the general election.

On Wednesday, however, Kristol argued that Biden should announce he won’t run for re-election.

He said on Twitter that a retirement announcement by Biden would bolster the Democrats’ chances in the 2022 midterm elections and lead to a Democratic victory in the 2024 presidential race.

Straightforward from here:

1. Biden announces not running again.

2. 2022 focus turns to R extremism, Ds do well in Nov.

3. Inflation subsides, Ukraine defeats Russia, Biden is successful 1-term president.

4. Younger moderate D defeats Trump or Trumpist in ’24.

Pourquoi pas?

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) July 13, 2022

As the president’s popularity drops further and further amid historic inflation and other crises, even liberals are increasingly giving him the cold shoulder.

A recent New York Times/Siena College poll indicated that 64 percent of Democratic voters want someone else than the incumbent as their nominee for president in 2024.

Biden snapped at a reporter who asked him about the poll at a White House event Tuesday.

“Read the polls, jack! You guys are all the same,” he said.

“What’s your message to Democrats who don’t want you to run again?”

BIDEN: “Read the polls! Read the polls, Jack! You guys are all the same.” pic.twitter.com/e0G3Sfufwm

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) July 12, 2022

Related:

Conservative Anti-Trump Magazine The Weekly Standard Announces Closure

If Biden were to run for re-election in 2024, he’d start his second term at the age of 82, smashing presidential age records.

Democrats have quietly circulated concerns about his age and unpopularity.

Kristol repeated his desire for Biden to eschew a 2024 re-election campaign in a subsequent tweet.

A lively (I thought!) podcast with @SykesCharlie.

We discuss just how (predictably) dangerous Trump proved to be, and the failure of Republicans and conservatives to come to grips with this.

Bonus: I make the case for Biden announcing he’s one and done.https://t.co/Ux5LubuqpN

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) July 13, 2022

At the now-defunct Weekly Standard, the neoconservative ideologue became a crucial proponent of President George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The invasion has since become regarded as one of the worst foreign policy disasters in U.S. history.

Kristol reinvented himself by aligning with progressive Democrats as a Trump critic after the 2016 GOP primary, establishing himself as a mainstay on liberal cable channels such as CNN and MSNBC.

TikTok is no longer advertising for employees in Moscow, following a Washington Free Beacon report that the company was seeking hires in Russia a few months after announcing it had suspended operations in the country.

TikTok’s corporate website listed over a dozen job listings for staffers in Moscow—noting a preference for candidates who spoke Mandarin Chinese—but the posts disappeared shortly after the Free Beacon’s report in late June. The postings appeared to conflict with TikTok’s announcement last March that it would scale back its operations in Russia after President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

The removal of the job postings comes as the social media company has faced criticism for promoting pro-Putin propaganda and reportedly allowing its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to access private U.S. consumer data.

The company had advertised for numerous openings in Russia, including revenue planning managers, industry analysts, and monetization strategists. While TikTok often stresses its independence from its Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance, several of the Russian job ads request Mandarin Chinese speakers, with one stating that “fluency in Mandarin would be [a] distinct advantage” for candidates.

It’s unclear if the posts were removed because the positions were filled. TikTok did not respond to a request for comment.

Many news outlets depicted Twitter’s suspension of business in Russia as part of a global corporate boycott campaign. But the company’s actions ended up aiding the Putin regime’s efforts to control information on the platform, according to a Washington Post report in June, by allowing state-run outlets to post propaganda while censoring outside information.

Last week, the leaders of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate concerns that TikTok “may be collecting biometric data such as faceprints and voiceprints” from its U.S. user base, and that this information could be accessed by the Chinese government.

In a letter to the FTC, the senators cited leaked audio recordings from TikTok meetings that revealed engineers at ByteDance were able to obtain U.S. user data, despite assurances from the social media company that these private records were inaccessible to China. The recordings were first reported by BuzzFeed last month.

“In light of this new report, we ask that your agency immediately initiate … [an] investigation on the basis of apparent deception by TikTok, and coordinate this work with any national security or counter-intelligence investigation that may be initiated by the U.S. Department of Justice,” wrote Senate Select Committee on Intelligence chairman Mark Warner (D., Va.) and vice chairman Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) in the letter last week.

“TikTok’s Trust and Safety department was aware of these improper access practices and governance irregularities, which—according to internal recordings of TikTok deliberations—offered PRC-based employees unfettered access to user information, including birthdates, phone numbers, and device identification information.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Few companies have embraced wokeness with as much zeal as Disney. The company has leaped headlong into America’s culture war to become one of the most activist corporations in the United States.

Disney management’s public battle with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis over the state’s Parental Rights in Education law — which critics disingenuously called the “Don’t Say Gay” bill — drew national attention to the company this spring.

Videos from company meetings leaked in March showed company leaders bragging about Disney’s “not-at-all-secret gay agenda” and its moves to create “canonical trans characters” in children’s programming.

In April, we learned that the Walt Disney Co. had kicked its LGBT activism up a notch by offering a new benefit that will assist employees and their minor children with “gender affirmation procedures.”

And following the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade, the company immediately assured employees that regardless of where they live, they will be reimbursed for the cost of travel to the nearest state that allows abortion.

What a great work environment for a liberal employee. This company really has their backs.

But what if you’re a conservative?

This is precisely where Disney content producer Jeremiah Daws found himself. The pro-life, conservative Christian recently shared his story with The Daily Wire.

Shortly after his arrival in Hollywood, Daws learned to keep his conservative views to himself. In the late 2000s, he and his brother signed up for a screenwriting workshop.

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“The man who ran the workshop noticed some conservative posts on my social media and invited us to breakfast to let us know we would be blacklisted in Hollywood if people knew we held those beliefs,” he told the Daily Wire.

In 2015, Daws went to work for Disney. He managed to avoid political discussions and got along just fine until the summer of 2020.

In reaction to the riots that had spread throughout the country following George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis police custody, Disney began sending employees to mandatory diversity and inclusion training sessions.

“That was the last straw” for Daws, he said.

He recalled being told that “as a white, straight, male, I should be quiet and listen” and that “promotions would be on hold for the white men on the team.” He said he’d been instructed to “start casting non-binary children for our photo and video shoots.”

Related:

Leaked Disney Footage: Hidden Sex Message Found in New Kids Cartoon – Can You Spot It?

That fall, Daws read a book that had an impact on him. “Live Not By Lies,” by The American Conservative’s Rod Dreher, tells the “stories of Christians who resisted totalitarianism in the Soviet Union.”

Daws told the Daily Wire he felt like he was “living every day promoting a company, a belief system, and even COVID hysteria, that I didn’t agree with. … I was living by lies, putting on this false exterior.”

He quoted Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: “Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.”

Daws left the company several months later.

“I just couldn’t lie anymore,” he told the Daily Wire. “I would remove myself from the equation. Living in that kind of environment is soul-crushing. I wanted to be free to express myself without fear of losing my job. I wanted to be in an environment where I could make friends who would accept me as I am, not as they demand me to be.”

Since leaving, Daws has enrolled in trade school and plans to open a machine shop.

“I had hope in the back of my mind that if Disney ever got back to just making magic, maybe I could go back,” he said. “But the lie was still out there. There were 10 years worth of friends and coworkers that still believed I was one of them.”

“It was time to end the lies once and for all. I wanted my next phase of life to be open and truthful. Wherever I worked next, everything would be out on the table.”

Daws said he was pleased by the Supreme Court’s decision last month to reverse the Roe v. Wade ruling. “People have prayed for this day for 50 years,” he said. “We are now on the path to righting this horrible wrong.”

“This was a day to celebrate. I had a small platform among my liberal friends to be a different voice,” he said.

Daws chose that day to “come out” on social media as a conservative. Predictably, his liberal friends responded with “a lot of negativity.”

He was wise to get out.

Although Disney likely tops the list of major U.S. corporations that have adopted a woke agenda, this toxic ideology has spread like a plague throughout corporate America.

As Disney’s executives chase their woke dreams, they’ve forgotten their two primary responsibilities: to provide entertainment to families and to maximize shareholder value. No doubt a portion of the company’s clientele thinks it’s wonderful to include transgenders in films and to add gay characters to Disney classics, but my guess is that the majority of American parents disagree.

That they’ve failed at both is apparent in the price of the company’s common stock, which has been cut in half over the past year.

The pendulum has swung too far in one direction, and ordinary Americans are fed up with identity politics and speech regulation.

Hopefully, voters will deliver a huge “thumbs down” to the woke agenda in November.

A growing number of hosts are leaving a Spanish-language radio station after it was bought by a group backed by billionaire leftist George Soros.

Nelson Rubio announced his resignation from Radio Mambi on July 12, following Dania Alexandrino and Lourdes Ubieta.

Radio Mambi “has been the voice of the Cuban exile, the voice of conservative men and women who defend freedom, democracy, family principles, truth, and faith in God,” Rubio said during a press conference in Miami. “Many in this community have felt betrayed by the acquisition of this radio by a company financed by the left liberal extremist, George Soros.”

Rubio and Ubieta are joining Americano Media, where Alexandrino already had a show.

“Being faithful to my principles I couldn’t accept being part of any business associated with these leftist activists and their socialist agenda,” Alexandrino told reporters.

Radio Mambi was one of 18 radio stations in 10 cities that was recently purchased by the Latino Media Network from Univision. The stations were said to reach about one-third of U.S. Latinos. The deal was $60 million, all cash, according to the network.

The network, which did not respond to a request for comment, said its funding came from “leading Latino investors” and Lakestar Finance LLC, an investment entity affiliated with the Soros Fund Management, one of the many entities owned or linked to Soros.

‘Relevant Content’

Jess Morales Rocketto, one of the network’s founders, said in a statement that the group “hope[s] to create relevant content for radio and other audio platforms with content that our community can trust and rely on” and “is going to ensure that the Latino community continues to be served with the news and information that local communities deserve.”

The transition to the new ownership will not happen until the Federal Communications Commission approves the deal. The network said the deal is expected to finalize in quarter four of 2023. The network also said it intended to retain employees who work at the stations.

Americano Media bills itself as the nation’s first national conservative Hispanic network in Spanish. It launched in March and broadcasts on Sirius XM, GETTR, and applications, with plans to launch on television soon.

CEO Ivan Garcia Hidalgo said during the briefing that the purchase of Mambi “indicated to us that the Left is trying to silence truth and the conservative narrative, and we offered an opportunity to these great hosts and talent to come to Americano and continue their work.”

“These individuals make up a powerful team that has fled from what will become a voice of oppression and disinformation, to come join a strong network of Hispanics that care deeply about their communities,” he added.

Brazilian journalist Paulo Figueiredo was among others sounding the alarm, telling EpochTV’s “Crossroads” that the Latino Media Network move stemmed from a desire to get Hispanics voting for Democrats again, as more and more have shifted to Republicans in recent elections.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

“It takes a lot of work”

John Bolton delivered an epic humble brag during an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Tuesday.

The former adviser to Greatest Living President George W. Bush cited his expertise “as someone who has helped plan coups d’état” abroad to dispel the journalist’s uniformed opinion that “one doesn’t have to be brilliant to attempt a coup,” in reference to the January 6 uprising.

“I disagree with that,” Bolton said. “As somebody who has helped plan coups d’état—not here but, you know, other places—it takes a lot of work.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Aspen Times publisher decries brazen use of power and influence to ‘control a community newspaper’

Pot and kettle? [US Patriot]

Eighteen Colorado politicians are threatening to use their power and influence to compel a small local newspaper to hire their preferred editor, to republish a column the paper pulled from its website, and to disclose the terms of a settlement the paper reached in a defamation lawsuit in June.

Failure to acquiesce to their demands, the politicians are warning, will cause them to use power to “pull advertisements and notices from the paper,” to encourage local businesses to divest from the paper, and to refuse the paper access to local officials. The publisher of the paper, the Aspen Times, is pushing back, arguing that it is “shocking to see elected officials so brazenly threaten to use their positions of power to control a community newspaper.”

The fracas comes in the wake of legal settlement between the paper and Russian-born billionaire Vladislav Doronin. Doronin sued the Times over its coverage of his purchase of a prime piece of land at the base of Aspen Mountain, which referred to him as an “oligarch” and suggested he is an ally of Russian strongman Vladimir Putin.

The Times settled the dispute with Doronin out of court, agreeing to issue a correction to its coverage of the billionaire. Many defamation cases are settled out of court, and it’s not uncommon for settlements to be kept private.

The lawmakers, however, say the newspaper’s actions cast doubt over its “ability to freely achieve the high journalistic standards which you purportedly profess and which our community has come to expect of this local institution.”

“We would like to see clear action,” the lawmakers wrote in a June letter, including the “reinstatement of Andrew Travers as the editor in chief; republication of [Roger] Marolt’s June 10 column … and public clarity about the settlement that was reached in Doronin’s lawsuit.” The signatories also accused the paper of censoring stories about Doronin’s real estate acquisitions, which have been covered by other papers, including the Aspen Daily News.

The situation in Aspen is rare in the United States, where politicians generally avoid making explicit demands about the staffing and editorial decisions of media organizations. Polling has shown that Americans overwhelmingly support press freedom, despite their distrust of the media.

Of the people who signed the letter, at least 12 are Democrats, 3 are Republicans, and 3 appear to be unaffiliated.

Allison Pattillo, the publisher of the Times, rebuked attempts from government officials to control the press in the name of preserving freedom. “This chilling precedent is certainly not representative of our democracy nor the Aspen Idea our community touts,” she wrote.

The letter’s signatories include some ambitious Colorado politicians. Adam Frisch, a former Aspen city councilman, secured the Democratic nomination to run against Rep. Lauren Boebert (R., Colo.) in the 2022 midterm elections. “Protecting our Democracy” is one of the top priorities listed on Frisch’s campaign website.

Democrats in recent years have condemned Republicans for allegedly eroding freedom of the press. The American Civil Liberties Union painted former president Donald Trump as the enemy of the free press. Several left-leaning publications said Trump was engaging in a prolonged assault on press freedom.

The letter’s signatories did not respond to a request for comment.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Resident Joe Biden was among a group of world leaders that Uber had access to, when the ride-sharing company was aggressively expanding its global presence, according to leaked company files.

The Uber files—containing more than 124,000 emails, memos, text messages, company presentations, and other documents dating from 2013 to 2017—were leaked to British newspaper The Guardian. The outlet then shared the files with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and its media partners.

The person who leaked the files is Mark MacGann, Uber’s former chief European lobbyist.

According to an ICIJ report on the Uber files published on July 10, the files showed how Uber executives, including co-founder Travis Kalanick, lobbied and courted politicians around the world for favors, during its dramatic expansion.

In total, Uber executives held more than 100 meetings with public officials from 17 countries and the European Union, according to the report. Among those meetings, 34 were with European Union officials, and 9 were with European Commissioners. Twelve of the meetings with European Commission representatives had not been publicly disclosed.

Biden met with Kalanick in Davos, Switzerland, in 2016, just before the then-U.S. Vice President delivered a speech at the World Economic Forum, according to the report.

Kalanick was apparently not pleased that Biden showed up late at their meeting in Biden’s suite at the InterContinental Hotel.

“I’ve had my people let him know that every minute late he is, is one less minute he will have with me,” Kalanick wrote in a text message to a colleague.

At their meeting, Biden was impressed by what Kalanick said, how Uber was transforming cities and the way people work for the better, that the then-Vice President “tweaked his keynote speech,” according to the report.

Biden did not name Uber or Kalanick in his speech.

“Ride-sharing companies employ tens of thousands of new people. I met with the CEO today of one of those companies,” Biden said in the speech. “He said he is gonna add two million new jobs this year, allowing them freedom to work as many hours as they wish, manage their own lives as they wish.”

“Uber took special care to keep Kalanick’s meeting with Biden confidential,” the report said, before adding that the meeting was arranged “through a chain of former Obama staffers.”

In response to ICIJ’s questions in June, a White House spokeswoman said Biden was “committed to combating employee misclassification which deprives workers of critical protections and benefits, including minimum wage, overtime, and family and medical leave,” according to the report.

Kalanick served as Uber CEO from 2010 to 2017 before he resigned amid scrutiny over Uber’s treatment of female engineers and questionable business practices. However, he held on to his seat on the company’s board of directors until the end of 2019.

Europe

The report also named French President Emmanuel Macron, specifically about how he was an Uber ally when he was the country’s finance minister.

Uber’s service was partially suspended in France’s city of Marseille on Oct. 20, 2015, the report said, following protests by local taxi drivers.

“Could you ask your cabinet to help us to understand what is going on?” MacGann wrote to Macron.

Less than a day later, Macron responded, “I’ll look into this personally. Send me all the facts and we’ll decide by tonight. Let’s stay calm at this stage, I trust you.”

Hours later, authorities in Marseille said they would revise the suspension order, according to the report.

The report said the exchange between MacGann and Macron was “one of more than a dozen undisclosed communications” between Uber representatives and Macron.

Marcon’s office has responded to the Uber files, saying the economy minister had frequent contacts with companies disrupting the service industry at the time, and it was appropriate to facilitate the lifting of red tape, reported French newspaper Le Monde.

Kalanick also met with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte in 2016.

“Right now you are seen as aggressive,” Rutte told Kalanick according to meeting notes cited in the report.

Rutte suggested that Kalanick “change the way people look at the company” by emphasizing the company’s positives.

“This will make you seem cuddly,” Rutte said. 

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Costco CEO Craig Jelinek has warned that although the middle class is doing OK financially, people with less discretionary spending are having a difficult time in the current economy.

In a July 11 interview for CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” program, Jelinek said that while overall “the consumer is not doing bad,” and the unemployment rate is down significantly, many are struggling with sky-high gas prices and the cost of living steadily rising.

“For a lot of people, right now, they are in a recession because they’re just trying to survive with just buying gas and making their house payments, rent payments,” Jelinek said.

However, the CEO noted that people from higher-income households still have “discretionary income to buy goods,” adding that Costco’s member base is generally middle to upper-middle class households.

“You don’t know what’s going to happen three months from now. Interest rates have gone down … but right at the moment, we think things aren’t so bad,” Jelinek added.

Jelinek’s comments come as resident Joe Biden’s administration continues to downplay the possibility of a recession in the United States.

In June, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that while she expects the economy to slow down, she does not believe a recession is “inevitable.”

Biden himself has repeated those claims, telling The Associated Press in June that the United States is “in a stronger position than any nation in the world to overcome this inflation.”

Economy Is ‘Very Strong’

On July 10, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo doubled down on those claims, telling ABC’s “This Week” that the U.S. economy is fundamentally “very strong” and that she doesn’t see any reason to think there will be a serious recession.

Raimondo pointed to job recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic, strong household balance sheets, and companies hiring and thriving as reasons for the lack of possibility of an economic downturn.

But other experts disagree.

Economists at Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley are among those forecasting a recession in the not-too-distant future.

Analysts at Wells Fargo & Company have also noted that “storm clouds are gathering around the broader U.S. economy,” while forecasting that a recession could take place by the end of 2022 and the start of 2023.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has also acknowledged that while the Fed aims to raise interest rates without bringing on an economic downturn, this is not an easy task.

An inflation tracker from the bipartisan Senate Joint Economic Committee found that price hikes are expected to cost the average American household an extra $7,620 over the next 12 months.

Despite the cost of living soaring, Jelinek had some good news for Costco customers: price hikes won’t hit the hot dogs.

When asked whether the food giant would increase the cost of its signature food court item—the hot dog and soda combo—from its current price of $1.50, Jelinek gave a stern “no.”

The company also won’t be upping Costco membership fees, stating that this is “not on the table right at the moment” as it is not “the right time.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Aspen Institute asks, ‘(How) should ESG leaders support democracy?’

The Aspen Institute is holding an invitation-only event, the “Aspen ESG Summit,” at a time when rising energy prices, novel climate mandates, and growing global instability have made environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) a subject of controversy.

Speakers on the three-day summit’s agenda include Securities and Exchange Commissioner Allison Herren Lee, who recently voted for sweeping new climate disclosure requirements for public companies.

Headquartered in the upscale mountain resort town of Aspen, Colorado, the Aspen Institute aims to “turn ideas into action and impact for individuals and society,” according to its mission statement.

In 2020 alone, the Aspen Institute received funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, BlackRock, the Crown family, the Ford Foundation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and the Bloomberg Family Foundation, among other billionaires and billionaire-founded non-profits.

It also received at least a million or more dollars from the U.S. Department of State and Walmart, respectively.

The Aspen Institute describes itself as values-based but non-partisan. It does not fund political candidates or parties.

“We do not engage in electoral politics or any activity that would require registration under the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995, and do not engage staff or contractors as ‘lobbyists’ as defined by the Act,” it states on its website.

Some sources have characterized the organization as left-leaning. In 2019, The Economist described it as “the mountain retreat for the liberal elite.”

Data from Open Secrets show that individuals employed by or closely connected with the Aspen Institute have donated overwhelmingly to Democrats in recent election cycles.

During the 2022 cycle, for example, 98.26 percent of the money that those individuals donated to federal candidates went to Democrats. During the 2018 cycle, all of their money went to Democrats.

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson has also taken aim at the Aspen Institute. In his current Twitter bio, he sarcastically calls himself a “frequent visitor to the Aspen Inst.”

In an April monologue, Carlson alluded to its influence when criticizing former President Barack Obama’s Stanford University speech on disinformation.

“So me and my friends at the Aspen Institute need to be in complete control of every word uttered, or else it’s not democracy,” he opined.

Team Aspen Rules on What’s ‘Valuable’ for Democracy

ESG was recently slammed by Elon Musk, who described it as a “scam” after the S&P Global Index removed his pioneering electric car company, Tesla Motors, from its ESG Index.

In addition, the treasurers of many energy-producing states in the United States believe they have been unfairly penalized by new ESG ratings.

Representatives of the United States’ largest banks and other companies are also slated to talk at the Aspen Institute’s summit, which lasts from July 11 until July 14.

Those speakers include individuals affiliated with Citi, Microsoft, Starbucks, Putnam Investments, Prudential, GE, and Danone.

One “dialogue stream” at the event is titled, “(How) Should ESG Leaders Support Democracy?”

“Threats to democracy have upended business as usual domestically and abroad. Why should ESG leaders care? Are ESG leaders playing a role in operationalizing the pro-democracy commitments their firms have made—or how might they, while still doing their day job?” the agenda states.

In a 2021 set of “Predictions for Business and Society in 2022,” the Aspen Institute’s Judy Samuelson gave praise to employees who, “in the wake of January 6th” were the ones to connect their “company’s PAC [political action committee] to support of elected officials engaged in anti-democratic behavior.”

“As we move toward midterms, concern for our democracy will only grow—and businesses, particularly those that are active in the pay-to-[play] system that dominates our political system—will again be under the microscope of employees,” she wrote at the time.

The Aspen Institute did not respond to The Epoch Times’ requests for comment or footage of the event.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Elon Musk has taken to Twitter after former U.S. President Donald Trump criticized the Tesla CEO at a rally over the weekend.

Trump called Musk “another bull [expletive] artist,” saying that Musk had once told him privately he had won Musk’s vote in 2016, which would conflict with Musk’s public statement in mid-June about having just voted Republican for the first time in the midterm primaries.

“You know what he said the other day? ‘Oh, I’ve never voted for a Republican,’” Trump said to a full house at the Alaska Airlines Center on Saturday. “I said, ‘I didn’t know that.’ He told me he voted for me. So he’s another bull [expletive] artist.”

Trump made the comments as a side note while talking about Musk’s recent decision to not acquire Twitter.

“I don’t hate the man, but it’s time for Trump to hang up his hat & sail into the sunset,” Musk wrote on Monday night in response to a video of Trump’s comments. “[Democrats] should also call off the attack—don’t make it so that Trump’s only way to survive is to regain the Presidency.”

Trump–DeSantis Ticket

On the same night, Musk shared his thoughts about a potential Trump–DeSantis ticket in 2024.

“Trump would be 82 at end of term, which is too old to be chief executive of anything, let alone the United States of America,” Musk wrote in another post, replying to a suggestion from another Twitter user about a potential Trump-DeSantis run in 2024 and two terms of DeSantis presidency in 2028 and 2032.

But on a potential DeSantis 2024 run, Musk echoed his earlier comments that he would lean towards supporting the Florida governor.

“If DeSantis runs against Biden in 2024, then DeSantis will easily win—he doesn’t even need to campaign.” the billionaire said.

Musk’s Monday comments continue a series of high-profile political statements the billionaire has made in 2022, which included describing the Democratic Party as the party of “division & hate” and identifying himself as a part of a “massive red wave in 2022” by revealing his vote for Republican candidate Mayra Flores (R-Texas).

Trump: ‘I Think I Would Win’

While Trump has not explicitly announced his intention to run for commander-in-chief in 2024, he has teased it enough for spectators—including Musk—to consider it a serious prospect.

“I ran twice, I won twice … And now with the approval of the great people of Alaska, we may have to do it again,” Trump said over the weekend in Alaska, claiming that he received “many millions more votes” in 2020 than he did in 2016 when he defeated Hillary Clinton.

When asked about how well he would perform against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in a presidential race, the former president was confident.

“I don’t know if Ron is running, and I don’t ask him. It’s his prerogative … I think I would win.” Trump told The New Yorker in June. He told Newsmax later in the month that he would not rule out DeSantis as a running mate while saying that he “was very responsible for [DeSantis’s] success.”

Meanwhile, Republican figures have been positive that Trump’s political influence in the GOP is nothing close to insignificant.

“I don’t delude myself into thinking I have a big swath of the Republican Party,” Trump critic Mitt Romney (R-Utah) told Politico in May about his thoughts on Trump. “It’s hard to imagine anything that would derail his support.”

“So if he wants to become the nominee in [2024], I think he’s very likely to achieve that,” Romney said.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times