Dan Kildee’s latest ad undermined by fact that he votes with Biden 100 percent of time

Rep. Dan Kildee (D., Mich.) is distancing himself from other Democrats in a new campaign ad. That’s a heavy lift considering his voting record and position in Democratic leadership.

In a new ad, which does not mention that Kildee is a Democrat, the congressman pitches himself as an independent who stands up to his own party. Kildee adds that his self-described habit of breaking with his party makes him unpopular in Congress.

How Kildee can call himself unpopular when he’s one of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s (D., Calif.) whips—whose job is to pressure other Democrats to vote on legislation—is unclear. Moreover, Kildee votes with resident Joe Biden 100 percent of the time, according to FiveThirtyEight.

Kildee’s rebrand attempt is a familiar one. Vulnerable Democrats who have been rubber stamps for Biden’s agenda, such as Rep. Tim Ryan (D., Ohio), are running as far away from their party as possible, highlighting just how toxic the party brand has become in swing districts.

First elected in 2012, Kildee is a ripe target for Republicans in November. Kildee’s district changed in December of last year and now encompasses broad swaths of solid-red regions in Michigan.

Democrats are aware of this fact. In June, Pelosi sent out a fundraising plea for Kildee, calling on Democrats to support “his toughest reelection fight yet.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

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 U.S. government has reached a new deal with Moderna for 65 million additional COVID-19 vaccine doses, the Biden administration announced on July 29.

The deal is valued at $1.7 billion.

Moderna will sell doses of its vaccine that target Omicron subvariants, according to the agencies that announced the agreement. The actual contract has not yet been made public.

Moderna and other vaccine makers have been updating their COVID-19 vaccine formulations because the vaccines are based on the Wuhan strain, which has not been prevalent since 2020. The vaccines have proven increasingly worse at protecting recipients as newer variants emerge.

BA.5, an Omicron subvariant that is currently dominant in the United States, bypasses the protection from vaccination and prior infection better than earlier strains, according to emerging data. Prior infection, or natural immunity, continues to hold up better than vaccination, according to the studies.

U.S. drug regulators in June recommended vaccine makers tweak their formulations to include components of BA.5 and BA.4, another Omicron subvariant. The companies had been focusing on early Omicron strains, which have since largely been displaced.

“Currently available vaccines have helped reduce the most serious outcomes (hospitalization and death) caused by COVID-19, but results from post-authorization observational studies have shown that effectiveness of primary vaccination wanes over time against certain variants, including Omicron. And while initial booster doses have helped restore protection against severe disease and hospitalization associated with omicron, studies have also indicated waning effectiveness of first booster doses over time,” Dr. Peter Marks, a top Food and Drug Administration (FDA) official, said in a recent statement.

“As we move into the fall and winter, it is critical that we have safe and effective vaccine boosters that can provide protection against circulating and emerging variants to prevent the most severe consequences of COVID-19,” he added.

Any updated formulations would need to be cleared by the agency.

“We are pleased to extend our successful collaboration with the U.S. government,” Stéphane Bancel, Moderna’s CEO, said in a statement on Friday. “Moderna’s mRNA platform is enabling us to rapidly create mRNA-1273.222, a bivalent vaccine that specifically targets Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5, the most prevalent variants of concern in the U.S. today.”

Pfizer Purchase

Before the Moderna agreement, the U.S. government agreed to buy 105 million updated Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine doses.

That agreement was valued at $3.2 billion.

Both agreements were hammered out with the Department of Defense, which coordinated with the Department of Health and Human Services. They include options that enable the government to buy up to 600 million doses in total, or 300 million from each company, if additional doses are deemed necessary. However, that would require more funding from Congress, Biden administration officials say.

Deliveries of the updated Moderna and Pfizer vaccines could come as early as the fall, pending FDA authorization and backing from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We must stay vigilant in our fight against COVID-19 and continue to expand Americans’ access to the best vaccines and treatments,” Health Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement. “As we look to the fall and winter, we’re doing just that—ensuring Americans have the tools they need to stay safe and help keep our nation moving forward.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

President Donald Trump has warned that America’s economy is on track for a bigger disaster than a recession, with his remarks coming shortly before government statistics showed GDP printing negative for the second consecutive quarter, which is a rule-of-thumb definition for a recession.

“Where we’re going now could be a very bad place,” Trump said at a rally in Arizona last week. “We got to get this act in order, we have to get this country going, or we’re going to have a serious problem.”

The former president singled out the collapse in Americans’ real wages, a historically depressed labor force participation rate, and the Democrat push for the Green New Deal that he said would crush economic growth.

“Not recession. Recession’s a nice word. We’re going to have a much bigger problem than recession. We’ll have a depression,” the former president said.

Trump’s remarks came several days before the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released data showing that real U.S. GDP fell by an annualized 0.9 percent in the second quarter after contracting 1.6 percent in the first quarter.

Two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth are a common rule-of-thumb definition for a recession, although recessions in the United States are officially declared by a committee of economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) using a broader definition than the two-quarter rule.

Vance Ginn, Chief Economist at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, told The Epoch Times’ sister media NTD in an interview that, while officially it’s NBER that calls recessions, the two-quarter rule is “usually how it’s done by a rule of thumb.”

“I think this is definitely recession that we’re in now from these bad policies,” Ginn added, blaming a series of “progressive policies” coming out of the White House and the Democrat-controlled House.

Stagflationary Winds Blowing

In his remarks, Trump also took aim at resident Joe Biden’s handling of the economy, blaming him for soaring inflation.

“Biden created the worst inflation in 47 years. We’re at 9.1 percent, but the actual number is much, much higher than that,” Trump said.

While the former president didn’t provide his own estimate for the true rate of inflation, an alternative CPI inflation gauge developed by economist John Williams, calculated according to the same methodology used by the U.S. government in the 1980s, puts the figure at 17.3 percent, a 75-year high.

Trump also said that persistently high inflation combined with an economic slowdown has put the country “on the verge of a devastating” spell of stagflation, which is a combination of accelerating prices and slowing economic growth.

Inflation is “going higher and higher all the time,” Trump said, adding that it’s “costing families nearly $6,000 a year, bigger than any tax increase ever proposed other than the tax increase that they want to propose right now.”

In Trump’s first full month in office in February 2017, the headline Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation gauge came in at 2.8 percent in annual terms. While the CPI measure fluctuated during his tenure, the highest it ever reached was 2.9 percent in July 2018, while in his final month in office, January 2021, inflation clocked in at 1.4 percent.

Under Biden, inflation has climbed steadily, soaring 9.1 percent year-over-year in June 2022, a figure not seen in more than 40 years.

‘War on American Energy’

Soaring energy prices have been one of the key contributing factors to inflation, accounting for around half of the headline inflation figure, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In his criticism of Biden’s policies, Trump singled out what he called “Biden’s war on American energy” and blamed it for pushing up gasoline prices.

Since taking office, Biden has taken a number of executive actions targeting the oil industry, including rescinding the Keystone XL pipeline permit, halting new oil and gas drilling leases on federal lands and waters, and ending fossil fuel subsidies by some agencies.

The price of gasoline is around double what it was when Biden took office, with the president blaming various factors, including a lack of refining capacity, the war in Ukraine, and corporate greed.

In a bid to lower prices at the pump, Biden ordered the release of oil reserves from the national strategic reserve, called on U.S. refineries to boost output, and pushed OPEC to pump more crude.

In his speech, Trump said this amounted to “begging” other countries to pump more oil instead of trying to ramp up domestic production.

“We have more liquid gold under our feet than any other country in the world. We are a nation that is consumed by the radical left’s Green New Deal, yet everyone knows that the Green New Deal will lead to our destruction.”

“Just two years ago, we were energy-independent. We were even energy-dominant. The United States is now a beggar for energy

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

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

A group of health care workers who sued their hospital over a COVID-19 vaccine mandate are slated to receive $10 million, according to a settlement agreement filed on July 29.

About a dozen workers at the NorthShore University HealthSystem in Illinois lodged the suit in October 2021, arguing that the facility was illegally not granting religious exemptions to the mandate.

After eight months of negotiations, the workers and NorthShore “have agreed to settle this case,” according to a memorandum filed in federal court.

Under the settlement’s terms, NorthShore will pay $10,337,500 into a settlement fund for workers affected by its mandate—specifically, workers who between July 1, 2021, and Jan. 1, 2022, asked for a religious accommodation and were denied and either received a vaccine to avoid termination or were fired or resigned. About 473 workers fit under that category.

NorthShore will also adjust its vaccine mandate “to enhance its accommodation procedures for individuals with approved exemptions for sincerely held religious belief.”

Workers fired because they refused to get vaccinated due to their religious beliefs are eligible to apply for re-employment.

U.S. District Judge John Kness, the Trump appointee overseeing the case, was asked to approve the proposed settlement.

Liberty Counsel, the legal group representing the platiniffs, described the settlement as a first-of-its-kind for an action against a private employer who denied hundreds of requests for religious exemptions to a COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

“The drastic policy change and substantial monetary relief required by the settlement will bring a strong measure of justice to NorthShore’s employees who were callously forced to choose between their conscience and their jobs,” Horatio Mihet, vice president of legal affairs at the group, said in a statement.

“This settlement should also serve as a strong warning to employers across the nation that they cannot refuse to accommodate those with sincere religious objections to forced vaccination mandates,” he added.

Fund

If the agreement is approved, affected workers could apply for money from the $10 million fund.

Each worker who eventually got a vaccine despite raising religious objections would be eligible for approximately $3,000 while those who were fired or resigned could get up to about $25,000, according to estimates.

The final amounts will depend on how many workers apply for money, among other factors.

In addition, the agreement sets aside $260,000 for the named plaintiffs in the case. Each would be slated to receive about $20,000, on top of the other funds.

Liberty Counsel is also asking for $2 million in attorneys fees, or about 20 percent of the total settlement.

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

A New York judge overturned a law that allowed the state government to place even healthy citizens in quarantine camps for an indefinite time without review.

Until July 8, the New York Department of Health had immense power to enforce quarantine measures on citizens. It received this power from the state’s Rule 2.13.

Legislators never voted to allow the New York Commissioner of Health to put any individual into quarantine for any length of time.

Gov. Kathy Hochul and the Department of Health ordered the rule’s protocols during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Then, the state renewed Rule 2.13 every 90 days. The commissioner wanted to make the rule permanent, respondents told the court.

The court overturned Rule 2.13, stating that the executive branch had wrongly used legislative authority.

“Involuntary detention is a severe deprivation of individual liberty, far more egregious than other health safety measures, such as requiring mask wearing at certain venues,” the court’s opinion read.

“Involuntary quarantine may have far-reaching consequences such as loss of income [or employment] and isolation from family.”

The court barred state enforcement of Rule 2.13 because the executive branch lacked the authority to introduce it. But the court decision also condemned the rule for its failure to consider individual freedom or due process.

“The commissioner has unfettered discretion to issue a quarantine or isolation for anyone, even if there is no evidence that person is infected or a carrier of the disease. Further, the commissioner sets the terms, duration, and location of the detention, not an independent magistrate,” the court document read.

Previous New York laws about quarantine protected individual rights, it added.

But Rule 2.13 put all power into the hands of the commissioner of health, the document stated.

In the 1953 New York quarantine law, isolation can only happen after a complex process.

First, a doctor must report someone who is currently sick with a contagious disease to government health officers.

Then, the health officers must investigate and report their findings to a magistrate, who can then hold a quarantine hearing.

But Rule 2.13 allowed the commissioner to order quarantining for anyone, anywhere, at any time.

People isolated under the rule only got a judicial review and the right to a lawyer after they were put in quarantine, the court wrote.

This order offered only “lip service” to constitutional due process.

“These protections are after-the-fact and would force the detainee to exercise these rights at a time when he or she is already detained, possibly isolated from home and family, and in a situation where it might be difficult to obtain legal counsel in a timely manner,” the court decision read.

The case was the result of a pro bono lawsuit by attorney Bobbie Anne Cox.

“You can’t make laws or rules that don’t have protections built in to protect the citizens,” Cox said.

However, laws like the New York one still exist in other states.

In Florida, the state health officer can order quarantines for any individual that “poses a danger to the public health.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

What’s Happening:

Have you been rooting for Senator Joe Manchin? The man has almost singlehandedly stopped his own party from blowing up the filibuster, packing the Supreme Court and spending recklessly.

Well, it looks like it’s about time to stop rooting for the rogue Democrat.

For months, Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin refused to support Biden’s radical spending plan.  But, with just months until the midterms, the “moderate” is suddenly in favor of massive spending and higher taxes.

From The Hill:

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and centrist Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) on Wednesday said they had struck a climate, health and tax package deal.

It seems Mitch McConnell was going to oppose the semiconductor deal if Manchin supported the spending bill. But it seems McConnell moved too quickly and was tricked by the Democrat.

From The Hill:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who voted for the chips and science bill, had vowed to block the legislation if Democrats stuck to their plans to pass a reconciliation bill that raised taxes and spent hundreds of billions of dollars on climate-related programs.

Why did McConnell trust a man like Manchin, who consistently folds when the heat is on?

From Twitter:

Absolute scumbag move. Manchin waited until Rs moved CHIPS, giving up their leverage and then reversed course the very minute they passed it.

Should be a lesson for every R not work with Dems. https://t.co/IMagnbiXFF

— Mike Palicz (@Mike_Palicz) July 27, 2022

Absolute scumbag move. Manchin waited until Rs moved CHIPS, giving up their leverage and then reversed course the very minute they passed it.

Should be a lesson for every R not work with Dems.

But where McConnell failed miserably, House Republicans might have a chance to strike back.

From The Hill:

In a memo to all House GOP offices Wednesday night, leadership recommended that Republican lawmakers vote against the CHIPS-Plus bill…

“The partisan Democrat agenda has given us record inflation, and now they are poised to send our country into a crushing recession,” the office added.

After McConnell foolishly voted for the CHIPS bill and was tricked by Manchin, House Republicans are urging its members to vote no on the semiconductor package.

The Republican leadership in the House is compelling members to vote against the package because of how Senate Democrats—namely Manchin—went back on their word.

If Republicans in the House all vote no on the CHIPS bill, it will require every last Democrat to vote yes to pass it.

It’s unclear, as of right now, if Democrats have enough votes. A number of progressive Democrats might not want to pass a bill that hands billions to big companies.

Not to mention the fact that this CHIPS bill is supposed to rival China, a country many Democrats seem to love more than America.

If House Republicans are able to stall the CHIPS bill, they might be able to block the reconciliation package.

Either case, this episode reveals just how untrustworthy both McConnell and Manchin are.

McConnell should have stuck to his guns and waited for the reconciliation bill to fail, before voting on the CHIPS bill.

He trusted Manchin, a Democrat who is easily pressured by his radical party to do what they demand.

Manchin might come from a conservative state but, at the end of the day, he’s going to do what Schumer wants.

This might cost him support back home, but keep him in the good graces of the D.C. swamp.

And it’s another lesson to Republican lawmakers: don’t trust the left.

Key Takeaways:

• Joe Manchin tricked McConnell and is supporting Biden’s massive spending bill.
• McConnell voted for the CHIPS bill, paving the way for “BBB.”
• House Republicans are now trying to block the CHIPS bill.

SOURCE: The Patriot Journal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — The U.S. economy contracted again in the second quarter amid aggressive monetary policy tightening from the Federal Reserve to combat high inflation, which could fan financial market fears that the economy was already in recession.

Gross domestic product fell at a 0.9% annualized rate last quarter, the Commerce Department said in its advance estimate of GDP on Thursday. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast GDP rebounding at a 0.5% rate.

Estimates ranged from as low as a 2.1% rate of contraction to as high as a 2.0% growth pace. The economy contracted at a 1.6% pace in the first quarter.

The second straight quarterly decline in GDP meets the standard definition of a recession.

But the National Bureau of Economic Research, the official arbiter of recessions in the United States, defines a recession as “a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in production, employment, real income, and other indicators.”

Job growth averaged 456,700 per month in the first half of the year, which is generating strong wage gains. Still, the risks of a downturn have increased. Homebuilding and house sales have weakened while business and consumer sentiment have softened in recent months.

The White House is vigorously pushing back against the recession chatter as it seeks to calm voters ahead of the Nov. 8 midterm elections that will decide whether resident Joe Biden’s Democratic Party retains control of the U.S. Congress.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is scheduled to hold a news conference on Thursday to “discuss the state of the U.S. economy.” While labor market remains tight, there are signs it is losing steam.

A separate report from the Labor Department on Thursday showed initial claims for state unemployment benefits decreased 5,000 to a seasonally adjusted 256,000 for the week ended July 23. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 253,000 applications for the latest week.

Jobless claims remain below the 270,000-350,000 range that economists say would signal an increase in the unemployment rate. Slowing economic growth could, however, encourage the Fed to step back from hefty interest rate increases, though much would depend on the path of inflation, which is way above the U.S. central bank’s 2% target.

The Fed on Wednesday raised its policy rate by another three-quarters of a percentage point, bringing the total interest rate hikes since March to 225 basis points. Fed Chair Jerome Powell acknowledged the softening economic activity as a result of tighter monetary policy.

(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani. Editing by Chizu Nomiyama.)

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

SHE’S THE HEAD OF U.S. GOVERNMENT BIOETHICS.

Anthony Fauci’s wife – who is also head of the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center – authored a paper detailing how to enroll children in COVID-19 vaccine trials.

The study – “Enrolling Minors in COVID-19 Vaccine Trials” – was funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Center and was published in the journal Pediatrics. Christine Grady, wife to National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Anthony Fauci, and four co-authors collaborated on the paper to “propose recommendations for when and how to enroll minors in vaccine trials for the coronavirus disease 2019.”

“The costs that delay poses to children, their families, and society provide strong reasons to consider enrolling minors in vaccine trials for COVID-19 before safety and efficacy have been established in adults,” claimed Grady in the paper.

The paper proceeds to assess the benefits and drawbacks surrounding the timing of enrolling children in COVID-19 vaccine trials along with the ideal selection criteria for participants.

“A different way to address this concern is to enroll minors after there are sufficient safety data in adults, but before there is evidence of efficacy. To pursue this strategy, enrollment of minors should begin with those who are most similar to the adults from whom safety data were collected,” explains researchers.

The paper was published in March of 2021, is roughly one year before public health officials would authorize and urge the vaccination of children against COVID-19.

The unearthed paper comes amidst controversy over Fauci’s decision to fund research on “killer” bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Additionally, Grady’s prominent role in supervising the ethics of NIH research and policy appear to present a conflict of interest given her husband’s role in shaping America’s COVID-19 response and vaccination guidelines.

MUST READ: 40% of Women With The COVID Vaccine Have Reported Significant Effects on their Periods.

It also follows documents revealing Fauci’s frantically increasing investments and net worth amidst COVID-19.

**** THIS HAS TO STOP !!!! ****

Anthony Fauci’s National Institutes of Health agency has sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to China-based laboratories with deep ties to the regime’s military, including facilities that have worked with the Wuhan Institue of Virology on bat coronavirus research, The National Pulse can reveal.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant database shows two studies that have received funds from Fauci’s agency in 2022 so far: “Antigen discovery for transmission-blocking vaccines in Plasmodium vivax” and “Impacts of Urbanization on Vector Biology and Transmission of Dengue in China.”

The first study, which focuses on research into “transmission-blocking vaccines” for malaria-endemic nations, has received $135,000 from Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in 2022.

“This project seeks to use a comprehensive antigen discovery pathway, including antigen identification through genome-wide immunological screening, validation in rodent malaria model, and further evaluation in P. vivax, to identify new transmission-blocking vaccine candidates for vivax malaria,” explains a project summary.

The grant was distributed to China Medical University, which is entirely controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, and formerly known as the Peasants Red Army Military Medical School. It is the only medical institution to have participated in the “Long March” in 1934 with the Red Army of the Chinese Communist Party.

Similarly, the second study, which focuses on the spread of Dengue fever in China, counts $132,912 going to China’s Southern Medical University (SMU).

Formerly known as First Military Medical University, SMU falls under the jurisdiction of the Military Committee of PLA, according to its own website. Professors, as well as entire institutes, have received awards from various branches of the PLA including its General Logistics Department.

MUST READ: As Washington Wakes Up to TikTok Threats, The Democrats Launch Their Official Account.

The school also runs a variety of labs, including an Institute for Genetic Engineering Research, which is described as an “arm of the PLA Key Biochip Lab” and “one of the top 20 labs of the Army.”

The school’s biomechanics lab operates under the control of the PLA and counts support from China’s 863 program, which has seen Chinese scientists affiliated with the effort get convicted for stealing trade secrets from American companies.

The school has previously collaborated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology – believed by many to be the source of COVID-19 – on bat coronavirus research also funded by Anthony Fauci. SMU provided human blood samples to the Wuhan lab for its controversial work with EcoHealth Alliance, appearing to represent “gain-of-function” research.

So this will be how they rig the next election: Mail-in ballots due to pandemic. [US Patriot]

Two retired U.S. generals, MG Paul Vallely, U.S. Army, and Thomas McInerney, USAF, raised concerns over the World Health Organization’s recent declaration of monkeypox as a global health emergency, alleging potential ulterior motives.

“Each of us should not be alarmed by this alert as the credibility of WHO is in great question based on their actions and notices on COVID-19,” Vallely told The Epoch Times.

“The rare designation means the WHO now views the outbreak as a significant enough threat to global health that a coordinated international response is needed to prevent the virus from spreading further and potentially escalating into a pandemic,” Vallely said.

“Beware of this politically driven global organization that is funded by the global elite.”

Monkeypox

Monkeypox is a disease primarily transmitted through the sexual activity of gay and bisexual men.

“I have decided that the global monkeypox outbreak represents a public health emergency of international concern,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a July 23 statement.

Ghebreyesus said that his decision was due to an increase of monkeypox cases in the world, now having been reported in over 75 countries and territories, with over 16,000 infections and five deaths.

A report published on July 23 lays out the reasons that the committee members had for and against declaring monkeypox a global emergency.

“Although the declaration does not impose requirements on national governments, it serves as an urgent call for action. The WHO can only issue guidance and recommendations to its member states, not mandates. Member states are required to report events that pose a threat to global health,” Vallely said.

“WHO Director Tedros is not a medical doctor, he is a Marxist from Ethiopia, totally supported by the Chinese Communist Party. He lied about C-19 from the beginning to cover for China,” Vallely added.

McInerney says that they predicted that the declaration of another pandemic would happen around this time of the year.

“They are right on our predicted schedule,” McInerney said.

“We shall not conform to their guidelines, we must resist lockdowns,” he further stated, “now is the time for America and the world and we the people to say no!”

“Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me!” the general exclaimed.

The Epoch Times reached out to the WHO for comment.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

White House medical adviser Anthony Fauci claimed Monday that he never recommended “locking anything down” when pressed about what he would do differently regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.

“First of all, I didn’t recommend locking anything down,” Fauci replied during an interview published by The Hill’s “Rising” program on Monday, suggesting it had been a recommendation from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

“Go back and look at my statements,” he added, “that we need to do everything we can to keep the schools open and safe.”

Although it’s unclear exactly what Fauci meant by lockdowns, in October 2020, Fauci had publicly recommended that former President Donald Trump “shut the whole country down,” although it’s not clear what he meant as presidents don’t have the authority to hand down sweeping lockdowns.

“When it became clear that we had community spread in the country … I recommended to the president that we shut the country down,” he said in an event with students at the College of the Holy Cross in October 2020.

If the United States didn’t “shut down completely the way China did,” then the spread of COVID-19 wouldn’t be stopped, Fauci continued to say at the time. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since early 2020 has pursued a “zero COVID” strategy that some analysts say is tantamount to economic suicide.

Closing Schools and Bars

In August 2020, Fauci said that public schools should remain closed across the country to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Fauci also publicly suggested multiple times in 2020 that bars and restaurants should remain closed, then arguing that there was a binary choice between opening schools or bars.

“You have a choice—either close the bars or close the schools. Because, if you have people congregating in bars, it’s likely you’re going to stay red,” the longtime head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said in November 2020.

Also during the interview with The Hill, Fauci said there should have been “much more stringent restrictions” imposed on asymptomatic people in 2020.

“We know now, two and a half years later, that anywhere from 50 to 60 percent of the transmission occur from someone without symptoms, either someone who never will get symptoms or someone who is in the pre-symptomatic stage,” he said.

It’s not clear how Fauci came to this conclusion about asymptomatic spread. Physician Aaron Kheriaty wrote for the Brownstone Institute that “no respiratory virus in history” has been known to spread asymptomatically.

“Had we known that then, the insidious nature of spread in the community would have been much more of an alarm and there would have been much, much more stringent restrictions in the sense of very, very heavy, encouraging people to wear masks, physical distancing or what have you,” added Fauci, who again called for mask-wearing in schools, workplaces, and “anything that brings people together in a closed environment” in some areas.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Resident Joe Biden held a phone call with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping on July 28. The call was the fifth of its kind between Biden and Xi and lasted more than two hours.

The call comes amid a myriad of tensions that have caused Sino–U.S. relations to fall to their lowest point in decades. Despite a decreasing willingness by the CCP to negotiate on most issues, the White House stated that it was important to keep the lines of communication open between the two powers.

“The President wants to make sure that the lines of communication with President Xi remain open, because they need to,” said White House national security spokesperson John Kirby. “There’s issues where we can cooperate with China on, and then there’s issues where, obviously, there’s friction and tension.

“This is one of the most consequential bilateral relationships in the world today, with ramifications well beyond both individual countries. The president clearly understands that, and we’re going to continue to work on that relationship.”

Chinese state-owned media outlets stated that the exchange was “candid and in-depth” and that the two leaders promised to stay in communication.

Xi reportedly told Biden that it was the duty of “the two major powers” to manage global security and urged Biden to not view the CCP through the lens of “strategic competition.”

Biden is currently contending with the need to adequately address China’s status as a rising power while simultaneously mitigating the regime’s increasingly hostile behavior.

To that end, Xi’s conversation with Biden focused heavily on Taiwan.

“Playing with fire will set you on fire,” Xi told Biden. “I hope the U.S. can see this clearly.”

The CCP maintains that Taiwan is a breakaway province of China. Xi has vowed to unite the island with the mainland and hasn’t ruled out the use of force to do so. For its part, Taiwan has been self-governed since 1949, has never been under CCP control, and boasts a thriving democracy and market economy.

The United States doesn’t have formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan but is bound by a treaty to provide it with the arms necessary for its self-defense. The government also maintains a doctrine of “strategic ambiguity” in which it will neither confirm nor deny whether it would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion.

The issue came to the fore over the past week as rumors emerged that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was planning a personal visit to Taiwan.

The CCP subsequently threatened “forceful measures” against the United States and Taiwan should the trip take place.

Following the remarks from the CCP, Biden publicly said such a trip was “not a good idea” and suggested that the military was against it.

Biden’s statements raised eyebrows from legislators and experts alike, who believed that they overstepped the bounds of both the president and the military in attempting to control the personal travel of a sitting member of Congress.

Pelosi said the administration may have believed that China would shoot down her plane if she visited Taiwan.

The back and forth was just one incident in a growing line of bellicose and, at times, hostile rhetoric emanating from the highest echelons of the CCP.

In May, China’s defense minister said the CCP would “not hesitate to start a war no matter the cost” to prevent Taiwan’s de facto independence from being recognized internationally.

The White House hadn’t released a readout of the call by press time.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

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

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) announced on July 27 that he has reached a deal with Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on energy, taxes, and health care to advance what appears to be a revised, alternate version to the Build Back Better (BBB) bill.

The new spending package (pdf), now dubbed the “Inflation Reduction Act of 2022,” will “address record inflation by paying down our national debt, lowering energy costs, and lowering healthcare costs,” Manchin said in a lengthy statement.

“For too long, the reconciliation debate in Washington has been defined by how it can help advance Democrats political agenda called Build Back Better. Build Back Better is dead, and instead, we have the opportunity to make our country stronger by bringing Americans together,” he added.

Manchin, a crucial swing vote in the 50–50 split Senate, had for months refused to support the BBB pushed by fellow Democrats that at one point had asked for over $3 trillion in funding. In mid-July, he reportedly killed any hope for a scaled down version of the BBB, telling party leadership he would not support new climate spending or raise taxes from their post-2017 levels.

“The revised legislative text will be submitted to the Parliamentarian for review this evening and the full Senate will consider it next week,” Manchin and Schumer said in a joint statement on July 27.

Schumer seeks to pass the measure through a procedural tool that allows a bill related to taxes, spending, and debt to be passed in the chamber by a simple 51-vote majority rather than having to pass the 60 vote filibuster threshold. The process also limits debate on the bill to 20 hours. That could allow the bill to be passed with only Democratic votes, if necessary—if every Democrat is on board.

Hours after Manchin announced the deal, a spokesperson for Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), a moderate Democrat, told news outlets that her office does not have a comment on the proposed legislation and that she will need to review the text.

Bill Claims to Reduce Federal Deficits by $300 Billion

The two senators said the bill “will make a historic down payment on deficit reduction to fight inflation, invest in domestic energy production and manufacturing, and reduce carbon emissions by roughly 40 percent by 2030.” It will also allow Medicare to negotiate for prescription drugs and lower health care costs for Americans, they added.

A one-page summary (pdf) from Manchin’s office show that the deal will see a total of $433 billion in investments: about $369.75 billion in energy security and climate change programs over 10 years, and $64 billion to extend the expanded Affordable Care Act program for federal subsidies of health insurance, for three years through 2025.

The deal seeks to generate an estimated $739 billion in new revenue over the next 10 years. A large portion of the money—an estimated $313 billion—is expected to be generated by increasing the corporate minimum tax to 15 percent. The remaining amounts include $288 billion in prescription drug pricing reform; $124 billion in Internal Revenue Service tax enforcement; and $14 billion in closing the carried interest loophole.

That would leave over $300 billion to reduce federal deficits over the next 10 years to fight inflation, according to the Democratic senators. The government is projected to rack up trillions in cumulative deficits over the next 10 years.

“It is past time for America to begin paying down our $30 trillion national debt and get serious about the record inflation that is crushing the wages of American workers,” Manchin said in his statement. He said the proposed legislation “would dedicate hundreds of billions of dollars to deficit reduction by adopting a tax policy that protects small businesses and working-class Americans while ensuring that large corporations and the ultra-wealthy pay their fair share in taxes.”

Resident Joe Biden said in a statement that the proposed legislation “will reduce the deficit beyond the record setting $1.7 trillion in deficit reduction we have already achieved this year, which will help fight inflation as well.”

Read More

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Congress Clears Bill to Raise Debt Ceiling by $2.5 Trillion, in Time for Treasury Dept. Deadline

“And we will pay for all of this by requiring big corporations to pay their fair share of taxes, with no tax increases at all for families making under $400,000 a year,” he said. “This is the action the American people have been waiting for.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) criticized the measure on Twitter.

“Democrats have already crushed American families with historic inflation. Now they want to pile on giant tax hikes that will hammer workers and kill many thousands of American jobs,” he wrote. “First they killed your family’s budget. Now they want to kill your job too.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The Biden administration has sold nearly 6 million barrels of oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve to an entity tied to the Chinese Communist Party, records show.

From September 2021 to July, the Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded three crude oil contracts with a combined value of roughly $464 million to Unipec America, the U.S. trading arm of Chinese state-owned oil company Sinopec, according to a review by The Epoch Times of the DOE documents. A Chinese firm with ties to Hunter Biden had invested in the national oil giant.

The sale would tap 5.9 million barrels in total from the strategic reserve (SPR) to export to the Chinese firm. The latest contract, revealed on July 10, was for 950,000 barrels sold for around $113.5 million.

The two most recent sales to Unipec came out of an emergency drawdown of the U.S. oil stockpile, initiated under resident Joe Biden on March 31 in what he said would offset the loss of Russian oil in global markets and tame rising fuel costs at home.

The Unipec contracts have been subject to heavy criticism in recent weeks, especially because of the firm’s connections to the president’s son. With Americans nationwide still reeling from elevated gas prices, the selling of oil reserves to foreign adversaries such as China is at odds with U.S. energy and security needs, Republican lawmakers and analysts have said.

“Biden is draining our strategic reserves at an unprecedented rate. This is an abuse of the SPR, far beyond its intended purpose. Sending U.S. petroleum reserves to foreign adversaries is wrong, and it undermines our national security,” Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) told The Epoch Times.

What the United States should do, he says, is to “unleash American energy production and ensure that our strategic reserves are stocked and able to meet the demands of a national emergency.”

Unipec’s Bids

The oil auction is price-competitive, meaning contracts are awarded to the highest bidder. Unipec, a consistent participant in previous U.S. crude oil sales, secured 1.9 million barrels over the past three months through two contracts it won on April 21 and July 10.

The DOE also sold 4 million barrels to Unipec last fall during a congressionally mandated sale.

Sales to Unipec appear to fall in the lower price range among the successful buyers, a review of DOE contracts by The Epoch Times shows. For the 2021 contract, Unipec paid about $63 for each barrel, about $7 lower than the trading price at the time, and more than $2 short of the highest price from other buyers in the sale.

The April and July purchases cost Unipec $103.30 and $119.50 per barrel, respectively. The highest prices offered, by comparison, were $111.25 and $125.10.

Unprecedented Drawdown

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is the world’s largest supply of emergency crude oil, with four storage sites in Texas and Louisiana designed to alleviate significant oil supply shortages in times of major geopolitical events or natural disasters.

The amount of oil in the SPR has seen a steep decline over the past year, more notably since Biden, blaming Russia’s Ukraine war for the “price hike at the pump,” in March ordered a withdrawal at a rate of 1 million barrels per day for six months to curb gas prices. The planned sale of about 180 million barrels marked the biggest drawdown in the reserve’s more-than-four-decade history and is set to cut the U.S. backup oil supply by about a third.

The inventory stood at 474.5 million barrels as of July 22, marking a 34 percent drop from its peak of 726.6 million, and some 90 million lower than the level in late March.

The DOE on May 5 announced a “long-term buyback plan” to repurchase 60 million barrels in fall through “a competitive, fixed-price bid process.” The delivery date, the DOE said, will take place “in future years when prices are anticipated to be significantly lower,” likely after fiscal year 2023. More buybacks would follow after this first tranche of purchases, it added.

But releasing oil reserves at this magnitude carries risks, according to Abhi Rajendran and Robert Johnston, two research scholars on global energy policy at Columbia University. For one, there’s no guarantee that oil prices will fall when the government moves to refill the stock. Further, the diminution of oil supply may cause the market to price in a greater premium for wars and other supply shocks, resulting in higher prices for longer, they said in a Q&A on April 1.

Scrutiny

On Capitol Hill, Republican lawmakers have been watching the oil sales with growing alarm. A total of 206 House Republicans voted on July 20 in support of a legislative amendment aimed at preventing the Biden administration from exporting petroleum to entities with Chinese Communist Party ties.

“It does not make sense that we are using our already depleted energy supplies to help China build up their own strategic reserves,” Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.) said in a speech rallying support for the proposal.

China is the world’s largest importer of oil. As the West turns away from Russian oil due to the Ukraine war, China has been quietly snapping up Russian resources at steep discounts. From March through June, it spent more than $25 billion on Russian oil, gas, and coal, nearly doubling the amount from the year-earlier period, the latest customs data show. The sales volume propelled Russia to become China’s top oil supplier for two straight months from May, displacing Saudi Arabia.

The GOP-led measure was overruled after 219 Democrats in the House unanimously voted against it.

The same day, 20 Republican members on the House Committee on Oversight and Reform wrote (pdf) to Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm requesting an immediate briefing and all documents related to the administration’s decision to sell U.S. oil reserves. They noted that Sinopec, the parent organization of Unipec, has been linked to the president’s son Hunter Biden, through the state-backed Chinese private equity firm BHR Partners, which became a stakeholder of Sinopec in 2014.

Hunter served as a founding board member of BHR from 2013 through April 2020. His firm Skaneateles also held a 10 percent stake in BHR, which his lawyer said has been divested as of November 2021. On BHR’s 2021 annual report released in June, however, Skaneateles was still listed as a shareholder.

Hunter’s lawyer hasn’t responded to The Epoch Times’ questions regarding Skaneateles.

“As if Biden couldn’t have bundled this energy crisis anymore, this latest development of sending our strategic petroleum reserves to a Chinese oil firm connected to Hunter Biden reaches a new low,” Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), who signed on the letter, told The Epoch Times.

“For one, this administration should have never tapped into these reserves. Second, these reserves should have never left U.S. shores, and third, the U.S. shouldn’t be doing deals with firms connected to the president’s son,” he said, adding that the Biden family’s “continued compromising actions require strict oversight from Congress.”

Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the ranking GOP member of the House Oversight Committee who spearheaded the letter, noted that previous inquiries by Republicans to the DOE about the oil sale had gone unanswered.

“Under no circumstances should the Department of Energy be making decisions which financially benefit Hunter Biden or any of the Biden family’s business partners,” he told The Epoch Times.

“If Administration officials continue to ignore meaningful oversight,” Republicans will “use the gavel to get answers in January,” Comer said, in reference to the expected swing to a Republican majority in the House in the November midterm elections, which would hand GOP lawmakers subpoena power as chairpersons of the chamber’s various committees.

“The American people need answers to determine if this is another attempt by the Biden family to peddle access to the highest levels of government to enrich themselves.”

Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), who also backed the Oversight Committee request, said the sale demonstrates the current administration’s “rank incompetence.”

“The Biden White House obviously didn’t see a problem with loading millions of barrels from our strategic reserves onto tankers bound for foreign countries, which likely explains why they don’t see a problem selling our emergency crude oil to a Chinese gas company with ties to Hunter Biden’s investment firm,” he told The Epoch Times.

White House Pushes Back

Ian Sams, a special assistant to Biden and spokesman for the White House Counsel’s Office, responded to the Republican claims on July 22, calling them “ridiculous and false.”

The DOE is “required by law to sell it ‘in a competitive auction to the highest bidder,’ regardless of whether that bidder is a foreign company,” he told Fox News, noting that the Trump administration, in 2017, also sold a half-million barrels of crude oil from the reserve to China’s state-run PetroChina International through the same “competitive bidding process.”

Sams also stressed that Biden “had no personal involvement in this process whatsoever.”

But Sams’s statement may not have presented the full picture, according to Daniel Turner, founder and executive director of Power the Future, a nonprofit group advocating for energy workers.

“The White House has pushed back as saying we have sold in the past to the communist Chinese. And that is true. We sold when our SPR was nearly full and oil was not at record highest and the world was at relative peace,” he told The Epoch Times. “Times change, and thanks to this president, they have not just changed but become worse, and our policies must change with them.”

DOE officials didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times about its buyback plan and Republican lawmakers’ concerns.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

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

A U.S. senator is asking the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to clear up conflicting statements on whether a specific method of COVID-19 vaccine safety research is being conducted.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) asked CDC Director Rochelle Walensky for details after The Epoch Times reported that Dr. John Su, a CDC doctor, claimed that the CDC has been performing Proportional Reporting Ratio analyses on data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System since February 2021.

That conflicted with the CDC telling the nonprofit Children’s Health Defense that it not only did not conduct the analyses but that the method “is outside of th[e] agency’s purview.”

“CDC’s assertion and Dr. Su’s statement cannot both be true,” Johnson told Walensky in a new letter, released on July 26 and dated July 25.

“The American people deserve the truth and you have not been providing it. That is why I, together with millions of Americans, have completely lost faith in the CDC and other federal health agencies. It is time to start regaining their confidence and your agency’s integrity by coming clean, being transparent, and telling the truth,” Johnson wrote.

He asked for Walensky to immediately respond to a letter he sent before requesting information on the CDC’s vaccine safety research. He also requested she confirm whether Dr. Su’s statement is true and if it is, why the CDC claimed it had not conducted the analyses.

And if Dr. Su’s statement is accurate, Johnson wants all of the Proportional Reporting Ratio analyses that the CDC has performed since February 2021.

Finally, Johnson asked for Dr. Su to be made available for an interview with his office concerning the data examinations.

The CDC and Walensky did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Background

The CDC said in an operating procedures document dated Jan. 29, 2021, that it “will perform” Proportional Reporting Ratio (PRR), a type of data mining analysis that compares the counts of adverse event reports following vaccination with one vaccine to those that have been reported after receipt of another vaccine or vaccines.

The same language was included in an updated document released in February.

But in a recent response to a Freedom of Information Act request from Children’s Health Defense, CDC records officer Roger Andoh said he spoke with the CDC’s Immunization and Safety Office, which informed him “that no PRRs were conducted by the CDC.”

“Furthermore, data mining is outside of th[e] agency’s purview,” Andoh added.

Dr. Su heads the CDC’s Immunization and Safety Office.

A CDC spokesperson defended the agency’s vaccine safety monitoring efforts in an earlier email to The Epoch Times, noting that the agencies detected post-vaccination heart inflammation and blood clotting in the summer of 2021.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

A group of Republican lawmakers are demanding an audit of the Biden administration’s $10 billion “COVID-19 Community Corps” program after reports it may be directing cash to partisan liberal political groups and giving left-wing activists access to Americans’ private information. 

(RELATED: Justice Department Diverting Victims’ Settlement Payments to Radical Liberal Activists)

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In a letter to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General Christin Grimm, the senators and representatives “raise concerns over the involvement of highly partisan organizations in the public education campaign, potentially inappropriate direct or indirect funding to these politically-affiliated groups, and possible access these organizations may have to personally identifiable information of Americans.”

The letter was signed by Senator Richard Burr (R-N.C.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Tim Scott (R-S.C.), Mitt Romney (R-Utah), Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), and Representatives Cathy McMorris Rogers (Wash.), Ranking Member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Morgan Griffith (Va.), Ranking Member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, and Brett Guthrie (Ky.), Ranking Member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Health.

“It is incredible that HHS and the Biden administration would partner with partisan political organizations and Democrat-affiliated campaign consultants on a $10 billion taxpayer funded vaccine confidence public education campaign, ostensibly intended to appeal to all Americans. It is not clear from publicly available information exactly what these groups do and what benefits they may derive from being a ‘founding member’ of the COVID-19 Community Corps,” the members write.

“First, we are concerned that some of these ‘founding members’ may inappropriately receive direct or indirect funding and support from HHS for partisan activities,” the members continue. “Second, HHS’s agencies contain or have access to vast amounts of personally identifiable information on hundreds of millions of Americans.”

Among those listed as members of the COVID-19 Community Corps are:

• “Nurses for Biden Harris,” a reelect Biden organization
• Planned Parenthood
• “Protect Our Care,” which lobbies and campaigns for socialized medicine
• “Never Trump” TV figure Ana Navarro
• “Latinx” political campaign organizations like “Voto Latino”
• Americans United for the Separation of Church of State
• “Blue Future,” which trains Democrat candidates
• Democracy Partners, a Democrat political campaign firm

The groups would be showered in billions of dollars in barely-tracked cash during a do-or-die election year for Biden.

The members demand Grimm investigate the program and provide a full accounting of its spending.

“Since the beginning of the pandemic, Congress has passed five bipartisan COVID-19 relief bills totaling $3.496 trillion,” write the members. “Recently, it has been reported that the Biden administration and Congressional Democrats are pursuing yet another partisan spending bill, despite record levels of inflation and billions of unspent dollars in COVID-19 relief funds. To date, the Biden administration’s accounting of how it spent trillions of dollars in past COVID-19 relief funding has been inadequate.”

The members continue, “As part of Congress’s effort to understand exactly how the Biden administration spent COVID-19 relief money, we request an audit of a $10 billion COVID-19 vaccine public education campaign launched by the Biden administration and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).”

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

READ NEXT: CDC Spied on 20 Million Cell Phones in National COVID Surveillance Program >>

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.

Former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Robert Redfield rejected White House adviser Anthony Fauci’s claims that it’s more likely COVID-19 originated naturally.

In a recent interview, Fauci said he has an “open mind” but still believes that the virus occurred naturally after previously dismissing the theory that it emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in late 2019. “It looks very much like this was a natural occurrence, but you keep an open mind,” Fauci said.

When asked about Fauci’s recent comments on Monday, Redfield told Fox News that he still suspects COVID-19 emerged “from the laboratory” and “had to be educated in the laboratory to gain the efficient human-to-human transmission capability that it has.”

“There’s very little evidence, if you really want to be critical, to support” the natural emergence theory, he said. The former Trump administration official then compared COVID-19 to prior coronaviruses such as Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that emerged about 10 years ago, saying that neither virus had the same transmission capacity as COVID-19.

“So it’s really exceptional that this virus is one of the most infectious viruses for man. And I still argue that’s because it was educated how to infect human tissue,” Redfield told Fox News.

Laboratory

The same Wuhan laboratory, he added, was the subject of a 2014 report amid claims that researchers performed research on bat-borne viruses that could impact humans.

“I’m disappointed in the [National Institutes of Health] for not leading an objective evaluation from the beginning,” Redfield told the outlet. “I think it really is antithetical to the science where they took a very strong position that people like myself who are somehow conspiratorial just because we have a different scientific hypothesis.”

A reason why the Wuhan lab leak theory has not been fully recognized, Redfield argued, is due to the politicization of the pandemic response and the pressure that was heaped on scientists who sought objective approaches while studying the origins of COVID-19.

“I’ve been very disappointed in the scientific community led by [National Institutes of Health] that has really dug their heels in from the beginning to try to minimize any of us that have a different hypothesis,” he said.

Both the NIH and Fauci have come under scrutiny over the agency’s decision to provide hundreds of thousands of dollars to a third-party group to assist in researching bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan lab.

After spending years working at the NIH, Redfield was named by former President Donald Trump to head the CDC in March 2018. He stepped down at the end of Trump’s term in January 2021.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Chinese intelligence has a systematic and well-funded campaign that successfully recruits U.S. Federal Reserve System economists and others to provide sensitive financial information and data in exchange for money and other benefits, according to Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio).

“This investigation makes clear that China’s malign efforts at influence and information theft are not limited to science and technology fields. American economic and monetary policy is also being targeted by the Chinese government,” Portman, the top Republican on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (HSGAC), said in a statement in conjunction with the release of a new report by congressional investigators.

The investigative report Portman made public on July 26 was prepared by the Republican staff of the Senate panel. The document updates a report on Chinese subversion in the United States released in 2019, when Portman was the committee’s chairman.

“As our investigation reveals, the Chinese government is using every tool at its disposal to infiltrate and steal valuable information,” Portman said. “We cannot let the American taxpayer continue to unwittingly fund China’s military and economic rise, which is why our report makes strong recommendations to enhance and protect our Federal Reserve.

“This report shows that we cannot make any American taxpayer-funded investment in science, technology, or economic policy without including safeguarding and security protections like my proposed ‘Safeguarding American Innovation Act.‘”

While Portman’s proposal has 17 co-sponsors, including a dozen Republicans and five Democrats, the Democratic-controlled HSGAC hasn’t held a hearing or otherwise moved to consider the proposal. Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) succeeded Portman as committee chairman in 2021.

“This investigation of the U.S. Federal Reserve shows how China has used a variety of tactics to recruit U.S.-based economists to provide China with knowledge and intellectual capital in exchange for monetary gain and other benefits,” the report says.

The report says Fed investigators have identified at least 13 individuals within the financial system who represent “stark examples of the ways in which the Chinese government has attempted to gain access to sensitive internal information and influence the Federal Reserve.”

The investigators, according to the report, dubbed the 13 individuals as the “P-Network,” and noted they work in eight of the central bank’s 12 regional banks.

“One Federal Reserve Bank employee with sensitive access to Federal Reserve Board data provided modeling code to a Chinese university with ties to the People’s Bank of China (PBOC). Another Federal Reserve Bank employee attempted to transfer large volumes of data from the Federal Reserve to an external on at least two occasions,” the report says.

Another Fed employee was forcibly detained while in China on four occasions, and he and his family members were threatened with imprisonment if he didn’t cooperate, the report says.

Yet another Federal Reserve employee, when confronted by investigators with concerns about his activities with Chinese individuals and programs, changed his email addresses and began using an encrypted communication channel, according to the report.

Investigators even found a Fed employee who regularly communicates with officials within China’s Xinhua News Agency, which is notorious for being a tool of the Beijing regime’s international spying efforts.

In addition, the report found that a number of Federal Reserve employees have maintained close ties for years to Chinese academic organizations known to be affiliated with China’s Thousand Talents Program, which is central to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) subversion campaign aimed at the United States and other Western nations.

Investigators also found that another employee working for a Fed bank “had been searching for articles relating to individuals who had been arrested for economic espionage and lying about providing intelligence agents with confidential information in exchange for financial compensation,” the report says. The individual used “xijinping” as a password.

The report says the situation is complicated by the Federal Reserve’s lack of sufficient counter-intelligence resources to deal effectively with the Chinese attack.

“Despite the long-running and brazen acts by Chinese officials and certain Federal Reserve employees, the investigation found the Federal Reserve unable to counter this threat effectively,” the report says. “Compounding this was a lack of internal counter-intelligence competency at the Federal Reserve or sufficient ongoing cooperation with federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies.”

After the HSGAC investigation was initiated, Fed officials implemented a new requirement barring employees from accepting any compensation from any country of concern, including China, according to the report.

But there are still serious gaps in the Federal Reserve’s defenses, with a result that China still has “an open avenue to disrupt the integrity of the American financial system and jeopardizing American national security,” the report says.

Despite having an internal program to protect the security of data used in the Federal Reserve’s most significant financial decision making, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) that sets economic policies, the report says only one of the 13 individuals identified as having links to or being influenced by the Chinese subversion effort has had data access withdrawn.

The remaining 12 Federal Reserve employees, including those suspected of sharing sensitive data, are still able to access FOMC information.

“I am concerned by the threat to the Fed and hope our investigation, which is based on the Fed’s own documents and corresponds with assessments and recommendations made by the FBI, wakes the Fed up to the broad threat from China to our monetary policy. The risk is clear, I urge the FBI and the Fed to do more to counter this threat from one of our foremost foreign adversaries,” Portman told a group of journalists given an advance briefing on the report on July 25.

Portman is retiring from the Senate at the end of his current term in January 2023.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) alleged on July 25 that there were “systemic and existential problems” within the Justice Department and the FBI, after “highly credible” whistleblowers informed his office that officials from the bureau labeled evidence against Hunter Biden as disinformation.

“The allegations provided to my office appear to indicate that there was a scheme in place among certain FBI officials to undermine derogatory information connected to Hunter Biden by falsely suggesting it was disinformation,” Grassley wrote in a letter (pdf) to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray.

Grassley, the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the “volume and consistency” of the whistleblowers’ allegations “substantiate their credibility.”

The latest revelation is part of Grassley’s ongoing effort to probe into Hunter Biden’s business activities. In September 2020, he and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) released a report, discovering that there was “potential criminal activity relating to transactions among and between Hunter Biden, his family, and his associates with Ukrainian, Russian, Kazakh, and Chinese nationals,” while Joe Biden was vice president during the Obama administration.

In March, the two senators presented bank records on the Senate floor showing CEFC China Energy, a now-defunct company, made payments to Hunter Biden. Currently, the U.S. attorney’s office in Delaware is investigating Biden for possible tax violations.

Whistleblowers

According to whistleblowers, the FBI came into possession of information about Hunter Biden’s “criminal financial and related activity” in 2020, which prompted FBI supervisory intelligence analyst Brian Auten to open an assessment in August 2020, according to the letter. An FBI headquarters team subsequently used the assessment to “improperly discredit negative Hunter Biden information as disinformation” and caused the bureau’s investigation on Hunter Biden “to cease.”

A month later, the FBI team placed findings by FBI agents involved in Auten’s assessment in “a restricted access sub-file.” Grassley said the decision was “problematic.”

“[I]t does not allow for proper oversight and opens the door to improper influence,” Grassley explained.

Auten was previously known for being under investigation for failing to properly vet the now-discredited Steele dossier, which contained false and fabricated claims accusing former President Donald Trump of colluding with Russia.

In October 2020, “an avenue of additional derogatory Hunter Biden reporting” surfaced, and the reporting was “verified or verifiable via criminal search warrants,” whistleblowers told Grassley. However, the FBI did not pursue the reporting after Timothy Thibault, an assistant special agent in charge of the Washington field office, shut it down.

“Thibault allegedly ordered the matter closed without providing a valid reason as required by FBI,” the letter said. FBI officials, including Thibault, then tried to “improperly mark the matter in FBI systems so that it could not be opened in the future.”

In May, Grassley requested an Inspector General investigation into Thibault, expressing concerns about how the agent had demonstrated “a pattern of active public partisanship,” in violation of his “ethical obligation as an FBI employee.” In his letter (pdf) to Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz at that time, Grassley documented Thibault’s left-wing social media posts, including retweeting a post from the anti-Trump political-action committee the Lincoln Project.

In response to Grassley’s letter, Horowitz wrote back (pdf) saying that Thibault may have violated the Hatch Act, and asked the Office of Special Counsel to review the case. The Act, passed in 1939, bans federal government officials from taking in certain political activities.

Request

Grassley said Garland and Wray must take the whistleblower allegations seriously.

“If these allegations are true and accurate, the Justice Department and FBI are—and have been—institutionally corrupted to their very core to the point in which the United States Congress and the American people will have no confidence in the equal application of the law,” Grassley wrote in his letter.

Grassley ended his letter by asking Garland and Wray to turn over records and information relating to the Biden family, Austen, and Thibault before Aug. 8.

The senator requested “all leads” that were either “ordered closed” or denied further review by Thibault.

“All records related to derogatory information on Hunter Biden, James Biden, and their foreign business relationships,” Grassley wrote as one of his requests.

The FBI said it has received the letter but declined to comment further.

Eva Fu contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

A Republican lawmaker is warning that the National Guard’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate will possibly cripple the military reserve component weeks after Army officials announced that some 60,000 troops won’t be allowed to participate in their duties if they aren’t vaccinated.

“June 30 marked Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s arbitrary deadline for members of the National Guard and Reserves to receive the COVID-19 vaccine despite Congress’ mandate that the Department of Defense establish uniform procedures under which service members can be exempted,” Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.), a retired Army Green Beret, wrote for Fox News on July 25, saying that if the mandate is ultimately enforced, the guard “will be crippled” due to a lack of staffing.

“To date, approximately 60,000 National Guard and Reserves remain unvaccinated and the pending decision from the Biden administration could punish the very service members who have been on the front lines of fighting this pandemic.”

Combined with poor recruitment efforts, “woke indoctrination,” and mandates, Waltz said that the U.S. military is “being depleted” in the midst of the Chinese regime’s military buildup and the Russia–Ukraine conflict. At the same time, the United States is soon to enter both its hurricane season, which generally starts in August, and its wildfire season, the congressman said.

“Two things have changed since the mandate was implemented. First, the vaccine has shown to not stop the spread but rather reduce symptoms,” Waltz wrote. “Second, tens of thousands of National Guard and reservists have expressed serious reservations about the emergency development of the vaccine.”

He added that “many of these service members have already been exposed to COVID-19 and last year’s defense bill specifically asks the department to consider whether previous exposures induce sustained antibody protection, which may produce similar levels of immunity as the vaccine.”

Earlier this month, the Army confirmed that 40,000 National Guard and 22,000 reserve soldiers who didn’t get the vaccine will be blocked from their duties.

“Soldiers who refuse the vaccination order without an approved or pending exemption request are subject to adverse administrative actions, including flags, bars to service, and official reprimands,” an Army spokesperson said in a statement.

A study published in JAMA found that at least 22 service members have suffered from serious vaccine-related side effects, including heart inflammation. Few service members, meanwhile, have been given religious exemptions, with only 20 being approved in the Army and six National Guard soldiers having their religious exemptions approved.

Several Republican governors have vowed not to remove Guard members who remain unvaccinated. Last year, the governors of Wyoming, Alaska, Iowa, Mississippi, and Nebraska wrote in a letter to the Pentagon that the troops don’t need to follow federal military policy.

Pentagon officials didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

NILES, Ohio—Tim Ryan’s old street in east Ohio is a progressive oasis in a working-class town suffering from deindustrialization and the opioid crisis. Rather than the American flags seen on lawns just a few streets over, several of the 3,000-square-foot-plus homes on North Rhodes Avenue sport pride banners.

Carl Mymo, a retired forklift driver who lives just two blocks from where Ryan did, said those living on the conspicuously wealthier avenue in Niles don’t care about the same issues as the rest of the town, such as skyrocketing gas prices. “They can afford it,” Mymo said.

“This is all Democrat, this neighborhood,” said Mymo, a lifelong Democrat until this year when he changed his registration, as he pointed to larger homes in the distance. “I was a Democrat but started voting Republican on everything after Trump. I don’t like Ryan at all no more. I used to like him, but to me he’s just a regular politician now.”

Mymo’s description was familiar to others who spoke with the Washington Free Beacon in Niles, where Ryan lived until 2013. Several residents remarked on the town’s golden years when large corporations such as General Electric employed thousands of people in-town or nearby. Those golden years corresponded with overwhelming Democratic Party support, and are the reason Ryan’s seat was safe for decades.

That’s not the case anymore. Many of those companies are now gone, as are the jobs. One out of four jobs in Trumbull County, where Niles sits, disappeared from 2000 to 2016. And Ryan is gone as well. He moved just north to Howland after purchasing a 4,300-square-foot McMansion with his wife. A real estate listing from before the sale describes the home as “beauty on a private cul-de-sac” with a three-car garage and granite countertops in the kitchen. His new town’s median income is roughly 50 percent higher than Niles, according to U.S. Census data.

Ryan’s campaign did not respond to an interview request.

Ryan’s Senate campaign message for voters in Ohio is simple: He’ll bring factory jobs home from abroad. In a video announcing his candidacy for the Senate seat occupied by the retiring Republican senator Rob Portman, Ryan toured an abandoned factory in Niles.

“China is out-manufacturing us left and right and it’s time we fight back,” Ryan says in another ad. “We’ve got to go all in and it starts by investing in Ohio workers.”

But for many voters living in Niles, that line is getting stale. For 20 years Ryan has served in Congress passing no bills except a handful to rename federal buildings. Few of those factory jobs have come back.

“I don’t think he’s done a lot for the area,” said Sarah Smith, a nurse at a hospital in neighboring Warren. “I don’t think he’s ever had a regular job. When General Motors left, he says he did a lot to try and stop that, but it was too late. He gets on the bandwagon too late.”

That Ryan is jumping on the protectionist bandwagon is a criticism often lobbed by his Republican opponent, J.D. Vance. In June, Ryan wrote a letter to resident Joe Biden demanding he not remove tariffs against China. Almost four years earlier, however, he criticized Trump’s anti-free trade agenda “designed to inflict maximum damage on the U.S. economy, for minimum gain.”

Now Ryan says he always “agreed with Trump on trade.” His massive $9 million campaign war chest, the majority of which has come from out-of-state donors, has funded ad blitzes across Ohio. Almost every ad features references to China and none to the Democratic Party. (Smith said she found Ryan’s commercials the most annoying thing about his campaign. “China, China, China. Come on.”)

Ryan’s attempts to distance himself from the Democratic Party are most obvious when he revels in the occasional compliment from Fox News. Earlier this month, Ryan released an ad featuring years-old clips from Fox hosts noting his opposition to the far left on such issues as open borders.

Yet Ryan’s strategy of cherry-picking praise from conservatives comes with a tremendous caveat: His voting record. Ryan votes with Biden 100 percent of the time in Congress—exceeding his FiveThirtyEight-predicted voting record by more than 30 points.

Why Ryan behaves in Congress the way he does while pitching himself on the campaign trail as a flexible moderate is a bit of a mystery to the voters in Niles. If it were 1998, or even 2008, such a voting record wouldn’t be a surprise. Trumbull County went blue by 22 points in 2008, and again in 2012.

“Basically Niles voted Democrat no matter who ran. It used to be if you were a Republican, you couldn’t get elected around here no matter what,” said Dave Sherman, who works in IT for a nearby steel company and intends to vote for Vance. “I voted Democrat until my early 50s. My dad was a Democrat, he was a union guy. But I think a lot of people here who aren’t talking are going to vote for J.D., there’s just a loud minority for Ryan.”

Trump carried Trumbull County by more than 6 points in 2016 and more than 10 points in 2020. The county’s recent voting history makes it more red than Ohio as a whole, which favored Trump in 2016 and 2020 by around 8 points.

The effect of Trump on northeast Ohio can’t be overstated. Outside of cities, this Ohio region used to be one of the bluest in the country. Trump was the first Republican to win the neighboring Mahoning County since 1972.

Even Ryan’s supporters in Niles such as Carla Dean, a retired school teacher who knows the Ryans personally, say the area’s politics aren’t what they used to be. Speaking with the Free Beacon on her front lawn, Dean sighed and pointed at her neighbor’s home.

“He’s huge. Trump is huge. [My neighbor] flies the [Trump] flag,” she said. “I don’t even speak politics at all with him because I’m afraid.”

How Vance performs in November without Trump on the ticket will be a test for whether Republicans can hold their gains in the rustbelt. A major asset for Vance is that the only politician with a higher name ID in Niles than Ryan may be Biden. The voters unfamiliar with Vance know one thing: They’re unhappy with the president.

Ryan is acutely aware of this fact. When Biden came to Cleveland earlier this month, where some Trumbull County residents commute to for work, Ryan conveniently scheduled campaign stops in the state hundreds of miles away. A Morning Consult poll recently found Biden’s approval rating 23 points underwater in Ohio.

“I don’t know who I’m gonna be voting for,” said Michelle Yuri, a registered Democrat who works as a packer at the printing company Pubco, when asked about Vance. “I don’t agree with our president, let’s just say that.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Republican senators balk at $250 billion CHIPS Act over China concerns

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) removed an anti-China security measure from a bill that invests billions of dollars in the U.S. technology sector, a move Republicans say would allow China to benefit from the spending bill and could kneecap the legislation.

At issue are provisions written by Sen. Rob Portman (R., Ohio) that bar U.S. companies from manufacturing products in China, such as semiconductors, that were developed using federally funded research. Myriad government and private investigations conclude that the Chinese government routinely steals trade secrets from U.S. companies, government agencies, and universities.

Schumer earlier this month removed Portman’s provisions from the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) for America Act, throwing a wrench into the vote for Republicans who were under the impression it would be included and planned to vote for the bill, according to multiple interviews and internal documents viewed by the Washington Free Beacon.

The reason Schumer removed Portman’s anti-China provision is unclear. Some say he caved to lobbying efforts from various interest groups and the White House. The Senate last year passed a version of Portman’s measure with bipartisan support, but the House never put it up for a vote.

The removal puts a bipartisan bill that appeared to be headed toward approval in jeopardy. Opponents of the CHIPS Act now include several Republican senators who initially supported the funding for the domestic production of semiconductors. Even if it passes, the lack of meaningful guardrails against the Chinese raise grave questions about whether a bill initially meant to counter China may backfire.

Schumer did not respond to a request for comment.

The CHIPS Act puts a staggering $250 billion for domestic science investment and education, making it the largest domestic industrial investment scheme in U.S. history. But Republicans say the act, prompted by concerns that the United States is losing its technological edge to China on such critical goods as semiconductors, could end up benefiting adversaries.

Senior staffers from six Republican offices in the Senate and House spoke to the Free Beacon on the condition of anonymity to criticize Schumer’s decision. In interviews, several expressed bewilderment at the modification while others said they were misled by Senate leadership.

“Legislators are talking about pouring hundreds of billions into industry subsidies and federal R&D, ostensibly to strengthen American competitiveness and to compete with China,” one Senate staffer told the Free Beacon. “Spending that level of taxpayer dollars without meaningful safeguards to ensure they don’t end up in Beijing’s hands—either through Chinese Communist Party espionage, corporate malfeasance, or inept bureaucrats—would be a colossal mistake.”

Exactly why Portman’s measure was removed is a matter of ongoing debate on Capitol Hill. One office blamed Rep. Frank Lucas (R., Okla.), the ranking member on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. Two Republican offices pointed the finger at Senate Republican staff tasked with whipping support for the CHIPS Act for failing to communicate that the provision was removed ahead of a procedural vote earlier this month. Another office said the decision to remove the guardrail provision was entirely Schumer’s and couldn’t be stopped by Republicans.

Guardrail provisions such as the ones in Portman’s bill are unpopular with universities with large research departments, as well as some corporations. Universities object for ideological reasons, namely the belief that their research should be enjoyed by everyone around the world. Universities in the last several weeks have been lobbying Republican members including Lucas particularly hard, Republican sources told the Free Beacon.

“Lucas has been turned by the lefty universities,” the individual said. “Disappointing that he’s going soft on China for them.”

One House Republican source called the idea that a single member in the minority party could tank the provision preposterous, and that the negotiations took place entirely in the Senate. A staffer for Lucas on the House Committee on Science and Technology concurred with that characterization.

“The House was shut out of any negotiations after the Senate ended four-corner discussions and then picked up this legislation on their own,” said Heather Vaughan, communications director for the House Committee on Science and Technology. “If the Senate can’t read their own legislative language ahead of a vote or negotiate effectively with each other, that’s simply not within our control.”

No matter the explanation, the lack of guardrails means several Senate offices that were potential “Yes” votes on the CHIPS Act are working behind the scenes to tank it. Other senators, such as Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), are pushing for new guardrail provisions.

Rubio on July 22 filed legislation that would, among other things, establish a counterintelligence screening process to “certify that anyone receiving funds under the bill has sufficient protections against government threats.” Such guardrails are missing from the CHIPS Act, he said.

“America needs to make things again, especially critical chips and other tech, but we need to do it in a way that benefits our country and our workers,” Rubio said. “Unless we add meaningful safeguards in this package, we should call this for what it is: the China Investment Bill.”

The Senate is expected to hold a final vote this week on the CHIPS Act. Original supporters of domestic semiconductor funding, including Rubio, are expected to vote against it.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Declare Emergency hopes roadblocks will pressure Biden to declare a climate emergency

The climate alarmism group that blocked interstates around Washington, D.C., on Independence Day is planning to shut down city streets to pressure resident Joe Biden to declare a climate emergency.

Declare Emergency will organize roadblocks, including a conga line to disrupt traffic, and rallies at national monuments throughout the week of Oct. 1—all to put enough strain on the nation’s capital to push Biden to take executive action on climate change, group leader Donald Zepeda told the Washington Free Beacon. During the “week of arrest,” Declare Emergency aims for up to 100 protesters to be arrested for “nonviolent civil disobedience action.”

“What people are interested in and concerned about is that sacrifice element,” Zepeda said, “so I don’t think we’re going to have actions without arrests.”

Like Declare Emergency, which believes there are fewer than 1,000 days left to avert a climate catastrophe, left-wing activists in the United States and Europe are intensifying their protest strategies. Declare Emergency protesters on July 4 blocked all lanes of Interstate 495 in Montgomery County, Md., for more than an hour, leading to 14 arrests. Italian environmental activists on Friday glued themselves to Botticelli’s Primavera painting in Florence, the latest in a series of stunts involving artwork in European art museums.

The climate group Now or Never, meanwhile, is planning to stop the July 28 Congressional Baseball Game to pressure Democratic lawmakers to pass climate legislation. Seventeen congressional staffers on Monday staged a sit-in in Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D., N.Y.) office to demand he reopen negotiations on climate legislation, which has failed to garner support from Republicans and some Democratic lawmakers.

Biden last week announced several green energy initiatives, including new funding for cooling centers and offshore wind projects in the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico, but stopped short of declaring an emergency. Environmental activists are demanding an emergency declaration because it would allow the president to redirect military funding to green-energy construction and end fossil fuel exports, among other measures. Declare Emergency said anything short of these actions are “band-aid solutions” that will result in the deaths of “billions” of people.

“While a step in the right direction, resident Biden’s speech fell short of declaring a climate emergency,” group member Michelle Wehner said in a news release. “The efforts he named for adaptation and a clean energy transition are wholly inadequate to stopping the climate crisis. The result will be billions of people left behind.”

Since assuming office, Biden has taken several actions to reduce U.S. energy production, including bans on oil and natural gas leases on federal land. The president also revoked the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have transported hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil from Canada to the United States. Still, Declare Emergency believes Biden has failed to live up to his campaign promise of prioritizing climate change.

“The Democrats are all about this as the biggest issue of our lifetime, and then they do nothing,” said Paul Severance, a Declare Emergency mobilizer. “That’s soft denial. If we don’t all get in this, and get in this fully, we are not going to survive.”

Declare Emergency has organized several “action periods” in the nation’s capital since Biden’s inauguration, aiming for each protest to gain more attention than the last. Between July 1 and 6, the group blocked roads and rallied at the Lincoln Memorial and the White House. It is preparing for the October protests by mobilizing supporters through biweekly meetings, leaflet distribution, and telephone outreach, according to a meeting recording obtained by the Free Beacon. Zepeda expects the October demonstration to be “better” and “bigger” than July’s.

The Washington Monument and the American Petroleum Institute headquarters are under consideration for rallies in October, Zepeda said. Declare Emergency is willing to do “whatever is nonviolently necessary” to get Biden to “begin a full-scale World War II-like mobilization effort” and stop climate change, according to the group’s website.

“Change needs to come very quickly and we don’t have a lot of time,” Zepeda said. “We need to really front load a lot of the changes so that way, we save as many lives as we can.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Deputy National Cyber Director Camille Stewart has called for a race-focused defense agenda

Solving “perceived” systematic racism by implementing systematic racism. Sounds like a democrat. Stop looking for hand-outs and start lending a hand. [US Patriot]

Resident Joe Biden’s incoming cyber defense deputy has claimed that “systemic racism” is one of the greatest threats to U.S. cybersecurity.

Camille Stewart, a former Google strategist whom Biden reportedly tapped for White House deputy national cyber director, has argued that “our #NatSec apparatus must be a part of dismantling systemic racism,” and “pursuing anti-racist and anti-hate policy outcomes” should be a chief national security focus for the administration.

Biden’s new hire is likely to stoke concerns from Republican legislators that his administration has been more focused on pushing a race-focused ideological agenda than on traditional national defense issues—such as the increasing risk of cyberattacks from Russia, Iran, and China. The Department of Justice said in June it is bracing for more cyberwarfare from adversarial countries. Last month, the FBI revealed it intercepted an Iranian-backed cyberattack against Boston Children’s Hospital, and Russian hackers targeted an American satellite company in Ukraine earlier this year.

Stewart, who served as policy adviser for the Obama administration’s Department of Homeland Security, has criticized the United States as an intrinsically racist society in her writing and on social media.

She claimed that the U.S. economy “lost $16 trillion b/c of Racism against Black Americans,” and warned in 2020 that “SYSTEMIC RACISM WILL RUIN THIS DEMOCRACY,” arguing that systemic racism was a part of “every institution not just the criminal justice system.”

“[Solutions] to cybersecurity challenges will never reach their full potential until systemic racism is addressed and diverse voices are reflected among our ranks at all levels,” Stewart wrote in a 2020 column for the Council on Foreign Relations titled “Systemic Racism Is a National Security Threat.”

She added that “communities of color are disproportionately affected by cyberattacks that target critical infrastructure.”

In a 2020 column for the Hill, Stewart said the Biden administration’s efforts to combat systemic racism “must be woven into leadership priorities, processes, structures, and domestic and international strategy.”

Stewart proposed that U.S. foreign policy leaders be encouraged to “talk about systemic racism in the U.S on a global stage” and acknowledge the “detrimental effects of racism at home and in U.S. foreign policy towards regions of the world.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment. A White House press release on Monday said Stewart was “regarded as not only an expert but also as an inspiration, especially to women and underrepresented minorities.”

Republican lawmakers have objected to other recent hires by the Biden administration, including U.S. special representative for racial equity and justice appointee Desirée Cormier Smith, who claimed white diplomats lack empathy and humility.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

A group of liberal Capitol Hill staffers were arrested in the office of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) after demanding Democratic leadership resume talks on climate legislation.

More than a dozen employees of Democratic members of Congress sat down in Schumer’s office holding signs calling on the majority leader to renew efforts to combat climate change. The protest ended after about half an hour when Capitol Police bound the disgruntled staffers’ hands with zip ties and escorted them out.

One of the protesters, Saul Levin, a staffer for “Squad” member Rep. Cori Bush (D., Mo.), tweeted photos of the demonstration from within Schumer’s office.

“We, staffers of the US Congress, are peacefully sitting in on Senator Schumer’s office to demand Dems pass climate justice policy this year,” Levin tweeted. “We are putting our bodies on the line because we have no other choice.”

Congressional staffers have increasingly attempted to pressure lawmakers to pursue certain policies and deliver greater benefits for staff. Staffers across several progressive offices have begun efforts to unionize in pursuit of “pay equity” and other aims.

In a similar protest last week, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) and Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) pretended to be handcuffed and arrested as they were taken away from a protest at the Supreme Court.

Levin is the son of progressive congressman Andy Levin (D., Mich.), who is currently caught up in a primary contest with another incumbent. A focal point of the race concerns Levin’s failure to support the state of Israel, a key American ally.

Negotiations on a massive climate spending package broke down last week when Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.) rejected efforts to spend hundreds of billions on combating carbon emissions. Manchin cited record inflation and the importance of traditional energy sources in outlining his opposition to the “green” policies.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

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.

Related Coverage

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

The U.S. Army announced on July 21 that it has approved just 20 permanent religious exemptions for the COVID-19 vaccine amid thousands of requests.

Out of the 8,000 applications for a permanent religious exemption, a total of 1,465 have been reviewed by the Army. Just 20 have been approved—an approval rate of about 1.37 percent.

All those who had their applications approved were in the active Army. None from the Army National Guard or Army Reserve have received an exemption.

That leaves 6,535 applications for a permanent religious exemption yet to be reviewed by the service.

Meanwhile, the Army has reviewed 1,045 permanent medical exemptions for the COVID-19 vaccine, out of 1,100 requests. It has approved just 34 of the requests, which is an approval rate of about 3.25 percent.

“Army officials review each request on an individual basis to determine whether an exemption is appropriate,” the Army stated. “Medical requests are reviewed primarily by healthcare providers, while religious accommodation requests include interviews with the Soldier’s chaplain, recommendations from the chain of command, as well as a public health and a legal review.

“All Soldiers who refuse the order to be vaccinated without an approved or pending exemption request are subject to certain adverse administrative actions, including flags, bars to continued service, and official reprimands.

“Soldiers who continue to refuse the vaccination order without an approved or pending exemption may also be subject to additional adverse administrative action, including separation.”

Ninety-six percent of the active Army, 88 percent of the Army National Guard, and 90 percent of the Army Reserve are fully vaccinated, according to the military branch’s statistics.

Over 17,000 COVID-19 Vaccine Refusals

More than 17,000 Army troops have refused to take the COVID-19 vaccine, data indicated. Most of the refusals come from the Army National Guard, where more than 10,700 soldiers have refused to be vaccinated.

Out of 1,425 active Army members who refused the COVID-19 vaccine, 1,379 have been separated; no troops in the Army National Guard or Army Reserve have been separated.

Since July 1, under orders of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, members of the Army National Guard or Army Reserve who have refused the vaccine and don’t have a valid exemption “may not participate in federally funded drills, training, and other duty nor receive payment or retirement credit,” the Army said.

While the Army’s vaccine mandate continues to be in force, the U.S. Air Force has been temporarily blocked from enforcing its vaccine mandate after a federal district court in Ohio issued a temporary restraining order in mid-July. The order prevents Air Force authorities from disciplining any service members who are unvaccinated after having their religious exemption applications denied.

Plaintiffs in the case had contended that the class action suit would include more than 12,000 airmen.

According to data from the Air Force, as of July 11, more than 6,800 service members have been denied religious accommodation requests, while only 104 have been approved. Meanwhile, 834 members have been “administratively separated” by the branch.

Army Facing Personnel Shortfalls

The figures point to a low rate of permanent COVID-19 vaccine exemption approvals from the Army at a time when the service branch forecasts it will have significantly fewer troops than originally planned by the end of fiscal 2023.Members of the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Battalion, 69th Armored Regiment deploy to Germany in Savannah, Ga., on March 2, 2022. (Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty Images)

Army Gen. Joseph Martin, vice chief of staff for the Army, told a House military personnel panel on July 19 that the projection for the estimated total number of troops in the force by the end of the 2022 fiscal year, on Sept. 30, is 466,400—a drop of 6,600 from the original target of 473,000.

He also said that the estimated number of troops for the end of 2023 fiscal year is 445,000 to 452,000, which is 24,000 to 31,000 troops less than the original target of 476,000.

“Right now, what we’re experiencing—the ‘why’ of what we think is going on right now—is we’ve got unprecedented challenges with both a post-COVID-19 environment and labor market, but also private competition with private companies that have changed their incentives over time,” Martin said.

He said the Army can manage to handle personnel shortfalls in the short term, but it could have an impact on readiness if it persists.

Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), a member of the House Judiciary and Armed Services committees, took to Twitter on July 19 to advocate for the end of the COVID-19 vaccine mandate in the military, noting the drastic projected reductions in strength for the Army.

“Army Reserve and Army National Guard reductions will be even worse. We must depoliticize the military and end the vaccine mandate,” he said on Twitter.

Johnson in late June accused the Biden administration of having destroyed the Army’s readiness “by creating an unnecessary recruiting and retention shortfall, and trying to make up the difference by lowering other crucial education and fitness standards.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

China’s military has become more aggressive and dangerous over the past five years, the top U.S. general asserted on July 24.

Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters during a trip to Indonesia that the United States and its allies have conducted more and more intercepts of Chinese aircraft and ships in the Pacific. The number of unsafe encounters has also increased significantly, he said.

“The message is the Chinese military, in the air and at sea, have become significantly more and noticeably more aggressive in this particular region,” said Milley, who recently asked his staff to compile details about interactions between China and the United States and others in the region.

The Chinese military has become “noticeably more aggressive in this particular region,” he also told the Financial Times. Milley spoke with The Associated Press and the Financial Times aboard his aircraft as he was flying to visit the Indo–Pacific over the weekend.

Milley, who has faced congressional blowback for holding two phone calls with a top Chinese general during the waning months of the Trump administration, didn’t provide specific figures about incidents involving Chinese jets or ships.

But, in one example, a Chinese J-6 fighter jet in May flew close to an Australian P-8 Poseidon spy plane and released chaff—pieces of metal debris to confuse enemy radar—that was sucked into the Australian plane’s engines, Australian officials said.

“The intercept resulted in a dangerous maneuver which posed a safety threat to the P-8 aircraft and its crew,” Australia’s military said last month about the encounter.

Threats to the Region

U.S. military officials have recently raised alarms about the possibility that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) could invade Taiwan amid speculation the CCP could take inspiration from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The CCP has stepped up its military provocations against Taiwan in 2022 as it looks to intimidate it into assimilating with the communist mainland.

Milley also made note of an agreement between the CCP and the Solomon Islands that will allow Beijing to potentially construct a naval base in the South Pacific region.

“This is an area in which China is trying to do outreach for their own purposes. And again, this is concerning because China is not doing it just for benign reasons,” Milley told reporters. “They’re trying to expand their influence throughout the region. And that has potential consequences that are not necessarily favorable to our allies and partners in the region.”

He said that the “vast majority” of countries in the Pacific want the U.S. military to be more involved amid the CCP threat.

“We want to work with them to develop interoperability and modernize our militaries collectively, in order to make sure that, geostrategically, we’re able to meet whatever challenge that China poses,” he said, according to the FT.

Earlier this month, two Republican congressmen again asked Milley’s office to provide more details about two phone calls he had with a top Chinese general, including one on Jan. 8, 2021. They said that the general may have usurped civilian control of the military and said that he “has yet to respond” to their questions.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The COVID-19 vaccine mandate for all students 12 and older in Washington, D.C. violates federal law, a legal expert says.

“There is no FDA-approved COVID shot available and therefore, individuals have a right under the emergency use authorization to refuse these shots,” Matthew Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, told The Epoch Times.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted emergency authorization to the Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, and Novavax COVID-19 vaccines.

Under the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, people who go to receive a product that has received emergency authorization must be informed that some benefits and risks “are unknown” and of “the option to accept or refuse administration of the product.”

“It is your choice to receive or not receive [the vaccine]. Should you decide not to receive it, it will not change your standard medical care,” FDA fact sheets provided to people getting a shot state.

Staver’s group may challenge the District of Columbia vaccine mandate.

Other interpretations of the law do exist. The U.S. Department of Justice, for instance, has said that the section “concerns only the provision of information to potential vaccine recipients and does not prohibit public or private entities from imposing vaccination requirements for a vaccine that is subject to an emergency use authorization.”

Mandate and Availability

Students in Washington aged 12 and older must already get a COVID-19 vaccine in order to be on school sports teams. The D.C. City Council passed a law in 2021 to extend the mandate to attending school at all.

“We need everyone to get vaccinated to stop the spread and protect vulnerable members of our community,” Councilwoman Janeese Lewis George, a Democrat, said during a hearing on the bill.

The law says that students must “receive a vaccination that is fully approved in the United States to prevent against COVID-19.” But it also states that an approved vaccine needs to be “available” to students for the law to take effect.

The FDA has approved Pfizer’s vaccine for children as young as 12. But vials produced after the approval are marked Comirnaty, which became the vaccine’s trade name. And a survey of vaccine providers in the city indicated there are no vials of Comirnaty available.

“Unfortunately we do not,” West End Pediatrics, one of the providers, told The Epoch Times in an email when asked if they were administering Comirnaty.

Four other providers could not confirm having Comirnaty vials, while nine others did not pick up the phone or respond to requests for comment.

As recently as February, no states could confirm receipt of Comirnaty vials.

Education Officials

Citing the city law, the district’s Office of the State Superintendent of Education said on July 19 that students aged 12 and older must get a COVID-19 vaccine to attend school in the fall, unless they are granted a medical or religious exemption.

The deadline is the start of the school year.

“We want to make sure that all of our students have everything they need for a healthy start to the school year,” State Superintendent of Education Christina Grant said in a statement. “This means making sure children see their primary medical provider for a well-child visit and receive all needed immunizations.”

The office noted that the FDA has approved Pfizer’s shot for the age group but did not mention whether the vials produced after FDA approval were available.

Fred Lewis, a spokesman for the agency, declined to answer questions.

“Please reach out to the DC Department of Health for this information. DC Health is better able to respond to questions on vaccine availability in the District,” Lewis told The Epoch Times in an email.

A spokesman for the department of health did not respond to inquiries.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Retired Lt. Col. Sandy Miarecki, who served over 20 years in the Air Force as a pilot, was given a notice of proposed removal from her position as an instructor at the U.S. Air Force Academy (USAFA) on July 14 for refusing COVID-19 vaccination and testing.

At the beginning of the school term, in January 2022, she was first suspended from teaching for the same reason.

Miarecki was vaccine injured in 1992 during her military service. She was not completely disabled from the injury, and she gave credit to her research on natural medicine, saying it allowed her to be functional.

When the COVID vaccines were mandated in the military, she thought the imposition would violate U.S. law as well as the Nuremberg Code.

“Before the [COVID vaccine] shots mandates came down, I warned my chain of command that they would be breaking federal law if they forced any EUA shots on anyone,” Miarecki told The Epoch Times, referring to the vaccines allowed under emergency use authorization.

Similar to Miarecki, USAFA civilian Olympic-calibre coach Dana Lyon believes that she was terminated due to rejecting COVID vaccination, according to The Gazette.

“When the mandates came down—illegally from SecDef, who has zero authority to mandate anything like this, per the USC—all subsequent people who forced the injections on people or lose their jobs or get kicked out of Academy were guilty of coercion under 21 US Code, Section 360bbb-3 and Nuremberg code,” Miarecki added.

The Nuremberg Code is a set of internationally accepted standards to which doctors have to conform when experimenting on humans. It was established by the war crime tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany, after World War II.

“Even to this day, neither Pfizer’s Comirnaty (the only FDA approved shots until Jan 2021) nor SpikeVax by Moderna (started in Jan 2021) have EVER been available in the US. Bottom line: all shots are still only EUA, and coercion to take them or lose your job or Academy appointment is a crime against humanity and punishable by death through international tribunals,” Miarecki said.

She says that some of her students told her that they didn’t want the shots, and she told them about the regulations for religious and medical exemptions.

“Since their chain of command denied them due process and withheld this information, the students (and faculty, and civilians) asked me for help,” Miarecki said.

“I helped them write exemption letters and connected them with my legal team when they wanted to talk to a lawyer. That was the first problem, that I was ‘counseling and mentoring students on avoiding the mandates,’” she noted.

Miarecki, who was given the Airman’s Medal for heroism in 1992 for a river rescue, says that she personally knows “three civilian instructors flying under the radar because they will do the EUA testing, and four military instructors doing the same.”

Miarecki told The Epoch Times that she filed formal DoD/IG complaints in Jan 2022, and in March 2022 the IG (Inspector General) informed her that part of the complaint should be handled by the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), so she filed new complaints to the OSC but hasn’t heard back from them so far.

“I would guess that I will not receive a favorable outcome, which should arrive any day now,” she said.

Around the same time she was suspended, a federal district court in Ohio temporarily blocked the Biden administration from enforcing the COVID-19 vaccine mandate on thousands of U.S. Air Force service members who remain unvaccinated after having opposed the shot on religious grounds but have had their religious exemption applications denied.

The Air Force has been struggling with pilot shortages for years now.

Former Air Force Chief of Staff General David Goldfein testified before Congress in 2017 about a shortage of aviators, writing in 2016 that the situation was a “quiet crisis.”

A DoD report (pdf) from 2019 noted that by the end of FY 2018, the Air Force was “short 2,000 pilots out of a total inventory of 18,400.”

“I know of personally more than 700 pilots who are actively unvaccinated and have filed a religious accommodation or have filed for a medical exemption or something of the sort,” USAF pilot Lt. John Bowes told The Epoch Times on June 24.

About this, Miarecki said: “I can guarantee that 700 is a low number overall.”

“We’ll be holding our breath to hear if we get a preliminary injunction, but this fight is far from over. Most pilots are still grounded, including myself, and we’ll see how that changes with the coming news,” Bowes told The Epoch Times on July 19.

The Epoch Times reached out to USAF for comment.

Beth Brelje and Mimi Nguyen Ly contributed to this report.

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

America’s current education system is antiquated, wasteful, and “bent on saving and serving itself,” argues former U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.

She is one of the very few department heads to have advocated for the abolition of the agency she ran. Education gaps have only widened since the establishment of the federal Department of Education under President Jimmy Carter, she says.

Two years of remote learning have now put children months, if not years behind during this pandemic. “You couple the learning losses with the mental health challenges, and you have a disaster looming,” she says.

DeVos is the author of the new book, “Hostages No More: The Fight for Education Freedom and the Future of the American Child.” Tonight, she breaks down creative new approaches to schooling being adopted in states like Florida and Arizona that could soon change the game for millions of children across America.

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Below is a rush transcript of this American Thought Leaders episode from Jul 21, 2022. This transcript may not be in its final form and may be updated.

Jan Jekielek:

Betsy DeVos, such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders.

Ms. Betsy DeVos:

Thank you, Jan. It’s great to be with you.

Mr. Jekielek:

It’s been several years since we spoke last. You were the Secretary of Education at the time and you were getting, I think it’s an understatement to say a ton of flack for just about anything that you were trying to do. And now, you’ve written about it in your book. What is it like to be outside of government now? How has your life changed?

Ms. DeVos:

Well, I’ve been busy writing this book, which is about how we actually fix American education. And it’s been very, I would say, energizing and cathartic at the same time. And I’m continuing to advocate for kids and for their family’s ability to direct their own child’s education as I had for 30 years before I went to Washington.

So in that regard, not much has changed. I just am able to do it now with a different perspective and a different set of experiences. And I’m working with governors and state legislators and some of our federal elected officials as well to really promote and advance policies that are going to empower families to do just that.

Mr. Jekielek:

So tell me about this different perspective. What is it that you, what were the big lessons of being in an administration?

Ms. DeVos:

Well, it only confirmed further for me what I knew before even going there. And that is the federal government does not do education well. It is not involved in education in a good and positive and constructive way. It is really the purview of the family and the most local units of government that really have to be able to take charge of and control for the kids’ education.

And we’re seeing this happen now in more meaningful ways across the country with Arizona being the most recent state, the first state to enact a universal education freedom policy, which is going to change the life trajectories for thousands of kids in that state. I’m very excited about that. I’m also excited about how that’s going to continue to build momentum in other states for the policy changes necessary to do that same thing.

Mr. Jekielek:

And so it’s interesting to me, because you are the head of a large federal department. Of course, education is left to the states, but there’s been all sorts of federal mechanisms created to be able to influence the states with time, right?

Ms. DeVos:

Yes. Well, people often don’t realize the fact that only 8% or 9% of funding for K-12 education comes from the federal government and yet the regulations and all of the policies that directly impact state and local education are far beyond that 8% or 9%. And so there are a lot of strings attached to the money that government sends and funds for K-12 education.

I contend that that money is better spent when directed by families from the state level as well. And I use the metaphor of a backpack. Kids go to school every day with the stuff they need for the day. Metaphorically, we should attach the funds that are already being spent on that child to that child’s backpack, for that family to figure out, is there assigned school working for them? If not, let’s figure out where is going to work.

And K-12 education is the least disrupted industry in our country. And it is an industry. We spend $750 billion a year on K-12 education, and we continue to get poorer and worse results in spite of the fact of spending more and more and more money. If we would empower families with those resources to make those buying decisions, we will get the creativity and ingenuity and entrepreneurship we need in K-12 learning experiences that we haven’t had to date with a 175-year-old industrial model approach.

Mr. Jekielek:

What place is there, if any, for a federal department of education? I’ve had someone on the show very recently who simply said, “Do away with it all.”

Ms. DeVos:

I concur with that. I think the department should not exist. It was a payoff to the teachers unions that Jimmy Carter made in 1979 or ’76 when he was running for election. And it was actually affected or implemented in 1979. We have since then spent over $1 trillion at the federal level alone with the express goal of closing the achievement gaps. Not only have those gaps not narrowed one little bit, by most measures they’ve actually widened.

And so there is no compelling reason for having a federal department of education. There are a couple of laws that we need to make sure are followed, protecting civil rights and making sure children with disabilities have the kinds of supports they need. But those don’t need to exist in a federal department. They can exist in another already established department and be overseen very well in those places. The federal department of education does not add any value to kids’ educations.

Mr. Jekielek:

You’re perhaps the first department head I’m aware of who’s advocating for the abolition of the department that they headed.

Ms. DeVos:

I did while I was there. I said, I would be very happy to work myself out of a job. And in fact, the last two budgets that we presented to Congress actually sought to block grant all of the funds to the states and local districts. Congress didn’t take it up seriously to even debate it. I hope they do.

I think it’s a very worthy discussion, particularly with how we’ve seen the system act and respond this last two years when families have had a front row seat to see firsthand the failings of the system.

Mr. Jekielek:

I want to talk about this Arizona law that you mentioned earlier. It’s obviously a major development. Before we go there, I just want to touch a little bit on this past administration. You actually quit following January 6th. You said that President Trump had crossed the red line. I want to give you a chance just to kind of say your piece, like what exactly happened so people understand what your position was very clearly before we continue.

Ms. DeVos:

Well, to put it a little more in context, following the election in November, during the rest of November and December when there was debate happening around a second COVID relief package, there was a very real opportunity to get a school choice, education freedom provision included in that bill. But The White House was not focused on doing those kinds of things and advocating for that kind of policy.

And so what could have been wasn’t, and my role, my job, focusing on doing the right things and everything we could for students, I’d pretty much come to the end of what we could possibly accomplish. And on January 6th, when I saw what was happening and I didn’t hear the president say the things that he could have or should have said, at least what I felt, to put an end to what was happening.

And when he turned his back on his vice president, it was kind of a line in the sand for me. I also felt we should have been taking victory laps about all of the accomplishments of the administration, of which there were so many. And instead we were focused on this. And so I’m always a forward looking person. That’s what I continue to do. And that’s what I think we need to do.

Look ahead. Let’s learn from what we did in the past, but let’s keep moving forward and doing the right thing for, in my case, the right thing for kids and more broadly the right thing for Americans.

Mr. Jekielek:

So again, you started talking about this Arizona law. A number of people are saying this is groundbreaking. There’s been nothing like this before. So, tell me a bit about this law. Do you see this as the future for the American child and where should it go from here?

Ms. DeVos:

Yeah, so the Education Savings Account is what Arizona just passed and Governor Ducey signed into law. That means that for all 1.1 million students in Arizona, if their families decide that the school to which they’re assigned is not working for them, they can take 90% of what the state would spend on that child and use it to buy that child’s education.

They could use it to go to a different school, one that requires tuition, a faith-based school or another private school of some sort. Or they could use it to customize their child’s education and maybe buy a couple of classes at one place, maybe buy a virtual class, maybe a couple of classes at a charter school, let’s say. Any combination of those things, or perhaps some things that haven’t yet even been developed.

In Arizona during the lockdowns, there were many families, many of them in the urban areas that started to band together in small cadres or consortiums of families and basically start up what I would refer to as a 21st century one-room schoolhouse with multi-age kids. They would hire a teacher that was looking for a different experience. And for them, if that’s working, they need to have the opportunity to continue to pursue that kind of experience for their children.

And like I said, the system has been so one size fits all for 175 years. We haven’t really wrapped our heads around what education in the K-12 years could really look like for kids, because we haven’t had the kind of creativity that we’ve seen in every other industry. This in Arizona, and I think there will be other states that will soon follow, we’re going to see that creativity really fostered and growing in ways that we can’t predict today.

Mr. Jekielek:

So you’re just making me think of something bizarre that I heard fairly recently. Basically, in a school where all the teachers were not in school. This is in New York, basically. One of the moms is describing this situation. The parents banded together and created one of these schoolhouses in that same school. And they said, how bizarre an experience was that? The teachers couldn’t come and actually, some of these teachers were somehow involved in the creation of this as well.

So on the one hand, the actual system wasn’t really functioning except perhaps virtually, although, certainly not at a hundred percent. And on the other hand, there were people creating these sorts of things. In some cases, even employing people that were involved in the educational system in the first place. What do you make of this?

Ms. DeVos:

Well, I think it’s just one example of people finding solutions to problems. And I’ve used the example recently of a small school that I’m familiar with in West Michigan. I live in Michigan. It’s cold in the winter in Michigan. And yet there’s this small school where the kids are outside all day, all year long and they’re learning outside and they choose to do this. It is an outdoor school by design. And the teachers who are there are choosing to be there.

And I use it as one small example of thinking about solutions that we need to be much more open to because we know kids learn differently. They have different needs. And parents again have had front row seats to that in the last couple of years. And they’ve seen if distance learning was just the ticket for their child or if it was a disaster. They’ve seen in many cases, curriculums that they didn’t want their children to be exposed to.

And in other cases, they’ve seen curriculums that were very low in their expectations of what a child could do. And the parents may know that their child is capable of much more. They should have the opportunity to find the solution that’s going to work for that child to unlock that child’s full potential.

Mr. Jekielek:

For all intents and purposes, from everyone that I’ve heard, the distance learning didn’t work for most kids. It worked for a few kids that were very self-directed, but it didn’t work for most of them. And I guess, the other part of the previous question, these teachers weren’t in school. And so this is one of the reasons the parents had to start organizing. But what about the fact that these teachers weren’t in school in the first place? There’s a lot of contention about that, right?

Ms. DeVos:

And I think many of them had longed to be in school. They knew that their kids were falling further and further behind, but the system in many cases precluded them from doing that. There were a lot of teachers who I think have walked away from teaching because they’ve become so frustrated by the system.

And in an education freedom environment like Arizona is just creating, teachers are going to become the most valued part of that equation. And there are going to be opportunities for them like they’ve never seen before. Opportunities for them to be really creative themselves about solving problems for families and kids, or addressing needs.

And I’m just very excited about what it can mean for students in Arizona and more broadly, how it’s going to continue to drive change. Because we know that this is a very winning issue for families, for everyone … Like three out of four Americans say, “Money for students should follow the student to where that student goes to school.” You cannot deny the power behind that sentiment.

And when that actually happens at a scale to really make a difference, again, we’re going to see creativity and experiences for kids in their K-12 learning that we haven’t even begun to dream of because we’re just so stuck in this one-size-fits-all old model that is no longer working for way too many kids across the country.

Mr. Jekielek:

You’re expecting because of this new legal structure around the funding for students, all sorts of new models will spring up. Teachers will be able to enter them, figure new things out. It’s sort of like this innovation land in education.

Ms. DeVos:

Absolutely, absolutely. And Florida is one state where they’re farthest along with the greatest number of students. They’re going to continue to expand those opportunities for kids. But we’re only at the tip of the iceberg as to what that could look like.

Mr. Jekielek:

I want to touch a little bit more on this, the learning during the pandemic. I think you were urging schools to open very early on. And I think you even threatened to withhold funding as part of the urging, so to speak. How did that end up playing out in the end?

Ms. DeVos:

Well, there was no ability to withhold funding at the federal level. But we did everything we could as an administration to urge and encourage schools systems, all of those involved to find the solutions, to get kids back to learning.

And again, we don’t even begin to understand the breadth and magnitude of the learning loss and the impact, the negative impact on kids, particularly the most vulnerable kids, low income kids, many kids from minority families. They’re the ones who have been most hurt by the system’s behavior during the pandemic. And you couple the learning losses with the mental health challenges, and you have a disaster looming.

Again, this is the ideal time for states to change their policy, to support funds going to the families for their children’s education, not to systems or buildings that are going to simply double down on doing the same thing, the same way over and over again, with more money and expect different results. It’s not going to happen. It hasn’t happened in the last 30 years. It’s not going to happen tomorrow because the system is bent on saving and serving itself.

Mr. Jekielek:

This is something that’s been really troubling me. This arguably a generational crisis caused by these two years for some students of almost a complete loss of education. I forget what the numbers are exactly. But some significant percentage of students is almost a complete loss in the prime of their lives, so to speak, or their childhood lives. One way to deal with it is to adopt new, innovative methods. But have you thought about how America and frankly, every country that’s faced this is actually going to deal with this?

Ms. DeVos:

Well, I believe you’re only going to deal with it when you interject creativity and entrepreneurship into it to solve problems because you are not going to get a different result by doing the same thing. And we’ve seen families actually start to address these issues because they did so out of necessity during the pandemic. We should support those and many more who are suddenly attracted to something different because they’ve seen the opportunities.

And the reality is that the traditional system or systems, they’re going to ultimately make changes because they’re going to see the competition. They’re going to have benchmarks to be able to compare themselves to, they’re going to make changes that are ultimately going to benefit kids too. But you have to allow for the families to make those choices and those decisions in order to foster that kind of change.

Mr. Jekielek:

Were there any policies that you instituted while you were a secretary of education that you felt just didn’t work out the way they were planned or things that you wish you had done differently now with a bit of hindsight, like looking at it?

Ms. DeVos:

Well, I wish we had been able to get the federal tax credit to support education freedom passed and accomplished. Short of that, everything else we did was really focused on doing the right thing for students. And our work on Title IX on making sure that kids, when they are on campuses and they have an issue with sexual misconduct, that they have a framework that is fair, that is balanced, that is going to treat everyone fairly and with respect, and put the one who brings it forward in control of what happens next.

That and other issues on which we regulated or dealt, those are all … The current administration, the Biden administration is trying to undo all of those and turn us backward. This is a travesty for students, and we have to speak up. We have to push back against this effort to totally upend all of the progress that we made on behalf of students.

Mr. Jekielek:

It’s kind of a fundamentally different view of how education should function, isn’t it? I mean, we saw this debate that saw Glenn Youngkin win in Virginia.

Ms. DeVos:

And Terry McAuliffe said that parents didn’t have any business in their knowing or directing what was going on in their child’s schools. I mean, he said he doubled down on it.

[Sound bite/Terry McAuliffe]:

So I’m not going to let parents come into schools and actually take their child, make their own decision.

[Sound bite/Speaker 4]:

You vetoed it, to our parents. You vetoed it.

[Sound bite/Terry McAuliffe]:

I stopped the bill that I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.

Mr. Jekielek:

Do you feel like that’s the MO here with undoing these pieces? Or what do you think the operating principle is here?

Ms. DeVos:

It’s a very, very left wing, far left of the Democrat party that is really driving these policies. And they are really turning back and doubling down on the disastrous policies that the Obama administration advanced. It would totally reverse everything that we did. It would also expand the definition of biological sex to gender identity, and basically anything you decide at any point in time. And it would decimate women’s sports, ultimately.

Mr. Jekielek:

So we also have this situation where there’s a lot of people that are advocating against school choice, who actually send their kids to private school. And this has always struck me as kind of a bizarre dichotomy.

Ms. DeVos:

Well, it’s a total hypocrisy. It’s for people who consistently fight against low income and middle income parents being able to make these decisions, they’re making those decisions themselves. And the fact that they blatantly do so without apology is, to me, I cannot fathom it or understand it. I don’t. These are the very kids they profess to want to help. And yet they consistently protect and defend a system that denies those families those opportunities.

Mr. Jekielek:

I want to talk a little bit about higher education, about college. New York University right now, it’s like, a year is something like 80 grand, $80,000. It’s very difficult to access for the majority of Americans, or frankly, anybody. And so does that make sense?

Ms. DeVos:

No, it doesn’t make any sense. And the cost of higher education has continued to skyrocket and you saw it take off dramatically when the federal government, when they federalized student lending under the Obama administration, ostensibly to pay for Obamacare.

Not only has it not paid for anything to do with Obamacare, it has cost American taxpayers, most of whom never went to college or took out student loans, billions and billions of dollars. It is an unsustainable model. It is out of control. And now you have an administration that’s trying to wipe away all kinds of student debt.

You cannot do that. The president cannot do that. He cannot legally do that on his own. And you cannot say with a straight face that wiping out a bunch of student debt is a good policy, because it is not fair to the two out of three Americans who didn’t go to college, who will ultimately have to pay those bills. And it’s not fair to the students who took out student loans and have faithfully paid on them, or the families that save for their children to go to college, or for the veterans that served and earned their college funds.

It makes zero sense. And even if you said it did make sense and you wiped it away, where does that leave you? You haven’t solved anything. You’re going to have students next year taking out student loans and you’re going to have the same problem all over again.

So this is an issue that Congress and the administration have really got to deal with. It is unsustainable the way it has gone. There is no accountability on the part of higher ed institutions for what kind of quality or what kind of outcomes they are serving up. And there’s just no governor on what they can charge for a tuition.

Mr. Jekielek:

And for those of us uninitiated, what are the nuts and bolts of how that worked? How did that Obama policy basically create this trend?

Ms. DeVos:

Well, there used to be private lenders that were backed by the federal government for certain students. And that worked. It worked for everyone, but the federal government took over all student lending in 2010.

And at that point … And so they send all the student loans directly to the schools and then the schools take out what they’re going to take out. And if there’s some left over, then the students get it. But very often the students don’t understand the implications of that. And they will go and spend it on things that are not related to education, which is not a good decision either.

And so the whole model is it’s not a logical or defensible model for the long term.

Mr. Jekielek:

But how did that actually balloon these? Just the university-

Ms. DeVos:

Well, because they’re on the government’s balance sheets as though they’re all good loans that are going to be fully repaid. And in many cases, they’re not. And in many cases, students have elected and Congress has continued to adopt all of these repayment plans that are based on a student’s income versus what they actually owe. And so they’re ultimately paying back pennies on the dollar from what they have borrowed and someone somewhere has to pay that.

Mr. Jekielek:

So I guess the big question here is, American education already prior to COVID was in rough shape. And we’ve talked a little bit about this already. And so now we have this prototype in Arizona, but we don’t know for sure how that’s going to play. What are you suggesting states do?

Ms. DeVos:

Well, I’m suggesting all states adopt policies that are going to give parents and families the freedom to direct their children’s education, to choose where their child gets their K-12 education. And I’ve cited Arizona as the most recent state, the first state to do a universal model in approach.

But there have been many other states that have been very forward leaning on this. Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Wisconsin, Ohio, there are a lot of states that have undertaken these programs. They’ve been at smaller scales. But Florida, as I said, is the most advanced in this, has the greatest number of students in programs, going to schools other than their assigned schools.

And interestingly, the districts where students are the highest number or percentage of students are going to schools other than their assigned school, the students who are remaining in their assigned schools are actually the outcomes, the achievement levels are actually improving.

I argue there has not been a definitive study on this, but there’s a couple of reasons, logical reasons. First, the kids have left if that school wasn’t working for them. They’re choosing to go somewhere else that is working. And the kids who are still staying there are the beneficiaries of leadership now making decisions and changes that they refuse to or wouldn’t make before, because they have other schools and other experiences now to benchmark themselves against.

And they’re actually improving opportunities for kids within the traditional schools as well. It’s a win-win for everyone. And the system that continues to defend the monopolistic government run system cannot fight back against these arguments because they are obvious and they are proliferating in many states where these policies have been adopted.

Mr. Jekielek:

So you’re very obviously against Critical Race Theory, Praxis, within education K to 12, I suspect any area. Now, what do you make of the fact that some of the most woke schools are actually the elite private schools? And so, we talk about school choice, the opportunity. Ostensibly, these are the schools that anybody would dream of coming, yet they’re the ones that have seemed to be hit by this ideology, perhaps the most. I mean, obviously not empirically, but that’s what people are telling me. So what do you think of this?

Ms. DeVos:

Well, this is a problem all over the place, and that’s why I think parents need to be demanding and expecting radical transparency around curriculum. And while many of these elite private schools are experiencing the same type of phenomenon or families have finally found out about it, there are many other schools, faith-based schools in states across the country that have been doing a great job of preparing and educating students and giving families opportunities at much lower costs than these elite private schools.

Many people, when we talk about choosing a private school through an education freedom model, immediately go to these, $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 a year schools. But there are many, many schools that educate children at a much lower cost, $10,000, in some cases less, and have a faith-based grounding that are doing a good job and families want to be able to make those choices as well.

And so these policies can support whatever families decide is going to be the right environment and the right setting for their kids.

Mr. Jekielek:

So you’re seeing this correlation between them being faith based and having the more classical education model, basically. That’s what you’re saying?

Ms. DeVos:

Well, there are a lot of classical models that there’s classical charter schools, there’s classical Christian schools. And that focus, I think, have been reawakened and is going to continue to grow. The opportunity to access those opportunities is only going to happen for all families if they’re empowered to make those choices with policies that support that.

Mr. Jekielek:

Got it. Any final thoughts as we finish up?

Ms. DeVos:

Just again, thanks for the opportunity to be here. My book is really about how we fix American K-12 education and how we can make learning a great experience for every child. And I hope that folks will enjoy it.

Mr. Jekielek:

Well, Betsy DeVos, it’s such a pleasure to have you on.

Ms. DeVos:

Thanks so much, Jan.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Free Beacon report sparks probe

Congressional Republicans launched a formal investigation into the Biden administration on Friday following its decision to sell a Chinese state-controlled company nearly one million barrels of oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, according to a copy of the probe obtained exclusively by the Washington Free Beacon.

The probe comes on the heels of a Free Beacon report detailing how the Biden administration sold China oil from the U.S. reserves amid a crippling energy crisis that has sent consumer prices skyrocketing. Rep. Pat Fallon (R., Texas), a member of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, is spearheading the investigation along with six of his GOP colleagues, including Reps. Ronny Jackson (Texas) and Ralph Norman (S.C.).

Fallon and his colleagues are demanding the White House turn over a trove of documents detailing the behind-the-scenes decision-making about these sales, as well as others potentially made to “foreign adversaries.”

The Biden administration came under intense criticism earlier this month after it was disclosed that it sold Chinese state-controlled energy firm Unipec 950,000 oil barrels from the U.S. reserves, which historically are tapped in response to emergencies. The White House claimed the sale would “address the pain Americans are feeling at the pump” and “help lower energy costs.” But critics say the administration is exploiting the reserves to appease foreign countries while it cuts production domestically to appease the Democratic Party’s far left flank.

“Your policies are harming American energy independence and benefiting our adversaries,” the lawmakers write. “Draining the [U.S. reserves] to historic lows for the sake of political expediency … threatens the national security of our nation, and contemplates no long-term strategy to ensure the energy independence of the United States.”

Information included in the Republican probe shows that the White House sold China 2.5 million barrels in October and another 1.5 million in November. Millions more were sold to other foreign countries during this time period. Amid these sales, the U.S. reserves dipped below 500 million barrels—the lowest level since 1986. China, on the other hand, has around 926 million barrels stored as it continues to import illicit Russian and Iranian oil to offset the rising price of crude. Current projections show the U.S. reserves “will be drained to approximately 130 million barrels by 2031,” according to figures included in the probe.

“The American people can’t afford to put gas in their tanks and our Strategic Petroleum Reserve is at its lowest level in decades, yet Joe Biden is wasting our money and resources by sending oil that’s intended for emergencies to the Chinese Communist Party,” Jackson told the Free Beacon. “Helping our adversaries and setting America up for failure in the event of a major disaster or national security threat is no way for an American president to govern. Taxpayers deserve better.”

The lawmakers say the “depletion of emergency supplies is troubling to the American public and puts the United States at a disadvantage should there be a real disaster or a national security threat.”

As China drains the American reserves, it also is “benefitting from loopholes in current sanctions against Russia and from your lack of sanctions enforcement,” the lawmakers write. “It is troubling that the United States is exporting [reserved] crude to China as China continues to align itself with our adversaries.”

While China has said that it would stop importing Russian oil amid the ongoing war in Ukraine, it has not made good on these promises. It also is importing illegal Iranian crude oil at record amounts, behavior that has been enabled by the Biden administration’s decision to loosen sanctions on Tehran as part of an effort to cajole it into signing a revamped version of the 2015 nuclear accord.

“Biden has taken these inappropriate steps as China continues to build their own reserve capabilities with cheap Russian and Iranian oil,” Fallon told the Free Beacon. “Our Strategic Petroleum Reserve was created to address national or weather emergencies, not for political expediency and personal profit.”

The Republican lawmakers instructed the White House to provide them with internal documents related to the sell-off of America’s strategic oil reserves. This includes “all documents and communications, from January 20, 2021, to present” that relates to U.S. crude “being shipped to foreign adversaries—specifically, the People’s Republic of China.” The White House must also furnish in-depth information about China’s own oil reserves, as well as any draft plans to potentially replenish America’s stockpile.

“Our strategic reserves are for national security, not to satisfy global oil markets, and certainly not to cover for resident Biden’s failed energy policies,” Norman told the Free Beacon. “This administration owes our nation immediate answers to these questions.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) efforts to militarize outer space are threatening the United States’ ability to defend itself and project power, according to the U.S. Space Force’s chief of space operations.

“China has gone from zero to 60 very quickly,” said Gen. John Raymond. “They are clearly our pacing challenge.”

“Today, more so than in the past, we have to worry about protecting and defending [our] satellites.”

Raymond delivered the remarks at the Aspen Security Forum on July 20, where he said that the United States would need to lead the world in developing international norms of behavior for space.

A Cluttered Space

Raymond said that developing more codified rules for space and further developing U.S. space systems are important given the essential role of space-based technologies in deterring conventional conflicts and preventing the escalation of hostilities.

“Space provides a great opportunity to have one more … means to change the deterrence calculus … and to deter conflict from beginning or extending into space, which we feel would deter a conflict from spilling over onto land,” Raymond said.

He noted that virtually all of the world’s most vital systems—from GPS to missile defense to international banking verification—are space-based. And space, Raymond said, is becoming more congested, more competitive, and more contested.

Indeed, the number of tracked objects in orbit has increased from 22,000 to 50,000 in just the last two years, he said.

China on the Horizon

Beyond mere space debris, however, Raymond said that China’s communist regime poses a serious threat to the United States’ interests in space, and that the regime is building out a suite of different weapons to attack U.S. space infrastructure.

“There’s a full spectrum of threats that we’re worried about,” Raymond said.

“Everything from reversible jamming of communication satellites and GPS satellites … to kinetic destruction.”

Raymond added that the CCP is reaching “near parity” with the United States regarding its space capabilities and is working to develop technologies that could seize the military, civil, or commercial advantage in space.

“That provides them [an] advantage, and that provides risk to our forces,” Raymond said.

“They have seen the advantages that space has provided us as we’ve integrated space and cyber and multi-domain operations, and, to be honest, they don’t like what they see.”

Raymond’s comments to that end were reminiscent of those made by Space Force Gen. David Thompson back in November, who said that China and Russia are conducting reversible attacks on U.S. satellites “every single day.”

2Fwww.theepochtimes.com%2Fchina-threatens-every-instrument-of-national-power-space-force-

To that end, Raymond said that establishing “rules of the road” for the international community is vital to securing space, even if it was a foregone conclusion that the CCP wouldn’t obey those rules. By at least having a solidified framework, Raymond said, China’s hostile actions in space could be measured and recorded.

“I firmly believe that we need to develop norms of behavior, rules of the road. The U.S. and its partners are working on that.”

“And today, one of the challenges is there are no rules or very few rules. It’s the wild, wild west.”

Raymond added that China threatens “every instrument of national power.” Still, he assured the audience that the Space Force would do everything in its power to prevent the CCP from escalating its aggression in space into a bona fide war.

“We come to work every day wanting to deter great power war,” Raymond said. “That’s what we do.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Dr. Anthony Fauci will receive a tax-paid annual federal retirement pension benefit of $414,667—more than the President’s $400,000 annual salary—if he leaves the civil service service in January 2025, as he has said he plans to do, according to the nonprofit government watchdog Open the Books (OTB).

While the specific details of an individual federal employee’s retirement benefit are exempt from public disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the formula used to determine the amount is public, as are key details, including annual salary and years of service.

The OTB figure was arrived at by the nonprofit’s auditors by using the known formula, salary data and number of years of service for Fauci, who is the long-time Director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the National Institutes for Health (NIH).

Fauci will have been a government employee for 59 years and be 85 years of age if he retires in January 2025. Under the present rules for federal compensation, his annual salary at retirement will be nearly $530,000, according to the OTB calculations.

He presently is paid $456,028 in annual salary compensation, making him the highest-paid employee on the federal payroll. His salary exceeds those of the president, the vice president, the heads of federal departments, senators and representatives, and the justices of the Supreme Court.

Fauci did not respond to The Epoch Times request for comment.

Adam Andrzjewski, OTB’s president, told The Epoch Times that “if it wasn’t already clear enough, Dr. Fauci’s profound impact on our public health policies, economy, and public schools is reflected by this enormous pension. At the end of the day, taxpayers helped fund this pension and guarantee all of it.”

The OTB chief added that the generosity of federal compensation overall is excessive, noting that “when debating the pay, perks, and pension benefits for federal employees, everything needs to be on the table. Today, the average federal bureaucrat makes six figures, receives 44 days of paid time off, and has a very lucrative retirement pension. It’s tough for the private sector to compete with this benefit package.”

The Chicago-based nonprofit is the nation’s largest private repository of information on government spending, including salary and pension benefit data. The foundation has filed thousands of FOIA requests and obtained data on more than $6 trillion in federal spending, the official checks of 49 of the 50 states, and the pay and pension information for 25 million government workers.

Fauci’s wife, Christine Grady, is also highly compensated and is listed on the NIH website as “Senior Investigator” and “Chief of the Department of Bioethics at NIH’s Health Clinical Center.”

Her title is currently listed by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management as “Social Science” with a pay level of $238,970, according to data compiled by OTB. The current top pay rate for federal government executive-level officials is $226,300.

Grady’s compensation is at the center of a federal court complaint as a result of NIH officials’ refusal to disclose information sought via a FOIA request dated April 8 by OTB. The OTB lawsuit (pdf) was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

The OTB request sought “all employment contracts, modifications, and addendums” for Grady since assuming her present position, as well as “all confidentiality agreements/documents, conflicts of interest waivers or documents, ethics disclosures, and financial interest and/or economic interest disclosure documents.”

In addition, the FOIA request sought a copy of Grady’s current official job description. All federal employment positions are required by federal law and regulation to have an official position description that describes the specific duties and responsibilities for which the individual holding the position can be held accountable.

The OTB FOIA was acknowledged by NIH officials on April 28, which was the maximum of 20 days allowed by federal law for an agency to do so. Federal law also requires agencies to communicate a final determination on what documents, if any, they will provide in response to requests. But OTB told the court that the NIH had failed to do so by the May 26 deadline.

The NIH further failed to advise OTB of its potential administrative remedies, and has produced none of the requested documents or explained which, if any, of the FOIA’s eight permitted exemption categories apply that would allow for the documents to be withheld.

As a result, the complaint asked the court to order the NIH to conduct a thorough search for all of the requested documents, to produce all such documents that aren’t subject to being withheld by a certain date, or to explain why doing so isn’t possible, and to provide what is known as a Vaughn Index describing each withheld document and why it was withheld, and to pay Open the Books the legal costs of the litigation.

Fauci’s long-time boss, former NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins left the agency in December 2021, and was then appointed in March 2022 as resident Joe Biden’s Chief Science Adviser. That appointment made Collins the highest-paid member of the most expensive White House staff ever.

Not all of Fauci’s income is received from federal taxpayers, however, as was first reported by The Epoch Times. He also received 23 secret royalty payments of undisclosed amounts between 2010 and 2020 from entities outside of the federal government that NIH refuses to identify. The 23 payments were part of an estimated $350 million in royalty payments received by more than 1,600 NIH officials, scientists and researchers, according to OTB.

Collins received 14 such payments, while Fauci’s top deputy at NIAID, Clifford Lane, received eight payments, according to OTB.

Dr. Lawrence Tabak, Collins’ successor as Acting NIH Director, admitted during a May congressional hearing that the $350 million in secret royalty payments has the appearance of a conflict of interest, but he claimed the agency has enough internal safeguards to prevent abuse..

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.

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

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

WHY ISN’T ANYONE STOPPING THIS?

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is helping fund the Chinese Communist Party’s Ministry of Science and Technology, assisting the brutal regime in its efforts to lure foreign scientists in to boost China’s scientific advancement, The National Pulse can reveal.

A recent, $100,000 grant from the Microsoft mogul’s foundation was sent to the Foreign Talent Research Center of China’s Ministry of Science and Technology in June, according to the organization’s website.

The purpose of the cash is listed as organizing a forum on “pandemic preparedness and response,” which would focus on “leveraging resources to improve global health and support disadvantaged populations who are disproportionately impacted by pandemic.” The forum is affiliated with the Zhongguancun Forum, a Beijing-based technology conference sponsored by the Chinese Communist Party that counts high-level officials – including President Xi Jinping – as speakers.

The Gates Foundation’s decision to fund the Foreign Talent Research Center of China’s Ministry of Science and Technology comes amidst controversy over the likelihood of international collaboration between U.S. and Chinese researchers in Wuhan leading to the genesis of COVID-19. Since the outbreak of the virus, the Chinese Communist Party has stonewalled investigations into the origins of the virus and planted Western researchers with compromising ties to China in senior investigative roles.

Beyond COVID-19, the Chinese Communist Party has also come under fire for weaponizing its science and technology programs to lure Western scientists away from their home countries in order to facilitate Chinese advancement and military build-up. This program – commonly known as the Thousand Talents Plan – has led to several Department of Justice (DOJ) indictments of American researchers who routinely fail to disclose their financial ties to the Chinese Communist Party despite receiving U.S. taxpayer funds.

MUST READ: Bill Gates-Funded Lab, Less Than 2 Miles From Wuhan Institute, Reports Cholera Case.

The Ministry of Science and Technology’s Foreign Talent Research Center appears to engage in similar conduct, as it is responsible for “bring[ing] in foreign talent,” according to an outline of its missions.

The ministry “formulates and facilitates the implementation of plans for bringing in high-end foreign experts, develops mechanisms for pooling top-notch scientists and research teams from abroad, and provides services for foreign experts,” it continues.

The unearthed grant comes amidst the Gates Foundation pouring millions of dollars into China, including to universities with ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The antibodies triggered by COVID-19 vaccines are interfering with people’s immune systems as newer virus variants emerge, Dr. Harvey Risch said.

The two most widely-used vaccines in the United States, produced by Pfizer and Moderna, both work by sending messenger RNA into muscle cells, where they produce a piece of the spike protein from the virus that causes COVID-19. The spike protein triggers the production of antibodies, which are believed to help prevent infection by SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, and fight illness if one still gets infected.

But the vaccines are based on the spike protein from the original virus variant, which was displaced early in the pandemic. Since then, a series of newer strains have become dominant around the world, with the latest being BA.5.

Related Coverage

Dr. Harvey Risch: Why Are Vaccinated People Getting COVID at Higher Rates Than the Unvaccinated?

“The vaccines only make a very narrow range of antibodies to the spike protein,” compared to the broader exposure experienced when one gets infected, Risch, an epidemiology professor at the Yale School of Public Health, told EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders.”

“The problem with that is, of course, that when the spike protein changes because of new strains of the virus, that the ability of the immune system to make antibodies that correlate to the new strains becomes reduced to the point where it may be almost ineffective over longer periods of time,” he added.

That leads to the antibodies being triggered by the vaccines not binding strongly enough to neutralize.

“What that means is they become interfering antibodies, instead of neutralizing antibodies,” Risch said. “And that’s the reason I believe that we’ve seen what’s called negative benefit—negative vaccine efficacy over longer time—over four to six to eight months after the last vaccine dose, that one sees the benefit of the vaccines turn negative.”

Worse Effectiveness Amid Spike Protein Changes

A number of recent studies have indicated that people who were vaccinated are more likely to get infected with COVID-19 after a period of time, including Pfizer’s clinical trial in young children (pdf). Some real-world data also show higher rates of infection among the vaccinated. Other research indicates vaccines still provide some protection as time wears on after getting a shot, but the protection does wane considerably. The research all deals with the Omicron variant, which became dominant in late 2021, and its subvariants.

There were relatively few changes to the spike protein as the initial variants emerged, which meant that vaccines still provided a fairly good benefit, Risch said. But Omicron started off with more than 50 changes to the spike protein, and subvariants of Omicron such as BA.5 have added more.

He pointed to data reported by United Kingdom health authorities in March (pdf)—the officials stopped reporting the data after that—pegging people who had received both a primary vaccination series and a booster as having three times the rate of symptomatic infection as unvaccinated people.

“After the second dose of the mRNA vaccines, it looks like they provide a benefit against symptomatic infection for … most people for maybe 10 to 12 weeks,” Risch said.

“After the first booster, the third dose, that drops to six to eight weeks. After the fourth booster, it may be as short as four weeks before the efficacy wears off and begins to turn negative.”

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.

New York governor Kathy Hochul’s administration funneled more than $600 million in no-bid COVID-19 contracts to a megadonor family that has contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Democrat’s campaign.

From December 2021 to March 2022, Hochul’s Department of Health paid $637 million in taxpayer funds to Digital Gadgets LLC for at-home COVID tests, the Albany Times Union reported. That company—which is based in New Jersey and sells hoverboards and other electronics through television shopping network QVC—is led by Charlie Tebele, whose family has contributed nearly $300,000 to Hochul’s campaign. The purchases were made under Hochul’s November coronavirus state-of-emergency order, which suspended the state’s competitive bidding process for COVID-related spending.

The ordeal marks the latest example of how Democratic governors have used the pandemic to award their political allies. In April of 2020, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer (D.) awarded a contract for the state’s contact-tracing operation to a Democratic consultant who then retained one of Whitmer’s own campaign vendors, liberal data behemoth NGP VAN, to work on the project. After the Washington Free Beacon exposed that deal, Whitmer rescinded the contract and said her office had no role in awarding it. Internal emails, however, later showed that Whitmer’s office gave the “green light” to move forward with the plan.

Hochul is not the only New York Democrat to award a COVID contract to Digital Gadgets after taking campaign cash from the owner’s family. In the spring of 2020, then-New York City mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration awarded $119 million in no-bid coronavirus contracts to the company shortly after the Tebele family gave the Democrat’s presidential campaign roughly $30,000. Digital Gadgets, however, failed to provide the 2,000 ventilators and 200,000 “breathing kits” it promised to the city, causing the de Blasio administration to cancel a $91 million contract that was part of its deal with the megadonor family’s company.

Hochul took office in August 2021 after disgraced Democrat Andrew Cuomo resigned in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations. Hochul has leveraged her relationships with deep-pocketed megadonors such as the Tebeles to raise a record-breaking $34 million since becoming governor. She emerged from New York’s gubernatorial primary in June and will face Republican challenger Lee Zeldin in November.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

San Francisco Public Schools released data last month painting a bleak picture of academic achievement in the famously liberal city.

For the 2021-2022 school year, just 47 percent of eighth graders were deemed ready for high school. Twenty-eight percent of students in the San Francisco Unified School District are “chronically absent”—a proportion that has doubled since the 2019-2020 school year. Two-thirds of African-American students fall into that category.

Despite the declining academic performance, San Francisco city officials have debated whether or not to rename schools or remove murals dedicated to important figures in American history. Three progressive members of the San Francisco school board were recalled earlier this year after parents opposed the district’s focus on social justice issues over education.

In English Language Arts, 42 percent of students in the district scored below proficient, with 72 percent of African Americans and 66 percent of “Latinx” at reading levels deemed unsatisfactory for their grade levels.

San Francisco schools in 2021 refused to disclose the percentage of students ready for college or a career after graduation. The district has yet to release data on the percentage of students on track to graduate and is withholding its 2022 report until the following year, according to the performance analysis report released in June.

Only Asian students in San Francisco are more likely than not to be prepared for high school. The proportion of students prepared has dropped 13 percent since 2021.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Parents think school boards are ‘not putting students first,’ says candidate

More than two years after San Diego first instituted a COVID-19 mask mandate, city schools are reinstating masks for students. Any child who doesn’t want to wear a mask, board president Sharon Whitehurst-Payne told KUSI News, won’t be allowed back in school.

“They can opt not to return to the regular school, but to go to the school … via Zoom,” Whitehurst-Payne told the local news station, adding that students “really should wear the mask.”

The board has already ordered the nearly 25,000 students in San Diego’s summer school program to mask up. Whitehurst-Payne said students in the program uncomfortable with wearing masks should “just not return.”

Remote learning during the pandemic has severely harmed children’s education, a Harvard study found. K-12 students who attended school remotely lost 40 percent of their typical math curriculum learning. Almost half of all parents, including around 70 percent of Republicans and around 50 percent of independents, say masking hurts their children’s education. Clinical trials, meanwhile, have shown that masks have little effect on the spread of COVID-19.

The announcement comes only a few months after San Diego schools in April lifted their original mask mandate. Whitehurst-Payne attributed the new mandate to “high” levels of COVID-19 transmission, according to the CDC. The district will revisit the policy in two weeks.

The San Diego Unified School District is not alone in ushering in a third year of COVID-19 protocols. Public schools in other Democratic-run cities such as Washington, D.C., New York City, and Chicago are forcing unvaccinated students to quarantine at home after COVID-19 exposures, even if they test negative. The CDC in May said “a third of the U.S. population” should wear masks indoors.

San Diego’s mask mandate “exemplifies why many parents are stepping up to run,” Carlsbad school board candidate Sharon McKeeman told ABC 10 News. “They feel that school boards have not listened to families’ concerns during the pandemic and … [are] not putting students first.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Sen. Mark Kelly (D., Ariz.) says he wants to stop lawmakers from exploiting their office for personal gain. But his investment in an aerospace company awarded a lucrative Pentagon contract is the kind of conflict of interest he’s claimed to oppose.

Kelly owns as much as $250,000 in non-public stock in Boom Technology, according to his most recent financial disclosure. The former astronaut served on Boom’s board of advisers until 2019 and had up to $50,000 in stock options in the company that expired in February. In January, Boom Technology announced a strategic partnership with the Air Force worth up to $60 million, one of the military branch’s “largest investments” into research of supersonic aviation. The three-year partnership marked a “substantial increase” over an Air Force contract with Boom Technology from 2020, before Kelly entered the Senate.

Kelly’s stake in Boom poses a potential conflict of interest because of his position on the Senate Armed Services Committee, which oversees the Pentagon’s budget. He is also on the Airland Subcommittee, which has oversight of the Air Force’s research budget. Kelly has introduced multiple bills to prohibit members of Congress from profiting off their office, including bans on lawmakers from trading stocks and receiving campaign contributions from corporate PACs. Kelly, who has said he wants to “root out corruption and increase transparency in Washington,” exercised stock options in Boom Technology in April 2021.

Kelly placed his assets in a blind trust in July 2021 to ensure “transparency and accountability.” He has since proposed legislation to require all members of Congress to do the same. But other lawmakers have cast doubt on the practicality of blind trusts to curb conflicts of interests. “You know what you put in, so it’s not really blind,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D., Calif.).

Asked for comment, Kelly’s office denied his investments pose a conflict of interest, saying that senators and congressional committees do not award contracts to individual companies. But Boom Technology lobbies the Senate on defense appropriations and noise pollution, the main hurdle to commercially viable supersonic flight. The federal government banned supersonic commercial flight in the 1970s because of the “sonic boom” airplanes emit when flying faster than the speed of sound. Boom Technology and its competitors claim they can drastically reduce the noise pollution in their airplanes.

As a Boom adviser, Kelly helped the company land one of its earliest commercial wins. According to Boom CEO Blake Scholl, Kelly arranged a key meeting between the company and his friend, Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson. The billionaire later pledged to buy 10 of Boom’s supersonic planes. Emerson Collective, the investment firm founded by Apple heiress Laurene Powell Jobs, is also a major investor in Boom. The Apple heiress gave maximum campaign contributions to Kelly in 2019 and 2021.

Boom has touted its technology for potential use by the American military, but the company has also worked with Chinese companies to “bring supersonic flight to China,” the Washington Free Beacon has reported.

Kelly has faced scrutiny before over his business dealings. He cofounded a space tourism company, World View Enterprises, that partnered with Tencent, a Chinese technology behemoth that helps Beijing censor the Internet.

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

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

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Monday ended its COVID-19 program for cruise ships that reported cases of the virus, while saying that ships can handle their own testing and mitigation.

“CDC has worked closely with the cruise industry, state, territorial, and local health authorities, and federal and seaport partners to provide a safer and healthier environment for cruise passengers and crew,” the federal agency’s website said in an update on Monday. “Cruise ships have access to guidance and tools to manage their own COVID-19 mitigation programs.”

“While cruising poses some risk of COVID-19 transmission,” the agency said, the “CDC will continue to publish guidance to help cruise ships continue to provide a safer and healthier environment for crew, passengers, and communities going forward.” The agency did not post a date for the latest guidance, but an Epoch Times review of archived pages shows that the update was posted Monday.

Throughout the pandemic, the cruise industry worldwide has been gutted by lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and other government-imposed rules. Cruise industry groups have called on the CDC to end its program for months.

Health officials have often scrutinized cruise ships and warned that the vessels allow for widespread transmission of COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. In early 2020, extensive media coverage was dedicated to an outbreak on the Diamond Princess ship in Japan, prompting health agencies worldwide to place curbs on cruises.

‘Important Step Forward’

In a statement Monday, Cruise Lines International Association spokeswoman Anne Madison told USA Today that it’s pleased the rules were dropped “in favor of a set of guidelines for public health operations on cruise ships

“We look forward to reviewing the details, which we understand will be posted on the CDC website in the coming days,” she told the news outlet. “This is an important step forward in the CDC aligning the guidelines for cruise with those it has established for other travel, hospitality, and entertainment sectors.”

The CDC used a so-called “Conditional Sailing Order” throughout the pandemic after having first issued a no-sail order in 2020. The CDC dropped the conditional order as well as its color-coded COVID-19 warning system earlier this year, which was also hailed by cruise industry groups.

As for mandatory vaccination rules on ships, several fully vaccinated cruises have faced respective COVID-19 outbreaks so far in 2022.

A “100 percent vaccinated” Princess Cruises vessel, for example, reported a COVID-19 outbreak before it docked in San Francisco, officials said in late March.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis fought against COVID-19 restrictions for cruise ships, including vaccine mandates. Last year, the Republican governor vowed that he would take legal measures to end the enforcement of CDC rules at ports in Florida, which are used by major cruise operators.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

A top U.S. health agency is refusing to identify which employees are working on vaccine safety teams, drawing criticism from watchdog groups.

The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is a database in which people file reports of adverse events following vaccination. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) manages the database with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The Epoch Times sought the names of employees on three CDC teams charged with analyzing data from VAERS, including a team that looks at data pertaining to post-vaccination heart inflammation. The CDC denied the request in full.

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requires agencies to comply with information requests but establishes exemptions that agencies can cite to withhold requested information. Roger Andoh, a CDC FOIA officer, cited an exemption that protects “personnel and medical files and similar files” if the disclosure of the files “would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”

“The information that has been withheld under Exemption 6 consists of employee names. We have determined that the individual(s) to whom this information pertains has a substantial privacy interest in withholding it,” Andoh wrote to The Epoch Times.

Calls for Transparency

Watchdog groups questioned the move.

“If Democrats and Republicans want the American people to trust government institutions, i.e. CDC, NIH [National Institutes of Health] and all the others, one would think members of Congress, agency bureaucrats, and the president’s administration would be motivated to start by offering transparency and eliminating the taxpayer’s justifiable questions and worries,” Adam Andrzejewski, CEO and founder of OpenTheBooks.com, told The Epoch Times in an email.

“Not having the ability to see into the bureaucracy is troubling and these agencies are rife with conflicts of interest. Denying transparency to the public is never the answer.”

Michael Chamberlain, director of Protect the Public’s Trust, noted that Americans’ trust in the government, and health agencies in particular, has declined during the pandemic, according to surveys.

“Pulling the veil of secrecy over basic agency information only serves to make this situation worse,” he told The Epoch Times in an email.

The CDC’s FOIA office reviewed its decision after a request from The Epoch Times.

“I’ve taken a look at your case and we stand by the full denial of the requested information due to the potential for harassment and to protect the physical safety of the employees on these teams,” Bruno Viana, a deputy director who handles FOIA questions, told The Epoch Times in an email.

The Epoch Times has appealed the determination to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the parent agency of the CDC and the NIH.

VAERS Teams

The CDC describes VAERS as “the nation’s early warning system” for the detection of vaccine safety signals, or signs that specific side effects are linked to a vaccine. Health care workers are required to report serious adverse events following vaccination to the database, and other interested parties, such as relatives, can also file reports.

Health officials have repeatedly said that signals from the COVID-19 vaccines would be detected by VAERS and other systems like it, but one of the most prevalent serious side effects, heart inflammation, appears to have been first identified by the Pentagon, not the CDC. Even after the Pentagon discovered the issue, the CDC’s director said no signal was found, though the agency has since acknowledged the side effect.

Raw data from VAERS doesn’t alone constitute a safety signal, according to the CDC. The agency says experts must analyze the data to figure out if signals truly exist.

The three teams whose members the CDC is shielding are among those tasked with analyzing the data, including digging into medical records from reports. One focuses on post-vaccination blood clotting—a condition identified after Johnson & Johnson vaccination. Another looks at the post-vaccination heart inflammation, which has appeared in many more people—especially young males—than expected after receipt of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines. A third analyzes an assortment of data.

The work of the teams has been cited by CDC officials during meetings about vaccines.

If the names of the team members were released, they could be used to file additional records requests, which could shed light on how the CDC is analyzing the VAERS data. For example, one could request emails sent between two team members during the time when the heart inflammation issues were first uncovered to see if they were aware of the issue before U.S. military doctors.

The names of all CDC employees are listed in the Department of Health and Human Services’ employee directory, but it isn’t clear from the directory which workers are on the VAERS teams.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

BlackRock, JPMorgan Chase, others respond to boycott notices from West Virginia state treasurer

Six financial institutions that West Virginia Treasurer Riley Moore contacted over their alleged boycotting of the fossil fuel industry have replied, denying the accusations while laying the groundwork for what could be a protracted legal battle.

The Epoch Times obtained the letters through a West Virginia Freedom of Information Act request.

Moore sent letters to BlackRock, JPMorgan Chase, U.S. Bancorp, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley on June 10.

That was in line with a new West Virginia law that limits the state’s ability to do business with financial institutions believed to be boycotting energy companies with ties to coal, oil, or natural gas production.

The companies had to respond to the letters within 30 days of receiving them to avoid being placed on a list of restricted financial institutions, which would have been published 45 days after Moore’s office sent them. The West Virginia State Treasurer’s Office still intends to publish a list of restricted financial institutions.

Coal, natural gas, and oil are important sources of revenue for the state, including through what are known as severance taxes.

In fiscal year 2022, West Virginia collected almost $800 million in such taxes, more than the nearly $300 million collected during the previous fiscal year.

In addition to providing direct tax revenue, the fossil fuel industry is a significant driver of the state’s overall prosperity.

A West Virginia University research report found that coal power and coal mining were collectively responsible for roughly $13.9 billion in economic activity in West Virginia in 2019.

Sen. Joe Manchin

Unsurprisingly, one of the few national-level Democrats who defend fossil fuels is Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.).

On July 14, Manchin made it apparent that he wouldn’t back resident Joe Biden’s efforts to finance additional climate and energy programs.

The move prompted one University of California–Santa Barbara political science professor to write on Twitter that she was “holding [her] children and sobbing.”

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), and other Democrats have since taken aim at Manchin’s chairmanship of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Moore, a Republican, thinks Democratic rhetoric and policies targeting the fossil fuel industry have helped shift voters in West Virginia, a state long dominated by Democrats, toward the Republican Party.

“We have union members voting for us in large numbers now, which was not the case previously,” Moore told The Epoch Times on July 18.

‘Risk Management’

The banks and financial institutions that received letters have argued that their various policies on fossil fuel financing don’t qualify as boycotts, claiming that they’re covered by the ‘reasonable business purpose’ exemption in West Virginia’s new law.

“The Company’s reasonable business purpose for any determination not to proceed with a transaction includes assessment of both commercial viability and risk management for the Company and its clients,” Goldman Sachs’s letter reads.

It also noted that it tells firms in the energy sector that a diversification strategy tends to make companies “much more successful in obtaining financing.”

“That is the basis for the note in the Company’s Environmental Policy Framework, available on its public website, about the phasing out, over time, of financing of thermal coal mining companies that do not have a diversification strategy within a reasonable timeframe,” the letter reads.

Goldman Sachs’s letter also states that the company doesn’t back energy firms if their financing supports new thermal coal mines, mountaintop removal mining, new coal plants that lack carbon capture or equivalent technologies, and new upstream oil drilling in the Arctic.

Similarly, Wells Fargo asserted that its limitations on the financing of coal, its “additional levels of due diligence to companies in the oil and gas and mining industries,” and its unwillingness to fund oil drilling in the Arctic reflect a reasonable business purpose—namely, risk management.

Morgan Stanley explicitly argued that its risk management strategy encompasses “the risks of climate change” to “our reputation and client relations.”

In its own “Environmental and Social Policy Statement,” Morgan Stanley pledges to not finance new coal plants without carbon capture or similar technologies and to not finance new thermal coal mining.

“By 2030, we will phase out our remaining credit exposure to companies with greater than 20% of revenue from thermal coal mining globally,” the policy statement reads.

JPMorgan Chase made a very similar argument in its letter to the West Virginia State Treasurer’s Office.

Like Wells Fargo and other firms that responded to Moore’s letters, JPMorgan Chase stated that it already provides significant financing to the energy industry, countering the argument that they’re boycotting it.

Yet, the language in West Virginia’s law refers not merely to full de-banking, but more broadly to any action “intended to penalize, inflict economic harm on, or limit commercial relations with a company” involved in fossil fuels or doing business with a fossil fuel company.

This includes actions on a firm because it “does not commit or pledge to meet environmental standards beyond applicable federal and state law.”

Wells Fargo, for its part, pointed out that it recommended against a resolution at its 2022 shareholder meeting that would have seen it “adopt a boycott-like policy prohibiting lending to or underwriting new fossil fuel development.” That resolution failed to pass.

Law Professor Questions Responses

William J. Carney, Charles Howard Candler professor of law emeritus at Emory Law School, didn’t find the financial institutions’ arguments convincing.

In a July 15 email interview with The Epoch Times, Carney noted that some of the banks and financial institutions “claim ‘environmental risks,’ which involves either the risk of government regulations or a risk of reduced demand for their products.”

“Rising oil prices put the lie to the price risk, as does President [Joe] Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia to beg for more output,” he said. “Government regulation is dependent on politics, which currently suggests a consumer revolt against anti-energy policies.”

Carney said he strongly disagrees with the overall push for de-banking oil, coal, and natural gas companies.

“Obviously it is suicide for local banks to boycott fossil fuel companies in West Virginia. The entire anti-carbon fuel movement is predicated on a false assumption: that global warming is caused by the use of fossil fuels,” he said. “[Boards] that act on this assumption have not engaged in a reasonable inquiry, and thus should not be protected by the Business Judgment Rule.”

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

If there is one consistent fact about electric vehicles, it’s that they are unreliable. Now their charging stations have come into question as well.

In Aspen and Glenwood Springs, Colorado, many companies have implemented charging stations in their parking lots. Not all of them are fully functional, however.

Chris Lane, a Basalt resident who owns two electric cars, highlighted a couple of issues with the local charging stations: Cables are ripped out, attachments are damaged and screens are cracked.

If there is a mechanical problem with any one of these stations, it automatically shuts down, Aspen Daily News reported.

“I charge in Glenwood, I see problems. I charge in Aspen, I see problems,” Lane said. He mentioned one exception: Tesla’s stations.

“I will say this, the Tesla stations are way better, flawless,” he said.

Companies and stores that have EV stations in their parking lots are expected to take care of them, but this has not always been the case.

The Willits Town Center in Basalt, Colorado, is a prime example. With 11 total stations, five were out of order and two were inaccessible, leaving only four functioning chargers available.

“I see mechanical failures up and down the valley,” Lane said.

Despite Tesla’s more consistent reliability, most charging stations in the area have been inoperable. This fact should be concerning for EV owners, especially if they are traveling long distances.

Furthermore, a gas-powered sedan was seen in one of the two parking spaces in front of an EV station on July 10. The second spot, as Aspen Daily News wrote, was a handicapped space, “creating confusion as to whether it could be used for charging for a driver who wasn’t handicapped.”

So even when the EV stations work, someone might park their gas car in front of it, preventing EV owners from charging. This is another indication that buying an electric car is inefficient and inconvenient in the long run.

Philip Jeffreys, SkiCo director of housing development, described the local charging station conditions as a sort of “Wild West.” SkiCo owns 12 charging stations, which roughly make up 26 percent of all spaces in the company’s private parking lot.

In addition to slow recharge times and long lines, this incident demonstrates yet another EV technology failure … and it’s not just in Colorado.

Tesla Owners Share Alarming Message Received on Screen Amid Heat Wave

In San Francisco alone, 23 percent of EV stations were not functional of the 657 plugs studied. The study excluded Tesla’s charging stations.

It sure seems like electric vehicles will not become the future of driving, based on this ongoing trend.

Despite the left’s political efforts in advocating for widespread EV use, the future is not going green anytime soon.

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

A trio of U.S. senators is requesting a security review of a farmland purchase by a Chinese agribusiness with a founder who has links to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), raising concerns about the property’s proximity to a U.S. military installation.

Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), John Hoeven (R-N.D.), and Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) are asking the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS)—an interagency group that screens foreign investments for security risks—to review the Fufeng Group’s purchase of 370 acres of farmland near the Grand Forks Air Force Base for potential “national security implications.”

“This property is approximately 12 miles from Grand Forks Air Force Base, which has led to concern that Fufeng operations could provide cover for PRC [the People’s Republic of China] surveillance or interference with the missions located at that installation, given Fufeng Group’s reported ties to the Chinese Communist Party,” the senators wrote in a July 14 letter addressed to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen.

“PRC investments in the United States demand scrutiny. We therefore urge you, through CFIUS, to determine whether this project has national security implications and inform us when such a review is completed.”

Fufeng is a manufacturer of bio-fermented, corn-derived products, which are used in end products ranging from animal feed to pharmaceuticals. A Hong Kong-listed company, the group has multiple subsidiaries around the world, but most of its production facilities can be found in northeast China.

Fufeng’s chairman, Li Xuechun, was a provincial-level representative in China’s rubber-stamp legislature system—the People’s Congress—in 2008 and 2013 in northeastern Shandong Province and has been a CCP member since 1985, according to Chinese media reports.

Li was awarded the “model worker” award and an “outstanding” award for entrepreneurs by Shandong provincial authorities in 2003. According to geopolitical analyst Ross Kennedy, the awards revealed Li to have embodied “the synthesis of economic and political goals of the Shandong region and the CCP.”

Considering Fufeng’s connections to an adversarial regime and the sensitive nature of the U.S. military installation, Cramer says the corn mill’s location is too close for comfort.

“There’s one very specific concern that has a lot of people focused on it, and that is that it’s in fairly close proximity to the Grand Forks Air Force Base. The Grand Forks Air Force Base is a very important ISR mission,” he told NTD, a sister media outlet of The Epoch Times, referring to the intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance activities at the base.

Cramer also noted that the Chinese regime is “very strategic” about the acquisitions of overseas assets, demonstrating a “willingness to use economic enticement to gain access to very important assets, whether it’s a port in Sri Lanka or an airport in Uganda.”

“China has been a predatory investor for a long time,” he said.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.) agrees with his Republican colleagues.

“The Senate Intelligence Committee has been loudly sounding the alarm about the counterintelligence threat posed by the PRC,” Warner told CNBC. “We should be seriously concerned about Chinese investment in locations close to sensitive sites, such as military bases around the U.S.”

According to a May report by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, an influential congressional advisory body, the Air Force facility “houses some of the United States’ top intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities.”

The commission found the mill’s location “particularly convenient for monitoring air traffic flows in and out of the base, among other security-related concerns.”

A representative of Fufeng USA, the subsidiary of Fufeng Group that has been leading the development and discussions with the City of Grand Forks, North Dakota, dismissed such security concerns.

“I know we’re not going to be asked to be collecting any intelligence on Grand Forks Air Force Base,” Eric Chutorash, chief operating officer of Fufeng USA, told local media outlets in March. “I can’t stress it any more than that. Me personally, I wouldn’t provide it. I don’t believe the team being built there would provide it.”

Brandon Bochenski, mayor of Grand Forks, has touted the economic benefits of the project while maintaining that the city has been working with authorities for direction.

“We have been in contact with our Governor, ND [North Dakota] state agencies, U.S. Senators, and U.S. House Representative regarding the project,” Bochenski previously told The Epoch Times in an email.

“We see economic benefits of a new wet-corn milling facility in the region. We are doing as much due diligence as possible and look to the appropriate federal agencies for national security insights and direction.”

The Pentagon declined to comment, and the Treasury didn’t respond to an inquiry from The Epoch Times.

J.M. Phelps contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

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.

The first hospital in America to mandate a COVID-19 vaccine for all employees is now facing a staffing shortage from infections.

Houston’s Methodist Hospital has hundreds of employees out of work because they tested positive for the virus that causes COVID-19. At the same hospital in 2021, 153 staff members who refused to get vaccinated quit or were fired. Now Methodist leadership is trying to avert a crisis.

“What is worrisome is the climbing number of our employees who cannot work because they are home sick with COVID-19. Almost 400 employees tested positive last week,” Dr. Robert Phillips, the executive vice president and chief physician executive of Houston Methodist, wrote in an internal email on July 12 obtained by The Epoch Times.

“While most of these employees are getting COVID-19 from the community, it is vital that we don’t face a situation where too many employees are out sick and we find ourselves with a staffing shortage,” he added.

Houston Methodist, with a workforce of around 28,000, was the first hospital system in the country to mandate the COVID-19 vaccine for all of its employees. It also was the first system in the nation to mandate the vaccine for its private health care providers who are credentialed members of its medical staff. The hospital later required all its employees to get a vaccine booster by March 1.

Most employees got vaccinated and stayed, but the system is having trouble with staffing as the vaccines prove increasingly worse at protecting against infection as new variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, emerge.

“The spike in cases is happening all over the country and is likely attributed to the highly contagious and more vaccine-resistant omicron subvariant,” Phillips wrote. “BA.5 is now the most infectious variant so far and is thought to be four times more vaccine evasive than the last dominant variant.”

BA.5 is a subvariant of Omicron. It recently became the dominant strain in the United States, according to federal data.

Phillips nodded at how the vaccines provide little protection against infection, describing BA.5 as four times more “vaccine-evasive” than the last dominant strain, which was BA2.12.1.

While many employees are sick, Phillips said the spike is “not yet correlating with a large surge in hospitalizations” in Houston Methodist, with just 290 COVID-19 patients in the system as of July 12.

None of the patients are Methodist employees, according to Stefanie Asin, a spokeswoman for Houston Methodist Hospital. Asked how many of the hospitalized COVID patients are vaccinated, Asin said she didn’t know. Nearly half of the patients in the system in late 2021 were vaccinated.

Problem With Mandates

“The problem with vaccine mandates is that they are immunologically ignorant by ignoring the powerful effect of natural immunity,” Dr. Marty Makary, a Johns Hopkins surgeon and professor, told The Epoch Times. “Natural immunity has been formally studied in over 200 studies and has been found to be more effective than vaccinated immunity.”

Studies from scientists in Qatar, the United States, and other countries have found those who survived COVID-19 had superior protection than the vaccinated, though a smaller number of studies indicate the opposite.

Nurse Jennifer Bridges was fired by Methodist in June 2021 for refusing the vaccine. “This only proves our point that the vaccine doesn’t work. A true vaccine would prevent you from catching the virus. It’s time Methodist owns up to its mistakes,” Bridges told The Epoch Times after reviewing Phillips’ memo.

“That is absolutely a false premise,” Asin, the hospital’s spokeswoman responded. “The vaccines were never intended to stop you from getting it. The point of the vaccines is to keep you from severe illness and being hospitalized. The mandates and the vaccines are absolutely working.”

Bridges now works at a private COVID-19 clinic located in Houston called BreatheMD, which is owned by Dr. Mary Talley Bowden.

“I had COVID two years ago and have never gotten sick again—even though all I do is care for COVID  patients,” she said.

Bridges and a number of other former Houston Methodist workers sued their employer over the refusal to recognize natural immunity and other aspects of the mandate, but the lawsuit was thrown out and the appeal was rejected.

But Makary, a member of the National Academy of Medicine, said the science shows the naturally immune should have been retained.

“When Methodist fired nurses who had natural immunity for not being vaccinated, they fired those least likely to spread the infection at the workplace,” he said. “Many nurses have circulating antibodies that neutralize the COVID virus, but they are not antibodies that Methodist hospital recognizes.”

Bridges said, “The patients are suffering in the hospitals, and the little staff they have are overworked due to these shortages. It’s sad that they would rather keep away very healthy, unvaccinated nurses with natural immunity when they need us so badly.”

“What does natural immunity actually mean?” Asin responded. “We required the vaccines for our employees to keep the patients safe.” She said they do not currently have staffing shortages.

Change in Tune

The vaccines were authorized by federal regulators to prevent symptomatic infection, and were touted by vaccine makers and numerous health officials as offering high protection.

As that protection has waned, authorities focus on the protection the vaccines provide against severe disease.

While Methodist Hospital now says the vaccines were intended to protect its employees from severe illness, that is not what its leaders said a year and a half ago, according to emails reviewed by The Epoch Times. In February 2021, the hospital emailed an offer of a $500 bonus to any hospital employee who got two shots of the vaccines. The email says, “The Hope Bonus is a reward for setting the right example and doing our part to stop the spread.”

Dr. Marc Boom, the president and CEO of Houston Methodist, emailed employees on April 15, 2021, telling them that the mandate was for preventing infection and spread to patients:  “We’re seeing positive results as the number of employee infections has dropped inversely with the number of employees receiving the vaccine. It appears we’ve successfully created herd immunity at Houston Methodist.”

Herd immunity means the level of protection that comes from vaccines, prior infection, or both, is so high that the spread of a disease is no longer an issue.

“COVID vaccines were originally thought to reduce COVID transmission, but that understanding quickly changed, rendering policies for unvaccinated people obsolete,” Makary said. “If someone who does not have natural immunity chooses not to get vaccinated, they do so at their own individual risk, but they pose no public health threat now that population immunity is high.”

Bowden, Bridges’s new employer, lost her privileges with Houston Methodist after she announced that she would only treat unvaccinated patients who couldn’t get care elsewhere. The hospital said Bowden was spreading “misinformation.” Bowden was suspended, and then she resigned.

Bowden said the number of vaccinated employees who are out sick means Houston Methodist leaders owe an explanation “to those of us who were persecuted for questioning the mandates.”

“We have 400 employees out sick with COVID. They are out sick without severe illness. We stand by the effectiveness of the vaccine,” Asin responded.

Phillips told his employees to do their best to not get sick.

“Our patients need us to stay healthy, so I strongly encourage our employees to be as vigilant as possible,” he said, adding later, “please use good judgment in your personal lives as community spread … is high right now.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

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.

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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

SUNAK’S WIFE IS A FOREIGN CITIZEN WITH A SHAREHOLDING IN THE WEF-LINKED COMPANY.

Former British finance minister Rishi Sunak – a frontrunner to become Britain’s next Prime Minister – has family ties to a technology partner of the World Economic Forum that has advocated for a Chinese Communist Party-style economy complete with trackable, digital identities and currency.

Sunak, who topped the second round of voting by Conservative Members of Parliament (MP) in the Tory leadership race on July 15th following Boris Johnson’s resignation, is widely considered the “neoliberal” or “globalist” candidate.

The father of Sunak’s wife Akshata Murthy is the founder of Infosys, an Indian information technology company that provides services to a host of Fortune 500 companies and banks. One of the company’s leading services is Finacle, a digital banking platform. Murthy remains a foreign citizen with “non dom” i.e. non UK tax-paying status despite her husband’s work as Britain’s most senior finance chief, and expectation of becoming Prime Minister.

Infosys is listed as an official partner of the World Economic Forum (WEF), which has been accused of seeking to develop the technological infrastructure to implement a global “social credit score” system.

Social credit scores have been used by authoritarian regimes to deny rights and restrict the movements of individuals who fail to comply with diktats. For the World Economic Forum, social credit priorities would likely focus on left-wing social issues like climate change, diversity, and equity.

Klaus Schwab’s Candidate.

Far from being a silent partner, InfoSys has earned praise from the WEF, being dubbed a “global leader in next-generation digital services and consulting.”

“With three decades of experience in managing the systems and workings of global enterprises, it steers clients through their digital journey by enabling them with an artificial intelligence-powered core that helps prioritize the execution of change…”

– WEF on the Sunak-linked InfoSys

Several Infosys executives have also contributed articles to the WEF website, including the company’s Global Head, President, and Chief Compliance Officer.

MUST READ: CONFLICTED MUCH? – World Economic Forum ‘Anti-Corruption’ Champion Is Pfizer Director AND Reuters CEO.

Infosys President Mohit Joshi has penned articles for the site in favor of digital banking, which provides the technological framework for the “social credit score” system the WEF has come under scrutiny for attempting to effectuate across the world.

Joshi echoes these sentiments in an article for the WEF from August 2020: “Why it’s time to take central banks’ digital currencies seriously.”

“What is clear is that the crisis of COVID-19 presents many challenges – but also a unique opportunity to rethink how money is managed and used in our society,” he asks.

“There also credible concerns that paper money can transmit the virus,” he claimed before asking:

“Who then can blame the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) when it announced in February that it would be destroying cash collected in high-risk environments, such as public transport, markets or in hospitals?”

“Digital currencies could remove the cumbersome operational and security apparatus which surround conventional forms of money transmission,” continues his article, before claiming “there are political and social benefits as well.”

China’s Candidate.

“The potential for China here is immense. If the e-RMB is adopted broadly as a system to streamline trade and reduce risk, China could become the world’s trade banker, as well as its factory. Yet the bigger goal for China is actually more local, and relates to financial inclusion. Digitising the RMB will grant access to financial services to hundreds of millions of citizens, including some of the most disadvantaged. This benefit is something that can be applied to any country across the world,” continues the article, which also revealed that Infosys is contributing to digitization efforts.

MUST READ: Boris Johnson Resigns: He Couldn’t ‘Carrie On’ Any Longer. So What Next?

Another op-ed by Joshi – “Digital identity can help advance inclusive financial services” – advocates for granting every person a “unique digital identity” to conduct financial transactions. He points to the Chinese Communist Party as a successful example of this policy:

“The Chinese government in Zhejiang Province has developed an “enterprise digital code” for just this purpose, responding to small and mediums banks (SMBs) with easy-to-access financial resources. MYBank, a subsidiary of Ant Financial, the Chinese Big Tech firm, collaborates with the Chinese government through this scheme to provide cheap loans and other financial products to SMBs.”

He also calls for the creation of a “digital stability board” to regulate all payments.

“This “digital stability board” would give members the platform to share best practices and monitor risks in digital commerce and health care, for instance. With this board in place, data trusts could be built to manage individuals’ and SMBs’ data,” he explains.

Infosys is also a member of the WEF’s Partnering Against Corruption Initiative (PACI), which includes cross-industry representatives from the world’s largest corporations. The National Pulse recently exposed how the initiative, which purports to fight for transparency in business practices, is the former CEO of Reuters who now serves as a board member at COVID-19 vaccine maker Pfizer.

Its leaders are also involved with different WEF sub-groups, such as the Global Head of Sustainability and Design Consulting Services Corey Glickman, who is a member of the WEF Pioneer Cities working group.

Sunak himself has a history of being soft on China, telling the Telegraph that he wanted a “complete sea change” in relations with the Chinese Communist Party in favor of increased trade ties and economic collaboration. China, in turn, has endorsed Sunak’s candidacy.

THIS WILL END WELL.

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023 authorizes taxpayer funds for the U.S. Department of Defense to research and develop plant-based proteins for members of the military.

The congressional legislation, H.R. 7900, establishes a “Pilot Program on Research and Development of Plant-based Protein for the Navy.”

The bill stipulates that by March 1st, 2023, the Secretary of the Navy “shall establish and carry out a pilot program to offer plant-based protein options at forward operating bases for consumption by members of the Navy.” Plant-based protein options are defined as “edible vegan or vegetarian meat alternative products made using plant and other non-livestock-based proteins,” according to the bill.

At least two naval facilities will be made to participate in the pilot program and “prioritize facilities where livestock-based protein options may be costly to obtain or store.”

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2023, which dictates appropriations for military activities and programs run by the Department of Defense, explains that the pilot program will run for three years. Following its completion, the Secretary of the Navy will submit a report to Congress including the following findings:

(1) The consumption rate of plant-based protein options by members of the Navy under the pilot program.

(2) Effective criteria to increase plant-based protein options at naval facilities not identified under subsection (b).

(3) An analysis of the costs of obtaining and storing plant-based protein options compared to the costs of obtaining and storing livestock-based protein options at selected naval facilities.

On June 22nd,  the Committee on Armed Services held a markup session to consider the bill, with the House of Representatives later voting 57 to 1 in favor of recommending it.

MUST READ: Bill Gates-Funded Lab, Less Than 2 Miles From Wuhan Institute, Reports Cholera Case.

The pilot program comes amidst intense scrutiny over billionaires such as Bill Gates purchasing massive amounts of U.S. farmland to develop plant-based alternatives to animal meats. The Microsoft founder recently called on rich nations to switch entirely to synthetic beef.

The Chinese Communist Party has also collaborated on similar ventures, launching expansive influence operations targeting American agriculture officials with free trips to China.

THE NEWS RAISES QUESTIONS ABOUT THE ENDORSEMENT OF BIRX BY NH-1 CANDIDATE MATT MOWERS.

Dr. Deborah Birx – who often appeared in front of COVID-19 task force briefings on behalf of the Trump administration – has admitted to doctoring data associated with the government’s response, as well as quietly altering the Centers for Disease Control advice without authorization, according to her own book.

Birx – who was brought into the White House task force following recommendations from Republican Party figures such as Matt Mowers (now running for Congress in New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District) – writes in her underperforming book ‘Silent Invasion‘:

“I devised a work-around for the governor’s reports I was then writing. Instead of including those recommendations in the common bulleted list, I’d include them in the pandemic summary and state-specific recommendations in the governor’s reports, where they wouldn’t be so obvious. These weekly reports couldn’t go out on Monday without administration approval. Week by week Marc’s office began providing line-by-line edits. After the heavily edited documents were returned to me, I’d reinsert what they had objected to, but place it in those 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.”

Birx’s appointment was welcomed by her former Chief of Staff in the State Department, Mowers, who tweeted:

I served as Chief of Staff to Ambassador Birx and I have the utmost confidence that she will ensure America is prepared to confront the Coronavirus outbreak. Her passion and commitment to ensuring our nation’s health and safety are second to none.

— Matt Mowers (@mowers) February 27, 2020

Indeed, press reports indicate that Birx’s ability to operate in such a manner was specifically due to Mowers’s influence:

Though Birx was not personally close to the President, she was able to develop a close relationship with this White House in part because Trump campaign official Matt Mowers served as her chief of staff for nearly two years, according to a source familiar with her situation.

Within weeks, however, Birx was thwarting the will of President Trump and his team, in order to prioritize the demands of pharmaceutical lobbyists and Chinese Communist Party sympathisers like Anthony Fauci. She further revealed:

MUST READ: Bill Gates-Funded Lab, Less Than 2 Miles From Wuhan Institute, Reports Cholera Case.

This wasn’t the only bit of subterfuge I had to engage in. Immediately after the Atlas-influenced revised CDC testing guidance went up in late August, I contacted Bob Redfield. He confirmed my suspicions: he had disagreed with the guidance, but had felt pressured by HHS and the White House to post it. Also, many on his staff in Atlanta were still comfortable prioritizing symptomatic individuals. Even at this late point, eight months into the pandemic, many at both the White House and the CDC still refused to see that silent spread played a prominent role in viral spread and that it started with social gatherings, especially among the younger adults. We had to find a way around them. Recognizing the damage to public health the Scott Atlas–driven testing guidance could do and was doing with testing rates dropping across the country, Bob and I agreed to quietly rewrite the guidance and post it to the CDC website. We would not seek approval. Because we were both quite busy, it might take a week or two, but we were committed to subverting the dangerous message that limiting testing was the right thing to do.

As this was going on, Republican figures like Mowers were running cover for the scarfed bureaucrat:

Thankful for Ambassador Birx’s leadership in this response. We are in good hands. #nhpolitics https://t.co/p8ZZKus4Ir

— Matt Mowers (@mowers) March 13, 2020

Worse still, Birx claimed to offer little contrition over her outright insubordination, when challenged on the matter by then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows:

MUST READ: STUDY: 99% Of COVID-19 Data Websites Secretly Track Users.

“On September 18, I was still on the road—in Arizona again, for a meeting with those conducting proactive testing at the University of Arizona—when Mark Meadows’s name and number flashed across my White House–issued smartphone.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing? You rewrote and posted the CDC testing stuff.”

“Yes, I did, but—” “There’s no ‘buts’ here. You went over my head.”

I explained why I had done it. We’d already seen the drop in testing numbers resulting from Scott Atlas’s dangerous guidelines. Those few pages we’d rewritten would change how states could test, and we’d prevent even more community spread going into the dangerous winter ahead. Mark Meadows took this in and then, biting off each of his words, said, “You went over everyone else on the task force’s heads. You went around the whole approval process. You do not make unilateral decisions. It’s that simple. Period. End of sentence. Understood? Don’t ever do this again.”

“Understood. I did what I needed to do.”

“Don’t do that again without talking with me first.”

The news will raise questions about the work of Birx and those around her in the White House, and whether or not she acted illegally during her employment. The developments could also cost Mowers – whose lead in the New Hampshire 1 Congressional race has narrowed in recent months.

His main opponent – former Trump admin official Karoline Leavitt – has experienced a bumper fundraising quarter as well as garnering endorsements from key Trump-world figures such as Steve Cortes:

Karoline is a rising star of America First. https://t.co/TrYgCErLkz

— Steve Cortes (@CortesSteve) July 14, 2022

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

Remembering the courageous people who refused to be silenced

Over the past two decades, countless people of faith have lost their lives in communist China. And tens of thousands of them are still being persecuted there, every single day. These people face endless abuse and torture for displaying moral courage in the face of oppression.

Here, we remember 10 of these moral bravehearts, from all walks of life, who were killed for their faith.

Though the 5,000-year-old Chinese civilization was founded on faith and tradition, these very virtues are what the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) aims to uproot. Since the year 1992, over 100 million law-abiding spiritual believers—with their resolute faith in the universal values of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance—have been quietly turning back the destructive tide of atheism, merely due to their undeniable existence in this totalitarian society.

Fearful of the soaring popularity of Falun Gong, former head of the CCP Jiang Zemin decided to initiate an unprecedented campaign of persecution on July 20, 1999, to eradicate the peaceful practice.

Rooted in traditional Chinese culture, Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a self-cultivation practice consisting of meditative exercises and moral teachings. It was introduced in China 30 years ago, in 1992, and became hugely popular by the end of the decade, owing to its moral appeal and health benefits. According to official estimates at the time, 70 million to 100 million people were practicing Falun Gong in China. Today, Falun Gong is thriving outside China and is practiced in over 80 countries. Its adherents endeavor to be honest and virtuous, and uphold the age-old traditional thoughts of “good begets good” and “heaven accepts only kindness.”

However, the communist regime perceived Falun Gong’s presence too intimidating for the Party’s totalitarian rule—especially because the practice is bringing about a tangible rise in spirituality and restoring traditional culture, which is exactly what the Party has been persistently destroying since coming into power.

During this past 23 years of relentless persecution, countless Falun Gong adherents in China have been subjected to arrest, imprisonment, forced labor, torture, and even forced organ harvesting. Countless have been expelled from school, or fired from jobs. These people of faith usually make the majority of the CCP’s forced labor “workforce”—working for as long as 20 hours per day, often without pay, making export items like chopsticks, toys, Christmas lights, etc. Minghui.org, a U.S.-based website that reports on the spiritual practice and its persecution, confirmed that over 4,600 Falun Gong practitioners have died from the persecution, but that the actual death toll is likely much higher.

Many global news media, the United Nations, the U.S. Department of State, and Amnesty International, have reported on the severity of the persecution.

1. Body Cremated 11 Years After Death

Qin Yueming, from Yichun City, Heilongjiang province, was sentenced to 10 years in 2002 for refusing to give up his faith. On Feb. 25, 2011, the Jiamusi prison authorities force-fed him, and the feeding tube ended up being inserted into his lung. He was moved into an isolated room where he died the next day. When his family saw his body, they found blood in his mouth and nose, and his facial expression showed as if he was in extreme pain. His wife and daughter were persecuted for their years-long efforts to seek justice for his death. Eventually, the prison authorities were able to pressure his octogenarian father to sign a consent form to cremate his body, which had been kept in the prison for more than a decade after his death.

2. A Retired Colonel Persecuted

Gong Piqi, a 66-year-old retired colonel and former deputy chief of staff at Shandong Province Reserve Artillery Brigade, from Qingdao City, Shandong province, was reported to have died in Jinan Prison in April 2021; he had been sentenced to 7 1/2 years for refusing to stop practicing Falun Gong. The prison authorities informed the family that he had died of a stroke. However, when the family members saw his body, there was blood in his ears, and his head was injured and swollen.

3. Elderly Lady Dies 2 Hours After Arrest

Cui Jinshi, 88, from Harbin City, Heilongjiang province, was arrested for studying Falun Gong’s teachings with other adherents on April 13 this year. She died just two hours after her arrest. When her son first saw her dead body, he found that her throat was cut open. The police didn’t allow the rest of the family members to see her body but took the initiative to call up a local funeral home. As the police have withheld her death certificate, the family is finding it hard to get an independent autopsy done. At the time of writing, her body is still kept at the funeral home.

4. A Hospital President and His Oncologist Wife

Li Yanchun, a 68-year-old retired hospital president from Qinhuangdao City, Hebei province, was imprisoned in August 2021 for 7 1/2 years, despite his “dangerously high” blood pressure. His wife, an award-winning oncologist, was incarcerated for her faith in 2019. The couple were sentenced for distributing informational materials exposing the CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong.

5. A Retired Engineer

Wang Liuzhen, a retired metallurgical engineer in the Chang’an No. 2 Factory in Chongqing, in her 80s, died on Jan. 1 after a decade of persecution. She faced around-the-clock surveillance after authorities built a sentry box right outside her house; the security personnel often abused and beat her. At one point, she was also forcefully injected with drugs, which damaged her liver and left her blind. The constant harassment and beatings had reduced her to skin and bones before passing away.

6. Man Dies After 12 Years of Torture

Ge Zhijun, 42, from Zhuozhou City, Hebei province, died after enduring gruesome torture for a total of 12 years, leaving behind a grieving 9-year-old daughter, wife, and paralyzed father. He was subjected to extreme abuse which lead to his mental collapse. Handcuffed and shackled, he was once locked in a tiny 3-foot-long, 1-foot-wide cell for 15 days. Prison inmates who wanted to have their sentences reduced “assisted” the guards in torturing him; they would often throw him on the ground and then stand on his legs, press his chest so hard that he was unable to breathe, and burn his body with cigarettes.

Facing prolonged torture, his memory declined, and he developed a host of health issues, including hypertension and heart and liver problems. He was last released from prison in 2019. When he returned home, he mostly stayed silent and locked himself in a room, before passing away on Nov. 29, 2020.

7. A Manager Under Forest Bureau

Ma Shufang, 69, a former household affairs department manager under Tongbei County Forest Bureau Police Department, died of brain hemorrhage days after an appeals court upheld her three-year sentence in early June this year. She was arrested in August 2020, but later released on bail due to high blood pressure; she was indicted in August 2021 and sentenced to three years in a virtual trial in December 2021. After her appeal was rejected, she suffered a brain hemorrhage on June 4 and passed away six days later.

8. A Professor Falls Into Coma, Dies

Xing Wenzhen, 79, a professor at Northwestern Polytechnic University in Xi’an City, Shaanxi province, faced persecution for over 20 years before dying in October 2021. She was forced to retire early and was held in a brainwashing center for 102 days. Since the 2008 Beijing Olympics, surveillance cameras had been installed outside of her home to monitor her. In September 2021, the police harassment began again and the elderly lady couldn’t bear it anymore with her weakened body; she fell into a coma, and died in October that year.

9. A Retired Middle-School Teacher

Li Jingxia, 85, a retired middle-school teacher from Qiqihar City, Heilongjiang province, died three months after being detained in July 2020 after police monitored her phone calls. Prior to her last arrest, she had faced years of brutal persecution: The police burned her ears with a lighter, beat her with a belt until it cracked, pulled her hair, threatened to rape her, and covered her head with a plastic bag before hitting her with a thick club. In 2020, the police once again started harassing her. Faced with constant mental pressure, her health deteriorated, and she died in October that year.

10: Reportedly Declared Dead While Still Alive

Liu Qingfei, 74, from Shenyang City, Liaoning province, was arrested on Aug. 28, 2021, after police broke into his home, claiming they were there to give him a COVID-19 vaccine. He was detained for eight months and persecuted, before being pronounced dead on April 24 this year. When the family saw his body, they felt he didn’t look like a dead person; the police told them that he had died after developing a “sudden, acute condition.” The family suspect that Liu might have been pronounced dead while he was still alive. Liu’s body is currently in a funeral home, the family is seeking justice.

Source: The Epoch Times

The opening paragraph of Gen. Daniel Hokanson, chief of the National Guard Bureau, on their website reads:

“The National Guard is a lethal, cost-effective, dual-role operational force that provides strategic depth to the Army, Air Force, and Space Force, and responds to crises in our homeland. We are capable of operating in a complex global security environment, and continue to invest in modernization and readiness to prepare for the threats of the future. Today’s National Guard is an integral part of addressing the gravest challenges facing the Joint Force.”

Sort of… at least it should be.

Unfortunately, these days the Guard is being manipulated and often attacked on all sides as the proverbial political football.

First came the question of its use. Although the Guard was properly called into Minneapolis after the George Floyd rioting and into Portland after that benighted city’s post-election violence (maybe it should have been earlier), the question of why it was not present for the Jan. 6 events—however you want to define them—remains unanswered. From what we understand, then-President Donald Trump, under whose leadership they served, offered them to the Congressional leadership who, for whatever reason, were disinterested.

Yet worse, however, is what has happened now to the actual members of this volunteer army, the National Guard. (Yes, we should never forget that National Guardsmen, many of whom served previously, are all volunteers. What could be more patriotic than that?)

Those volunteers who did not dutifully—subserviently might be a better word—take the COVID-19 vaccines will be ejected from the National Guard.

From here on The Epoch Times:

“About 40,000 National Guard and 22,000 reserve soldiers will be blocked from service for rejecting the COVID vaccines, U.S. Army officials said on July 8.

“’Soldiers who refuse the vaccination order without an approved or pending exemption request are subject to adverse administrative actions, including flags, bars to service, and official reprimands,’ an Army spokesperson told Military.com.

“The deadline for the Defense Department’s vaccination mandate passed at midnight on June 30. The order cuts off pay and some of the military benefits to the 62,000 service members.”

I’m going to say right now that those 62,000 are most likely among the bravest of the National Guard because they have the courage to stand by their beliefs as few do.

Ironically, news of this despicable treatment of the very people to whom we owe our thanks arrived not long before the father of it all, Dr. Anthony Fauci, began to backpedal.

“White House COVID-19 adviser Anthony Fauci conceded Wednesday morning that COVID-19 vaccines don’t protect ‘overly well’ against the virus.

“Speaking during a Fox News interview, Fauci told host Neil Cavuto that ‘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.’”

So if they don’t protect “overly well” why are we kicking all those people out of the National Guard?

Few of those being ejected are anywhere near the supposed danger age of over 70 or so with the requisite co-morbidities. Most are reasonably physically fit, possibly quite fit. But they have to go. No “our bodies, ourselves” for them.

Fauci, in the Cavuto interview, suggested the vaccines indeed did work against severe reactions for older people because he had evidence. It turned out, however, that the evidence he provided was from a study with only one person—himself. He had taken an array of shots and boosters and, at 81, only got a self-described mild case of COVID.

I will counter that with another study of one person—myself. I’m only a few years younger than Fauci. I took the initial Pfizer shots way back in February 2021, abjured all boosters after that, almost never wore a mask except when forced on airplanes, and have been in many crowds, unmasked, in New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Nashville and have never contracted COVID at all, at least as far as I know.

Does that prove anything? Of course not, but neither does what Fauci told Cavuto “as a scientist.” Not remotely.

I don’t know for sure what inspired Fauci’s backpedaling and his ludicrous cover, but I suspect there’s a world of potential lawsuits out there that could cause grave financial harm to Big Pharma and those like Fauci who work so closely with them. One of the reasons some say they recommend these dubious shots to children is to avoid these devastating suits. When the government makes vaccines mandatory for children, the companies that produce them are held harmless.

Following on the theme of volunteers, and since I live in the Volunteer State (Tennessee), I would be remiss in not noting that as of now our Republican governor, Bill Lee, has been on the wrong side of the National Guard story, doing nothing, despite many asking, for the ejected Guardsmen. (The Tennessee Star has been covering this closely.)

Also in Tennessee, 5th District Congressional candidate Kurt Winstead, a brigadier general in the National Guard himself, has been curiously silent on his beleaguered fellow Guardsmen.

This, although the policy endangers far more than just the National Guard—it seriously endangers the already endangered national security of our country. As Breitbart is reporting, it’s on the brink of engulfing our entire army:

“At least 260,000 American troops—or about 13 percent of the 2.1 million total force—are not fully vaccinated despite a Biden administration vaccine mandate for the military, and many of them could face discharge.

“According to the Department of Defense website, at least 268,858 service members as of July 13 are still not in compliance with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s August 2021 mandate for every member of the military to be fully vaccinated with two doses of a vaccine. That figure does not count the thousands who have not taken any doses.”

I guess Biden is planning on having Ukrainians do all our fighting for us. Sorry, folks, we just don’t have the troops.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Resident Joe Biden on Friday warned that he may take executive actions targeting the climate and health care if Congress doesn’t pass a bill that’s suitable for his agenda.

“So let me be clear: if the Senate will not move to tackle the climate crisis and strengthen our domestic clean energy industry, I will take strong executive action to meet this moment,” he said in a statement released by the White House on Friday. “My actions will create jobs, improve our energy security, bolster domestic manufacturing and supply chains, protect us from oil and gas price hikes in the future, and address climate change.”

Biden also wrote that “health care is critical” and suggested he would issue an executive order to “lower drug prices and to prevent an increase in health insurance premiums for millions of families.”

In the statement, Biden did not elaborate on what steps he would take to address health care or the climate in his executive orders.

The statement came after Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) reportedly told top Democrats, including Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), on Thursday that he will not support new spending on climate-related measures or tax hikes

“I said, ‘Chuck until we see the July inflation figures, until we see the July, basically Federal Reserve rates, interest rates, then let’s wait till that comes out so we know that we’re going down a path that won’t be inflammatory, to add more to inflation,’” Manchin said on Friday morning during a radio interview.

“He says, ‘Are you telling me you won’t do the other right now?’” Manchin recalled. “I said, ‘Chuck, it’s wrong, it’s not prudent to do the other right now.’”

Democrats Make Demands

Following the development, Democrats expressed disappointment and demanded that Biden take executive action targeting the climate.

“With legislative climate options now closed, it’s now time for executive Beast Mode,” Sen. Shelton Whitehouse (D-R.I.) wrote on Twitter. “Free at last. Let’s roll. Do it all and start it now.”

Senate Finance Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) issued a statement in reference to Manchin’s decision, saying that “this is our last chance” to pass climate-related measures.

But a spokesperson for Manchin told reporters this week that the senator has serious concerns about soaring inflation. A report issued by the Bureau of Labor Statistics this week revealed that inflation spiked to 9.1 percent year-over-year in June.

“Political headlines are of no value to the millions of Americans struggling to afford groceries and gas as inflation soars to 9.1 percent,” Manchin spokeswoman Sam Runyon told Bloomberg. “Senator Manchin believes it’s time for leaders to put political agendas aside, reevaluate and adjust to the economic realities the country faces to avoid taking steps that add fuel to the inflation fire.”

Republicans say the spiking inflation and elevated gas prices are largely due to Biden’s policies. The president promoted the $2 trillion American Rescue Plan in early 2021 and also targeted the oil industry in a series of executive orders after he took office last year.

The White House released Biden’s statement threatening executive action while the president was visiting with the Saudi royal family on a several-day visit to the Middle East.

Source: The Epoch Times

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) launched an inquiry into the National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding of bat research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology, newly released emails show.

The interest from the top U.S. intelligence agency adds to the international scrutiny on the Wuhan facility, which houses one of China’s highest-level biosecurity labs that has been considered a possible source of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“In preparation for our call on Tuesday, Erik [Stemmy] (cc’d) has provided responses to your initial questions below (also attached),” wrote Ashley Sanders, an investigation officer at the NIH’s division of program integriy, in an email (pdf) dated May 22, 2020 with the subject “Grant Questions – FBI Inquiry,” and directed to FBI agent David Miller.

The email was obtained by government transparency watchdog Judicial Watch through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, which asked for records of communications, contracts, and agreements with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

The scope of the inquiry is unclear because the rest of the email correspondence, five pages in total, are entirely redacted. But the name of the email attachment “SF 424 AI110964-06 (received date 11/05/2018),” corresponds to the NIH grant “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.”

The project in question is headed by Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance, which then funnels money to the lab in Wuhan. From 2014 to 2019, the New York nonprofit received six yearly grants totaling $3,748,715 from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases under the NIH to fund the project, which was expected to end in 2026.

The FBI inquiry had focused on at least two of the grants, in 2014 and 2019 respectively, the email subject line suggests.

The 2014 grant aimed to “understand what factors increase the risk of the next CoV emerging in people by studying CoV diversity in a critical zoonotic reservoir (bats), at sites of high risk for emergence (wildlife markets) in an emerging disease hotspot (China),” according to the project description. Specifically, the researchers would assess the coronavirus spillover potential, develop predictive models of bat coronavirus emergence risk, and use virus infection experiments as well as “reverse genetics” to test the virus’s transmission between species.

In the project summary for the 2019 grant, EcoHealth stated that they had found that “bats in southern China harbor an extraordinary diversity of SARSr-CoVs,” and some of those viruses can “infect humanized mouse models causing SARS-like illness, and evade available therapies or vaccines.”

Recently disclosed documents show that, under one grant, the WIV had conducted an experiment that resulted in a more potent version of a bat coronavirus.

In the project that took place under the fifth grant, from June 2018 to May 2019, the researchers infected two groups of laboratory mice, one of which with a modified version of a bat coronavirus already existing in nature, and another with the original virus.

Those infected with the modified version became sicker, Lawrence Tabak, a principal deputy director at the NIH, wrote in a letter in response to a Congressional inquiry. (not sure if we need to specify who it’s from)

“As sometimes occurs in science, this was an unexpected result of the research, as opposed to something that the researchers set out to do,” wrote Tabak. He acknowledged that EcoHealth had violated the grant terms by failing to notify the NIH “right away” about the finding.

The experiment appears to fit the definition of gain-of-function research regardless of its intentions, according to some experts.

“The genetic manipulation of both MERS and the SARS conducted in Wuhan clearly constituted gain-of-function experiments,” Jonathan Latham, executive director of The Bioscience Research Project, previously told The Epoch Times. He said the NIH’s wording choice “unexpected” was “absurd,” “when clearly these experiments were expressly designed to detect increased pathogenicity.”

An April 2020 memo (pdf) reveals that the State Department assessed lab leak as the most likely origin of COVID-19.

“The Wuhan labs remained the most likely yet least probed. All other possible places of virus’ origin have been proven false,” the memo stated, citing circumstantial evidence such as safety standard lapses, experiments on bats by WIV researchers, and the lab’s role in a “deliberate coverup, especially destruction of any evidence of leaks and disappearance of its employees as Patient Zero.”

The Epoch Times has reached out to the FBI for comments.

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

Temporary restraining order on vaccine mandate

A federal district court in Ohio has temporarily blocked the Biden administration from enforcing the COVID-19 vaccine mandate on thousands of U.S. Air Force service members who remain unvaccinated after having opposed the shot on religious grounds but have had their religious exemption applications denied.

U.S. District Court Judge Matthew McFarland, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump in late 2019, issued a temporary restraining order filed on Thursday preventing the Biden administration from taking any action for at least 14 days against any Air Force member who opted not to take the COVID-19 vaccine.

The judge’s ruling also grants the case “class status,” which means the temporary restraining order will grant relief to all members of the Air Force who submitted a religious accommodation request from the COVID-19 vaccine mandate from Sept. 1, 2021, to the present, and were confirmed via the Air Force Chaplains as having a sincerely held religious belief, but had their requests denied or not yet acted upon. Plaintiffs had contended that such a class would include over 12,000 airmen.

The action stems from a case filed in February 2022 challenging the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Plaintiffs comprise 18 active-duty members of the Air Force serving at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio; Hurlburt Field in Florida; Randolph Air Force Base in Texas; and Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Georgia, plus all similarly affected members.

“The court has already granted a preliminary injunction to our 18 original plaintiffs,” an attorney in the case, Tom Bruns of Siri & Glimstad law firm, told The Epoch Times. “The court has now granted a class certification—and that’s kind of the historic moment—Air Force-wide, service-wide, it covers every member of the Air Force. And now he’s saying, ‘Why shouldn’t I grant the preliminary injunction to all those folks?’”

McFarland wrote in his order (pdf) in granting the class status: “They face separation from the Air Force and other disciplinary measures. A single injunction would provide relief to the entire class. Indeed, the main purpose of a [lawsuit class] is to provide relief through a single injunction or declaratory judgment. Because Defendants have uniformly maintained a policy of overriding Airmen’s religious objections to the COVID-19 vaccine, they have acted ‘on grounds that apply generally to the class.’

“Moreover, the class definition requires that a Chaplain certify that the airman’s religious beliefs are sincerely held. Finally, a single injunction would provide the proposed class with the relief they seek from the harm they stand to suffer.”

McFarland gave Air Force officials until July 21 to file a response “identifying why this Court should not grant a class-wide preliminary injunction.” He also gave plaintiffs an opportunity to then file a response by July 25.

According to data from the Air Force, as of July 11, over 6,800 service members have been denied religious accommodation requests. Only 104 have had their applications approved. Meanwhile, 834 members have been “administratively separated” by the force. According to the figures, 97.1 percent of the Air Force has been fully vaccinated, and 0.1 percent has been partially vaccinated.

Painful Consequences

McFarland’s order came in the nick of time for some airmen. Many have received notices in the last week, with a date of their final day, an airman at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska told The Epoch Times.

One client was in the middle of a board hearing determining his future with the service, Attorney Wendy Cox of Siri & Glimstad law firm, told The Epoch Times. Objecting to the COVID-19 shot put airmen at risk of job loss and disciplinary measures.

“One of the officers we were representing was facing $1,000 a month pay reduction for two months as well as an official letter of reprimand,” Cox said. “We’ve had people removed from positions of commands because of their alleged violation of this order to get a vaccination, of which they are unable to get because it violates their religious beliefs.”

“Some were stranded in foreign countries after refusing the shot, and missed weddings. There’s some pretty tragic stories about what has happened,” Cox said.

The Air Force officials told the court that they had every consequence still on the table for service members who refused to get the shot, and those consequences included everything up to court martial and two years incarceration at Leavenworth, the attorneys said.

“The proof in the case was very clear. The Air Force tried to pretend that they did individualized analysis of each service member’s religious objection, and, and that did occur in terms of the service member proving they had a sincerely held religious belief,” Bruns said. “But then the Air Force, in its affidavits, proved that when it came to accommodating that belief, they took the position we can’t grant religious exemptions, because we have to save these slots for administrative and medical exemptions. So their own proof was ‘We didn’t do the individualized analysis on the back end, because we weren’t granting any religious exemptions.’ And it was only once the lawsuits got filed, that they granted a few religious exemptions. And all of those folks were near the end of their career.”

The Air Force wanted the airmen’s cases heard individually, but in his decision allowing class status, McFarland noted how the Air Force did not consider each case individually when denying religious accommodation requests.

“Defendants appear to again argue that the court must individually analyze each airmen’s claims on the one hand, while systematically denying all religious accommodation requests despite the factual differences defendants claim the court should consider on the other,” McFarland wrote.

“The Court appreciates there may be minor factual differences between the members of the class, including roles, responsibilities, levels of proximity, likelihood of deployment or travel, and ability to telework, as well as different religious beliefs and reasons for objecting to the COVID-19 vaccine.

“However, these minor differences do not outweigh that defendants’ typical response when receiving a religious accommodation request is to deny it. The typicality of the putative class is reflected in the fact that defendants have indiscriminately denied almost all religious accommodation requests, and their use of form letters to deny the accommodation requests. Such facts suggest that defendants do not individually weigh each applicant’s belief or circumstances in issuing their response, further cementing the typicality of the class.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

SHOCKING, WE KNOW…

The vast majority of governmental and COVID-19 tracking websites employ third-party trackers on users without consent, according to a new study.

The revelation comes from a recent paper – “Measuring Web Cookies in Governmental Websites” – published by a cohort of European researchers funded by groups including the European Research Council (ERC), the European Union, and the Spanish government.

“A potential risk from e-governance is that since it represents a unique point of interaction for mandatory and indispensable services for all citizens, it can, unintentionally or not, become a single point of monitoring and tracking for the entire population of a country. A readily available way to achieve that is with the use of Web cookies,” cautions the paper.

The study analyzed three types of websites: official governmental websites of “G20” countries around the world; websites of international organizations such as the United Nations and popular websites used for COVID-19 tracking and information. It measured these sites’ use of “cookies” – personal data related to your browsing history that websites can retrieve at a later time.

“Web cookies have been exploited to collect information about users’ online activities and interests,” notes the paper.

“Our results show that, unfortunately, tracking is a serious concern, as in some countries up to 90% of these websites create cookies of third-party trackers without any consent from users,” explains a summary of the findings.

“Non-session cookies, that are created by trackers and can last for days or months, are widely present even in countries with strict user privacy laws. We also show that the above is a problem for official websites of international organizations and popular websites that inform the public about the COVID-19 pandemic,” it continues.

MUST READ: Vaccine Mandates Were Predicated on “Hope” Rather Than Science, Admits Deborah Birx.

Researchers found that up to 90 percent of governmental websites for “G20” countries, which include 19 countries and the European Union comprising the world’s largest economies, added tracking cookies without user consent.

“More than 50% of cookies created on G20 government websites belong to third-parties and at least 10% (up to 90%) originate from known trackers. Most of these cookies have a life span of more than a day and many an expiration time of a year or more,” continued the study, which based its analysis on 5,500 governmental websites and over 118,000 URLs administrated by governments.

Around 95 percent of the international organizations analyzed in the paper created cookies without user consent, and roughly 60 percent used at least one third-party cookie. Third-party cookies are “known to be tracking users for data collection purposes,” explain researchers.

Similarly, 99 percent of COVID-19 information sites added at least one cookie without user consent.

“For example, the very popular website with global maps about the COVID-19 cases, maintained by Johns Hopkins University, add cookies from 7 trackers,” explains the paper.

“All the other Top 10 website are official national information websites in European countries that have three trackers or more. The American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is also in the Top 10, with cookies associated with three trackers,” it continues.

The findings come amidst concerns that governments in the West are seeking to emulate the Chinese Communist Party’s “social credit score” system, granting the regime the ability to dictate individuals’ spending habits and movements potentially based on their ideologies.

A New York Supreme Court judge this month quietly ruled that regulations mandating that people infected with or exposed to highly contagious communicable diseases be quarantined are a violation of state law, declaring them null and void.

The Isolation and Quarantine procedures, known as Rule 2.13, were enacted in February.

Under the rule, “whenever appropriate to control the spread of a highly contagious communicable disease, the State Commissioner of Health may issue and/or may direct the local health authority to issue isolation and/or quarantine orders, consistent with due process of law, to all such persons as the State Commissioner of Health shall determine appropriate.”

Isolations may include those at home, or in residential or temporary housing, subject to what the public health authority issuing the order determines is “appropriate.”

However, the rule notes that “where symptoms or conditions indicate that medical care in a general hospital is expected to be required, the isolation location shall be a general hospital.”

Three Republican state legislators, Sen. George Borrello, assemblyman Chris Tague, and assemblyman Michael Lawler, along with Uniting NYS, filed a lawsuit against Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul, Commissioner of Health Mary Bassett, the state’s health department, and the Public Health and Health Planning Council.

Plaintiffs argued that the Isolation and Quarantine procedures were in violation of the New York State Constitution and a violation of the separation of powers.

“It’s unconstitutional in our eyes, and anything like that should go through the legislature,” Tague told local media. “It should have an opportunity to be debated. To be able to have facts brought forth by health professionals, and leaders within our communities before we just decide to put something into law.”

‘Lip Service’

In a July 8 ruling, Acting Justice of the Supreme Court of Cattaraugus County Ronald D. Ploetz sided with the plaintiffs, stating that the rule merely gives “lip service” to constitutional due process.

“Involuntary detention is a severe deprivation of individual liberty, far more egregious than other health safety measures, such as requiring mask wearing at certain venues. Involuntary quarantine may have far-reaching consequences such as loss of income (or employment) and isolation from family,” Ploetz wrote.

The judge added that there was “no scientific data or expert testimony” to back up the rule.

“Respondents offered no scientific data or expert testimony why Rule 2.13 was a necessary response to combat COVID-19, but instead contend only that it would provide a quick and nimble approach to combating the pandemic,” wrote the judge. “Nevertheless, during oral argument of this matter, at a time when we hope that the worst of the pandemic is behind us, counsel for the Respondents were unable to cite any instance where the procedure set forth in Rule 2.13 was actually utilized.”

However, the judge noted in his ruling that the rule is null and void “until the New York State Legislation acts otherwise,” potentially paving the way for future appeals.

On Tuesday, Hochul told local media that she would be appealing the court’s decision, stating, “We feel very confident that if we appeal this, we will be successful.”

New York Attorney General Letitia James’s office on Wednesday formally appealed the state Supreme Court ruling, according to local reports.

The Epoch Times has contacted James’s office for comment.

The ruling comes as Hochul’s office on Wednesday reported that the seven-day average of COVID-19 cases in New York has risen from 30.53 per 100,000 people to 35.28, while hospitalizations have increased in recent days to 2,397 patients.

However, 57.5 percent of those people who were hospitalized were admitted for reasons that did not include COVID-19.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has a new message for governments around the world, bring back mandatory coronavirus rules to fight the “increasing trend of deaths.”

Join SoldierStrong and Improve the Lives of Our Nation’s Heroes

So far, Ghebreyesus’ pleas to mask up have been cast aside by exhausted governments and citizens who have abandoned strict COVID-19 restrictions.

While America’s aversion to big government makes us as a whole more resistant to Ghebreyesus’ claims that the pandemic is “nowhere near over,” officials in countries like the United Kingdom have said future lockdowns may be warranted if rising cases from new variants overwhelm the healthcare system.

Britain’s Sky News has more on Ghebreyesus’ call to reimpose COVID rules:

Among the variants and subvariants being tracked by the WHO is BA.2.75 – nicknamed the centaurus – which was first discovered in India in May.

Scientists say the variant may be able to spread rapidly and get around immunity from vaccines and previous infection.

Dr. Ghebreyesus outlined several “interlinked challenges” now facing the global response to coronavirus, including the Omicron sub-variants and reduced testing and sequencing.

He added: “There is a major disconnect in COVID-19 risk perception between scientific communities, political leaders and the general public.

Sky News’ reporting suggests there’s a possibility that cities like London could reimpose mandatory mask wearing. Are you worried that could happen in America, too? As always, tell us your thoughts in the comments below!

SOURCE: American Liberty News

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

HERE WE GO AGAIN. (AGAIN.)

The Chinese Communist Party-run Wuhan University has reported a case of an individual contracting the virulent disease of cholera, media reports suggest.

Located in the same province as the Wuhan Institute of Virology – believed by many scientists and government intelligence officials to be the source of COVID-19 – Wuhan University is less than two miles from the controversial lab. The university has also received nearly three quarters of a million dollars from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

In November 2018, the vaccine advocate’s foundation sent $499,944 to the university to “establish international research networks and data sharing platforms as well as develop policy recommendations for improving the medical insurance system in China.” In January 2021, even after the Chinese Communist Party purposely hid data relevant to the origins of COVID-19, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation sent the university an additional $127,650 to fund research into broadening access to drugs for Tuberculosis.

The district’s health department claims to have collected samples, undertaken contact tracing, and closed certain venues for disinfection after a Wuhan University student was found to have the disease.

Chinese Communist Party health officials claim no further cases have been reported.

Cholera is a virulent disease that can be spread through contaminated food or water, typically resulting in acute diarrhea. The incident at Wuhan University is rare, as only one other case has been identified in China this year and five were detected throughout the entirety of last year.

The incident follows intense scrutiny of the Wuhan Institute of Virology for its role in the origins of COVID-19, as the lab manipulated bat coronavirus strains to become more lethal to humans. Resembling the hallmarks of gain-of-function research, which has previously been banned in the U.S. due to its risky nature, Wuhan Institute of Virology researchers have also hidden troves of data relevant to COVID-19.

MUST READ: Vaccine Mandates Were Predicated on “Hope” Rather Than Science, Admits Deborah Birx.

These same researchers, such as “Bat Lady” Shi Zhengli, have received millions in funding from Anthony Fauci.

Surging costs of fuel, housing, and food were major contributors to high inflation last month

The U.S. annual inflation rate climbed to 9.1 percent in June, reaching its highest level since November 1981 and topping the market estimate of 8.8 percent and May’s annual rate of 8.6 percent.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the consumer price index (CPI) rose by 1.3 percent month-over-month. The monthly inflation also was higher than economists’ expectations of 1.1 percent.

While the core inflation rate, which removes the volatile food and energy sectors, eased to 5.9 percent, that was higher than the forecast of 5.7 percent. On a monthly basis, core inflation rose at a higher-than-expected pace of 0.7 percent.

Food prices soared by 10.4 percent, while the energy index advanced by 41.6 percent.

Nearly every food item, except uncooked beef steak, was more expensive last month. Pork surged by 9 percent, chicken soared by 18.6 percent, and ham increased by 9.6 percent. Eggs spiked by 33.1 percent, milk rose by 16.4 percent, fruits and vegetables jumped by 8.1 percent, and coffee swelled by 15.8 percent.

On the energy front, fuel oil increased by 98.5 percent. Gasoline surged by 59.9 percent, electricity costs picked up by 13.7 percent, and propane and kerosene jumped by 26.1 percent.

New vehicles surged by 11.4 percent, used cars and trucks jumped by 7.1 percent, apparel increased by 5.2 percent, and shelter climbed by 5.6 percent.

Shelter costs, which make up about one-third of the CPI, increased by 0.6 percent in June from May. This was mainly driven by a 0.8 percent rise in rent of primary residence, the greatest rent increase since 1986.

“Today’s shockingly high consumer price inflation number does not bode well for our country’s economic outlook,” Desmond Lachman, economist and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told The Epoch Times in an email.

It makes it likely that the Fed will keep raising interest rates and decreasing its “bloated balance sheet” aggressively, he said.

“The Fed will likely do so despite the growing signs of economic and financial market weakness both at home and abroad,” Lachman said. “That has to raise the risk of a hard economic landing before yearend and further turmoil in the equity and bond markets.”

The S&P 500 ended 0.4 percent lower, its fourth consecutive drop, after tumbling as much as 1.6 percent earlier. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.7 percent, while the Nasdaq Composite ended down 0.2 percent, erasing nearly all of an early 2.1 percent loss.

The U.S. Dollar Index (DXY), which measures the greenback against a basket of currencies, spiked with the news before ending the day lower by 0.13 percent to 108.02. The index has been on a tear in 2022, rallying about 13 percent year-to-date.

A fake CPI report circulated online on July 12 and attempted to emulate the formatting of the May inflation data, using different dates and figures. It claimed that the annual inflation rate was 10.2 percent in June. Despite being a forgery, it caught the attention of investors, sending stocks slightly lower in the afternoon session on Wall Street.

The White House braced the American people on July 12 for an elevated headline reading, noting in a memo that the June CPI report was out of date since it didn’t contain the dramatic decline in food and energy prices. U.S. officials are ostensibly looking ahead to the July inflation numbers to show that their efforts are succeeding.

Peak Inflation?

Over the past month, crude oil and gasoline prices have fallen by notable levels amid growing recession fears and weaker demand outlooks.

West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude has slumped by about 17 percent to below $100 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange since the middle of July. The national average for a gallon of gasoline has tumbled by roughly 7 percent to about $4.65, according to AAA.

Agricultural commodities have also plummeted, with corn, wheat, and soybeans down by approximately 20 percent in the past month.

“The softening food, energy, and commodity prices, the improved supply chains, the easing shipping costs, and lower purchasing manager indices hint that U.S. inflation may have hit a peak last month, or will hit one soon,” Ipek Ozkardeskaya, a senior analyst at Swissquote Bank, wrote in a research note.

Even if inflation has peaked, market experts believe prices for many goods and services in the marketplace will remain elevated, such as rent and airline fares. Core CPI could moderate, too, because of weaker used car prices.

The headline inflation reading prompted the interest-rate futures market to revise its expectations that the Federal Reserve will raise rates by 100 basis points at this month’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) policy meeting. Most of the market had anticipated a three-quarter-point increase at the upcoming rate-setting committee meeting, with small odds of a full point hike, according to the CME FedWatch Tool.

Price stability has become the central bank’s primary objective, even if it triggers a recession and extends the selloff in the financial markets. Fed Chair Jerome Powell has stated that it’s possible to navigate a soft landing, but noted that it isn’t a guarantee.

Bryce Doty, senior vice president and senior portfolio manager at Sit Investment Associates, says the Fed’s actions will exacerbate problems in the economy.

“The Fed’s clear mistake of destroying demand by aggressively raising rates instead of supporting businesses desperately in need of workers will further extend shortages,” he wrote in a July 12 research note. “Just think of the incredible growth we would have if another 2 to 4 million workers re-entered the workforce. Supply shortages would dry up and inflation pressures would dissipate. Instead, the Fed’s actions will slow growth and inflation will persist longer than it should.”

However, Deutsche Bank analysts believe that the U.S. central bank needs to maintain its hawkish attitude as inflation continues to show that it’s “a demand-driven phenomenon.” In the past couple of months, consumer demand has eased. Personal spending rose by just 0.2 percent in May, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Retail sales unexpectedly fell by 0.3 percent in May, the Census Bureau reported.

At the same time, with near-term recession fears growing, the financial institution expects the peak fed funds rate will be 4.1 percent, but economic downturn concerns “could well short-circuit the Fed’s hiking cycle before it reaches our current terminal rate expectations.”

Following the June FOMC meeting, the Fed updated its dot-plot from March, projecting that the benchmark rate would hit 3.4 percent this year, 3.8 percent in 2023, and drop back to 3.4 percent in 2024 (pdf).

“My expectation is that inflation will soon peak,” Lachman said. “It will do so as a result of the U.S. and world economy moving into a recession, as well as a result of the slump presently underway in international commodity prices in general and oil prices in particular.”

Next on the inflation front, the BLS will release the June producer price index on July 14. Economists forecast that it will come in at 10.7 percent year-over-year, down from 10.8 percent in May.

Emel Akan contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

A team of Harvard research scientists, publishing in the New England Journal of Medicine, have found that SARS-CoV-2 virus has mutated so much that the Pfizer mRNA vaccines developed against the original Wuhan strain now have little to no effect.

The study, “Neutralization Escape by SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Subvariants BA.2.12.1, BA.4, and BA.5,” evaluated neutralizing antibody titers of participants vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine, against multiple SARS-CoV-2 strains.

The scientists found that the titers dropped from 5,783 (against the WA1/2020 isolate, Wuhan strain) to 275 (against the BA.4 or BA.5 subvariant, omicron variants), by a factor of 21.

In other words, they found the mRNA vaccine to be essentially ineffective against Omicron variants currently in circulation.

SARS-CoV-2 Mutations

SARS-CoV-2 has been a quickly evolving virus since late 2019. Like all RNA viruses, it has a strand of RNA that is packaged in a delivery vehicle that allows it to attach itself to host cells and inject its RNA into the cells and hijack the cells to make more copies of its RNA.

A virus must interact with living cells in order to reproduce. Without this interaction, the virus itself is inert. It has no metabolism. It cannot move. It doesn’t eat. It cannot reproduce with other viruses. What this means is that a virus has none of the characteristics of living organisms. Because of this, some scientists want to classify viruses as part of life while others point out that viruses are not alive. At least not without hosts.

Life or not, all viruses must have genetic material RNA (ribonucleic acid) or DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). RNA or DNA make copies using templates of complementary strands of RNA or DNA. There is always a chance for errors to happen during this process. We call these “errors” mutations.

Often these errors make the DNA or RNA too imperfect to carry on functioning, so the mutation goes nowhere. But if the mutated version is viable, the result is a new, slightly changed version of the DNA or RNA.

A virus that does not kill its host but is able to keep using the host to replicate itself is able to continue replicating. There is an advantage to a virus developing a way to become chronic or endemic, rather than being rabidly lethal to the host.

By every indication, that is what is happening with SARS-CoV-2, the novel virus that likely originated in Wuhan, China, and quickly spread around the globe, using humans and other animals as its host.

Anti-Spike Antibodies

Many of the mutations to the SARS-CoV-2 RNA do not change any of the proteins the virus needs to survive and proliferate. These are called silent or synonymous mutations. Others, known to scientists as non-synonymous mutations, do change the amino acid composition of the proteins.

The amino acid sequence differences (about 3 percent) observed between SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins from the original Wuhan strain (GenBank # YP_009724390) and an Omicron isolate from Norway on January 3rd, 2022 (GenBank # UOU35996.1) are the results of two years of evolution of the virus on its spike protein.

Using the National Library of Medicine’s online Blast service, the authors compared the spike protein sequences from the Wuhan strain and an Omicron variant. The red lines highlight the mismatches.

Compared to other parts of the virus genome, the gene that codes for the spike protein evolve faster, as the spike protein is on the surface of the virus and is under much more selection pressure.

This poses a problem for the current vaccines and any future vaccines based on the spike protein. The fast-changing spike protein would likely make the existing vaccines and any new vaccines less effective. In other words, the virus has moved on, but the vaccines have not.

Existing vaccines based on the spike protein generate multiclonal antibodies against different epitopes of the spike protein. If an antibody reacts to an epitope that is not affected by the mutations that Omicron has, then this antibody would be effective against Omicron. Otherwise, it will not be effective.

When most, if not all antibodies that the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines developed based on the original Wuhan strain fails to react to the current SARS-CoV-2 variant, the vaccine becomes ineffective.

Vaccinated Have Negligible Antibodies Against Current Strain

In the new Harvard study, the scientists tested 27 participants who had been vaccinated with Pfizer’s messenger RNA vaccine (BNT162b2) and 27 participants who had been infected naturally with the original Wuhan strain.

Most of those who had had COVID already had also been vaccinated, so most, but not all, had hybrid immunity.

Those who had recovered from COVID had a strong immune response to the original virus, which is no longer circulating in the world.

But those who had been vaccinated just six months prior to the test had only 1 percent as many antibodies as those who had recovered from having the virus.

Participants who had been boosted just two weeks before the test and were at the peak of their immunity did have a strong response, though it was still half as strong as those with natural immunity. Evidently their vaccine-acquired immune response was not long lasting, either.

And these results were only for the original, outdated virus, which is no longer a danger.

Against the strain currently dominant in the United States, those who had been vaccinated, even at the peak of their protection two weeks after the booster, had a very scant antibody response to the current virus, about 7 percent as strong as their antibody response to the original 2020 virus.

Those who were vaccinated six months before, but not boosted, had negligible antibodies against the current virus.

Natural Immunity Provides Substantial Immune Response

Those with natural immunity after recovering from COVID had a substantial immune response to the current virus.

Though it was only 10 percent as strong as their response to the original 2020 virus, their immune systems still responded with three times as many antibodies as the boosted group’s peak response.

More importantly, compared to immunity acquired through the spike-protein-based vaccines, natural immunity from SARS-CoV-2 infections covers the whole spectrum of immunity, giving the body short-term antibody protection as well as memory B and T cells for long-term protection. In addition, the short-term antibodies cover not only the fast-changing spike protein (S), but also other viral proteins, such as nucleocapsid protein (N) and envelope protein (E), making natural immunity less vulnerable for immune escape.

The takeaway is that even for the brief period right after a booster, vaccination was not as effective as natural immunity. Six months later, it was essentially useless.

The good news is that almost everyone in the U.K. has SARS-CoV-2 antibodies. This suggests that almost everyone there has had a SARS-CoV-2 infection at some point, and so has some level of natural immunity.

This does not mean that COVID-19 is over. It does mean that nature has provided people in the U.K. with protection better than the current spike-protein-based vaccines.

We believe that the same is true in the United States and Canada.

Take the jab, if you want, and get the boosters. But don’t be fooled. They will not give you any more protection than what you already have.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Taxes will go up for millions of lower- and middle-income taxpayers under the House Democrats’ version of resident Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan, according to two new analyses by the non-partisan professional staff of the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT).

“While Republican tax reform in 2017 cut taxes for all Americans, and increased the progressivity of the tax code, the Democrats’ approach to tax reform does not cut taxes for anyone, but it would raise taxes on millions of lower- and middle-income Americans at a time when they can least afford it,” U.S. Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) said in a statement issued late Monday.

“The economy is already reeling from Democrats’ bad policies and people are struggling to make ends meet. The last thing they need are higher taxes, especially in light of rising odds of a recession and stagflation,” the Idaho Republican continued.

Crapo was referring to the June 23 (pdf) and June 27 (pdf) analyses by the 10-member panel, which made the studies available to Members of Congress and their staff, but did not publicly issue news releases describing the results. Both analyses focused on H.R. 5376, as amended.

The JCT includes five members from the Senate and five from the House of Representatives. Six of the 10 are presently Democrats, with the other four being Republicans.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) is the JCT chairman in 2022, while Crapo is the top Republican. Wyden and Crapo are also chairman and ranking member, respectively, on the Senate Finance Committee.

Last year, Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.) was chairman and Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) was vice-chairman. The Senate and House members exchange the leadership positions from one session of Congress to the next.

The JCT’s 65-member staff is entirely non-partisan, and includes 25 economists.

According to the findings of the two JCT analyses, taxes on Americans making less than $400,000 annually will increase by $33 billion in 2023, while levies on those making more than that level will receive a net decrease of $1.5 billion.

Over a 10-year-projection, more than 30 percent of the new revenues raised for spending offsets and deficit reduction would come from taxpayers making less than $400,000 annually.

Overall, the income tax rate for every category of taxpayer would go up, not down, according to the JCT.

Promises During Campaign

Biden promised throughout his 2020 president campaign and since being inaugurated in January 2021 as chief executive that his tax plan would only increase levies on those making $400,000 or more in a year.

The JCT analyses also found that if Congress enacts the House Democratic tax proposal this year, more than a fourth of all Americans making between $75,000 and $100,000 annually will pay more in taxes next year. More than half of those making between $100,000 and $200,000 will also see their taxes increase in 2023.

The vast majority of Americans making between $200,000 and $400,000 will experience higher levies in 2023, and by 2029 nearly one of every five Americans earning between $50,000 and $75,000 will get a tax increase, while none will receive any tax relief.

The JCT analyses did not account for the impact of the House Democratic proposal’s repeal of the cap on the deductibility of state taxes that was included in President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax reform.

But Crapo pointed to independent studies by the Tax Foundation and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) that “have shown that the net effect would essentially wipe out any tax hit on the wealthy, leaving the middle class to shoulder even more of the brunt of the tax burden in their bill.”

The cap limited the amount taxpayers in high-tax states like New York, New Jersey, and California could deduct from their federal taxes to $10,000. Prior to Trump’s reform, the unlimited deductibility served as an incentive for state lawmakers to raise levies. The House version of Biden’s proposal restores the deduction up to $80,000.

In an Oct. 4, 2021 study, the Tax Foundation’s Garrett Watson concluded that “our analysis illustrates how restoring the SALT deduction now would be more regressive than under prior law, strengthening the case for keeping the cap in place.”

In a Nov. 8, 2021 analysis, the CRFB concluded that “we estimate extending the $80,000 SALT deduction cap beyond the current cap expirations in 2026, and reducing it to $10,000 in 2031, would technically raise around $300 billion. In reality, we view this revenue as highly questionable and more of a gimmick.”

A spokesman for Wyden could not be reached for comment.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Things have not been the same since June 2021 for 53-year-old Douglas Howey from Colorado.

Around a year after he received the second dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, the 6 foot 4 and a half inch paraplegic man who once weighed 262 pounds lost over 100 pounds after the sudden onset of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), an incurable and fatal disease that gradually kills a person’s motor neurons.

Though he never told his doctors that he started developing symptoms a month after the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, his family thinks that his sudden sickness a month later and dramatic weight loss within weeks seemed like too much of a coincidence.

This suspicion was further confirmed after Linda Howey, Douglas’s mother, heard a podcast by Del Bigtree where Dr. Stephanie Seneff, a senior researcher from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, talked about her research on possible links between neurodegenerative diseases and the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines.

Once patients are diagnosed with ALS, they are normally given a life expectancy of two to five years. The disease is mostly diagnosed in men, and often between the ages of 55 to 75.

Douglas is younger than this and his illness has progressed much faster than most. He has already entered the late stage of the disease and is experiencing breathing difficulties although he has only been sick for one year.

Linda recalled that Douglas’s fever began in June, around a month after he received his second Moderna COVID-19 vaccine dose on May 21, 2021. He experienced high fever and was bedridden for a month.

Douglas’s father passed away in 2011 after a 25-year battle with a brain degenerative disease called frontotemporal dementia (FTD) that has a genetic component.

Within the last week or so of life, Douglas’s father began to experience ALS symptoms. Though Douglas also has the FTD gene, he was not expecting any significant progression for the next 20 years.

However, after Douglas recovered from his month-long fever, he began to notice constant fatigue and weakness in his grip strength.

Within six weeks of falling ill, he lost 40 pounds and his weight only continued to decline as his appetite deteriorated.

Five months later, Douglas was too weak to handle silverware properly and needed to feed himself with both hands.

Douglas has been a paraplegic since he was hit by a truck in 2012. As a result of that accident, he developed strong upper arms that he used to hoist himself up from bed and to propel himself around in a manual wheelchair.

His ALS disease quickly spread to the motor neurons in his arms so that by January 2022, just seven months after he fell sick, Douglas required a bed hoister and an automatic wheelchair which he now has much difficulty using.

Gone are Douglas’s days of gardening, traveling, working full-time, and acting as an active advocate for people with disabilities. Caregivers that used to help around the house for only a few hours are now there around the clock every day taking care of him.

Douglas has also gradually developed a cough and has trouble speaking.

A test in February 2022 showed that he had lost much of his functional lung capacity and was only using 40 percent of his diaphragm. The once eloquent and talkative physics instructor was reduced to spelling out his words to enable basic communication.

The destruction of his motor neurons has caused him pain and crippled his sleep but he has not been able to verbalize it. Caregivers may jam his toe in the bed hoister or bruise his back on the machinery yet he could only text his mother Linda who would later tell the caregivers that he was in pain.

“His lack of ability to talk has caused a lot of pain and suffering. When he texts me the details later, I communicate to the caregiver the pain he was enduring when he could not speak at the time the pain or injury was happening. By then, the damage has happened,” Linda told The Epoch Times through an email.

Mundane things that he once did without much thought now needed much effort to instruct caregivers to do, such as wiping his eyes, adjusting his glasses, and moving his cap.

With much effort, Douglas spelled out to his mother that he even needed to tell the caregivers to clean out mucus in his nose.

Linda said that she had searched up the batch numbers of his Moderna injections on How Bad is My Batch, a website that has gathered data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). Each search will show the reported adverse events, deaths, and disabilities associated with the batches that have been reported to VAERS.

Douglas’s batch numbers were 001c21a and 25c21a, respectively associated with 779 and 523 reported adverse events, eight and five deaths, and 10 and eight disabilities. However, these numbers were far from the number of reported cases from the batches highest on the list.

According to Pfizer, each batch can consist of 1 to 3 million vaccine doses, though it is not certain if Moderna is the same.

Researchers’ Suspicions

Dr. Stephanie Seneff and many others have been suspicious of the actual safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines from the moment they started to be administered to the population.

Research into this novel technology made her very concerned that the vaccine could cause incurable prion diseases and prion-like diseases within the population in five to 10 years, or even further down the line.

“To have [almost] 100 percent success rate with [a] few months of testing, it just seems completely reckless to me,” she said on the call with The Epoch Times.

In 2021, months after the rollout of the mRNA Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, Seneff published a peer-reviewed paper with Dr. Greg Nigh (pdf).

In the study, she and Nigh declared that a vaccine that produced the spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus could be a health concern as the spike protein has a prion region that is able to interact with proteins on human cells.

Prions are common proteins that naturally exist in the human brain. However, in the case of prion diseases, the prion will come into contact with a misfolded (pathogenic) prion, and just like a set of dominoes, the single contact will cause all other normal prions to become pathogenic, slowly killing the individual.

Awful as it sounds, it generally is a slow kill, often taking decades after the first exposure for symptoms to appear.

Examples of prion diseases include Creutzfeldt Jakob disease (CJD), an incurable and fatal disease.

Recent studies also show neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and ALS have prion-like features with protein misfolding and clumping in the brain which kills neurons. Some studies also suggest these diseases may also be prion disease, though this has not been proven.

Seneff and her colleagues expressed concern that an mRNA or DNA (adenovirus AstraZeneca) vaccine may serve as a trigger to cause prion or prion-like diseases and that we may see a spike in such diseases in the coming years.

In their rigorously peer-reviewed study (pdf), Seneff and her colleagues speculated that the vaccine may cause prion misfolding, causing damage to the brain in the forms of CJD, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, ALS, and so on.

The mRNA and DNA vaccines carry instructions for making the spike protein into cells. Once cells receive these instructions, they start making spike protein. Cells then stick these spike proteins on their cellular surface, and when immune cells recognize the proteins as foreign, an immune response is triggered.

However, mistakes can occur during the process of translating RNA or DNA into protein.

Seneff speculated that errors could also happen for the spike protein, causing misfolding. If misfolding also happens in the prion region, it may be able to interact with human prions and trigger prion diseases such as CJD, or a prion-like disease.

However, compared to the current CJD, Parkinson’s, and the other neurodegenerative diseases, Seneff said that disease, if caused by the vaccine, would, most likely, progress faster.

Since the vaccine hijacks cellular processes to make more foreign proteins than in a natural infection, there would be greater opportunities for misfolding.

“We suggested that you might not see anything for a year or even five years or a decade…it would take a long time for the symptoms to appear,” Seneff said.

“We were predicting that we would see an increase in the rate of Parkinson’s [and other diseases], and that would happen in younger people in the coming years.

Soon after Seneff appeared on Fox News highlighting her concerns, her inbox was immediately flooded with emails from individuals who believe that they themselves or their loved ones were affected by prion disease or prion-like diseases because of the vaccine.

Some saw a worsening of already-present neurodegenerative symptoms; some developed a neurodegenerative disease just weeks or months after vaccination.

A New Variant of Prion and Prion-like Diseases?

The sudden influx of people contacting her suggested to Seneff that the vaccine may have accelerated the process even faster than she expected.

“It’s possibly a new variant [of brain-degenerating disease], because it is sufficiently different than anything we’ve seen before,” she said.

Neurodegenerative diseases such as CJD, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and ALS all take many years for symptoms to manifest.

Seneff’s understanding of prion and prion-like disease is that individuals need to first be exposed to a protein that triggers misfolding of the body’s prions, which then build up for years before showing any symptoms.

“There’s a certain point at which it starts just to show symptoms, but it takes a whole process beforehand,” she said.

“You can have evidence of misfolded amyloid beta (a protein involved in Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease) in the spleen … and even in the brain before you have any symptoms … it’s a slow disease, but … it’s a progressive disease.”

Other research studies are also suggesting a possible link between prion and prion-like diseases and the COVID-19 vaccine.

Seneff’s friend and Nobel laureate, the late Prof. Luc Montagnier, co-authored a preprint study on 26 patients that developed CJD and died after receiving the vaccine.

The majority of the cases occurred within 11.38 days after vaccination, with deaths occurring at around 4.76 months.

The authors were fairly confident that the cases were related to the vaccine. The study’s corresponding author Dr. Jean-Claude Perez said his friend Montagnier feared, during the initial release of the vaccine, that the “new form of CJD would affect the millions of adolescents or children vaccinated with COVID-19.”

“All this confirms the radically different nature of this new form of CJD, whereas the classic form requires several decades,” the researchers wrote.

Other studies on the worsening of Parkinson’s or similar diseases also surfaced with some researchers pondering the links between the two events.

The “hidden process is happening faster with people who are getting the vaccine such that they’ll get the Parkinson’s disease [and other related diseases] sooner than they would have gotten it without the vaccine,” Seneff said.

Why so Toxic?

Seneff told The Epoch Times that the mRNA technology in the majority of the COVID-19 vaccines may be why we are seeing greater instances of reported adverse effects than from all previous vaccines.

She said she was concerned the moment she heard the term “warp speed”—the operation between the department of health and vaccine manufacturers to accelerate the vaccine production process—and started studying mRNA technology.

Her immediate verdict was “I was not going to get it; there was no way I was gonna let anyone inject it into my arm,” she said.

Studies have shown that the spike protein on the COVID-19 virus is toxic, therefore the mRNA and DNA (AstraZeneca) vaccines that force a person’s cells to make more toxic proteins are very likely to cause damage, though many media platforms have stated that the spike proteins produced by the vaccines are harmless.

Seneff’s study mostly focused on the mRNA vaccines.

“The coronavirus is very good at adapting, which is why they never were able to develop a vaccine in the past,” she said. Seneff, therefore, could not understand how the technology suddenly became so skilled and was able to do something they could not do before.

Even Bill Gates, a major public figure behind the movement to vaccinate the globe for COVID-19 funded a report through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation stating that unprecedented vaccines like the mRNA vaccines would take 10 to 12 years to be fully tested before release.

Further, of all these unprecedented vaccines, only 2 percent would be able to pass through the clinical trials.

Seneff’s second study highlighted that although existing vaccines confer immunity by mimicking the natural infection process, the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines do not mimic natural infection at all.

“The messenger RNA (mRNA) [in the vaccine] is extremely … not natural,” she said.

Compared to natural mRNA that quickly degrades in the cell, the mRNA from the COVID-19 vaccines have been shown to take over two months to degrade, even though the manufacturers promised that degradation would occur in a few days.

“They were so worried about the mRNA not lasting long enough that they way overdid it, I think,” Seneff said.

Unaltered mRNA injected into the body triggers immediate immune responses, particularly interferon release, that will degrade the mRNA before it can reach target cells to initiate the manufacture of spike proteins. Therefore, in order to evade these fundamental immune defenses, Moderna and Pfizer altered the mRNA’s uridine molecule (a basic component of mRNA) into 1-methylpseudouridine to “dramatically reduce innate immune activation against exogenous (outside sourced) mRNA.”

Natural infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus triggers innate immune responses such as the production of interferon. Altering the structure of the vaccine mRNA allows the synthetic mRNA to persist in the body as it bypasses these fundamental immune responses. It can be argued that the vaccine’s version of the spike protein is not the same as the native one.

Further, to make the mRNA more stable, Moderna and Pfizer changed the chemical bases that make up the strand of RNA. The original RNA strand in the virus is made up of 36 percent of guanine (G) and cytosine (C).

mRNA low in G and C bases are less stable and degradable; Pfizer and Moderna’s mRNA vaccines had this percentage raised to 53 percent and 61 respectively.

Previous experiments showed that genes that had higher G and C content were more likely to be read and their information made into proteins. Having a high G content also increases the speed at which the gene is read, but faster reading also means more likelihood of errors, and a higher likelihood of misfolding.

This potentially means that not only will this instruction remain in the cell for longer for its information to be made into protein, cells will also preferentially express information from the vaccine mRNA.

“The increasing evidence [is] that the vaccines do little to control disease spread and that their effectiveness wanes over time,” Seneff’s study read. “SARS-CoV-2 modified spike protein mRNA vaccinations have bio­logical impacts is without question.”

Papers Refused ‘As Soon as the Word Prion Is Mentioned’

It should be noted that many of Seneff’s studies are her own speculations that have not been proven although they have been rigorously peer-reviewed.

It has been difficult for her to develop a solid case, as very few studies examine the negative implications of COVID-19 vaccines. For Seneff and her colleagues, who write papers that tell an alternative story, it has been difficult to find a journal to publish their work.

Dr. Jean-Claude Perez, the co-author of Prof. Luc Montagnier’s study on 26 CJD cases, told The Epoch Times via email that it was very difficult to publish his previous study with Montagnier and Dr. Valère Lounnas in reputable neurology journals.

That study found that Omicron is the only COVID-19 variant that does not contain a prion region, and despite receiving consent from all participants in the study, reputable journals cited ethical constraints as a major barrier to publication.

The authors considered publishing their research in smaller journals, but then fewer people would read it.

The authors therefore chose to publish their work as a pre-print which has fewer constraints, and although findings published in this way are generally less trusted, a wider range of people can be reached.

“But even certain types of preprints that we will not mention refuse such articles as soon as the word prion is pronounced there, such was the case for our article,” Perez wrote.

Seneff also experienced rejection of her work on spike proteins; both she and Montagnier have had their expertise in the matter questioned by the media and other members of the scientific community.

Linda said that Douglas and she decided to go public with his story as they want to raise awareness about the possible dangers of the COVID-19 vaccines.

“Douglas, pretty much knows he’s gonna die from this … and that’s a terrible thing that happened to a 53-year-old man,” she said.

“If anybody could hear this story, because … the regular news media does not cover this at all.”

Seneff encourages other people affected to report the adverse event to VAERS and investigate and confirm if it may be linked to the COVID-19 vaccines.

Asked about a cure, Seneff says she doesn’t know of any cures but some of her friends have been using herbal medications to treat long COVID-19 symptoms seen in vaccine-injured patients to see if such treatments could be efficacious.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Dr. Robert Malone is warning of immune imprinting after Dr. Anthony Fauci signaled his backing for second COVID-19 vaccine boosters for all Americans aged 5 and older.

“I couldn’t design a vaccine if I wanted to, to be more likely to drive immune imprinting,” Malone, who helped invent the messenger RNA technology the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are built on, told The Epoch Times.

Immune imprinting refers to a phenomenon whereby initial exposure to a virus strain may prevent the body from producing enough neutralizing antibodies against a new viral strain.

The COVID-19 vaccines currently in circulation are based on the Wuhan strain of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. Also known as SARS-CoV-2, the virus causes COVID-19.

A number of strains have emerged and become dominant since the Wuhan strain was prevalent, including the currently dominant Omicron variant.

Researchers with Imperial College London and the United Kingdom Health Security Agency found that people who received three doses of a COVID-19 vaccine and were infected with the Wuhan strain had a lower level of protection against later strains when compared to people who had not been infected. Other groups, including researchers with the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, have found the vaccines much less effective against Omicron subvariants than the Wuhan strain.

A number of studies have found negative effectiveness among vaccinated groups. That means those who get vaccinated are more likely to get infected.

In some areas, the vaccinated account for a majority of those infected or in hospitals or dying with COVID-19. In Louisiana, for example, 70 percent of the deaths recorded between June 23 and June 29 were among the vaccinated.

Second Booster Push

The vaccines were originally promoted as two-shot primary regimens (Pfizer and Moderna) or a one-shot immunization (Johnson & Johnson). They were said to have efficacy as high as 100 percent against symptomatic infection.

Due to waning effectiveness against the emerging variants, U.S. officials authorized booster doses. In March, because the effects of the boosters against infection didn’t last long, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) cleared and recommended second boosters for all adults over the age of 50.

Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and resident Joe Biden’s top medical adviser, is now saying Americans 5 to 50 should be allowed to get a second booster dose.

Fauci told the Washington Post that the United States “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,” he added.

Fauci has no authority over authorizing or recommending boosters, but has signaled major changes in U.S. vaccine policy in the past.

White House, FDA Respond

Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House’s COVID-19 response coordinator, told reporters on July 12 that “we have conversations all the time about what are possible things we could be doing to better protect the American people” but that the decision on second boosters will be made by the FDA and the CDC.

Fauci uttered a similar statement during the briefing.

“The FDA is evaluating the current situation, including the emerging epidemiology indicating increased hospitalization, and will be open to all potential options to address this, if necessary,” an FDA spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email.

Vaccine makers and the FDA are working together to develop variant-specific shots for the fall, which they say will offer better protection. But the updated shots aren’t yet on the market.

Many U.S. adults have received a primary series of a vaccine, including 91 percent of those 65 and older and 77 percent of those 18 and older. But booster doses have been a harder sell. Only 70 percent of elderly persons who got a primary series have received a first booster, along with just 51 percent of those 18 and older, according to CDC data. A second booster has only been administered to 28 percent of the population 50 and older.

Few of the COVID-19 vaccine mandates included a booster, and most of the mandates have been rescinded due to factors like plunging COVID-19 metrics and the waning effectiveness of the vaccines.

The new BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants—which have been edging out other strains in the United States and are thought to be more transmissible, but do not seem to cause more severe illness—are “more likely to lead to vaccine breakthrough infections,” researchers with Columbia University found.

‘Vaccine-driven Disease’

The COVID-19 metrics in the United States have been creeping up in recent weeks, with the weekly average of cases jumping by 75 percent since late March and hospitalizations with COVID-19 doubling since April.

Officials blame the BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants, which have been edging out other strains in the United States and are thought to be more transmissible, but do not seem to cause more severe illness.

People should get a booster as soon as they’re eligible, which is typically about five months after their last shot, Jha and CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said. “Don’t delay,” Jha said.

But Malone is among the scientists who are challenging the idea that the old vaccines are the solution.

“You got a major problem with the new Omicron, that’s the BA.5. The people that are getting infected chronically and hospitalized and dying are predominantly the vaccinated. It’s happening all over the world,” Malone said. “Now they’ve got a problem because they have driven this because of immune imprinting. This is increasingly becoming a vaccine-driven disease.”

Fauci, a major vaccine proponent, “has basically created a situation through the insistence on the hyper vaccination where he’s actually driving the disease in the United States,” he added.

Government officials disagree. Walensky said CDC data show that people who either have not received a vaccine or have not been boosted have less protection than those who have been boosted, including against infection, even as studies show the boost against infection quickly drops after the first and second booster.

Fauci said that people who were previously infected, or have natural immunity from surviving COVID-19, “don’t have a lot of protection” against the new subvariants.

Neither mentioned how natural immunity, according to a new study, remains stronger than the protection from vaccines even with boosters, particularly against severe disease.

Meiling Lee contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The details in the stories of the families whose loved ones died in the hospital due to what they call “death protocols” are strikingly similar.

The patients were all scorned because of their unvaccinated status and were given a combination of sedatives and the antiviral drug remdesivir.

The patients were also kept isolated, malnourished, and ultimately put on a ventilator before dying.

After death, the families were left in confusion and with inconceivable stories that many don’t believe—stories of chilling administrative cruelty.

The FormerFedsGroup Freedom Foundation (FFFF) has gathered about 200 of these stories through its COVID-19 Humanity Betrayal Memory Project to build an online database of testimonies for the purpose of surveying accounts of treatment for the sick unvaccinated and prosecuting any cases involving alleged abuse.

“They are horror stories,” Carolyn Blakeman, media director and task force coordinator for FFFF, told The Epoch Times.

Many of these deaths in hospitals occurred in 2021 after COVID-19 vaccine mandates were announced by resident Joe Biden.

In some cases, people who didn’t want to take the experimental vaccine were being fired, while unvaccinated patients in hospitals were being treated much differently than the vaccinated.

The phrase “the pandemic of the unvaccinated” was used by public officials to place blame on those who chose not to take vaccines that later proved to not be as safe and effective as touted.

Reports from people such as Scott Schara in Wisconsin and Anne Quiner in Minnesota began to reveal patterns of behavior by hospital administrators that suggested medical discrimination and protocols that many, like Schara and Quiner, alleged led to the barbaric death of their loved ones.

To grasp how health officials, physicians, and citizens were falling in lockstep with what appeared to be a global trance, Dr. Robert Malone, a pioneer of mRNA technology, presented the idea that many have fallen into “mass formation psychosis.”

‘We Need Massive Investigations’

Brad Geyer, a former federal prosecutor for 21 years with the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, told The Epoch Times, “We found these testimonial accounts to be so overwhelming, unimpeachable, and compelling that it might be exactly what we need to break the spell.”

Dr. Peter McCullough, the renowned cardiologist who has spoken out against COVID-19 protocols, is the president of FFFF, a New Jersey-based nonprofit comprised of former federal agents, prosecutors, lawyers, medical professionals, researchers, and volunteers whose efforts are geared toward exposing what it has determined are fraudulent COVID-19 practices established by the medical establishment and Marxist ideologies infiltrating American institutions that have directed society into a “new normal” of unconstitutionality.

There are several goals of the project, one being to create a historical document on what has taken place for those who can’t get their voices heard in mainstream media outlets that have been corrupted by the “safe and effective” feedback loop, Geyer said.

Then, FFFF finds representation for the victims while building a larger, collective case for crimes against humanity investigations, Geyer said.

There is also the goal of putting pressure on elected officials to hold everyone involved accountable, Geyer said.

“What is the purpose of sedating patients with fifteen different drugs, including fentanyl, and withholding food and water while keeping them isolated from their families?” Geyer asked. “We need massive investigations.”

‘They Scare These People to Death Through Emotional and Psychological Abuse’

In each story, Blakeman said family members have told her that doctors presented the same case for a ventilator.

“If I’ve heard that once, I’ve heard it 200 times in the exact words: ‘We’re just going to put you on the vent for a couple of days to give your lungs a rest,’” Blakeman said. “It’s like they all got the same memo on what to tell their patients. It’s insane.”

There is also the “COVID Cocktail” that is set before every patient, Blakeman said, which is what she called a kidney-failing concoction of remdesivir, vancomycin, and dexamethasone.

Each report also includes vitriolic contempt from doctors for the unvaccinated patients, Blakeman said.

“They scare these people to death through emotional and psychological abuse,” Blakeman said. “We had a victim whose husband literally had to break her out, with cops chasing them down the hallway to their getaway car. They are treated worse than prisoners.”

The value of the interviews as historical documents will help future generations to remember and not repeat these atrocities, Geyer said.

“Imagine if we could have interviewed all of those in the concentration camps,” Geyer said. “That’s what we are doing here in trying to build a machine that unearths the full truth of what occurred while it can deprogram enough people to get engaged in our effort to ensure our government continues to honor and respect the full measure of rights associated with citizenship and protect our constitutional rights.”

Another goal is to set up a humanity restoration board of physicians who have been uncorrupted, such as Drs. McCullough and Malone, to administer an organization that would confer, recommend, and advocate for physicians and nurses who want to come forward to make full disclosures of what they’ve done in exchange for leniency and amnesty.

“If we could create a quasi-governmental entity of physicians and scientists to administer a whistleblower program that would initially be a trickle, it could eventually become a stream and then hopefully a river of testimonies from physicians and nurses who want to get off their consciences what they’ve done,” Geyer said.

‘Our Stories are Eerily the Same’

Among the people FFFF has interviewed are Katrin Crum, Aletha Chavez, and Ashley Wines, each of whom also spoke with The Epoch Times about their experiences.

“It’s been eight months since my husband was killed, and I say killed because that’s exactly what happened,” Crum said. “He did not die of COVID. He died from the federal COVID protocols that were dictated to every hospital in the country.”

Crum started the private Facebook group C19 Widows/Widowers that want JUSTICE, where she met Chavez and Wines.

The group now has 600 members.

“All of our stories are eerily the same, and there’s a reason for that,” Crum said.

Crum’s husband, 58-year-old Richard, was a principal in Washington state at a private school that served special needs students, Crum said.

“Over 20 of his former students attended his memorial and spoke about the positive impact he had on their lives,” Crum said.

After his death—a more detailed account of which can be found here on FFFF’s web page—Crum said she turned her grief and anger into activism and advocacy, pouring herself into research.

“When the pandemic started, the NIH (National Institutes of Health), the FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) handed down protocols for hospitals to follow in treating COVID patients,” Crum said. “Never before in the history of our country did a three-letter agency dictate to the doctor what the standard of care for a patient was going to be.”

Neither the NIH nor the FDA responded to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.

Individual treatment had been left up to the physician and was an open discussion between the physician and the patient, Crum said.

“But now, all of that has been thrown out the window,” Crum said. “My 58-year-old husband in Washington received the exact same treatment as a 40-year-old woman in Florida who had none of the same health issues that my husband had.”

Richard was admitted on Oct. 21 and died in the hospital on Nov. 5, 2021, with Crum, who had been able to advocate her way into finally seeing him after 11 days, in the room with him as nurses attempted CPR.

“He had wrist restraints on, a sore on his face from the mask, and had lost 36 pounds in 14 days,” Crum said.

Before he died, one doctor had attempted to coerce Crum into agreeing to change his classification to “Do Not Resuscitate,” Crum said.

“I kept refusing, and finally, at the end of our conversation, she was so mad she told me, ‘Fine, if you won’t change him to DNR when your husband goes into cardiac arrest, I’ll refuse to give him chest compressions,’” Crum said.

Crum had a private autopsy and toxicology report that listed medical conditions that caused his death other than COVID: a 90 percent blockage in the main artery of his heart that went untreated throughout his 16-day stay at the hospital, and a lethal dose of fentanyl, she said.

The protocols make the patients like her husband sicker and lead to death, Crum said, while reaping high financial incentives from the federal government through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic (CARES) Act and the American Rescue Plan supplemental funding to hospitals.

The hospitals get reimbursed for admitting or having a patient test positive for COVID, which is why there are reports such as Crum’s in which staff will continue to test a patient even if they weren’t admitted with a positive test, Crum said.

In addition, Crum said hospitals get reimbursed for using remdesivir, putting a patient on a ventilator, and having a patient die with COVID on the death certificate.

‘A Perverse Agenda’

Tom Renz, an attorney with America’s Frontline Doctors and Make Americans Free Again—organizations that oppose unconstitutional federal health mandates, spoke with The Epoch Times in a previous article about the reimbursements.

Renz said hospitals get federal funding through the CARES Act, which gives a 20 percent increase in reimbursement to hospitals for inpatient stays resulting from COVID-19, Renz said.

“The laws are structured in a way that incentivizes hospitals to kill people,” Renz said. “The hospital makes more money if you die from COVID-19 than if you recover from it. Why don’t we incentivize hospitals for getting people cured of COVID?”

In a Texas Senate Committee on Health and Human Services in June, Texas state Sen. Bob Hall alluded to the stories like ones collected by the FFFF when he said, “Never before have we seen the government step between the patient and the doctor and usurp that doctor’s right to exercise their conscience, their training, and what they know that patient needed.”

Hall said it’s something “we need to get to the bottom of” so that it doesn’t become “the norm” because the treatment is not only not helping, but also causing harm.

“How many people walk into U.S. hospitals and don’t walk out again because of this perverse agenda?” Crum asked. “A very high number.”

‘I Trusted Them’

Chavez’s more detailed account of her husband Roberto’s death in a hospital in California can be found on FFFF’s web page.

Roberto was a deputy sheriff for the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department who lifted weights and hiked every day.

“We were told he was the healthiest person there with COVID,” Chavez said.  “He never took any medications, worked out every day, and had no co-morbidities.”

Roberto was aware of stories of neglect in nursing homes and hospitals throughout COVID, Chavez said.

“He didn’t want to be admitted, but we just thought that he would go in and get a breathing treatment and come home, so, I took him to the hospital,” Chavez said. “It’s my biggest regret after all I know now.”

Roberto was admitted overnight on Aug. 17, Chavez said.

From the beginning, he was isolated, treated with neglect and disrespect because of his unvaccinated status, and put through the same series of protocols that led to Richard’s death, Chavez said.

“He had told me he needed to use the bathroom but couldn’t get a nurse to help him,” Chavez said. “He asked me to call the nurses station at least five times since they would not respond to him.”

Chavez received a call at 4 a.m. from a nurse telling her that he had fallen out of bed, she said.

“I know my husband,” Chavez said. “He’s not just going to lay there. He’s going to get up and use the bathroom.”

The nurse told Chavez there were no injuries from the fall, but because he lost his oxygen mask, he had gone into respiratory failure, which then led to their petition to put him on ventilation, Chavez said, though it was never a treatment he wanted.

“We had been texting and talking on the phone every day, so I knew he had been fine,” Chavez said. “They told me if we don’t vent him he’ll die, so I was put on the spot. I agreed. When given that choice, what would you do? I trusted them.”

The next day his heart stopped twice, and on the third time, he could not be resuscitated, Chavez said, and he died on Aug. 26, 2021.

“That was the worst day of my life,” Chavez said.

At first, Chavez said she thought it was just neglect, then she paid an outside company of physicians and nurses to review Roberto’s medical records which showed what they referred to as many red flags and, among other issues, that Roberto had been saturated with cross-interaction drugs while kept on fentanyl.

“As I delved further into this, I found that my story is many, many other people’s stories,” Chavez said.

‘They Told Us It Was His Fault’

Ashley Wines, a nursing student herself whose story in more detail can be found on FFFF’s webpage, lost her 32-year-old fiance Phillip Carron on Oct. 14, after he was admitted on September 23, 2021.

“Phil was a real estate agent here locally in Bellingham, Washington,” Wines said. “He actually just became sales manager and senior vice president for NW Premium Homes shortly before everything happened. We pretty much had our future set up for us.”

Like Crum and Chavez, she encountered rabid discrimination because of Phillip’s unvaccinated status, she said.

“When I tried to drop off some food, one nurse yelled at me, telling me that because he was unvaccinated, he was going to die and that he’s not going to be eating or drinking for the rest of the time he’s here,” Wines said.

Initially, Phillip was going to be kept for observation; however, after he denied vaccination, Wines said he was put on morphine overnight, which she said increases respiratory distress.

“The next morning, he’s getting sent to ICU and labeled ‘imminent death,’” Wines said. “A couple of days later they start giving him precedex, which is a strong sedative, and remdesivir.”

After one dose of remdesivir, Phillip went into complete liver failure, Wines said.

Wines’s questioning of the protocols eventually got her banned from calling the hospital, Wines said, and she could no longer speak with Phillip, so she relied on Phillips’s mother, Pam, as power of attorney.

While Phillip was on the ventilator for 15 days, Wines said he lost 86 pounds.

“I would say 75 percent of the nurses were just nasty,” Wines said. “Every single doctor was nasty. We had doctors laugh at us. They told us it was his fault because he was not vaccinated.”

Wines and Phillip’s mother, Pam, were with Phillip the day he died, but had left two hours earlier, Wines said.

“I worked in hospice; I know what end-of-life looks like,” Wines said. “There’s no way we would have left had I thought he was going to pass. I find it interesting that two hours after we left, he passed.”

These are just brief vignettes skimming the surface of Crum’s, Chavez’s, and Wines’s stories that can be found in more detail— in addition to the stories of others—on the FFFF’s COVID-19 Humanity Betrayal Memory Project’s webpage.

‘We Are Going to Get Justice’

“People don’t want to believe that this is happening,” Crum said. “But as more stories come out, you cannot deny it.”

There are hundreds of people willing to come forward to share stories like theirs, Crum said.

“This has got to stop,” Crum said. “I think whoever set this evil system in place thought we would just dissolve into a heap of grief.”

Though there are times when they may want to, Crum said, it’s now become bigger than that.

“We are going to fight. We want the protocols to stop, and we want to hold these people accountable,” Crum said. “We are going to get justice.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

As Biden depletes US oil reserve, China amasses huge stockpile

Resident Joe Biden’s decision to deplete America’s oil reserves is helping a top adversary—China, which has built up its own stockpile while taking advantage of Biden’s firesale.

Biden’s Department of Energy in April sold roughly one million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve barrels to Unipec, the trading arm of the China Petrochemical Corporation, which is wholly owned by the Chinese government. That decision came just two months after Unipec launched an “unusual buying spree” aimed at boosting China’s own oil reserves.

The communist nation’s strategy was clearly successful—from mid-March to mid-May, China increased its oil reserves from 869 million barrels to 926 million barrels, according to Bloomberg. America’s oil reserves, meanwhile, are in freefall under Biden. The Democrat inherited 638 million barrels of reserve oil; that number is set to drop to 384.6 million barrels, the lowest level since 1984.

China’s newfound oil reserve advantage poses a serious national security threat, Republican lawmakers told the Washington Free Beacon. As war rages on in Ukraine, China has strengthened its energy relationship with Russia—in May, for example, Beijing entered discussions with Moscow to buy discounted Russian oil to further fill its reserves. For Rep. Mike Waltz (R., Fla.), that development stresses the need to ramp up U.S. energy production “rather than begging foreign governments for more supply.”

“At a time when millions of Americans are suffering financially at the gas pump, Joe Biden is helping replenish our biggest adversary’s energy reserves with our own damn oil,” Waltz said. “It’s astonishing how clueless this administration is when it comes to trusting bad actors like China to help alleviate our economy. If we want to compete with China, we need to begin expanding production here at home by expanding federal drilling leases and building more pipelines.”

Sen. Dan Sullivan (R., Alaska) echoed Waltz’s remarks, calling the fall of American energy independence under Biden “national security suicide.”

“Make no mistake: The biggest fans of Biden’s radical energy policies are Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin,” Sullivan told the Free Beacon. “We are in a new era of authoritarian aggression led by the dictators in Russia and China. The Biden administration needs to wake up to the fact that this new era—and our need for oil and gas—will be with us for decades to come.”

Neither the White House nor the Department of Energy returned requests for comment. 

It’s unclear if the reserve oil Biden sold to Unipec went directly to China’s own reserves, but the sale helped China grow its stockpile regardless, Power the Future founder and executive director Daniel Turner argued. Even if Unipec released the oil it purchased from the Biden administration into the global market, Turner said, the sale gave the state-controlled company additional supply that would allow China to place oil from other sources into its reserves.

“The energy market’s uncertainty is a good reason for any country to stockpile oil in their strategic reserves, yet America is seemingly depleting its oil reserves to help China fill theirs,” Turner told the Free Beacon. “China couldn’t create a more favorable economic and national security approach to strategic oil reserves if they had created it themselves.”

The Biden administration claimed its sale of 950,000 Strategic Petroleum Reserve barrels to Unipec would “address the pain Americans are feeling at the pump” and combat “Putin’s price hike.” In the months following the sale, however, the national average for a gallon of gas surpassed $5 for the first time ever. Unipec also ramped up its shipments of Russian oil in May, giving Putin a much-needed income source as Russia’s economy slumps in the face of Western sanctions.

While the Biden administration has blamed sky-high gas prices on Russia’s war, prices at the pump were increasing long before Putin invaded Ukraine. Biden railed against the oil and gas industry on the campaign trail in 2020, pledging to “end fossil fuel.” He went on to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline and halt new gas leases on federal land during his first month in office. Those decisions have not been well received—nearly 75 percent of Americans are not satisfied with the federal government’s national energy policy, the highest level in roughly two decades, according to a January Gallup poll.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

A survey discovered that charging logistics is the primary reason why Americans aren’t buying electric vehicles.

Consumer Reports, which said it surveyed around 8,000 Americans, found that 61 percent said they wouldn’t seek to own an electric vehicle because of charging logistics while 55 percent cited the number of miles a vehicle can go per charge. Another 52 percent said that the costs of buying and maintaining an electric vehicle are cost-prohibitive.

Another 46 percent of the respondents stated they have not heard of any financial incentives available for owners of electric vehicles.

“We found that 14 percent of American drivers say they would ‘definitely’ buy or lease an electric-only vehicle if they were to buy a vehicle today,” said Consumer Reports. “That’s up markedly from the 4 percent who said the same in a 2020 nationally representative survey from CR of 3,392 licensed U.S. drivers.”

According to recent figures from Kelly Blue Book, the average price of a new electric vehicle hovered at roughly $56,000. In contrast, the average price of a new compact was about $25,000 at about the same time. The average price of a new, non-electric SUV was $34,000, while the electric version was nearly $45,000.

Meanwhile, a recent report from data analysis and advisory firm J.D. Power, however, found that electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids may have more problems than internal combustion engines.

While internal combustion engine vehicles averaged 175 problems per 100 vehicles, this jumped to 239 among plug-in hybrids and 240 among electric vehicles, a June 28 press release of the J.D. Power 2022 U.S. Initial Quality Study stated. Lower scores represented higher-quality vehicles.

Tesla models, which were included in the industry calculation for the first time, averaged 226 problems per 100 vehicles, according to the report.

“Automakers continue to launch vehicles that are more and more technologically complex in an era in which there have been many shortages of critical components to support them,” David Amodeo, director of global automotive at J.D. Power, according to the press release.

Amid elevated gas prices, White House officials have continued to suggest that Americans buy an electric car as Republicans have faulted the Biden administration’s policies for the spike in prices.

In mid-June, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm suggested that Americans can deal with $5 per gallon of gasoline by ditching an internal combustion engine in favor of an electric one.

“If you filled up your EV [electric vehicle] and you filled up your gas tank with gasoline, you would save $60 per fill-up by going electric rather than using gasoline, but it’s a very compelling case,” she said in a clip circulated by Republicans on social media on June 14. “But again, we want to bring down the price at the point of purchase.”

Naveen Athrappully contributed to this report.

Newly obtained emails confirm that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) changed its definition for both “vaccine” and “vaccinated” because people were pointing out that definitions didn’t seem to apply to the COVID-19 vaccines.

“The definition of vaccine we have posted is problematic and people are using it to claim the COVID-19 vaccine is not a vaccine based on our own definition,” Alycia Downs, a CDC official, wrote in an email on Aug. 25, 2021, to a colleague.

The definition is located on a page titled Immunization Basics.

“Vaccine” was defined since at least 2011 by the CDC as a product that triggers immunity, while “vaccination” was described as an injection that prevents a disease, according to archived versions of the page. However, a flood of inquiries on the definitions was triggered by the fact that the COVID-19 vaccines have been increasingly ineffective against infection by the virus that causes COVID-19, the emails show.

“Our question is how is the CDC and the rest of the world allowed to call the shot a vaccination when it doesn’t even meet your own definition,” one person wrote to the CDC.

“Right-wing covid-19 pandemic deniers are using your ‘vaccine’ definition to argue that mRNA vaccines are not vaccines,” another said.

The Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines are both built on messenger RNA technology. They are two of the three COVID-19 vaccines available in the United States.

Downs and colleagues Allison Michelle Fisher, Cynthia Jorgensen, Valerie Morelli, and Andrew (no last name given) worked on changing the definitions for “vaccine” and “vaccination,” according to the emails.

The changes were pushed through on Aug. 31, 2021, and Sept. 1, 2021, respectively.

Changing Definitions

“Vaccine” is now defined as “a preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases. Vaccines are usually administered through needle injections, but some can be administered by mouth or sprayed into the nose.”

The previous definition was “a product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease. Vaccines are usually administered through needle injections, but can also be administered by mouth or sprayed into the nose.”

“Vaccination” was changed to “the act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce protection from a specific disease” from “the act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce immunity to a specific disease.”

Attorney Travis Miller obtained some of the missives in 2021 and published screenshots of them. At the time, the CDC didn’t dispute their authenticity. The Epoch Times has obtained the emails, and additional messages concerning the changes, and has published all 67 pages of them.

The batch of emails, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, also shows that Andrew, a CDC employee on the agency’s Vaccine Task Force, boosted a Washington Post article that downplayed criticism of the change.

“I’ve only seen a couple of inquiries about the change to this page. I think the WaPo article explains the problem well—that people are misinterpreting ‘immunity’ to mean 100% protection,” Andrew wrote.

“Thank you, Andrew! I really appreciate your response,” Downs replied.

A CDC spokesperson has told The Epoch Times that the “slight changes in wording” haven’t altered “the overall definition,” of “vaccine,” adding, “the previous definition at Immunization Basics | CDC could be interpreted to mean that vaccines were 100% effective, which has never been the case for any vaccine, so the current definition is more transparent, and also describes the ways in which vaccines can be administered.”

Some other portions of the CDC website still say COVID-19 vaccines confer immunity. One page, for instance, says that “getting a COVID-19 vaccination is a safer and more dependable way to build immunity to COVID-19 than getting sick with COVID-19.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Americans’ confidence in major U.S. institutions—including government and the media—is in a state of collapse, falling to an average of just 27 percent across all categories, according to the latest national poll released by the Gallup Organization.

Only the military and small businesses still enjoy the confidence of a majority of Americans.

Although public belief in institutions has been weak for most of the past 15 years, the 27 percent average for all categories is the lowest recorded by Gallup.

The company began measuring confidence in institutions in 1973 and has done so each year since 1993.

The survey figures came after Gallup delivered sobering news on June 22. At that time the company said confidence in the overall direction of the country fell to 13 percent that month, down 3 percentage points from May and 11 points since March when the figure was 24 percent.

It also reported at that time that despite ongoing economic malaise, resident Joe Biden’s job approval rating held steady at 41 percent between May and June.

Gallup’s finding on the issue was called into question by the Civiqs Poll’s daily tracking survey of registered voters which found Biden’s approval rating has sunk to a new record low of just 30 percent, the New York Post reported July 9.

Only in two states, the Democratic strongholds of Vermont and Hawaii, are the president’s supporters more numerous than his detractors.

Gallup also reported on June 29 that although 96 percent of U.S. adults expressed pride in varying degrees about being American, that figure includes a record low of 38 percent who consider themselves “extremely proud” to be Americans, the lowest figure for that description since the company began tracking the issue in 2001.

Another 27 percent of Americans said they were “very proud,” while 22 percent said they were “moderately proud,” and 9 percent described themselves as “only a little proud.”

Four percent said they were “not at all” proud to be Americans.

In the new Gallup survey, Americans expressed less confidence in institutions than they did a year ago, with significant declines in 11 of the 16 examined—and no improvements for any of the institutions.

The biggest drops were regarding the presidency as an institution—as opposed to the job performance of the current president—and the Supreme Court.

Confidence in the presidency is now at 23 percent, which is 15 percentage points lower than 2021.

The Supreme Court came in at 25 percent, down 11 points since 2021. The survey was completed before the court rendered landmark rulings on gun rights and abortion, decisions that have proven controversial.

Confidence in Congress came in at just 7 percent, down from 12 percent a year ago.

The figures for the presidency, Congress, and the Supreme Court were record Gallup lows.

Five other institutions’ ratings plunged to record lows.

The church and organized religion weighed in at 31 percent, down from 37 percent. Newspapers scored 16 percent, falling from 21 percent. The criminal justice system got 14 percent, after rating 20 percent. Big business came in at 14 percent, falling from 18 percent. The police garnered 45 percent after the 51 percent figure a year ago.

Large technology companies weighed in at 26 percent, down from 29 percent. Gallup has only been measuring confidence in the category for three years.

Small business and the military still enjoy the confidence of a majority of Americans, despite slipping support. Small business came in at 68 percent, down from 70 percent in 2021. The military had a confidence level of 64 percent, which is lower than the previous 69 percent figure.

Confidence in the medical system is at 38 percent, down from 44 percent. The figure for public schools is 28 percent, down from 32 percent. Banks scored 27 percent, a drop from 33 percent. Confidence in organized labor remained steady at 28 percent.

Confidence in television news is down to 11 percent from 16 percent in the 2021 survey.

The new annual survey was carried out by telephone in the first three weeks of June. The respondents were 1,015 adults in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/confidence-in-us-media-government-and-justice-system-collapsing_4589439.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-07-11-2&utm_medium=email&est=WQ7IxDJu41RqYANJ%2Fie16XB%2BXk6DnxEZqS9ppCdU1MliBuh5UAG6oFEh8n69f%2FYwhg%3D%3D

Decision to not get COVID-19 vaccine comes with consequences, but maybe not for the health care system

A large-scale international study of those unvaccinated against COVID-19 finds a pattern of discrimination—and a relatively low hospitalization rate.

While the study’s findings are limited by the nature of the selection process, in which unvaccinated people opted in to participate, the new study suggests that those who declined the vaccine may not be the burden to the health care system many have claimed them to be. The study is now available as a preprint (which means it hasn’t yet been peer-reviewed). It was uploaded to ResearchGate earlier this month.

The findings hold significant importance to policymakers. According to Our World in Data, 60 percent of the world is fully vaccinated against COVID-19. The 40 percent who aren’t vaccinated against the virus have been frequently blamed for the duration and severity of the COVID-19 pandemic, even as vaccination rates reached up to 90 percent in many jurisdictions.

With government agencies, news media, and social media algorithms ignoring or misrepresenting the contending science around COVID-19, the unvaccinated have faced often intense pressure to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

“What the survey aimed to do is gather insights about health outcomes, choices, and discrimination experienced by the marginalized subpopulation of people from diverse socio-economic backgrounds, ethnicities, and cultures who have elected to exercise their right of refusal of COVID-19 injections,” the study authors said.

In many places in the United States, those who declined the COVID-19 vaccines have been discriminated against, stigmatized, and marginalized from society. Nurses and health care workers were fired, Air Force cadets were denied commissions, and family members found themselves ostracized within some of their most intimate and important relationships.

The vilification of the unvaccinated has come with the censorship of both science and personal experience. Many doctors, nurses, scientists, and other health care professionals who speak out about the safety and necessity of these vaccines have been threatened with the loss of their medical licenses, deleted from social media, canceled from events with their peers, and fired from their jobs.

The Control Group

The study is based on data collected from the Control Group Cooperative (CGC), which was founded in July 2021 by a citizens group in the UK to represent and connect people who elected to not get the COVID-19 vaccines.

The goal of the CGC has been to analyze the long-term health outcomes and experiences of these individuals through self-reported surveys. According to their website, there are currently more than 300,000 unvaccinated participants from more than 175 countries participating in their long-term study.

The study was conducted by Robert Verkerk, founder of the Alliance for Natural Health International, an affiliate of the CGC. A team of international scientists contributed to the research. The study analyzes the data from the CGC survey from the first five months of its operation—from September 2021 through February.

The Cohort

The cohort analyzed by Verkerk consisted of 18,497 individuals out of the 297,618 people who had joined the CGC by the end of February.

A plurality of participants were from the continent of Europe (40 percent), followed by Oceania (27 percent), and North America (25 percent). Three percent of participants were from South America and Asia, while less than 1 percent were from Africa. Ages ranged anywhere from 1 to more than 90 years old, with most participants being middle-aged.

Motive for Refusal

Individuals participating in the study declined COVID-19 vaccination for various reasons. These included past vaccine injuries, preference for more natural remedies, lack of trust in pharmaceutical companies and government entities, and concerns about the validity of vaccine study results.

One-third of the individuals in the study self-reported that they received vaccinations as children. That figure may be low, as others may not have reported—or even remembered—their previous vaccinations.

While some had never been vaccinated, the cohort was mainly concerned about the safety, efficacy, and necessity of the COVID-19 vaccines, not all vaccines in general.

Discrimination Based on Vaccination

Between 20 and 50 percent of respondents, depending on where they lived, reported being personal targets of hate and discrimination. Many felt victimized for their vaccination status, especially those living in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and South America.

They reported that they faced discrimination in the workplace, from friends or family members, and from their respective state authorities, because of their “unvaccinated” status.

The prejudice experienced within the workplace by respondents resulted in heavy economic burdens for many. For example, 29 percent of respondents from Australia and New Zealand reported losing their jobs during the five months that the survey was administered.

These survey results dovetail with what unvaccinated individuals have been facing globally. Those who don’t succumb to peer pressure, advertising, or incentivizing are then threatened with an ultimatum: Get the vaccine or get fired.

That’s what happened to Destiny Carpenter, a former nurse at Colorado Canyons Hospital. Carpenter is among one of the hundreds of U.S. nurses who have been fired for refusing to get the vaccine, as Fox News reported in September 2021.

Carpenter was nominated for the Daisy Award for extraordinary nursing three times during her tenure at the hospital. This award is granted to the most deserving nurse for exuding compassionate care to their patients.

In February, FiercePharma reported that more than 15,500 health care workers in the United States had been fired or suspended or had chosen to resign from their hospital jobs over their decision to remain unvaccinated.

About 40 percent of respondents, regardless of age, reported that they experienced mild or moderate mental health issues during the duration of the survey, while approximately 20 percent reported experiencing severe mental health issues.

In an analysis of the mental health issues experienced by the cohort, the scientists noted that the mental health burden “may be associated more to the human response to the pandemic, rather than psychological, fear-based reactions to any threat posed by the SARS-CoV-2 virus itself.”

In other words, the respondents’ mental health problems appeared to mainly be a result of being stigmatized and marginalized from society.

A Pandemic of the Unvaccinated?

While the study gives insight into the experience of the unvaccinated, it always raises questions about assertions that this group is an undue burden on the health care system.

“Only 74 respondents out of the 5,196 (1.4 percent) who reported suspected or known SARS-CoV-2 infection also reported that they were hospitalized following infection. Therefore, outpatient or inpatient hospitalization was reported in just 0.4 percent of the full survey cohort. Of these, 15 were outpatient only, another 15 were hospitalized for less than 3 days, 26 were hospitalized between 3 and 7 days, 11 for between 7 and 14 days and only 10 for more than 14 days,” the study reads.

While the study is potentially prone to bias because of the selection pool for the survey, an infection-hospitalization ratio of 0.4 percent would certainly challenge many assertions about the burden of the unvaccinated.

A study published in the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice in May 2021 found an overall infection-hospitalization ratio of 2.1 percent that varied more by age than by race or sex.

“Infection-hospitalization ratio estimates ranged from 0.4 percent for those younger than 40 years to 9.2 percent for those older than 60 years.”

The study also found that hospitalization rates based on case counts overestimated the IHR by a factor of 10, “but this overestimation differed by demographic groups, especially age.”

Most of the CGC respondents who reported that they had caught COVID-19 had only mild symptoms and were sick for less than a week. Fatigue and coughing were the most common symptoms recorded.

Beyond the fact that they were unvaccinated, another unique trait of the CGC cohort may also be their propensity to try various therapeutics to treat their COVID-19 infections.

Against the Grain

Participants reported that they didn’t need a vaccine to lessen their symptoms: Most infections were mild to begin with, and many respondents said they turned to natural remedies when they did get sick.

Participants reported that they opted to support their immune systems naturally by taking preventative vitamins such as zinc, vitamin C, vitamin D, and quercetin.

A study published in June 2021 in the journal Inflammopharmacology by an international team of researchers from India, Italy, and the United States, shows that using natural remedies is a scientifically sound choice.

This study explored the immune-boosting properties of vitamins and minerals in combating COVID-19 infections. The scientists found that if administered at higher-than-recommended daily doses, many vitamins had the potential to reduce viral load and risk of hospitalization from COVID-19.

The decision to combat COVID-19 with non-pharmacological immune-enhancing interventions may also help explain why the hospitalization rates of the unvaccinated in the study were so low.

What About Ivermectin?

A portion of the participants reported that they also took ivermectin, an anti-parasitical that has been both promoted and hotly criticized as a treatment for COVID-19, as The Epoch Times has reported.

While ivermectin remains controversial, a meta-analysis published in June 2021 in the American Journal of Therapeutics states: “Moderate-certainty evidence finds that large reductions in COVID-19 deaths are possible using ivermectin. Using ivermectin early in the clinical course may reduce numbers progressing to severe disease. The apparent safety and low cost suggest that ivermectin is likely to have a significant impact on the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic globally.”

Injecting Infants

On June 18, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that it was authorizing the emergency use of Moderna and Pfizer vaccines for babies 6 months and older. About 20 million U.S. children are in this age bracket.

The announcement has raised concerns that side effects from the vaccine aren’t being weighed against potential benefits.

As of June 12, the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) indicated that there have been 1,301,354 adverse events and 28,859 deaths from COVID-19 vaccines. A recent analysis of VAERS reports done by two journalists in Israel revealed that there were 58 serious adverse effects in babies prior to the rollout of the vaccine authorization for those aged 6 months and older. The reports failed to indicate if these infants and toddlers were involved in the Pfizer clinical trial or why they received vaccination.

Verkerk is deeply concerned about the CDC vaccine authorization for children younger than 5. He holds master’s and doctorate degrees from Imperial College London and is co-author of more than 60 peer-reviewed journal articles in the areas of health, agriculture, and environment. He’s also the co-chair of the World Council of Health’s Health & Humanity Committee. He told The Epoch Times via email that many parents want this vaccine for their children because, like every parent, they want what’s best for their child.

“However, they’ve been misled as to the known science on both the benefits and the risks,” he wrote. “There could be disastrous long-term consequences for some children if they are exposed to the spike protein via the vaccine before they are exposed to circulating coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2, which would otherwise result in broader-based, more robust, naturally-acquired immunity.”

For Verkerk, it’s about choice. We shouldn’t vilify those who rely on natural immunity or refuse the vaccines for religious, medical, or ethical reasons, he said.

“We have seen a dramatic erosion of the principles of medical ethics,” he wrote.

We need to respect autonomy (the right of competent adults to make individualized and informed decisions about their own medical care) and adhere to the principle of first doing no harm, as well as to the principles of beneficence and justice, according to Verkerk.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Scholars at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft cut bait

A few years ago, the Koch brothers and George Soros had a dream. What if the anti-war left joined forces with the isolationist right and worked together to bring U.S. foreign policy back to the 1930s? 

From this unholy alliance sprung the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. The mission: make America neutral again. Finally appeasers in Washington had a safe space to apologize for Russian oligarchs, Iranian terrorists, and Chinese communists. 

Well, all good things must come to an end.

An all-star in the Koch-Soros foreign policy alliance, Joseph Cirincione, announced on Thursday his resignation from the Quincy Institute: “They excuse Russia’s military threats and actions because they believe that they have been provoked by U.S. policies,” he told Politico.

Cirincione is not just some disgruntled scholar. He is the former president of Ploughshares, a grant-making organization that was not just a recipient of the Soros organization’s politicized philanthropy, but a gatekeeper and driver of it—deciding which pinkos would prosper and which would starve. Mother Jones reports that Cirincione helped connect Quincy to major donors in its early days.

His change of heart on Quincy is surely a weathervane for other elements of the Soros network. Indeed, Soros himself has been signaling in the last year that he favors a much tougher policy on China than the one offered up by the Quincy crowd, which released a major study in June that found the Chinese military build up was nothing to worry about and has warned of the perils of “threat inflation” when it comes to China’s military expansion. 

Soros, by contrast, came very close to endorsing regime change. “It is to be hoped that Xi Jinping may be replaced by someone less repressive at home and more peaceful abroad,” he told an audience at the Hoover Institution in January, calling Xi “the greatest threat that open societies face today.” 

Trita Parsi, a co-founder and executive vice president of Quincy, as well as somebody who could be confused for an Iranian agent—at least according to a federal judge—told Mother Jones he’s bewildered that Cirincione would suggest the think tank was avoiding criticism of Russia. But he acknowledges that Quincy is “not going along with the idea that it’s a good thing to change the objectives in Ukraine towards weakening Russia, because we believe that could lead to endless war.”

As the Quincy Institute demonstrated so spectacularly in Afghanistan, one sure fire way to end endless war is to lose the war quickly and all at once. 

As for the interpersonal drama that we assume is engulfing the Quincy Institute, and the enmity growing between teams Koch and Soros—may that war truly be endless.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

We spend a good deal of time on this Substack articulating the vast array of negative consequences of lockdowns on society. As I note in my upcoming book:

The Radical Left is Trying to Pressure the Supreme Court – Fight Back Here!

Many of those who joined Rational Ground and what we came to call Team Reality had similar experiences. Life isn’t always fair, and we adults are willing to bear with the challenges foisted on us, but when the government’s insane rules harm our children, watch out.

Below are links to some of the more prominent impacts we’ve cataloged against children from the egregious policies foisted on families during the pandemic. We’ll be discussing these and other items today at noon on our Rational Ground podcast.

Listen to the podcast live on the Callin website, or later on Apple iTunes or Spotify.

Stringency Measures and Their Impact on Children

This week a new study scanned the literature to determine what countries across the world are experiencing because of the pandemic and stringency measures. Here’s a thread on that:

Meta-study:
“… anxiety, depression, [PTSD], and sleep disorders.”
“… measures such as quarantine and isolation for infection prevention may have immediate and prolonged mental health impacts.”

The kids are not all righthttps://t.co/umGo0uWBZp
1/July 7, 2022

From RationalGround.com

• Our 4-part series by Emily Burns published last year is a tremendous overview about masking kids.
• Screamed for Mom to “Make it Stop”
• Ridiculous mandates, over-testing, unreasonable quarantines, illogical masking policies… the list goes on. This next generation is going to have a tough time grappling with concepts like “reason” and “logic.” One mom emailed us her letter to the school board. See below… feel free to re-use it.
• Our illustrious overlords of health determined it was better for kids that they be banished from school and locked indoors eating takeout. The result? BMI rate of change for 2 to 19 year olds DOUBLED! COVID didn’t do this. OUR POLICIES DID.

• A group of parents in Gainesville, FL, sent 6 face masks to a lab at the University of Florida, requesting an analysis of contaminants found on the masks after they had been worn. The resulting report found that five masks were contaminated with bacteria, parasites, and fungi, including three with dangerous pathogenic and pneumonia-causing bacteria.

Our friends at the Brownstone Institute have compiled a tremendous list of resources, analysis and commentary on this subject:

• What Covid Containment Has Done to Our Children
• A Partial List of the Myriad Abuses That Facemasks Inflict on Our Children
• More Than 400 Studies on the Failure of Compulsory Covid Interventions (Lockdowns, Restrictions, Closures)
• 75 Studies and Articles Against COVID-19 School Closures
• Hurting Children to Protect Them
• Human Shields: The Public-Health War on Children
• What Will We Tell Our Children?
• Why Have They Done This to the Children?
• Lockdowns Might Have Contributed to Myopia In Children
• More than 150 Comparative Studies and Articles on Mask Ineffectiveness and Harms

Articles From Our Substack:

• Masking Children is an Ineffective Policy and Not Supported by Research or Data
• Saving Children and Mental Health
• Low, Low, Low
• 16 States Where Kids Breathe Freely!
• Kids and Masks: A Review of the Insanity
• The List: Lockdown Impact

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

The protection against severe illness from so-called natural immunity remains superior to the protection bestowed by COVID-19 vaccines, according to a new study.

People who survived COVID-19 infection and were not vaccinated had sky-high protection against severe or fatal COVID-19, researchers in Qatar found.

“Effectiveness of primary infection against severe, critical, or fatal COVID-19 reinfection was 97.3 percent … irrespective of the variant of primary infection or reinfection, and with no evidence for waning. Similar results were found in sub-group analyses for those ≥50 years of age,” Dr. Laith Abu-Raddad, with Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar, and colleagues said after studying long-term natural immunity in unvaccinated people.

That percentage is higher than the protection from COVID-19 vaccines, according to other studies and real-world data.

Swedish researchers, for instance, found in May that two doses of a vaccine were just 54 percent effective against the Omicron variant of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes COVID-19.

South African scientists, meanwhile, found the effectiveness of the AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines peaked at 88 percent, and quickly dropped to 70 percent or lower.

The Qatar group found natural immunity for over 14 months after a person’s first infection “remains very strong, with no evidence for waning, irrespective of variant.”

The study was published ahead of peer review on the website medRxiv.

Few researchers have studied natural immunity long-term among unvaccinated persons, in part because many of the people have eventually received a COVID-19 vaccine.

The vaccines, meanwhile, have waned against both infection and severe illness over time, triggering recommendations for booster doses, with some Americans even getting five doses within 10 months.

Natural Immunity Performs Poorly Against Reinfection

The vaccines were once said to provide close to 100 percent protection against symptomatic infection. They now provide under 50 percent protection against infection after a short period of time, even after booster doses, following the emergence of Omicron.

That strain and its subvariants are dominant in countries around the world, including the United States and Qatar.

Natural immunity was thought to provide strong protection against reinfection. But the Qatari researchers found it also provides poor protection against reinfection from Omicron.

Pre-Omicron infection against pre-Omicron reinfection was as high as 90.5 percent, and remained around 70 percent by the 16th month, according to the study. But pre-Omicron infection against Omicron reinfection was just 38 percent effective, although it was higher among people infected with the original Wuhan strain or with the Delta variant, and lower among those who got sick from the Alpha or Beta strains.

Modeling signaled a drop to zero percent protection by 18 months, but the shielding still appears to last longer than that of vaccines, researchers said.

“Vaccine immunity against Omicron subvariants lasts for <6 months but pre-Omicron natural immunity, assuming Gompertz decay, may last for just over a year,” they wrote.

Limitations of the study included differences in testing frequency among the cohorts studied, and depletion of groups who had a COVID-19 infection due to deaths.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Jim Smith – whose concurrent roles as a Pfizer board member and Reuters CEO appear to pose a conflict of interest – serves as a board member of the World Economic Forum’s anti-corruption initiative.

Smith’s leading role with the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Partnering Against Corruption Initiative follows controversy over his position at the pharmaceutical giant and mainstream media outlet, which frequently reports on Pfizer. Reuters has published tens of thousands of articles covering or mentioning Pfizer, though the articles never disclose Smith’s affiliation with either entity.

Smith serves on the board of the WEF’s Partnering Against Corruption Initiative, dubbed the “leading business voice on anti-corruption and transparency.”

“It is one of the Forum’s strongest cross-industry collaborative efforts and is creating a highly visible, agenda-setting platform by working with business leaders, international organizations and governments to address corruption, transparency and emerging-market risks,” explains a WEF synopsis.

In this role, Smith has contributed articles to the WEF website, including a 2017 piece: “Corruption and the Erosion of Trust.”

“Today’s common struggle against corruption goes far beyond compliance. More problematic is the profound and worsening trust deficit that exists between institutions and individuals,” Smith begins before lamenting the public’s loss of trust in mainstream media outlets:

“The widespread perception that institutions—both public and private—are not acting in the interests of the people they serve pervades the thinking of communities across the globe. News organizations, which have historically served as the watchdog for governments and business leaders, are less trusted by the public than ever before.”

“Public confidence has been corroded by a concentration on near-term priorities and payoffs, propelled by election-cycle politics or quarterly results targets that too often leave children worse off than their parents,” laments Smith.

The article, however, comes amidst the Federal Drug Administration and Pfizer attempting to delay the release of documents related to the efficacy of its COVID-19 vaccine.

The WEF has been accused of exploiting COVID-19 to advance its “Great Reset” agenda to advance its radical agenda of abolishing private property ownership.

You can read more about the World Economic Forum at www.TakeDownTheWEF.com 

A second professor from Laval University in Quebec City has been suspended for questioning the need to vaccinate children against COVID-19.

Nicolas Derome, a professor of molecular biology, was suspended for the same reason and under similar circumstances as his colleague Patrick Provost, a professor of microbiology, infectious diseases, and immunology.

Derome and Provost both participated in activities organized by Réinfo COVID, which describes itself as a collective of nurses, physicians, scientists, and citizens seeking to generate debate about how the pandemic has been handled by the government.

Derome gave an online presentation organized by the collective in late November 2021, in which he said children were not at high risk for complications from COVID-19.

He said there had been “zero” serious cases among the 0 to 17 age bracket, with or without comorbidity, with his presentation slide indicating the data came from Quebec’s public health institute (INSPQ) and expert assessments.

A review of the INSPQ data for the first four waves, covering Feb. 23, 2020, to Dec. 4, 2021, reveals there were 73 ICU admissions for individuals between age 0 and 19. The data does not indicate if the admissions were “because of COVID” or “with COVID.”

These 73 ICU admissions represent an average of 1.6 percent of total ICU admissions across age groups during the four waves covered.

Derome also said children between 1 and 14 years old were 15 times more likely to die from a road accident than from COVID, and noted there had been no deaths for the 5 to 19 years olds.

“This information is very important to have in order to make a free and informed choice regarding this vaccination campaign for kids 5 to 11,” he said at the start of his presentation.

A current review of data for the first four waves shows one death occurred for the 10–19 age group during the third wave. A separate INSPQ chart reviewed on deaths and presence of comorbidities shows no deaths reported for the 19 and under category with the mention that percentages are not reported when the total number is less than 5.

Derome said, quoting published literature, that children have a better innate response to defend against COVID, which explains why they suffer less serious outcomes.

The professor also quoted from the U.N. children agency UNICEF, which said at the time that the World Health Organization (WHO) did not recommend COVID vaccines for children, due to lack of trials and little to no safety data for that age group.

Since then, the WHO has said that the Pfizer vaccine can be safely administered to children from 5 years of age and that both Pfizer and Moderna are licensed for use in children above 12.

The professor also raised the issue of the waning efficacy of vaccines—not only against infection, but hospitalizations—by quoting White House COVID adviser Anthony Fauci.

Derome gave his presentation when Quebec had just started its vaccination campaign for 5- to 11-year-olds.

Derome was contacted by The Epoch Times but was not available to comment.

Laval University said when contacted that it would not comment on the “personal situation of its employees.”

At the time Derome’s video was published, Laval spokesperson Andrée-Anne Stewart told Radio-Canada that his remarks “in no way reflect the stance of Laval University and its faculty of science and engineering regarding the health crisis.”

“Like all members of the teaching staff, professor Derome is held to all the rigour and scientific integrity required by this function,” Stewart said.

‘Sliding Into Dictatorship’

On Dec. 7, 2021, Derome’s colleague, Patrick Provost, said in a scientific panel organized by Réinfo COVID that, based on provincial data, there is more risk of hospitalization for children from the vaccines than from COVID-19 itself, in addition to not having a portrait of mid- to long-term side effects.

Provost was suspended for eight weeks without pay in mid-June for his comments. It’s likely that Derome received a similar penalty.

Réinfo COVID posted a letter on its website presumably from Provost asking, on behalf of Laval University, that the video of the panel he participated in be taken down, or else he could face further sanctions, including being fired.

The collective refused, citing the need for the public to be aware of the “utility, efficacy, risks, and ethics of vaccinating children.”

Réinfo said it would try to help the professors, noting: “If universities gag their professors, as do different professional orders, we’re sliding into dictatorship.”

Academic Freedom

The suspensions of Derome and Provost have added fuel to the debate about academic freedom in Quebec, which just last month adopted a law to protect it.

“Those situations at Laval University confirm that it was necessary to legislate on this issue and the law stipulates that every university must, within a year, write a policy and put in place a committee to monitor the implementation of the policy and review the complaints related to academic freedom in universities,” Higher Education Minister Danielle McCann said in a statement to The Epoch Times.

“The law also emphasizes that academic freedom must be practiced in conformity with norms of scientific rigour.”

The professors have the support of their union, which has filed a grievance, and of the larger union federation it’s affiliated to.

“Independently of what we can think of comments or statements made by a colleague, heads of the university have no legitimacy to intervene in the content of comments made by those colleagues,” says an email sent by the Laval teacher’s union (SPUL) to its members.

“The leadership of Laval University made a wrong call and hurts the principles guaranteeing the functioning of the University and academic freedom,” SPUL president Louis-Philippe Lampron said in a tweet.

The Epoch Times reached out to SPUL but didn’t hear back by publication time.

A provincial university professor’s labour union federation to which the SPUL is attached, the FQPPU, said the suspension of the two professors was even more “serious and surprising” since it occurred after the province passed the law on academic freedom.

“The conformity to the consensus of a scientific community is in itself not a sufficiently precise norm to justify a disciplinary sanction against a professor who exercises his academic freedom,” the FQPPU said in a statement.

It said it’s the duty of colleagues and other academics to refute or point out weaknesses in remarks or works presented.

“In an institution that respects academic freedom, it’s by refutation that professors and others participating in teaching and research must push back against comments which drift away from the knowledge validated by proven methods.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Tesla CEO Elon Musk appeared to poke fun at Bill Gates on Thursday after the Microsoft founder claimed that clean hydrogen energy could zero out emissions and help tackle climate change.

Gates, on his Twitter account, had earlier posted a link to a blog entry titled “To cut emissions, use this Swiss Army Knife”; a screenshot of which was captured and shared by The Whole Mars Catalog on Twitter.

“Cheap clean hydrogen would be a great breakthrough we have many uses for it. Also if we could bottle the tooth fairy and clone Santa Claus, and replace public transport with unicorns we’d be all good,” one Twitter user commented in response to the blog post, to which Musk replied with a laughing face emoji.

Hydrogen is an energy carrier, not an energy source, and can be used in fuel cells to generate electricity, or power and heat. In the United States, it is predominantly used to refine petroleum, treat metals, produce fertilizer, and process foods.

Because its conversion into electricity does not emit greenhouse gases, Hydrogen could potentially serve to meet climate change coals set out by resident Joe Biden as well as other world leaders.

However, critics note that while it is a renewable source and has only minimal impact on the environment, it doesn’t come without its risks: it is more flammable than natural gas and its flame is nearly invisible.

Scientists have also warned that hydrogen leaked into the atmosphere can contribute to climate change by increasing the amounts of other greenhouse gases, thus indirectly resulting in global warming.

‘Cheap, Green Hydrogen Would Be a Massive Breakthrough in Clean Energy’

Hydrogen is also difficult to store, given its low volumetric energy density, and must be compressed into gas or liquid at extremely low temperatures.

It also isn’t commercially viable right now.

Gates’ blog post notes that “cheap, green hydrogen would be a massive breakthrough in clean energy” and that “the world already uses 70 million tons of hydrogen each year as a chemical in some manufacturing processes like making fertilizer” of which nearly all is produced from fossil fuels.

“If we make that hydrogen clean, we eliminate the 1.6 percent of global emissions that it is responsible for now,” the billionaire wrote.

Electrolysis is the process of splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, which takes place in an electrolyzer, according to the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

However, the process can be expensive and energy-intensive.

“There are four different electrolyzer technologies being developed, and the price of each one needs to go down to make electrolyzed hydrogen cost-competitive,” Gates wrote on his blog.

“Finally, there are reserves of hydrogen in geologic formations around the world, and in theory, geologic hydrogen has the potential to provide a vast supply of affordable, zero-emissions hydrogen,” Gates continued. “Scientists are still in the early stages of researching ways to find and extract geologic hydrogen from natural reserves.”

Pointing to Russia’s war in Ukraine and the West’s aim to reduce dependence on Russian natural gas imports, Gates noted that the European Union has already announced plans to produce and import 20 million tons of green hydrogen by 2030.

‘Load Of Rubbish’

Musk has previously called hydrogen fuel cells “a load of rubbish” and claimed that success with hydrogen fuel cell vehicles is “simply not possible.”

This is not the first time that Musk and Gates have appeared to butt heads.

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, in May Gates claimed that Musk could “actually could make it worse,” while referring to misinformation and his planned takeover of the social media platform, Twitter.

However, the tech billionaire noted: “That’s not his track record.”

In April, the businessman became embroiled in a public spat when Musk said he confronted Gates over his short-selling of shares of Tesla, despite vowing to combat climate change.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times