Attorney General Merrick Garland on Aug. 11 said he personally approved the FBI’s raid earlier this week of the personal Mar-a-Lago residence of former President Donald Trump.
The FBI usually seeks approval from the top before conducting a raid on a political target. Garland’s confirmation was the first public statement from the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI on the unprecedented search.
Garland told reporters that his agency filed a motion on Aug. 11 to unseal the court-approved search warrant that was executed at a home “belonging to the former president,” after Trump confirmed the raid, “as is his right.”
“I personally approved the decision to seek a search warrant in this matter. … The Department does not take such a decision lightly,” Garland said.
He said copies of the warrant were provided to Trump’s lawyers on Aug. 8 by FBI agents.
The attorney general claimed that FBI agents are “patriotic” and “dedicated” public servants who protect Americans against violent crime and terrorism. “I am honored to work alongside them,” he said.
So far, the Justice Department and FBI have remained mostly quiet about the purpose and probable cause behind the raid and have repeatedly declined to publicly comment to The Epoch Times and other news outlets. Only alleged anonymous sources within the FBI and Justice Department have sporadically provided details about the incident to legacy media since Aug. 8.
A day before Garland’s statement, FBI Director Christopher Wray declined to speak about the FBI search, saying that it is “not something I can talk about, and I’d refer you to the department.”
The White House, meanwhile, said it wasn’t aware of the FBI raid. On Aug. 9, when asked by reporters about what Garland told him, President Joe Biden didn’t answer.
The judge who reportedly signed off on the warrant in the case, Bruce Reinhart, ordered the Justice Department on Aug. 10 to file a response before Aug. 15 after Judicial Watch and others asked the court to unseal the warrant.
Republicans in Congress have repeatedly called on the Justice Department to release documents and other information about the raid, with some arguing that it appears to be politically motivated. Even some Democrats, including former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, asserted that the agencies need to provide answers about the raid.
Because of the extraordinary targeting of a former U.S. president, many have speculated that officials at the highest levels of the Biden administration, including Garland and Wray, would have signed off on it. Meanwhile, news of the incident has triggered a political firestorm with just 90 days to go before the 2022 midterms and a possible announcement that Trump might run for president in 2024.
What Comes Next
It was Trump on Aug. 8 who confirmed the FBI raid at his Palm Beach home. The former president reportedly wasn’t there when it happened, and his lawyers said they weren’t able to observe the agents.
“Such an assault could only take place in broken, Third-World Countries. Sadly, America has now become one of those Countries, corrupt at a level not seen before. They even broke into my safe!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social website.
Members of Trump’s family and his lawyers said in multiple media interviews that agents went into several rooms in Mar-a-Lago, including Trump’s bedroom and office. The agents, his son Eric Trump said, didn’t provide lawyers with a copy of the warrant before the search and wouldn’t answer questions.
When speaking on Fox News about the search, Eric Trump said it was done because the “National Archives wanted to … corroborate whether or not Donald Trump had any documents in his possession.” Trump was referring to the National Archives having confirmed in February that classified documents were allegedly among several boxes that Trump took to his Florida residence last year.
As for Garland, some Republican lawmakers warned that he could be investigated or even impeached over the Aug. 8 raid if the GOP takes the House in 2022. The party of the president tends to lose seats in midterm elections, and Democrats currently hold slim majorities in both chambers of Congress.
“I’ve seen enough. The Department of Justice has reached an intolerable state of weaponized politicization,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said in a statement. “When Republicans take back the House, we will conduct immediate oversight of this department, follow the facts, and leave no stone unturned.”
In the Senate, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) suggested that if it’s found that Garland engaged in anything improper, he could face impeachment.
“Now, this is really something that’s going to require an investigation,” Paul said. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if the investigation leads to abuse of power that this could even lead to an impeachment of the attorney general.”
A California teacher who bragged about using his position to radicalize students into far-left “revolutionaries” has been given three years of pay by his school district to resign, according to a report.
Gabriel Gipe, a teacher of Advanced Placement government at Inderkum High School, agreed in January to leave his post with a $190,000 payout from the Natomas Unified School District, according to The Sacramento Bee, citing district records.
Gipe, whose annual base salary is about $60,000, received a final paycheck of about $100,000 after taxes were withheld, according to the newspaper.
The teacher drew outrage from the school district community last year after he was featured in a video by undercover news organization Project Veritas.
In the video footage, Gipe says he gave students extra credit for them to attend left-wing events, including counter-protests to the “right-wing rallies.” He also allegedly kept track of his students’ political inclinations to make sure they drifted further left as time went on.
“So, they take an ideology quiz and I put [the results] on the [classroom] wall. Every year, they get further and further left,” he tells the undercover journalist, who was posing as a left-wing sympathizer.
“I’m like, ‘These ideologies are considered extreme, right? Extreme times breed extreme ideologies.’ Right? There is a reason why Generation Z, these kids, are becoming further and further left.”
Gipe says he displayed on his classroom wall an Antifa flag, which he claimed was “meant to make fascists feel uncomfortable.” The video footage also shows a poster of Chinese Communist Party leader Mao Zedong on a wall in the teacher’s classroom.
When asked about his views on the Chinese Communist Party, Gipe says in the video footage that Mao’s Cultural Revolution, which took place after a disastrous economic campaign that triggered mass starvation and famine, provides lessons for how socialism can take root inside the United States.
“You need propaganda of the deed—your economics—and cultural propaganda as well. You need to retrain the way people think,” he says. “We have to hit both fronts. We have to convince people that this [socialism] is what we actually need.”
Later, when a Project Veritas reporter confronted Gipe on the street, the teacher was wearing a T-shirt with a hammer and sickle on the front. Gipe didn’t respond to the reporter’s questions regarding his persuading of students to adopt far-left ideologies.
Following parents’ outrage, the school district placed Gipe on unpaid leave pending an investigation, acknowledging that Gipe’s “educational approach” was “disturbing and [undermined] the public’s trust.”
An administrative judge later ordered that Gipe be put on paid leave as the district’s investigation continued.
The report of the investigation revealed more details about Gipe’s problematic conduct, including replacing typical AP government curriculum with lectures about communism and pinning photos of students who expressed conservative ideas on a wall next to a swastika.
“You used your position of authority with a captive audience of impressionable teenagers to promote your own political ideology, including advocating or teaching communism with the intent to indoctrinate or inculcate in the mind of any pupil a preference for communism,” the district report reads, according to The Sacramento Bee.
In response to a request for additional information, the Natomas Unified School District officials said in a statement that they have put the matter behind them.
“We have put this behind us and have moved forward,” the statement reads. “What’s most important right now is welcoming our students back to the start of a new school year.”
A person close to the Trump family suggested the FBI may have planted “listening devices” during a raid targeting former President Donald Trump’s Florida residence earlier this week.
Lawyers for the former president previously said that FBI agents would not allow Trump’s team to observe or supervise their search of Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach. One lawyer, Lindsey Halligan, told Fox News on Thursday that agents are believed to have searched Trump’s bedroom, office, and a storage room.
Because the FBI allegedly “didn’t allow anybody to supervise what they were doing, and they specifically requested to turn off the security cameras,” Kimbery Guilfoyle, Donald Trump Jr.’s fiancée and an advisor to the former president’s 2020 campaign, told Newsmax. “Why? Because they didn’t want to be caught with what they were doing. How do you know there weren’t listening devices planted or evidence planted there?
“It’s something that has to be investigated and checked out, and we want to see the affidavit and what was their probable cause to be able to go in there and break into the president’s home,” she added. For her claim, Guilfoyle did not provide evidence.
Trump’s son Eric Trump told the Daily Mail on Wednesday that security cameras remained on when the agents carried out their search, accusing the agents of refusing to hand over a warrant and kicking lawyers off the premises. Agents, he said, told Trump’s team to turn off the cameras but they remained on, and those agents went to places “they shouldn’t have been.”
No Response
The FBI and Department of Justice have not responded to requests for comment. The judge who approved the FBI warrant, Bruce Reinhart, ordered the Justice Department on Wednesday to respond to requests to unseal the warrant in the case.
The White House said Joe Biden was not aware of the FBI search before it was announced earlier this week. Top Republicans have called on the Department of Justice to release documents pertaining to the raid or to have Attorney General Merrick Garland speak about the matter.
Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray have remained silent on the Mar-a-Lago search. But on Wednesday, Wray complained to reporters in a press conference about alleged violent threats levied against federal law enforcement agents in the wake of the raid.
The former president on Wednesday took to his Truth Social app and speculated on whether the FBI planted evidence. Members of Trump’s team said he wasn’t there while the raid occurred.
“The FBI and others from the Federal Government would not let anyone, including my lawyers, be anywhere near the areas that were rummaged and otherwise looked at during the raid on Mar-a-Lago,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Everyone was asked to leave the premises, they wanted to be left alone, without any witnesses to see what they were doing, taking or, hopefully not, ‘planting.’”
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind.—An Indiana congresswoman who grew up under communism said the raid on former President Donald Trump’s home was similar to “KGB-style tactics.”
Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.) who grew up in Ukraine in the former Soviet Union, was one of about a dozen House Republicans who met with Trump on the evening of Aug. 9. She said the raid outraged her.
“As a US Congresswoman who grew up in the USSR, the FBI raid of President Trump’s home is alarming. It is reminiscent of KGB-style tactics,” Spartz said in an email to the Epoch Times.
Spartz called for equal treatment under the law, “not spectacles to destroy potential political opponents.”
“I don’t remember Hillary Clinton or Hunter Biden’s homes being raided in this embarrassing way,” Spartz said.
Spartz joined Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) and members of the House Republican Study Committee in a three-hour meeting with the former president. Banks told Fox News that Trump was “upbeat” and has made his decision about whether to run for president in 2024.
Ukrainian-American U.S. Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.) speaks at a news conference on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at the U.S. Capitol on March 2, 2022 in Washington. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Spartz counseled facts before feelings in the wake of the raid on Trump’s Palm Beach, Florida, home.
“Regardless of people’s feelings about President Trump, this should not be acceptable in a democratic society,” Spartz said.
“If the federal government can raid the home of a former president, all Americans should ask: what can 87,000 new IRS agents do to me?” the lawmaker added, referring to a provision in the Inflation Reduction Act that gives the Internal Revenue Service $45.6 billion in funding for tax enforcement activities, which is enough to hire up to 87,000 new agents. The bill was passed by the Senate and is expected to be approved by the House on Aug. 12.
Trump was in New York City while his Florida home was raided. Unconfirmed reports citing anonymous sources have said that the raid was related to a Department of Justice probe into whether Trump held on to records when he left the White House. Both the FBI and Justice Department have declined to comment on the raid.
All presidential correspondence and documentation have to be handed over to the National Archives when a president leaves office, according to a 1978 law.
The justification for the FBI search remains under seal. Trump’s legal team plans on asking the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida to unseal the search warrant affidavit, which would outline why authorities asked for the warrant.
“It breaks my heart to see what is happening in our country and around the world, but I have full faith in the American people to defeat the rise of socialism and communism once again with the right leaders,” Spartz said.
Banks said the lawmakers’ conversation with Trump involved Republicans winning back the congressional majority, and what they might do with that majority.
“I was honored to spend time with President Trump this week with my Republican colleagues and show our support,” Spartz said. “We need to have more people like President Trump who aren’t afraid to challenge the DC machine.”
Oversight GOP figures are requesting the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) provide information on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) raid of former president Donald Trump’s resort in Mar-a-Lago.
“NARA’s singling out of President Trump’s handling of official records stands starkly in contrast to the way NARA has treated far clearer violations committed by politicians and officials who are not Republicans,” 20 Republicans, including numerous Committee ranking members, wrote in an Aug. 10 letter addressed to U.S. Acting Archivist Debra Wall, first published by Politico.
“To better understand the circumstances and NARA’s role, if any, in the FBI raid, Oversight Republicans request an immediate briefing on this matter,” the lawmakers wrote.
The lawmakers’ move marks the first of the GOP’s promised effort in investigating the FBI’s Aug. 8 raid of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property for any underlying political motivation.
It follows shortly after the GOP in unison cast doubt over the nature of the raid—House Republicans first, and Senate ones followed—with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) promising to “leave no stone unturned” in an investigation of the Department of Justice that he says has “reached an intolerable state of weaponized politicization.”
The Republican lawmakers who wrote the letter allege that “political motivation” underlies the actions of the FBI and the National Archives, as the agencies’ treatment of Trump was “so contrary” to that of other former government officials—such as former president Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—whom the Republicans say also had “some Presidential Records Act violations.”
What Republicans Are Requesting
The GOP members of Congress are requesting that the NARA provide a “Member-level briefing” on the following no later than Aug. 17:
Any evidence of coordination between NARA and the FBI, or between NARA and the DOJ, on raiding the former president’s property
Any documents NARA produced and submitted to a U.S. federal court
Any documents that show NARA’s process in collecting presidential records after a presidential transition
In addition, the Republicans ask in their letter that NARA preserves records related to the warrant executed by the FBI at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort (which has, for now, yet to be unsealed), as well as any other NARA records related to Trump’s papers following Trump’s presidential term.
“The seeming weaponization of the federal government against Biden’s political rivals cannot go unchecked, and if NARA is working to further these efforts, it will be only the latest agency to lose its credibility in the eyes of the American people under the Biden Administration,” the Republican lawmakers say in their letter.
Trump’s Presidential Records
While the FBI’s search warrant for the raid remains under seal, multiple sources close to Trump have stated that the raid was conducted, at least in name, to look for presidential records that someone is alleging Trump himself has decided to keep in Mar-a-Lago after leaving office.
Trump’s lawyer, Christina Bobb, told The Epoch Times on Tuesday that FBI agents were looking for “what they deemed to be presidential records” and seized documents from Trump’s property.
“We had been very cooperative with them before. And it’s unclear to me why they went to such drastic measures to do this. But they did. And as far as the probable cause goes, they wouldn’t give that to us,” she added.
Bobb’s comments are consistent with what NARA said in statements earlier this year about how Trump’s representatives have been cooperating in transferring presidential records, including handing over 15 boxes containing presidential records. On Tuesday, the magistrate judge who reportedly approved the search warrant ordered the Department of Justice to file a response to a motion asking for the DOJ to unseal the warrant no later than Aug. 15.
Glasser portrays Milley as a dedicated military officer with a strong set of values who loathed his unstable and temperamental boss. But despite his commander in chief’s “fits of rage, late-night Twitter storms” and “abrupt dismissals,” Milley was determined not to resign for the good of his country. So altruistic.
There was that one time, however, when Milley was so utterly humiliated by Trump that he spent days in his Pentagon office, writing and rewriting a letter of resignation.
The occasion came during the June 2020 George Floyd riots. Members of Black Lives Matter had tried, but fortunately failed, to burn down St. John’s Church in Washington, D.C.’s Lafayette Square. Trump, accompanied by several advisers and Cabinet members, famously walked to the church and was photographed as he held up a Bible. Milley was among that group.
The legacy media claimed that a crowd of BLM protesters had been “violently” cleared from Lafayette Square by the U.S. Park Police for the sole purpose of this photo-op. One year later, the inspector general of the Interior Department released a report stating that the USPP had cleared the park to allow fencing to be installed “in response to destruction of property and injury to officers.”
In her new book, of course, Glasser tells readers, “Most of the demonstrations had been peaceful, but there were also eruptions of looting, street violence, and arson, including a small fire in St. John’s Church, across from the White House.”
Anyway, because members of the military are expected to remain apolitical and he had participated in a “political event,” Milley was filled with remorse.
During a pre-recorded commencement address to the graduating class of the National Defense University, Milley apologized. He said, “I should never have been there.”
“As senior leaders, everything you do will be closely watched, and I am not immune, as many of you saw the result of that photograph of me at Lafayette Square last week,” he told the graduates.
“I should not have been there. My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics. As a commissioned, uniformed officer, it was a mistake that I have learned from and I sincerely hope we all can learn from it.”
Upon additional reflection, Milley penned his letter of resignation, which is included in Glasser’s excerpt.
It is a boastful, four-paragraph letter written by a disgruntled subordinate with little sense of self-awareness. He tells the president he’s done some “deep soul-searching” and “can no longer faithfully support and execute your orders.”
“It is my belief that you were doing great and irreparable harm to my country,” he begins. “I believe that you have made a concerted effort over time to politicize the United States military. I thought that I could change that. I’ve come to the realization that I cannot, and I need to step aside and let someone else try to do that.”
Milley continues, “You are using the military to create fear in the minds of the people — and we are trying to protect the American people. I cannot stand idly by and participate in that attack, verbally or otherwise, on the American people.
“The American people trust their military and they trust us to protect them against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and our military will do just that. We will not turn our back on the American people.”
“I swore an oath to the Constitution of the United States and embodied within that Constitution is the idea that says that all men and women are created equal,” Milley writes. He expands upon his own acceptance of all people no matter their race, religion or sexual orientation, then moves on to his patriotism. The implication is, of course, that Trump is racist, bigoted and doesn’t love America.
“Lastly it is my deeply held belief that you’re ruining the international order, and causing significant damage to our country overseas, that was fought for so hard by the Greatest Generation that they instituted in 1945. Between 1914 and 1945, 150 million people were slaughtered in the conduct of war. They were slaughtered because of tyrannies and dictatorships.
“That generation, like every generation, has fought against that, has fought against fascism, has fought against Nazism, has fought against extremism. It’s now obvious to me that you don’t understand that world order.
“You don’t understand what the war was all about. In fact, you subscribe to many of the principles that we fought against. And I cannot be a party to that. It is with deep regret that I hereby submit my letter of resignation.”
Is he calling Trump a fascist? A Nazi? Sounds like it. If Milley thinks Trump damaged America’s reputation, we have to wonder how he feels about Biden’s blunders.
Unfortunately, he never submitted the letter to Trump.
Glasser writes, “Milley had finally come to a decision. He would not quit. ‘F*** that s***,’ he told his staff. ‘I’ll just fight him.’ The challenge, as he saw it, was to stop Trump from doing any more damage.”
Trump would have been better off if this coward had resigned. Among other allegations, Milley reportedly told his Chinese counterpart he would alert him if Trump were to plan any surprise attacks.
“Gen. Milley needs to be called in TODAY and asked under polygraph what he said to China.”
I would remind Milley of a certain oath he took a long time ago. He solemnly swore to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to bear true faith and allegiance to the same.
The BLM riots in the summer of 2020 were not peaceful. They were responsible for over $1 billion in property damage. They caused injury and even deaths. It’s one thing to oppose racism and quite another to excuse crime in our cities.
Either you’re for the rule of law and against terrorism, or you’re not.
Standing up for the rule of law and against terrorism isn’t politics, Gen. Milley. It’s your job.
George Gascón recall up in the air after campaign reveals outdated signature-verification process
Los Angeles County officials are rejecting more than one out of every five petition signatures in the campaign to recall radical prosecutor George Gascón (D.), according to a random sample of signatures provided to the anti-Gascón campaign, which says the “shockingly” high rate is because officials are using outdated signature standards.
In July, the Los Angeles County registrar notified the Recall DA George Gascón campaign that a random sampling of signatures revealed a 22 percent rejection rate, 60 times more than the rejection rate for mail-in-ballots during the 2020 presidential election. In response, the recall campaign pushed the registrar to explain what they believed was a “shockingly large rejection rate.”
The campaign obtained public records that show the registrar’s office was training staff to review votes using outdated signature standards, which allow the disqualification of any signature for minor variations compared with the one provided on a person’s voter registration form. In a letter to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, lawyers for the campaign expressed concerns that these outdated standards were leading to an improperly high rejection rate.
Registrar Dean Logan on Monday said concerns over the signature rejections were “selective outrage” and “a fictitious narrative to misinform and cast doubt.” But Marian Thompson, the attorney who wrote the letter, told the Washington Free Beacon the county clerk has not been forthcoming about the reasons for the rejection rate and refuses to share the precise number of invalid signatures.
“If they didn’t follow the law and apply the same legal standards used for signature verification for vote-by-mail ballots, then we have a legal team assembled to resolve this matter in a court of law,” Thompson said.
Gascón has been mired in controversy since taking office in November 2020. Like many progressive prosecutors backed by the left-wing billionaire George Soros, Gascón moved immediately to end cash bail, lighten sentencing guidelines, and reduce incarceration. His deputy district attorneys sued him weeks later for the drastic changes, saying his prosecutorial approach would violate their oath of office. Soros’s Justice and Public Safety PAC contributed $4.7 million to Gascón’s campaign.
The movement to recall Gascón began gathering steam as crime spiked in the city. In Los Angeles last year, auto thefts, robberies, and homicides were all up, with the city’s murder rate nearing a 15-year high. In December, former Los Angeles prosecutors began circulating a petition to recall Gascón and gathered more than 715,000 signatures by July. If around 579,000 of those signatures are from registered voters in Los Angeles County, a recall election will be held in November. The signature count is due next week.
In March, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D.) codified pandemic-era changes to the state’s voting regulations, which reduced mail-in rejection rates by more than 80 percent in the 2020 presidential election. The current standards presume that a signature appearing on a ballot is legitimate. Prior to that change, votes could be rejected if signatures differed even slightly from a voter’s registration.
Los Angeles County is in the process of verifying signatures after a random sampling in July determined there were not enough valid signatures to trigger a recall. The Washington Examinerreported the county has denied the Gascón recall campaign observation rights for the election’s signature count, further obfuscating the verification process. A spokesman for the county registrar said the recall campaign is entitled to review the count when it is over, and that their office’s “focus is on completing the verification within the legal timelines with integrity and appropriate quality review.”
Jason Snead, executive director of the Honest Elections Project, told the Free Beacon the registrar’s handling of the count “fuels skepticism.”
“Public officials should embrace transparency,” Snead said. “When they don’t it fuels doubt in the integrity of our electoral system.”
A coalition of 19 Republican attorneys general says BlackRock CEO Larry Fink prioritizes left-wing political initiatives over shareholder returns and is jeopardizing the retirement of middle class workers with pensions.
Fink’s embrace of environmental, social, and governance investment policies, known as ESG, potentially runs afoul of several laws, the AGs charge in a letter sent to Fink. Instead of managing state pension funds and finding the best returns on investment, the AGs write, BlackRock uses “citizens’ assets to pressure companies to comply with international agreements” such as various climate initiatives.
Republicans are increasingly targeting asset managers such as BlackRock over their pro-ESG policies. They allege that these asset managers are transforming into backdoor channels for liberals to implement policies outside of the legislative process and leaving aside their principle, legal duty: maximizing returns for shareholders.
Critics of ESG say the policies are often arbitrary and can hurt a company’s bottom line. Moreover, ESG metrics can be gamed. Many companies, such as Tesla, receive a high ESG score under one metric while they rank poorly on another.
“Rather than being a spectator betting on the game, BlackRock appears to have put on a quarterback jersey and actively taken the field,” the AGs write. “As a firm, Blackrock has committed to implementing an ESG engagement and voting strategy across all assets under management.”
BlackRock manages an estimated $10 trillion in assets, a number larger than many first-world economies. Billions of those dollars come from U.S. pension funds. That extraordinary amount of money also gives billionaire Fink, a large donor to Democratic Party candidates and causes, tremendous influence over companies BlackRock invests in. Should Blackrock pull investments from a company over its climate or racial policies, two categories often included in ESG metrics, the company’s stock price would plummet.
The AGs assert that when BlackRock engages with companies over climate practices, it violates the states’ law about maximizing financial returns. For example, if BlackRock representatives pressure a company CEO to adopt a more expensive way to source energy in order to meet climate goals, that company may post lower profits. That drop in profits may translate to a lower stock price and harm pension funds invested in that company.
BlackRock has emerged as an explicit leader in the push “to retire fossil fuels,” the AGs allege. Part of that may be purely ideological or because of a desire to “attract investment from European or left-wing pension funds,” the AGs add. Regardless of motivation, BlackRock is obligated per law to only seek the best financial return on their investments.
Pressure from asset managers such as BlackRock appears effective. Sixty percent of respondents to a Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas survey last year said “investor pressure” was the number one reason that oil companies such as Exxon are not expanding operations.
The Biden administration recently picked BlackRock Investment Institute chairman Thomas Donilon to co-chair the Foreign Affairs Policy Board. During his time at the BlackRock Investment Institute, Donilon called on Americans to triple their investments in China, the world’s largest polluter.
West Virginia announced last month that it would no longer do business with Wall Street firms that boycott the fossil fuel industry. One of those firms included BlackRock. The ban will cost the firms $18 billion a year, according to the state’s treasury office.
Andrea Mitchell says community is ‘historic’ because homes were built by slaves
Yet another NBC journalist is fighting to prevent the unwashed masses from befouling the sanctity of their ritzy Washington, D.C., neighborhood. Longtime host Andrea Mitchell is among the wealthy homeowners on Chain Bridge Road NW—described as “one of Washington’s most exclusive and prestigious streets”—who are aggressively opposing measures to allow greater access to unsavory drivers and pedestrians.
Washington City Paperreports that the “quintessentially D.C. dispute” dates back to at least 2009, when residents of the wealthy neighborhood successfully pushed back against city plans to build sidewalks for pedestrians in the interest of public safety. Opponents complained that doing so would make the posh neighborhood feel more “urban,” a racist euphemism for “not white.”
In recent weeks the D.C. Department of Transportation has taken steps to close the road to through traffic, a move some critics view as a blatant example of government officials protecting the interests of wealthy homeowners to the detriment of the greater public.
Mitchell got involved in 2021 when the local neighborhood commissioners once again raised the issue of building sidewalks. The journalist was horrified at the thought. “These are homes that were originally built during the Civil War. Mine was built in 1865, as was my next-door neighbor’s, as farm houses by freed slaves,” she said at a meeting last September. “This is a historic community.”
Wealthy liberals across the country frequently tout the “historic” character of their neighborhoods to scuttle plans that would make them more accessible and affordable for people of color. Robert Reich, a left-wing professor at the University of California-Berkeley, used similar language while attempting to block a proposal to build low-income housing units in his fancy neighborhood.
“If historic preservation means anything, it means maintaining enough of the character of an older neighborhood to remind people of its history and provide continuity with the present,” Reich wrote in 2020. “Development for the sake of development makes no sense when it imposes social costs like this.”
Mitchell is merely the most recent NBC journalist to publicly oppose efforts to make her neighborhood more accommodating to average folks. Former wunderkind host Luke Russert, who retired at age 30, made a fuss last year after a Georgetown science professor placed two large statues of iconic Transformers characters outside his home, which neighbors Russert’s $4 million pad. Children loved them, but Russert denounced them as a safety hazard that could attract unsavory visitors who might park illegally to take photos of their kids posing with the statues.
At one point during a neighborhood commission meeting, Russert suggested that failing to remove the statues was akin to endorsing Soviet communism in America. “What’s to stop someone from putting up a statue of Joseph Stalin and saying, ‘Well, this is provocative, it’s art, it speaks to me,'” Russert said. “They are a nuisance, they are an eyesore, and they detract from the spirit of the neighborhood.”
New DCCC ad pans to menu that lists prices in euros as narrator touts support for local entrepreneurs
A new Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee ad aimed at wooing Latinos says Democrats “strengthened Arizona by investing in small businesses.” The business to which the ad subsequently cuts is almost certainly not in Arizona, or even America—its prices are listed in euros.
The DCCC released the ad Monday as part of a “six-figure digital advertising campaign to reach Latino voters,” the group said in a press release. During the spot, a narrator says Democrats supported Arizona entrepreneurs by investing in local businesses. But the restaurant to which the ad cuts is by no means local—its menu lists an array of overpriced options in euros. A goat cheese platter, for example, will set customers back 11 euros, while an avocado option costs 10.50 euros. Should an Arizonan want to visit the eatery, however, the cost would be much higher. The cheapest flight from Phoenix to the European Union is $750, according to online travel agency Kayak.
The DCCC’s intercontinental Arizona ad—which the group said would appeal to Latinos as they are uniquely concerned about “protecting small businesses” and “creating good-paying jobs”—marks Democrats’ latest botched attempt to appeal to Hispanics.
Just weeks ago, in July, first lady Jill Biden compared the Latino community to breakfast tacos. Days later, the DCCC released a radio ad targeting Texas Hispanics, which argued that even though Democrats “seem so out of touch,” they aren’t as bad as “these Republican extremists.” The ad was routinely mocked by liberal Latinos in the Lone Star State—Democratic strategist Chuck Rocha called it “the worst ad I’ve ever heard,” while a Texas Young Democrats member said the spot was “so cringe.”
The DCCC did not return a request for comment. Its ad comes as Democrats hemorrhage Hispanic voters, particularly in South Texas. In June, Republicans flipped a Rio Grande Valley House seat for the first time in more than a century, a result that made Mayra Flores the first Mexican-born woman elected to Congress. Flores even defeated her Democratic opponent in deep-blue Cameron County, which is 90 percent Hispanic and less than two years ago backed Joe Biden by double digits.
Democratic lawmakers and liberal media outlets alike have responded to the Republican Party’s gains with Latino voters by attacking Hispanic Republicans. Flores’s opponent in November, Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D., Texas), argued in June that he is more qualified than Flores because he “wasn’t born in Mexico.” Weeks later, Arizona representative Rubén Gallego (D.) said a female Hispanic Republican running for Congress in the state was not sufficiently Latina because she took her husband’s last name.
The New York Times, meanwhile, said Flores’s win marked the “Rise of the Far-Right Latina,” citing the Republican’s support for religiosity, strong borders, and traditional values. A Texas political blog that has received campaign funds from Gonzalez also attacked Flores last month, referring to the congresswoman as “Miss Frijoles,” “Miss Enchiladas,” and a “cotton pickin’ liar.”
“Who does this Mayra Flores think she is? Somebody said she was crowned Miss Frijoles 2022 in San Benito,” Texas political blogger Jerry McHale, who has received $1,200 from Gonzalez’s campaign, wrote on July 2. “She isn’t in congressman Vicente Gonzalez’s league. She isn’t even in the bush leagues unless she doesn’t shave her p**sy.”
The DCCC is no stranger to bungled political ads. In addition to the European menu included in its Arizona spot, the group’s latest ad in New Mexico shows a person taking pills from a bottle labeled “FOR ANIMAL USE ONLY.” It’s unclear if the person in the ad is taking an animal version of the drug Ivermectin, which CNN labeled a “livestock drug” and a “horse dewormer” after popular podcaster Joe Rogan said he took it to treat COVID-19. Rogan was prescribed a human version of the drug.
A city van for voting visited majority-Democrat vicinities of Racine, Wisconsin, more often than it visited Republican ones, a complaint by the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) said.
This violation of voting laws must not be vindicated, wrote WILL deputy counsel, Anthony LoCoco.
“Racine’s use of mobile voting sites violates clear directives in state law on the collection of absentee ballots at alternative sites.
“WEC [Wisconsin Elections Commission] must make clear that Racine is violating the law and ensure that clerks across the state understand what is and is not permitted in Wisconsin law,” he said.
As of now, the city plans to use the voting van again in November’s midterm election.
Voting Violations
The voting van violated a variety of statutes, WILL’s analysis wrote.
Under Wisconsin law, absentee voters must send votes to the office of the municipal clerk, or an alternative site near to the clerk’s office.
But Racine used a voting van to collect absentee primary votes from 21 locations across the city, WILL said.
Moreover, the areas of Racine where the voting van ventured advantaged Democrats, it said.
A study by WILL alleged that Democratic districts got more voting van locations than Republican ones.
“The city of Racine assigned more potential mobile voting locations to wards that vote at the highest percentage for Democrats,” the study stated.
Under Wisconsin law, absentee voting locations that give one party an advantage are illegal, regardless of why they occur, the complaint noted.
“Many of the 21 alternate sites advantage the Democratic Party and some advantage the Republican Party. Collectively, however, the sites used by … [Racine’s city clerk Tara] McMenamin afforded an advantage to the Democratic Party,” WILL’s complaint said.
The voting van also left votes vulnerable, the complaint alleged.
WILL said the city kept ballots in the vehicle during the night, a practice inconsistent with normal Wisconsin ballot security measures.
“That is equivalent to having someone driving completed absentee ballots around the city in the trunk of their car for 14 days prior to the election and leaving the vehicle parked in various locations throughout the days and nights.”
The complaint asked for courts to order McMenamin to obey the law by ending the use of the voting van.
The Chinese regime commits and enables trafficking in persons, primarily by subjecting religious and ethnic minorities to forced labor, according to the U.S. Department of State’s latest Trafficking in Persons Report.
Forced labor in China is so prevalent—that it amounts to a “government policy or pattern”—conducted by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials at all levels, the report stated.
Chinese citizens have further reportedly suffered forced labor at Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, also known as “One Belt, One Road”) projects abroad due to the regime’s neglect to supervise recruitment and labor conditions, the report added.
During the reported period—from April 2021 to March 2022—China showed indicators of state-sanctioned forced labor, did not meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking in persons, and did not make serious efforts to fight it, causing the country to rank among the lowest tier of nations, the State Department said in the report.
Workers walk by the perimeter fence of what is officially known as a vocational skills education center in Dabancheng in Xinjiang, China, on Sept. 4, 2018. (Thomas Peter/Reuters)
Forced Labor in Detention Centers
State-sponsored forced labor occurs mainly under the CCP’s “mass detention and political indoctrination” campaign targeted against Uyghurs and other Muslim or Turkic minorities in China’s Xinjiang region, according to the State Department.
Victims include Tibetans, Christians, and members of other suppressed ethnic and religious minorities, such as Falun Gong adherents.
The CCP “subjugate[s] and exploit[s] minority populations in forced labor in internment camps under the pretext of combating violent extremism and other social ills,” the report stated.
“Authorities continued to amplify the magnitude of trafficking crimes in the country and abroad, including by perpetrating genocide,” it added.
An independent people’s tribunal, known as the Uyghur Tribunal, ruled in December 2021 that the Chinese regime had committed genocide against ethnic Muslims in Xinjiang—through an array of repressive acts that included mass internment, family separation, sterilizations, and forced labor.
The United Nations estimates that more than 1 million Uyghurs have been detained in internment camps in Xinjiang.
Such internment camps are “designed to erase ethnic and religious identities under the pretext of ‘deradicalization,’” according to the State Department.
Detainees may be subject to forced labor within internment camps or at near or external factories. The goods produced range from garments to consumer electronics, face masks, automotive components, and holiday decorations, among many others.
Domestic companies are incentivized to open factories near internment camps through tax cuts and subsidies, as well as to take in transferred detainees from other provinces, as stated in the report.
Local authorities are also incentivized to conduct forced labor, as they are awarded funds “for each inmate forced to work in these sites at a fraction of minimum wage or without any compensation,” the report read.
Local officials are also encouraged to meet detention quotas to keep the system functioning. They achieve this by issuing arbitrary arrests and accusing individuals of false criminal offenses or administrative violations—such as violating birth regulations. This data was extracted from the regime’s official documents, according to the State Department.
Non-interned Forced Labor
Besides being subject to forced labor under detention, victims are coerced into forced labor through threats of interment. They are also transferred to manufacturing sites in other provinces under “poverty alleviation” programs.
China “has reportedly placed 2.6 million members of minority communities in agricultural and manufacturing jobs within Xinjiang and across the country through state-sponsored ‘surplus labor’ and ‘labor transfer’ initiatives featuring overt forced labor indicators,” the report stated.
“The government has transported at least 80,000 of these individuals to other provinces for forced labor under the guise of poverty alleviation and industrial aid programs,” it added.
Workers take down a Belt and Road Forum panel outside the forum venue in Beijing on April 27, 2019. (Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)
Trafficking in Persons Linked to China’s BRI
The Chinese regime has reportedly omitted to oversee BRI projects’ recruitment channels, labor conditions, and contracts, which resulted in Chinese citizens being deceived into moving abroad, where they were subjected to forced labor and other abuses, according to the report.
The BRI—a tool for the CCP’s global expansion—finances enormous loans to developing nations for building infrastructure. Chinese state-owned banks provide the countries with loans that experts say open the nations to the risk of being saddled with unsustainable debt levels.
The loans are then used to pay Chinese companies to build infrastructure, including the development of roads, ports, power plants, mines, telecommunications, or banking institutions. The ostentatious projects have been described as part of so-called debt-trap diplomacy since the often-unpayable loans will force the nations to repay China with goods or land.
Chinese citizens employed in BRI projects abroad have suffered forced labor at worksites funded totally or partially by Beijing, Chinese companies, or Chinese nationals, said the State Department.
Chinese and “host country nationals employed in some BRI construction projects, mining operations, and factories in African, European, Middle Eastern, Asian, Pacific, Latin American, and Caribbean countries experience deceptive recruitment into debt bondage, arbitrary wage garnishing or withholding, contract irregularities, confiscation of travel and identity documentation, forced overtime, and resignation penalties,” the report read.
Such was the case of Li Wei and Mao Chen, two Chinese citizens recruited for a rural BRI project in Indonesia, which included flights, housing, food, and wages. However, once at the smelting plant, their passports were seized, and they were subject to forced labor, working 16 hours a day without a salary, according to the report. They were accommodated in small quarters, surveilled by armed guards.
A subcontractor later took over their contracts, but their labor conditions did not change. While Li escaped the facility, Mao was still subjected to forced labor.
SO WHEN ARE REPUBLICANS GOING TO GET OFF THEIR BUTTS AND CODIFY THIS TREND?
A majority of American voters support states requiring audits “immediately after elections” to protect election integrity, according to a new poll by Rasmussen Reports sponsored by The National Pulse.
Asked, “Should every state require that ballots be available immediately after elections for bipartisan voter reviews to enhance election confidence and transparency?” 56 percent of likely voters supported the idea while just 23 percent of likely voters opposed it.
The Rasmussen data showed that 68 percent of Republicans – considerably more than just 45 percent of their Democrat-voting counterparts – supported the push for election integrity. 57 percent of Independents were also in support.
When divided into the three ideologies of “Conservative,” “Moderate,” and “Liberal,” the data showed a similar trend: 73 percent of Conservatives responded “yes,” 52 percent of Moderates responded “yes,” and just 34 percent of Liberals responded “yes.”
The news follows Democrats attempting to universalize vote-by-mail in America’s forthcoming elections while Republican officials have sought to halt these efforts with election integrity measures. It also comes as the 2020 election results continue to be subject to scrutiny due to the nefarious influence of private foundations funding ballot harvesting efforts and unmanned ballot “drop boxes.”
The Rasmussen poll also inquires with voters “How important will the issue of election integrity be in this year’s congressional elections?”.
80 percent of likely voters felt the issue would be important, with 59 percent of individuals polled believing election integrity would be “very important.”
The feelings appeared to be nonpartisan, as 87 percent of Republicans, 78 percent of Democrats, and 76 percent of Independents believed election integrity would be important in the upcoming midterms.
The poll comes amidst ongoing investigations into several late-night ballot dumps during the 2020 election, all of which supported Joe Biden, and far-left activist groups linked to George Soros and Mark Zuckerberg using hundreds of millions of dollars to boost voter turnout rates for the Democratic Party.
Mainstream media outlets, social media platforms, and Democratic officials have set out to censor individuals discussing voter fraud, despite pushing similar claims about Russian election influence throughout 2016 and the entirety of Donald Trump’s presidency. Under Biden, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has also targeted officials and activists fighting for election integrity by threatening criminal prosecution.
The Justice Department has to respond to motions to unseal a warrant that triggered the FBI raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, according to a magistrate judge who reportedly approved the search.
“On or before 5:00 p.m. Eastern time on August 15, 2022, the Government shall file a Response to the Motion to Unseal,” wrote U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart on Wednesday afternoon, referring to the Department of Justice.
“The response may be filed ex parte and under seal as necessary to avoid disclosing matters already under seal. In that event, the Government shall file a redacted Response in the public record. If it chooses, the Government may file a consolidated Response to all Motions to Seal,” he wrote.
Neither the FBI nor Justice Department has issued public comments about the raid, which was first confirmed by Trump on Monday evening.
The FBI declined to comment when contacted by The Epoch Times, and the Justice Department has not responded to several requests for comment.
As for the White House, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said President Joe Biden was not aware of the raid before Trump’s announcement. Her claim was refuted by Trump on his social media platform, Truth Social.
“What I can tell you definitively and for sure, he was not aware of this,” Jean-Pierre said of Biden. “Nobody at the White House was. Nobody was given a heads up and we did not know about what happened yesterday.”
Requests
On Wednesday, the Times Union’s managing editor, Brendan J. Lyons, wrote to Reinhart to ask for the warrant to be unsealed.
“Given that the search warrant(s) have been executed, and the target of that search has full knowledge of what occurred, there is no impediment to any ongoing investigation from the disclosure of the search warrant order or the returns. As such, these records should be unsealed,” the letter to the Florida judge reads.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s residence in Mar-A-Lago, Palm Beach, Fla., on Aug. 9, 2022. (Giorgio Viera/AFP via Getty Images)
Judicial Watch asked for the warrant as part of an investigation into “the potential politicization of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Department of Justice and whether the FBI and the Justice Department are abusing their law enforcement powers to harass a likely future political opponent of President [Joe] Biden.”
“If the Court were to unseal the materials, Judicial Watch would obtain the materials, analyze them, and make them available to the public,” the letter said. “Unsealing the records therefore would further Judicial Watch’s mission of educating the public.”
It comes as Eric Trump, a son of the former president, told the Daily Mail that a Trump attorney at Mar-a-Lago, Christina Bobb, asked FBI agents Monday about seeing a warrant.
“They would not give her the search warrant,” he told the outlet, referring to Bobb. “So they showed it to her from about 10 feet away. They would not give her a copy of the search warrant.”
Top Republicans, meanwhile, demanded an investigation into the raid and argued that it was politically motivated to wound the GOP ahead of the 2022 midterms. Some have said the Justice Department immediately needs to release documents pertaining to the raid.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said there needs be a “thorough and immediate explanation” of how the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago was approved. Legal historians have said that such a raid against a former president is unprecedented.
“Attorney General Garland and the Department of Justice should already have provided answers to the American people and must do so immediately,” McConnel added.
Trump on Monday said that federal agents entered Mar-a-Lago despite him having cooperated with federal officials for months to return documents that he allegedly took from the White House after leaving office last year.
Reinhart came under fire Tuesday amid reports from several news outlets that found he had a connection to convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Reinhart left his job as an assistant United States in early 2008 before he began representing some of Epstein’s workers.
According to a 2018 Miami Herald report, two of Epstein’s accusers alleged Reinhart left his prosecutor job to give Epstein inside information. Reinhart denied those allegations.
As his connection to the Epstein case went viral on Tuesday, it appeared the U.S. Southern District of Florida removed the judge’s page from its website, according to archived versions of the website.
“Access denied,” Reinhart’s page reads. “You are not authorized to access this page.”
China and Russia are the clear winners of the the carbon-reducing provisions in the Democrats’ latest spending bill that aim to cut fossil fuel emissions by 40 percent by 2030, according to former President Donald Trump’s erstwhile economic adviser.
Stephen Moore, a Trump-era adviser and senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told NTD in a recent interview that the climate-related provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act—now en route to final House approval—would hamstring American energy production and benefit adversaries.
“The two big winners from this bill clearly are Russia and China,” Moore said, adding that he thinks the bill is not just bad for the U.S. economy but it’s “really bad for national security to give up our energy dominance.”
Moore pointed out that China—which is responsible for around five times more carbon emissions than the United States—is now building dozens of massive coal plants and “obviously, they don’t care about climate change.”
As a major exporter of fossil fuels, Russia also stands to gain from efforts to accelerate curbs on U.S. carbon emissions as that would keep crude prices elevated and bolster Russia’s revenue stream, Moore said.
The economist argued that the Biden administration has “basically declared a war on our fossil fuels,” while pointing to Germany’s “experiment” of going all-in on clean energy a decade or so ago that he said “basically led to a complete economic collapse.”
“Let’s not follow in their footsteps,” he said.
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks to reporters outside the Senate Chamber after passage of the Inflation Reduction Act at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Aug. 7, 2022. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Markets or Government Subsidies?
The Inflation Reduction Act includes $369 billion in climate and energy provisions, with measures like tax credits for buying electric vehicles, making homes more energy efficient, and installing residential solar panels and battery systems.
The measure also reinstates the superfund tax on crude and imported oil, which could lead to higher energy bills for households, and it includes a fee of up to $1,500 per ton for methane emissions.
“More simply, it means that roughly 40 percent of the country’s electricity will come from wind, solar, and energy storage by 2030,” ACP said in the analysis, which projects that the Inflation Reduction Act will, overall, deliver an estimated 525 to 550 gigawatts of new non-fossil fuel power by the end of the decade, up from the current 211 gigawatts.
The bill is also expected to generate over $900 billion in economic activity via the construction of clean energy projects between now and 2030, according to the association.
Moore said that he doesn’t object to renewable sources of energy but argued that market forces rather than government subsidies should be their key driver.
“We didn’t have the government subsidize Henry Ford when he invented cars,” Moore said. “We didn’t have the the federal government subsidize Standard Oil when it started making … gas plentiful and cheap for everyone. So why do we need to have the government throw hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars in this industry?”
Moore also argued that, contrary to what its name implies, the bill won’t reduce inflation.
Alliant Energy’s coal plant in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, on the shore of Lake Michigan, on July 4, 2022. (Timothy Gardner/Reuters)
Inflation Reduction?
The Inflation Reduction Act “will increase inflation,” Moore said, adding that, “the reason we have 9 percent inflation today is because of the massive Biden spending spree.”
“There’s two things you don’t want to do when you have massive inflation. You don’t want to spend more government money. And when you’re in a recession, you don’t want to raise taxes. This bill makes both those mistakes,” he said.
Some disagree with Moore about the bill’s impact on inflation.
Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said in an Aug. 9 interview in The Harvard Gazette that “the tendency of this bill will be to reduce inflation because over time it reduces demand by bringing down budget deficits.”
Summers also argued that it would bolster the supply of key commodities in the energy sector, helping push down prices.
Other backers of the bill, like Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), say the government subsidies for clean energy will have a knock-on effect and boost private investment in the sector and so accelerate cutting carbon emissions.
“This is going to be more massive than people realize,” Khanna told Politico in a recent interview.
“If the government invests $300 billion in solar, wind, batteries, and heat pumps, that has the potential to unlock trillions of dollars in private sector investment in climate,” he added.
Moore argued that the bill is less about the environment and more about money.
“This is a massive, now trillion-dollar, industry. This is about money, folks, this doesn’t have anything to do about cleaning up the environment or keeping our environment safe,” he said.
“This is massive numbers of huge companies and huge investors. They’re going to get very, very rich off of these hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidies,” Moore added.
The American Petroleum Institute (API), a fossil fuels industry group, identified six problematic provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act that it argued would undermine the industry’s ability to promote energy security for American consumers.
Besides the superfund tax and methane emission fees, the API also noted additional costs imposed on energy companies with the bill’s minimum book tax provisions and increased rental fees on onshore leases.
The group also panned the bill’s omitting of comprehensive permitting reform, which API believes is key for bolstering domestic energy production, lowering costs for consumers, and helping the country meet its emission objectives.
“Glaringly absent in the bill is permitting reform, which is required for America’s infrastructure needs and to bolster critical oil, natural gas, and renewable supplies to meet our current and future energy demand,” said Mike Sommers, API president and CEO, in a statement.
Former President Donald Trump’s son Eric Trump revealed that FBI agents wouldn’t hand over the search warrant during their Aug. 8 raid on Mar-a-Lago and removed an attorney from the property.
“There’s 30 agents there,” he told the Daily Mail on Aug. 10 of the FBI raid. ‘They told our lawyer … you have to leave the property right now. Turn off all security cameras.
“They would not give her the search warrant. So they showed it to her from about 10 feet away. They would not give her a copy of the search warrant.”
Attorney Christina Bobb was confused as to why the FBI couldn’t present the search warrant, according to Eric Trump.
“It’s all a coordinated attack with the FBI,” he said. “Do you think that the FBI director is going to raid the former president’s house, especially a house as you know, kind of world-renowned as Mar-a-Lago … without getting the approval of President [Biden]?”
The younger Trump said security cameras weren’t turned off. FBI agents accessed areas of the property where they “shouldn’t have been,” he claimed.
The former president confirmed the FBI raid on his property on the evening of Aug. 8. Both the FBI and Department of Justice haven’t issued public comments about the matter; The Epoch Times has contacted both agencies for comment.
Unconfirmed reports and anonymous sources say the raid pertained to a Department of Justice probe into whether Donald Trump held onto government documents after he left the White House last year.
All presidential correspondence and documentation have to be handed over to the National Archives when a president leaves office, according to a 1978 law.
(L-R) Kimberly Guilfoyle, Donald Trump Jr, Eric Trump, Ivanka Trump, and Jared Kushner arrive for the funeral services of Ivana Trump in New York on July 20, 2022. (Yuki Iwamura/AFP via Getty Images)
“[The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)] had ongoing communications with the representatives of former President Trump throughout 2021, which resulted in the transfer of 15 boxes to NARA in January 2022,” David Ferriero, who served as NARA director from November 2009 until April 2022, wrote to House Oversight Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) in February.
Ferriero said NARA requested that Trump representatives “continue to search for any additional Presidential records that have not been transferred to NARA, as required by the Presidential Records Act.”
But Bobb told Real America’s Voice that the raid over the documents is a “completely unnecessary power flex” and a “weird flex.”
“It’s quite honestly sad to see what they have done to our country,” she said.
Top Republicans demanded an investigation into the raid and argued that it was politically motivated to wound the Republican Party ahead of the 2022 midterms.
“The Department of Justice has reached an intolerable state of weaponized politicization,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said in an Aug. 10 statement. “When Republicans take back the House, we will conduct immediate oversight of their department, follow the facts, and leave no stone unturned.”
Hiring practices driven by diversity are ‘a recipe for disaster’
Southwest Airlines Co. (AKA SouthWoke Air [US Patriot]) is basking in accolades for its “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) efforts, award-winning customer service, and record-breaking quarterly revenues.
Behind the scenes of that rosy picture, heartaches are afflicting Southwest, called “the airline with Heart” because of its heart-shaped logo and a corporate culture steeped in “The Golden Rule,” treating others the same way they’d like to be treated.
But eight current Southwest employees, including three minorities, told The Epoch Times that “woke, leftist” DEI policies, as implemented, have tarnished the cherished Golden Rule principle, fractured a once-cohesive workforce, and, ultimately, may put safety at risk.
Faced with pandemic-related staffing shortages and pressure to add minorities, the company has changed the way it hires, trains, and disciplines workers—mostly to benefit less-qualified new hires representing the diversity rainbow, the employees say.
One Southwest flight attendant, a Hispanic female, said: “They are compromising safety for the sake of race, gender identity, and sexual preference … They’re risking people’s lives because of agendas.”
Southwest, one of America’s largest air carriers, didn’t respond to messages seeking comment.
Similar issues have spread industry-wide, according to 10 airline employees who agreed to be interviewed. Four are pilots and six are flight attendants; most have 20 or more years of experience. All of them, including two American Airlines pilots, spoke on condition of anonymity to protect their jobs.
While no one thinks the policies are causing an imminent threat of a plane falling out of the sky tomorrow, all of the interviewees agreed that each time a standard is lowered, or a less-qualified employee is hired, the risk that something can go horribly wrong inches forward a notch or two. In an industry that depends on a near-miracle integration of people, machinery, and computers, even a few deviations can culminate in catastrophe.
Still, some employees worry about what could happen if current trends continue to stress out and distract safety professionals. Said one flight attendant: “It’s a recipe for disaster. I just hope I’m not at work when it happens.”
Us-Versus-Them Mentality
While promoting diversity sounds like a great idea, the inclusionary policies have actually become exclusionary at Southwest, employees say. Disparate treatment has divided their ranks into two distinct camps: those with “desirable” or “approved” personal, social, or political characteristics—and those without.
Minorities or people with leftist political views, varying gender identities, and alternative sexual orientations appear to be given wide latitude. This “protected class” is allowed to bend or break rules, and new hires in these classifications may be given extra chances to pass required skills tests, the employees said.
At the same time, veteran workers—especially those who are white, heterosexual, and conservative—find themselves in the crosshairs for almost anything, including making a personal statement of religious or political beliefs, the Southwest workers said. Even minorities can be shifted into this targeted group if they espouse personal beliefs running counter to causes that the company supports.
“There are two sets of standards: One for us and one for them,” said an experienced flight attendant.
One of her colleagues said: “The company is trying to eliminate anybody who does not agree with their agenda. The last few years, anybody who speaks up against them, they want gone.” That flight attendant said she had no problems at work until she posted her Christian religious beliefs on her personal Facebook page, along with her support of President Donald Trump. A coworker reported the posts to Southwest, and the flight attendant said she has faced repercussions ever since.
She and others say the targeting of conservatives is common—and they point to the recently publicized case of fired Southwest flight attendant Charlene Carter as a prime example.
‘Targeted Assassinations’ of Conservatives
Last month, a federal jury in Texas awarded Carter more than $5 million after finding that Southwest wrongfully terminated her and that her union didn’t live up to its duty to represent her. The company fired Carter after she expressed her pro-life views to a union leader via social media and opposed the union’s pro-abortion activism.
The company supported the union’s political activism, Carter’s suit says, by accommodating work-shift changes for union members so they could participate in the Women’s March on Washington, D.C., in January 2017. Marchers were protesting Trump’s inauguration; one of the primary sponsors of the event was Planned Parenthood. Southwest also showed “solidarity” with the protesters by bathing its airplane cabins in pink lights on some D.C.-bound flights, Carter’s lawsuit says.
Charlene Carter, who was fired from her job at Southwest Airlines, has won a federal case alleging she was wrongfully terminated over expressing her personal religious views. (Courtesy of Charlene Carter)
Documents in the case revealed that some union officials and political activists were singling out dissenting Southwest employees for “targeted assassinations,” meaning that they would try to get the company to fire them, using the company’s social media policy as a bludgeon.
In an interview with The Epoch Times on Aug. 8, Carter, who lives near Denver, Colorado, said she can’t believe that some leaders of Transport Workers Union of America Local 556, who helped set her up to be fired, are still working for Southwest.
Carter also validated her coworkers’ concerns about the disparate treatment of employees who dare to oppose leftist agendas. “I think there are a ton of cases out there just like mine,” she said. Terminated employees from Southwest and other airlines have been continuously contacting Carter for help after learning about the July 14 verdict in her case.
Carter spent five years fighting in court; she thinks she was one of the first casualties of the erosion of Southwest’s unique corporate culture, which she witnessed during the latter part of her 20-plus years at the airline.
“We all loved our jobs; we all loved each other—our CoHearts, that’s what we called each other,” Carter said, pointing out that the airline’s stock ticker is LUV, a nod to its birthplace at Love Field, Texas.
Corporate Culture Shift
But corporate leadership and philosophy shifted. Carter said, her former coworkers tell her the culture is now one where people are fired on a whim, and they’re encouraged to file complaints against each other over perceived insults, such as failure to use the “preferred pronoun” of a person asserting an alternative gender identity.
Employees who face such accusations are presumed guilty, a current flight attendant said, and they risk suspension or termination. “That is how we are treated now,” she said.
“It’s gotten ridiculous,” Carter said. She was astounded to learn that lapel pins, designating preferred pronouns, are being offered to staff.
A fellow flight attendant says the company’s priorities are misplaced.
“We used to be focused on hiring ‘the best of the best,’” she said. “So why is it now that we feel at Southwest Airlines that we have to use the right pronouns and we have to acquiesce to someone’s gender-fluid mentality?”
The DEI Effect
The interviewed employees blame DEI policies for sowing the seeds of division. Ironically, before DEI was implemented, “people were never labeled,” a flight attendant said. “I find it very divisive,” she said, “because now everyone is labeled, divided by race, gender sexual orientation … whatever.”
“This is wrong—all the way wrong,” she said.
The company’s annual report, in its DEI section, says, “Southwest Airlines recognizes, respects, and values differences. … At Southwest, DEI is and always has been a part of our DNA.”
All four major airlines—and many other American companies—publicly disclose DEI-related information, such as data on minority recruitment and the racial makeup of their workforce.
“Every airline is trying to push forward with minority hiring because they want to ‘show that they care,’” aviation analyst Jay Ratliff said. “They’re being asked, ‘How many women are within your pilot ranks? … How many pilots of color?’”
If an airline’s diversity metrics seem low in comparison to their competitors’ numbers, the company’s reputation and bottom line can suffer, Ratliff said.
That’s not necessarily fair, he said, because few people have the ability, interest, and financial means to qualify as a commercial airline pilot. Amassing the FAA-required 1,500 hours of flight time with an instructor can cost $75,000 or more, pilots said.
Last year, United Airlines announced its goals: to train 5,000 new pilots by 2030 at its new flight school, with “at least half of those students to be women or people of color.” The first class of new recruits “exceeded that goal,” with 80 percent of the 30 students fitting that category, the airline said in a report.
Considering that white males make up about one-third of the American population, a Southwest pilot said that composing a class with 80 percent minorities and women looks like “DEI special-status hiring on steroids.”
Scoring Systems Push Diversity
DEI data play a significant role in corporate ESG scores—ratings of a company’s “environmental, social, and governance” performance. It’s a complex—and controversial—way to assess which companies are considered “good corporate citizens.”
Most of the interviewed airline employees believe that the pursuit of ESG scores is driving corporate personnel practices, including ignoring well-qualified male applicants while eagerly hiring less-experienced female and minority candidates.
Increasingly, ESG scores can help determine whether a company sinks or swims. A good ESG score can attract investors, government contracts, and favorable loan-interest rates—benefits that are especially important for the airline industry, in which lucrative U.S. Department of Defense contracts are at stake and profit margins are razor-thin because of astronomical costs for equipment and personnel.
ESG ratings have existed in some form for decades, yet they barely registered a blip on internet searches until a few months ago, amid the Biden administration’s continued push for businesses to address environmental concerns and to institute “green” policies, which weigh heavily in ESG scores and DEI metrics.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recently announced his intent to push back against ESG, calling it “leveraging corporate power to impose an ideological agenda on society.”
Refinitiv, a company that produces ESG scores, says its process for calculating the ratings starts with collecting more than 630 ESG measures from each company’s public disclosures. Other ESG assessors have their own rating systems, which means results can vary depending on which assessment method is being used. ESG advocates are now working on standardizing how these scores are calculated.
Several airline employees said it would benefit their company, their industry, and society in general if ESG scores and DEI programs were abolished.
One Southwest pilot with decades of experience said such measures create unnecessary complications with no positive effect on the airline’s core mission.
“Why do we need DEI programs? Why do we need ESG? A lot of the public isn’t even aware these things exist,” he said. “The passengers just want people like me to get them, and their bags, to the same place at the same time, safely … DEI and ESG do nothing to support that—zero.”
“I need these DEI programs and ESG scores to go out the back of the airplane like the jet fuel that we burn.”
Non-Pilots Hiring Pilots
Southwest’s annual report says it has been “evolving hiring and development practices to support diversity goals.”
Those changes are troubling to the interviewed employees and to the pilots’ union. In a letter to members last month, the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association pointed out that, for the first time in the company’s 51-year history, a non-pilot is in charge of hiring pilots. The “system chief pilot” used to have that responsibility. “We are just a single step away” from hiring pilots based upon mere reviews of their resumes, association president Casey Murray wrote to union members. Southwest has about 9,600 pilots, the letter said.
Putting a non-pilot in charge of hiring pilots most likely will affect the quality of the pilots who are being hired, Southwest interviewees said. People who lack specific knowledge of this specialized job would have a hard time telling the difference between a good hire and a bad one, pilots said. One of the interviewed pilots said that the chief pilot told him: “The diversity department has a very strong voice in who gets hired.”
Southwest wants to hire more than 2,000 pilots in the next year, the union’s letter said, questioning whether those new hires will be required to meet Southwest’s traditionally high standards. “Across the entire commercial aviation industry, employers are fighting for an ever-shrinking pool of qualified pilots,” yet Southwest may be at a disadvantage to compete for those pilots. Contract negotiations with Southwest’s pilots are lagging, compared to progress with other airlines’ pilot unions, Murray said.
“Pilots are the fuel that powers Southwest Airlines, and right now Southwest’s supply of fuel is running low. Time is growing critical, and options are becoming limited,” Murray wrote.
Seeking the Best (Non-White) Pilots?
Current pilots also say they have learned that hiring decisions are being driven by a job candidate scoring system; they’re unsure how long it has been in place, how it works, or whether it unfairly elevates minorities. The company controls all of that information.
Still, the employees feel confident in anecdotal evidence suggesting that the scoring system, coupled with other hiring practices, could be producing a pattern of discrimination against men, especially white men who come from military backgrounds—previously highly sought-after job candidates. “We could be wrong, but I don’t think we are,” said one pilot who has military experience.
That pilot said he thinks the vast majority of his colleagues have heard accounts of possible discrimination similar to the following:
When a well-qualified former military pilot applied for a job, Southwest never contacted him for an interview. But the applicant learned that a woman was hired as a pilot, despite having half as much experience in the airline industry.
Further, the man had experience as a captain while the woman had only been a first officer, who sits next to the captain in the cockpit. “It’s a completely different world” when a person shifts into the captain’s chair, said the pilot.
“We’re leaving a lot of people behind who are better-qualified, just because they’re the wrong color, or they’re identified the wrong way. That’s concerning. We’re not putting the best up-front,” he said. “We have people’s lives in our hands. It’s just like with doctors. If you go to a doctor, you want to go to the best doctor you can.”
An American Airlines pilot with decades of experience said he was less troubled than some of the Southwest interviewees who worried about the effects of reduced standards as a result of the increased emphasis on diversity hiring. However, that pilot said he would become very concerned if standards are lowered “to the point where people aren’t flying as confidently.”
A second American Airlines pilot said he has observed that “training is not nearly as comprehensive as it used to be,” he said. “But these people who are starting out are flying with people who are supremely qualified to be flying airplanes—so mistakes can be covered.”
He thinks the reduced standards could eventually cause problems if the hyperfocus on diversity continues: “If you’re looking for a diverse workforce and not a qualified workforce, you’ve got issues. … You haven’t seen any accidents because of ‘diversity,’ but the potential is there.”
All 11 people who were interviewed for this story, including Carter, the ex-flight attendant, said personal traits such as gender and race shouldn’t be part of the equation at all.
“From the cockpit door forward, guys and gals of all ethnicities are after the same thing—and that’s a safe flight,” said one of the American Airlines pilots. “They don’t care who sits next to them as long as they can do the job.”
More Than Snack Servers
Most air passengers think of flight attendants as hospitality ambassadors who make them comfortable with beverages, snacks, blankets, and pillows. But their main purpose is to assist in the rare event of an in-flight emergency.
Six Southwest flight attendants, along with Carter, say they feel less able to perform crucial duties because of the climate in which they’re now operating—and new hires appear to be less equipped to shoulder those responsibilities.
“They have just made it such a hostile work environment. Southwest has made it that way, and flight attendants are afraid to do their jobs,” a flight attendant said. “But you’re supposed to put a smile on your face and pretend that everything is grand.”
The flight attendants describe feeling as though a backstabber is always ready to pounce, to report any action or statement that doesn’t fit the corporate ideology. They’re being held to strict conduct and uniform standards while “accommodations” are extended to people in protected classes, such as a minority woman who was allowed to wear a nose ring—which got a white female in trouble—and a male flight attendant who described himself as “nonbinary”—neither totally male nor totally female—being allowed to wear a skirt that appeared to be shorter than regulations allowed.
The nonbinary employee seemed to be using his position at the airline as a platform for LGBTQ activism and self-promotion, rather than focusing on benefiting the company or its customers, fellow flight attendants said. They shared screenshots of the nonbinary employee’s social media posts. One is a selfie of the mustached man posing in his Southwest uniform, with the comment, “My dress looks better on me than most chicks.”
That employee no longer works for Southwest, flight attendants said. Yet they said they were aware that a couple of employees faced disciplinary action for referring to the nonbinary employee as “he” in a members-only Facebook group for flight attendants.
Antics Embarrass Fellow Flight Attendants
One flight attendant perceives that the company is making skewed, unfair hiring decisions, and creating a level of absurdity that’s hard to stomach. She knows of people who are related to Southwest employees and have college degrees—which go beyond the high-school education requirement for flight attendants—“and they don’t get hired, and yet we have this guy, with a mustache, in a skirt, distracting us all because the company wants to fight over his pronouns.”
Being a flight attendant used to be considered prestigious and classy; Southwest was viewed as “Mount Rushmore,” a pinnacle for flight attendants, who felt proud just to be hired.
“Now the pride is not about the brand of Southwest Airlines,” a flight attendant said. “It’s about how different I can be as an employee of Southwest Airlines—like, ‘Y’all need me more than I need you.’”
Public perception of the role has diminished, not just at Southwest, but across the industry. Airlines grant diversity-based exceptions to people who don’t want to look or act professional, the flight attendants said.
It used to be unusual to see flight attendants behave in ways that brought embarrassment to their coworkers. Now, quite a few of the new hires who were prized for their diversity “are rather risqué,” a flight attendant said. “They become very emboldened; they feel they can get away with this because they are in a protected class.”
Still, Southwest has had to fire employees who pushed the envelope too far, including one minority flight attendant who solicited sex in a social media video and another who videoed herself twerking. In both instances, the videos, provided to the Epoch Times, show the employees in Southwest uniforms.
Such conduct disgusts the flight attendants, and their concern is more than superficial. “If we relax the appearance standards and we’re letting people lower their professional standards, then they obviously are not equipped to handle any type of safety issue that can happen on that plane,” a flight attendant said.
“Where do you draw the line and say enough is enough?”
Commitment, Skills Insufficient
One of the flight attendants who has been targeted for religious and political views said her commitment to her job boils down to this: “I will give my life for my passengers and my crew, if that’s what I need to do. My last words will be, ‘Let’s roll,’” she said, referencing the famous words spoken by a passenger on one of the U.S. airplanes that were hijacked on Sept. 11, 2001.
She doesn’t see that same level of grit from the new hires. “They don’t have the same tough mentality,” she said. Nor do they have the same work ethic, which might be attributable to differences between the younger and older generations.
The older flight attendant described being busy from the beginning to the end of each flight while many of the new hires tend to just serve one round of drink orders, “then they go back to the back (of the airplane) and sit down for the rest of the flight.”
The new employees aren’t demonstrating mastery of the skills they were supposed to have been taught, or willingness to perform them. A passenger was having a medical emergency but the flight attendant in charge of that section “wouldn’t even come out of the galley to assist,” said one flight attendant. Instead, she and a second colleague had to take care of the ailing passenger.
Such an incident stokes her worst fear: “Somebody’s gonna die. With the lack of training that we’re seeing in the new hires that are coming out … there’s going to be somebody who’s not trained, facing an emergency.”
The irony is that, because of conduct problems and lack of devotion to the job, many of the “check-the-box” new hires either quit or are discharged, the employees said. That’s why it would make more sense for Southwest to be more selective in its hiring decisions—and to make those decisions based on the applicant’s qualifications and commitment to doing a good job, both of which now seem to be lacking.
Too Many Hires, Too Fast?
A flight attendant who is familiar with hiring practices said she is concerned about the speed with which large numbers of new employees were hired in recent months. She is hearing that up to 10,000 employees have been added to the roster, so the airline is now up to pre-pandemic staffing levels.
Her concern: It’s doubtful that the company had the capacity to properly vet and train such a large number of employees, including flight attendants, in such a short timeframe. In fact, she says it’s “mathematically impossible,” (That’s OK, because mathematics is racist anyway [US Patriot]) based on past observations of failure rates among new trainees.
For each class of about 50 flight attendants, about 15 trainees would “wash out,” or not make it through the rigorous testing process, which includes mastering emergency evacuation drills. Considering that, it’s most likely that “the standards would have to be relaxed” to allow large numbers of new hires to complete the process rapidly.
“There’s a mindset that’s changed…it seems like they’re accepting almost any applicant—here’s a body and here’s a checkmark” on the diversity list, she said.
She’s puzzled as to why Southwest pushed so hard to hire so many new flight attendants. “We don’t have all the airplanes that we were expecting to get,” she said. “Then why are we hiring all of these flight attendants?”
Less-Rigorous Training
Today’s training is “a lot shorter and a lot simpler” than it used to be, she said.
Carter said it’s her understanding that flight attendants now must pass only a few tests. In years past, “there were about three tests a week for six weeks,” she said. “You were breathing through a fire hose all of this information.”
She also said that if a trainee flunked a test, that person was given one chance to retake it, “and if you failed, you were done.” Now, Carter has been told that people are being given multiple opportunities for do-overs.
As a result, “I’m hearing from flight attendants that these people don’t understand what our safety is about here.”
Employees say they feel as though core values and common sense are falling by the wayside when they are asked to give wide berth to people asserting that they are gender fluid, or identify with a gender that doesn’t match their biological sex.
“I don’t tell a pilot that I identify as a pilot, and I’m going to fly the aircraft—because there are no facts in that,” a flight attendant said.
While seeing a decline in the flight attendants who seem to be truly vested in their work, the flight attendants say the company is directing them to merely “inform” passengers about violations of safety rules, not to enforce the rules. This is in direct contrast to a few months ago, when flight attendants were required to function as the facemask police to enforce a federal pandemic restriction while it remained in effect.
Presumably in response to customer backlash over the much-despised mask mandates, Southwest has instructed flight attendants to cut passengers more slack. “We’re allowing customers to do as they please, and it’s causing safety issues,” a flight attendant said. People are refusing to remain seated during takeoffs and landings, for example. If something goes amiss, “You become a projectile; you can hurt other people,” the flight attendant added.
Airline Love Affair Ends
A longtime pilot described his passion for his job, and laments how the company killed it.
From the outset, “I was in a love affair with Southwest Airlines. They were smaller and scrappier. They were all bone and muscle. No fat. And I liked that,” he said. “We grew under the nose of American, Delta, and United, despite their tactics … We continued to grow and thrive around a very simple business model that revolved around the Golden Rule.”
That enabled the company to empower all employee groups so they could make decisions benefiting both internal and external customers. They didn’t get sucked into bureaucracies.
But the company crossed a rubicon last year when it took a stand on the COVID-19 vaccine and “woke” policies, he said. Employees were told: “You must get vaccinated and you must accept these diversity and inclusion principles even though it goes against the principles that you grew up with at this company.”
For the veteran pilot, that was a death knell, he said. “It was a complete and total divorce of the culture.”
“The company has destroyed the trust relationship. This is not the Southwest Airlines that I joined. … The love affair is over,” he said. “When you prioritize profits and special interests over people, this is what you get.”
Although the public perception is that many pilots lost their jobs because of vaccine mandates, pilots doubt that’s accurate. In the case of Southwest, many employees sought—and obtained—religious or medical exemptions.
The company still touts the Golden Rule, but that’s mostly lip service, the pilot said. “It’s the thing that allowed Southwest to rise to greatness. It’s less important now. What’s more important? I have to understand that a person’s gender can be on a sliding scale, or maybe they’re just a man who wants to dress as a woman.”
He resents the implication that “hopelessly bigoted pilots like me” need to take a new sexual harassment training module that encompasses LGBTQ considerations. He learned that if a person in that category believes they were looked at in a way that they felt was uncomfortable, “I could be written up, and I don’t even have to say anything,” the pilot said.
Southwest flight attendants were recently required to complete a DEI training or face being put on unpaid leave. That didn’t sit well. The flight attendants say they were already treating people as equally as possible—values embodied in the Golden Rule and basic human decency. “I say this as a minority: I don’t need to be told how to treat people with dignity and respect. I’ve been doing that all my life.”
Distractions Imperil Safety
These programs and the “woke” cultural shift are creating huge distractions, which by themselves pose a threat to safety in ways that most people never think about, the pilot said.
“People take it for granted that takeoffs equal landings. But I can tell you that there are close calls—regularly—where human intervention prevented things from getting really bad. … And the traveling public never knew about it,” the pilot said.
For everyone’s safety, all airline workers must be at the top of their game.
“We need the most qualified people in these safety-sensitive jobs. But it doesn’t stop at the cockpit door,” he said. If any part of the system breaks down because a person was distracted or wasn’t the most qualified person for the job, “the end result is the same if you had an unqualified pilot: the airplane is a smoking hole at the end of the runway and you have 170 people dead—and a lot of angry families.”
“If you crash one airplane, that one crash has the ability to put an airline out of business. When I go to work that weighs on me. All 170 of those lives are in my mind from the time we take off until we land,” he said. “In my mind, disaster is just around the corner.”
Ready for The Worst
Before each takeoff, pilots mentally rehearse how they would react to rare dreaded scenarios, which have actually happened: A maintenance guy doesn’t do his job and the engine falls off the airplane. Or the motor blows up. Or a fire erupts. There is an infinite number of things that can go wrong. But such incidents are exceedingly rare—and when they do happen, a miraculous interplay between humans and technology averts death and catastrophe.
“These are the things we think about,” the pilot said. “And instead, we’ve got people thinking about their special status and how they can get one of their coworkers in trouble?… When you’re cheating the laws of physics every day, DEI has no place.” (Great remark! [US Patriot])
Under these circumstances, it’s infinitesimally trivial to even give a moment’s consideration to a person’s race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, or any other trait.
“I will treat that man, dressed as a woman, the same way I would treat a woman dressed as a woman, or a woman dressed as a man. I don’t care,” the pilot said. “Just do your job. Take care of those passengers. And then drag my sorry butt out of the airplane if it comes down to that, because I’m the last one to go.”
In one way, the “new” rules don’t really bother the pilot: He said he was already treating people well. That won’t change, he said. He just hates knowing that at any moment, he could be “written up because I looked at you wrong.”
As a white male, the pilot recognizes he’s “the new minority.”
He says he has to go to work every day and prove “I’m not the hopelessly bigoted, homophobic, misogynist, sexist fossil that they think I am.”
And that’s OK with him.
“I’m fine with that. I don’t care,” he said. “Because I live by the Golden Rule.”
Over two years of pandemic oversight, Johnson said he’s witnessed money being put before public health
From the early days of the pandemic, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) has been trying to hold U.S. public health agencies accountable on many issues, including why the agencies censored early treatment options for COVID-19, pushed vaccine mandates, and demonstrated a lack of integrity and transparency involving the vaccine data and reporting.
After conducting two years of oversight, Johnson said that the U.S. medical system has been compromised by money from Big Pharma.
“We have a corrupt medical system in this country,” Johnson said in a recent interview for NTD’s “Capitol Report” program. “From the pharmaceutical companies down to the federal health agencies through to the research centers and medical journals. It should concern every American.”
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Agencies including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration have not freely provided the public with accurate data about the vaccine’s origin, efficacy, and adverse effects, said Johnson, and he and others conducting oversight have had to rely heavily on other countries’ data.
“We’ve had to look to either Israel or Public Health England, Public Health Scotland. Now they’re shutting down their information streams as well,” he said. “One of my biggest concerns is our federal health agencies have not been honest. They’ve not been transparent.”
He called what the CDC is doing “willful ignorance.”
Public Health Agencies Contradicting Themselves
Johnson sent a letter to CDC Director Rochelle Walensky in late July, demanding answers as to why there have been conflicting statements about the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).
The Epoch Times reported that Dr. John Su, who heads the CDC’s Immunization and Safety Office, claimed that the CDC has been performing Proportional Reporting Ratio analyses on data from VAERS since February 2021. The CDC, however, told the nonprofit Children’s Health Defense that it not only did not conduct the analyses but that the method was outside of the agency’s purview.
“CDC’s assertion and Dr. Su’s statement cannot both be true,” Johnson said in the letter.
“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,” the letter states (pdf).
“It’s all BS,” Johnson said in the interview. “As soon as the safety signals started screaming at them through the VAER system, what do they do? They denigrated the VAER system.”
The CDC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
During the NTD interview, Johnson said he believes the health agencies don’t want to provide truthful information.
“I think, among many disappointments, one of the biggest disappointments in terms of the federal health agencies is they’re just not giving us the information, and I don’t think they really want to,” he said.
From the get-go, the vaccine mandates were “pointless, completely idiotic, and totally destructive,” Johnson said, adding that the agencies’ own data has long confirmed that vaccines do not prevent transmission or reoccurring infection.
Johnson implied that Big Pharma has had a role in pushing the vaccine mandates out of its own self-interest.
“I’ve always been supportive of the pharmaceutical industry,” because the drug companies need billions of dollars to develop new drugs that are important for improving lives, said Johnson. “But now I’ve just witnessed the capture of U.S. regulatory agencies by Big Pharma.”
Former President Donald Trump released a dramatic political video, hours after the FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, in which he laments the “declining” state of America and says it’s “time to start talking about greatness for our country again.”
“We are a nation in decline … We are a nation that in many ways has become a joke,” says Trump over the ominous sounds of thunder and rain in the nearly four-minute video in which he lists the apparent failures of the Biden administration, before promising, “Soon we will have greatness again.”
Trump, who is expected to announce that he will run again for president in 2024, released the video on his Truth Social platform late Tuesday.
In the video, he says that America has the “highest inflation in over 40 years” and “highest energy cost in its history.” He adds that in the two years since Joe Biden took office, America has lost its energy independence and dominance.
“We are a nation that is begging Venezuela and Saudi Arabia for oil,” Trump says. “We are a nation that surrendered in Afghanistan, leaving behind dead soldiers and American citizens and $85 billion worth of the finest military equipment in the world.”
Trump accuses the Biden administration of allowing “Russia to devastate a country, Ukraine, killing hundreds of thousands,” and suggests that “it will only get worse.”
‘Weaponization of the Justice System’
“We are a nation that has weaponized its law enforcement against the opposing political party like never before. We’ve never seen anything like this,” Trump says in his video.
Late on Monday, Trump announced that the FBI was raiding his Palm Beach estate, Mar-a-Lago, calling it evidence of “prosecutorial misconduct” and a “weaponization of the Justice System.”
A member of the Secret Service in front of the home of former President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., on Aug. 9, 2022. (Giorgio Viera/AFP via Getty Images)
The former president said the raid wasn’t announced and that it was motivated because Democrats do not want him to run again for president in 2024.
“They detest Donald Trump, not just on the Democrat side but the general establishment, because he’s not one of them. Because he doesn’t play their game,” his daughter-in-law Lara Trump told Fox News on Tuesday.
“They are terrified he’s going to announce any day that he’s running for president in 2024. And this is a very convenient way to just throw a little more mud on Donald Trump.”
America ‘No Longer Respected’
In his video, Trump also cites the legacy media as contributing to what he says is a nation in decline, saying America “no longer has a free and fair press. Fake news is about all you get.”
Traditionally, the media acts as a guardian of the public interest and a watchdog on government activities. But Trump has in the past accused legacy outlets of being partisan and colluding with “radical left Democrats … to hide the real facts.”
“We are a nation that is allowing Iran to build a massive nuclear weapon and China to use the trillions and trillions of dollars it’s taken from the United States to build a military to rival our own,” Trump says in the video.
U.S. Air Force loadmasters and pilots assigned to the 816th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron, load people being evacuated from Afghanistan onto a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 24, 2021. (Master Sgt. Donald R. Allen/U.S. Air Force via AP)
“We are a nation that over the past years is no longer respected or listened to all around the world. We are a nation that is hostile to liberty and freedom and faith.
“We are a nation whose economy is floundering, whose stores are not stocked, whose deliveries are not coming, and whose educational system is ranked at the bottom of every list,” he says.
“We are a nation that in many ways has become a joke,” says Trump. “But soon we will have greatness again.”
‘Soon We Will Have Greatness Again’
Trump’s political video starts in black and white with only the sounds of rain and thunder underscoring it. This sequence features video representative of the Biden administration’s apparent failures, including oil fields, the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
However, the last third of the video becomes colorized and the musical score uplifting as Trump shifts to speak about his promise of America having “greatness again.”
“It was hard-working patriots like you who built this country. And it is hard-working patriots like you who are going to save our country,” Trumps says in his video.
“There is no mountain we cannot climb. There is no summit we cannot reach. There is no challenge we cannot meet. There is no victory we cannot have.
“We will not bend. We will not break. We will not yield ever, ever, ever. We will never give in, we will never give up, and we will never ever back down. We will never let you down.
“As long as we are confident and united the tyrants we’re fighting do not stand even a little chance. Because we are Americans and Americans kneel to God and God alone. And it is time to start talking about greatness for our country again,” he says.
The video ends on a black screen with the words, “The best is yet to come.”
On Tuesday, only one day after the FBI’s controversial raid of Mar-a-Lago, former President Donald Trump’s Florida resort, federal agents seized the cellphone of Republican Congressman Scott Perry of Pennsylvania.
Perry revealed as much via a statement Tuesday.
The congressman had been traveling with his family at the time. Then, federal agents approached him, issued a warrant and requested he turn over his phone.
“This morning, while traveling with my family, three FBI agents visited me and seized my cellphone. They made no attempt to contact my lawyer, who would have made arrangements for them to have my phone if that was their wish,” Perry said via his statement, according to Fox News.
“I’m outraged — though not surprised — that the FBI under the direction of Merrick Garland’s DOJ, would seize the phone of a sitting Member of Congress.”
“My phone contains info about my legislative and political activities, and personal/private discussions with my wife, family, constituents and friends. None of this is the government’s business.”
Perry went on to connect his encounter with the FBI to Trump’s on Monday.
“As with President Trump last night, DOJ chose this unnecessary and aggressive action instead of simply contacting my attorneys. These kinds of banana republic tactics should concern every Citizen — especially considering the decision before Congress this week to hire 87,000 new IRS agents to further persecute law-abiding Citizens,” Perry said.
Although it remains unclear if the seizure is at all connected to the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago, Fox News noted that both Trump and Perry have both been targetted by the Democrat-led Jan. 6 House select committee.
The Department of Justice has yet to release a statement regarding either the seizure of Perry’s phone or the raid of Mar-a-Lago.
Regarding the raid, it is believed that FBI agents were looking for classified documents that Trump had taken with him after leaving the White House.
After news of the raid broke, conservatives and Republicans took to social media to voice their outrage.
Some supporters even went to Mar-a-Lago to support the former president.
Trump released a statement on Monday responding to the raid.
“These are dark times for our Nation, as my beautiful home, Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided and occupied by a large group of FBI agents,” Trump wrote in a statement on Monday.
“Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before. After working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate.”
“It is prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024, especially based on recent polls, and who will likewise do anything to stop Republicans and Conservatives in the upcoming Midterm Elections.”
Former Trump White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany laid out a common pattern the Justice Department has followed in dealing with those associated with former President Donald Trump.
The Fox News host argued on Tuesday’s “Outnumbered” that the DOJ now appears to be employing the same tactic against Trump himself in light of the FBI’s raid on his Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Florida, the previous day.
“This is very personal for somebody the FBI was, you could argue, looking at for six years,” McEnany said.
“We know about the [Steele] dossier. We know the way it was peddled. We know that there was an insurance policy, if you read Peter Strzok’s texts. So all the things President Trump was saying, this just pours fuel on that fire,” she recounted.
In August 2016, then FBI agent Strzok texted his lover then-FBI attorney Lisa Page that the bureau needed to have an “insurance policy” in case Trump got elected.
“I will say I think you can’t look at this in isolation,” McEnany said of the raid on Trump’s home, reportedly to obtain classified documents he allegedly has not turned over to the National Archives.
“I think you have to look at this in light of other Trump-related prosecutions. What I mean by that is in this case it’s the Presidential Records Act,” she argued.
McEnany cited George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley to point out the Presidential Records Act of 1978 has rarely been used for criminal prosecution.
GWU Law Professor Jonathan Turley: Biden FBI’s raid was “heavy-handed” and “unprecedented” pic.twitter.com/44eBN2xUpI
“You look at Paul Manafort who was the [2016] campaign manager for Donald Trump. It was a [Foreign Agents Registration Act] violation they pursued. FARA has been used seven times in 50 years, but it’s brought out against Paul Manafort, this despite there being rampant FARA violations: 62 percent of people admitting they report late,” McEnany, a Harvard Law School graduate, said.
The DOJ Office of Inspector General released a report in September 2016 finding that “62 percent of initial registrations were untimely.”
“And then the Logan Act, used against Michael Flynn,” McEnany said. “This is a 1799 statute that has never in the history of this country been used to successfully prosecute anyone, but it’s used as a pretext to go in and look at Michael Flynn.”
“Why are never before used statutes or rarely used statutes in those contexts being used in this manner?” she asked.
Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz argued in a Tuesday opinion piece in The Hill that if the DOJ wanted documents from Trump, prosecutors should have made the case to a grand jury to obtain a subpoena specifying the materials to be seized.
“Instead, the FBI apparently seized everything in view and will sort the documents and other material without a court’s deciding which ones are appropriately subject to Justice Department seizure,” Dershowitz wrote.
.@alandersh: “I don’t think you use search warrants and prosecutions to go after political enemies”
“Defenders of the raid argue that the search warrant was issued by a judge,” he added. “Yet every criminal defense lawyer knows that search warrants are issued routinely and less critically than candy is distributed on Halloween; judges rarely exercise real discretion or real supervision. It may be different when a president’s home is the object of the search, but only time will tell whether that was the case here.”
Dershowitz pointed out no such raids were conducted on Hillary Clinton’s or former Clinton administration national security adviser Sandy Berger’s homes, when they were accused of mishandling classified documents.
“It is true that a president or former president is not above the law — but neither should he or she be below the law. Precedents established in relation to Democrats must be equally applied to Republicans. On the face of it, this standard has not been met here,” he wrote.
Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton told Fox News Tuesday, “In my view, this is a raid that will go down in infamy. The Biden administration has crossed the Rubicon in terms of attacking President Trump and their political opponents by misusing law enforcement.”
“I tell you the FBI and the Justice Department can’t be trusted and should be thoroughly reformed, and frankly, as far as I’m concerned, I don’t think they’re redeemable at this point.”
There’s reason to suspect that the FBI search of the Florida residence of former President Donald Trump was improperly intrusive, according to several lawyers. The raid prompted a rebuke from Trump and Republicans more broadly and further escalated political tensions in the nation.
About two dozen FBI agents entered Trump’s Palm Beach resort of Mar-a-Lago at about 9 a.m. on Aug. 8 and left about 10 hours later with “a handful of boxes of documents,” one of Trump’s attorneys on the scene, Christina Bobb, told Insight.
“I didn’t actually get to oversee the search, they wouldn’t let anybody see what they were doing,” she said.
It isn’t clear what legal basis the FBI had for the raid. The agents had a search warrant signed by a judge. However, the affidavit explaining the basis—its probable cause—was filed under seal, and Trump’s lawyers weren’t allowed to examine it, Bobb said.
In general, the agents were looking for “what they deemed to be presidential records,” she said.
“I don’t think there was anything of substance.”
Trump’s legal team will take steps to obtain the affidavit, according to Bobb.
There has been a dispute between the National Archives and Trump about whether he has documents that should be stored at the archives under the U.S. Presidential Records Act.
Trump has been cooperative on that front and had previously invited the FBI to Mar-a-Lago to examine the White House records he had in storage at the time, Bobb said.
“Nothing had been hidden, and nothing had been kept secret from them, which makes this all the more ridiculous,” she said.
Potentially Illegal
“I’m stunned and dismayed,” Marc Ruskin, a 27-year FBI veteran and former federal prosecutor, told Insight. “The disregard for traditional norms and apparent lack of concern with the appearance of impropriety is indicative of an abandonment of even a veneer of independence and objectivity.”
Former federal prosecutor Mike Davis went even further, saying the raid may have been illegally invasive.
“Under the case law, you can’t do a home raid if you can secure the documents through less intrusive means,” he told “Bannon’s War Room” on Aug. 9.
The FBI had to first determine that requests for the documents or even subpoenas wouldn’t be sufficient, said Davis, who formerly advised Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on judicial nominations and now heads The Article III Project.
“There’s zero evidence” that Trump wouldn’t have cooperated, he said.
“There was no allegation or evidence that he [Trump] was destroying any of this evidence or putting it into the wrong hands. This is banana republic-level tactics from the Biden Justice Department.”
Even if Trump took classified documents, he took possession of them when he was still chief executive and had the authority to declassify them, according to Davis.
Bobb suggested that the invocation of classified documents was a disingenuous attempt of “shrouding this in a national security blanket.”
“They don’t want to disclose what they’re doing, because what they’re doing is wrong. And so they want to hide it behind the premise of ‘Oh, it’s a matter of national security and classified documents, so we can’t disclose to you what we’re doing or why we’re doing it. But just trust us. We’re not lying to you,’” she said. “Well, no, the American people aren’t going to stand for that anymore.”
Even if the DOJ tried to charge Trump with withholding documents, it wouldn’t hold up because the statute in question requires a “willful” violation, and Trump would have had to have “some malicious intent” to take specific documents, according to Bobb.
“They would have to lay the foundation that Donald Trump actually packed up his own office” or ordered somebody what specifically to take, she said.
History of Missing Documents
If Trump had documents that should go to the archives, it would add him to a lineup of former government officials.
Former FBI Director James Comey took his handwritten notes when he was fired by Trump in 2017. His home wasn’t raided. He handed the notes to FBI agents who came to interview him.
The Obama administration didn’t just fail to hand over documents, tens of thousands of its documents went missing or were destroyed. No homes were raided.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton failed to hand over tens of thousands of emails and documents from her server, claiming that they were of a personal nature. The FBI was able to retrieve some of the documents, revealing that many were work-related. Moreover, the documents were under congressional subpoena at the time when a Clinton aide deleted them.
Immediate Skepticism
The raid prompted an immediate wave of skepticism, particularly because the FBI and the Department of Justice (DOJ) have a history of breaking protocol, misrepresentations, and even forging evidence in their case against Trump and members of his campaign.
“After six years of unfounded, absurd investigations of President Trump, the presumption is that any investigation of President Trump is politically motivated, and the burden of proof is on FBI/DOJ to prove otherwise,” Will Chamberlain, senior counsel at the Internet Accountability Project, wrote in an Aug. 9 Twitter post.
In 2017, the FBI and DOJ obtained two extensions of a spying warrant on former Trump campaign aide Carter Page even though the warrant was based on false or unsubstantiated allegations. The FBI later acknowledged that spying based on the extensions was illegal.
The FBI also has a history of harsh treatment of people associated with Trump. His aides have been arrested at gunpoint, handcuffed, and “perp-walked,” and their homes and offices have been raided in pursuit of trivial or nonviolent offenses, even when the targets were cooperating with the government.
Shoe on the Other Foot
The Trump raid increased the already polarized political playing field, as Republicans can now argue that home raids of former presidents are acceptable.
“They’re setting a very dangerous precedent where you can do a home raid of a former president of the United States,” Davis said, noting that such a thing has never happened “in our 250 years as a republic.”
Already, Republican lawmakers are promising to subject the DOJ and the FBI to intense scrutiny, with the expectation of reclaiming the majority in the House after the November midterms.
“When Republicans take back the House, we will conduct immediate oversight of this department, follow the facts, and leave no stone unturned,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said in an Aug. 8 statement. “Attorney General Garland: preserve your documents and clear your calendar.”
Judge’s Epstein Connection
The search warrant was issued by U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart in the Southern District of Florida. Reinhart was a senior prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida when the office reached a nonprosecution agreement with Jeffrey Epstein, who was later indicted for sex trafficking children and died by apparent suicide in a New York jail.
Upon leaving office, Reinhart went into private practice and represented multiple Epstein associates and employees in civil cases against Epstein by his alleged victims.
Reinhart was appointed a magistrate judge in 2018 by the district judges in the Southern District of Florida.
The warrant was issued on Aug. 5, the day after FBI Director Christopher Wray testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee and was questioned about multiple whistleblower reports alleging the politicization of the bureau. Wray cut the questioning short because he said he had to urgently travel. Flight records indicate he flew in the FBI private jet to his vacation retreat in the Adirondacks, according to New York Post columnist Miranda Devine.
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the time around which the search of Donald Trump’s residence started. The raid started at about 9 a.m. Insight regrets the error.
Update: The article has been updated with a comment from Marc Ruskin.
Judge Bruce Reinhart – who is reportedly the most likely judge behind the warrant authorizing a raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar A Lago estate – is a former attorney who represented employees of convicted sex offender and notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, The National Pulse can reveal.
The National Pulse can also reveal that Judge Reinhart has donated to the campaigns of former President Barack Obama and to the establishment opponents of Donald J. Trump during the 2016 election, including Jeb Bush.
Politico – the news outlet closest linked to the establishment in Washington, D.C. – named Reinhart in their morning playbook e-mail on Tuesday, 9th August 2022:
POLITICO FINGERS REINHART
As reported by the Miami Herald, Judge Reinhart began representing Epstein’s employees on January 2nd, 2008, just one day after departing the U.S. Attorney’s Office where he served as an assistant U.S. attorney closely involved on the convicted pedophile’s case.
Accused of leveraging “inside information about Epstein’s investigation to curry favor with Epstein,” in 2011, he was named as a prosecutor who allegedly violated the rights of an underage girl whom Epstein solicited sex from in the Crime Victims’ Rights Act lawsuit.
Reinhart appears to have exploited his role in the U.S. Attorney’s Office to launch a private criminal defense practice, according to the Miami Herald:
“On Oct 23, 2007, as federal prosecutors in South Florida were in the midst of tense negotiations to finalize a plea deal with accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, a senior prosecutor in their office was quietly laying out plans to leave the U.S. attorney’s office after 11 years. “On that date, as emails were flying between Epstein’s lawyers and federal prosecutors, Bruce E. Reinhart, now a federal magistrate, opened a limited liability company in Florida that established what would become his new criminal defense practice.”
Reinhart insisted that he never represented Epstein himself — “only Epstein’s pilots; his scheduler, Sarah Kellen; and Nadia Marcinkova, described by some victims as Epstein’s sex slave.”
Reinhart has also participated in Newsmax interviews, appearing to defend Epstein by downplaying allegations of the financier and his associates soliciting underage prostitutes.
Reinhart donated twice to Obama’s campaign in 2008 totaling $2,000. Reinhart, who was appointed U.S. magistrate in March 2018, also donated to the campaign of Trump rival Jeb Bush in 2015.
FEC RECORDS.
The unearthed links come as Reinhart is believed to have signed off on a warrant responsible for the raid on Trump’s Palm Beach estate. A “source said FBI agents obtained a search warrant from a federal magistrate judge in West Palm Beach,” reports the Miami Herald.
Politico explained that of the three magistrate judges in that office, two recent warrant applications, both of which were assigned to Reinhart, were entered into the system on Monday. The subject of the warrants, however, remains sealed.
It would be difficult to find mainland U.S. Congressional districts much further away from each other than Washington’s 3rd District, in the far Southwest Corner of the state and Florida’s 7th District, which hugs Florida’s East Central Coast. But the swamp reaches everywhere in America, and these two districts are now inextricably linked by the shady tactics of the GOP establishment, working to defeat conservative candidates on behalf of Kevin McCarthy, alongside pro-impeachment forces and a compliant herd of RINOs they control.
McCarthy – a failed leader and an expert at talking out of both sides of his mouth – claims to be outraged about the deep state’s war against Trump and the conservative grassroots while he simultaneously works in the shadows to direct millions of dollars to anti-Trump, establishment candidates like those opposing Green Beret Joe Kent and Florida State Representative Anthony Sabatini.
Grassroots favorite Kent – Gold Star husband and recipient of six bronze stars who was endorsed by Trump in Washington’s 3rd Congressional district – thrilled grassroots Republicans by narrowly toppling pro-impeachment Republican incumbent Jamie Herrera Beutler in a huge comeback, after trailing badly on election night.
Kent triumphed despite millions of dollars of establishment money being spent to defeat him. The night he took the lead for good in the GOP primary, Kent appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show, renewing his call for a fundamental reining in of the deep state and intelligence agencies that had just conspired to raid Mar a Lago, the curbing of which he had made a centerpiece of his congressional campaign.
Even as the vote was still being counted, Kent sounded the alarm on Twitter about the same cast of characters that spent more than $4 million in dark money attempting to defeat him now targeting Sabatini, another grassroots conservative favorite who is currently leading the race in Florida’s open seat 7th Congressional district (August 23rd primary).
“The left uses dark money to seize the levers of power,” he tweeted in response to the news that a mysterious dark money firm, with the same financial backers and structure that had targeted him, was going after his friend and political ally. “Look at Soros Zuck etc. The right uses dark money against candidates who want to fight back against the left. Send @anthonysabatini whatever support you can. They are coming for him because he’s fighting for us.”
The left uses dark money to seize levers of power, look at Soros, Zuck etc, the right uses dark money against candidates who want to fight back against the left.
Kent’s victory was indeed remarkable. David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report, widely considered the nation’s leading guru on redistricting and elections, described Herrera-Beutler early in the campaign as a lock to make it to the general election. Thanks to Trump and a grassroots push, she failed.
But the swamp plays for keeps , and nothing enrages them like a loss. They thought they had won in Washington State on election night, where Herrera Beutler had a large lead against Kent, only to watch it wither away over the following days as Pro-Trump election day votes were counted. The establishment had spent more than $4 million in late, dirty, DC money to attempt rescue Herrera Beutler, one third of which went directly to boost her, one third of which went to attack Kent and one third of which went to split the grassroots vote by boosting a fake alternative to Herrera Beutler who reneged on a pledge to exit the race.
Sabatini, the latest target of the establishment’s ire, is a strongly pro-Trump and pro-DeSantis America First candidate and military veteran who, like Kent, has crusaded against the nation-building wars that the GOP establishment and Democrats combine on to fleece American taxpayers. He’s been the strongest and most outspoken voice in the Florida legislature on everything from critical race theory (CRT) to immigration and has been described as the most pro-Trump member of the Florida legislature.
Sabatini has led in the public polling in the race, and the money (more than $600,000 so far, with doubtless more to come) has been timed, as it was with Kent, so that the donors do not need to disclose their names until after the primary election. Sabatini is hoping that the grassroots energy that has powered his campaign will provide him with sufficient funding to hold on against the onslaught.
In a brief interview, Sabatini encouraged patriotic conservatives to “raise the volume” of their protests against the establishment, claiming that “sunlight is the best disinfectant” and to make sure they let their friends in Florida’s 7th district know the national importance of the race.
“The war within the Republican party now determines what the GOP will do in the future, and the establishment is hiding in the shadows and playing every dirty trick in the book. The real fight is in the primary.”
Sabatini is cautiously optimistic for a late Trump endorsement (it helps that he leads in the polls and counts Trump stalwarts like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz in his corner). Florida political operatives are confident this would put him over the top—but Trump’s attention has to this point been focused on going after explicitly pro-impeachment representatives and other major Trump critics, while Sabatini’s top opponents are ciphers with no record to stand on.
“The Republican establishment wants 22 to be a referendum against America 1st. They want controlled, weak Republicans who vote as they are told.” said Joe Kent in a tweet thread late in the primary campaign.
The Republican establishment wants 22’ to be a referendum against America 1st, they want controlled weak republicans who vote as they are told.
In the last week 2.5 million has been spent against me b/c I’m leading in the polls & Beutler might not make the top 2.
Russ Vought, President Donald Trump’s former Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director, had a plan, but too little time left in 2020 to restore the bureaucracy as a neutral tool for ensuring that federal officials do what American voters want done by their government.
But Vought will be ready from the get-go when, he hopes, the next Republican Chief Executive enters the Oval Office in January 2025. If he succeeds, Vought will accomplish something that has eluded presidents of both parties since before World War I, when Woodrow Wilson turned federal civil servants from neutral implementers into unaccountable policy-making “experts.”
Wilson upended the neutral federal workforce concept established by the Templeton Act of 1888, which replaced the former “to-the-winner-goes-the-spoils” system that had been in force for a century.
Wilson wanted policy experts in the bureaucracy in whom would be vested immense independent powers to regulate American society as they thought proper. That led to an explosion of regulations, including many intended to protect the newly muscular bureaucracy from electoral accountability.
Two of Wilson’s Democratic successors—Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal and Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society—expanded the federal bureaucracy into such an unwieldy, cumbersome, and costly regulatory monster that another Democrat, President Jimmy Carter, made it one of his administration’s chief goals to gain passage of the landmark Civil Service Reform Act (CSRA) of 1978.
It fell to Carter’s successor, Republican Ronald Reagan, however, to implement the CSRA, which included multiple provisions designed to make bureaucrats more accountable for their individual performance and easier to replace poor performers.
“It worked for a few years but was fought throughout by OMB, which moderated CSRA during its legislative journey through Congress and then, afterwards, helped agency experts and allies in Congress to modify CSRA’s reforms,” Donald Devine, the former Director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), who managed the CSRA implementation for Reagan, wrote recently.
“Today, we are basically back to the system Carter was elected to change—but worse, as aspects of his reforms are now forbidden by both law and regulation,” Devine continued.
That was the situation when Vought became Acting OMB Director under Trump in 2019. Having served on Capitol Hill in various Republican policy positions for two decades, Vought was already familiar with entrenched bureaucrats repeatedly undermining common sense, conservative policy directives. When the Senate confirmed him in the position the next year, Vought began taking concrete steps to address the problem.
What became known as “Schedule F” was a presidential Executive Order (EO) designed to extend application of CSRA’s basic principle of policy and performance accountability deeper into the bureaucracy by giving the president’s appointees throughout the departments and agencies more flexibility to replace recalcitrant bureaucrats in “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating” positions.
But there were so many fires to put out during the Trump era, that Vought was only able to implement his plan starting 13 days before the 2020 election, and then only within OMB where he reclassified an estimated 90 percent of the agency’s employees.
“We had been working on it for about two years and we were really trying to think through when we do it,” Vought told The Epoch Times in an interview. James Sherk, a Trump domestic policy adviser and former Heritage Foundation analyst, is credited with the original concept for Schedule F.
“A lot of my effort was to help get it across the finish line and then to show that an agency head was willing to use it, and then set down a marker that we would indeed do it in a second [Trump] term,” Vought said.
One of Joe Biden’s first acts in office after defeating Trump in the still-contested 2020 presidential election was to repeal the Schedule F EO. Since then, Vought founded the Center for Renewing America, a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt think tank discretely devoted to researching the case for and laying out policy frameworks for the continuation of the “America First” reforms first advanced by Trump.
That continuation could be carried out either by a resurgent Trump or by another of the GOP’s potential alternative presidential candidates such as former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, or former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley.
But a July 22 Axios story—”A Radical Plan for Trump’s Second Term” by Jonathan Swan—renewed worries throughout the Washington establishment that Schedule F will be among the top items on the policy agenda of any GOP president seeking to make significant headway toward reforming the Washington swamp.
One detail that gained particular notice was Swan quoting an unnamed source who estimated that full-scale implementation of Schedule F could affect as many as 50,000 civil service positions.
There are approximately 2.1 million civilian federal employees, but only about 9,000—or 0.43 percent of the total—of those positions are at-will, political appointees of a president. Assuming Swan’s 50,000 figure is accurate, it would still mean only 2.4 percent of the total workforce would be subject to Schedule F.
“I think any time you are setting policy within an agency, think about your entire regulatory departments, think of all those general counsels, and it’s not just the general counsels but those massive legal departments,” Vought said when asked to describe the kinds of positions that would be subject to Schedule F.
“I think it would be pretty sizable, given how many people you have working on policy these days in the agencies,” Vought added.
Under the Trump EO, the ultimate decision on whether to reclassify a career position to Schedule F status would be made by the OPM Director, a fact that would substantially elevate the importance of that presently obscure agency.
Vought has no illusions about the difficulties a future president will face if he or she attempts another run at Schedule F implementation.
Democrats in Congress who receive the overwhelming majority federal employee union political donations are already rallying against the possibility of a Schedule F renewal. The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the largest such labor group, gave more than 94 percent of its contributions to Democrats in 2020, continuing a trend that has held for decades.
In the House of Representatives, Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) whose district is made up almost exclusively of government employees and contractors, authored a provision adopted by the lower chamber to prevent implementation of Schedule F.
In the upper chamber of Congress, Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner of Virginia, and Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, plus Senators Diane Feinstein and Alex Padilla of California, are co-sponsoring the Connolly provision.
The mainstream news media inaccurately portrayed Trump’s Schedule F effort as an attempt to return to the old “Spoils System” that was abolished in 1888. Typical was an Oct. 23, 2020, Washington Post story headlined “Trump’s Historic Assault on the Civil Service Was Four Years in the Making.” In fact, Schedule F is based on the CSRA that was conceived and signed into law by a Democratic president, then implemented by a Republican chief executive.
Vought is confident as long as a GOP presidential aspirant makes reforming the federal bureaucracy a national issue, the Schedule F plan will go forward.
“How would they not? The only reason it wouldn’t be used is because no one would have wanted to take on the [opposition] forces, but in some respects that balloon has already been punctured,” he said.
“When you nationalize the issue heading into a presidential election, it makes it so this is part of the base of policy expectations in a way that it is not when someone just has a good policy idea and you’re trying to figure is this a good idea and will it sustain itself,” he added.
“They’re looking for presidential records, what they deemed to be presidential records, and anything that could potentially be classified,” Christina Bobb, the lawyer, told The Epoch Times on Aug. 9.
“We had been very cooperative with them before. And it’s unclear to me why they went to such drastic measures to do this. But they did. And as far as the probable cause goes, they wouldn’t give that to us,” she added.
In mid-January, the National Archives and Records Administration arranged for the transport from Mar-a-Lago to the National Archives 15 boxes that the archives said contained presidential records. Under the Presidential Records Act, the records should have been transferred in January 2021 as Trump left office, and some of the boxes contained classified information, the institution said in a statement at the time. The administration did not return an inquiry on Tuesday.
Approximately two dozen FBI agents arrived around 9 a.m. on Monday morning and remained at Mar-a-Lago, which is in West Palm Beach, for about 10 hours.
Agents initially resisted showing Bobb the warrant but ultimately did. But the agents would not allow any representatives of the former president to oversee the search, Bobb said. The justification for the search also remains under seal. Trump’s legal team plans on asking the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida to unseal the search warrant affidavit, which would outline why authorities asked for the warrant.
“We don’t know what the probable cause is. I don’t think there is a good cause to do such a drastic thing. But they did,” Bobb said.
The FBI has declined to comment. The Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence have not returned requests for comment. The White House has said the DOJ is independent and that Joe Biden and others in the White House were not notified of the raid ahead of time.
‘Peaceful’
Agents kept Mar-a-Lago neat while they were searching for documents, with one even picking up trash, according to Bobb. The agents “took a handful of boxes of documents,” she said.
“I don’t think that there was anything incriminating. I don’t think there was anything of substance. So I’m sure that they will say otherwise. But we’ll have to wait and see what they come up with, but it was all paper. I hear the conspiracy theories and the rumors that there were other artifacts or something taken—it was all paper,” she said.
Agents previously visited the resort in June, and were given access to a storage facility there, according to Bobb. “Nothing had been hidden and nothing had been kept secret from them, which makes this all more all the more ridiculous,” she said.
“Donald Trump didn’t commit a crime,” Bobb said, adding that prosecutors would not be able to show that Donald Trump knew about the boxes the FBI took.
“They would have to lay the foundation that Donald Trump actually packed up his own office, and Donald Trump was actually the custodian of these records, and that he actually moved them,” she said.
If the DOJ decides to press charges against Trump, then the effort would not get very far, she predicted.
“I just don’t see it making a bit of difference. I think President Trump is going to most likely run for reelection,” she said. “I can’t wait until he does. And he will be the next President of the United States.”
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other GOP leaders have responded to an FBI search of the 45th President’s Florida Mar-a-Lago home after former president Donald Trump said it was “currently under siege, raided, and occupied” on Aug. 8.
Decrying the alleged raid in a post on his social media app, Truth Social, Trump said, “these are dark times for our Nation.”
“After working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate,” he said.
Taking to Twitter following Trump’s post, Republican leaders condemned the alleged raid, with several warning that such a move could set a dangerous precedent, while others accused the Biden administration of weaponizing the Justice Department for political purposes.
Pompeo, the former secretary of state under Trump, said that executing a warrant against a former president of the United States was a “dangerous” precedent to set.
“The apparent political weaponization of DOJ/FBI is shameful. AG must explain why 250 yrs of practice was upended with this raid,” Pompeo wrote. “I served on Benghazi Com where we proved Hilliary (sic) possessed classified info. We didn’t raid her home.”
A car passes in front of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., on Feb. 11, 2022. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
The raid is mostly likely connected to an investigation regarding Trump’s handling of official papers. His lawyer, Christina Bobb, confirmed with CNN on Monday night that the FBI had seized documents during their search at his Mar-a-Lago home.
The FBI is directed by Christopher Wray who was appointed by Trump.
‘Banana Republic’
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said the raid of Trump’s home represents “another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the Regime’s political opponents,” while noting that people like Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden “get treated with kid gloves.”
Hunter Biden is currently under federal investigation for alleged tax fraud, lobbying crimes, and money laundering in a probe dating back to as early as 2018.
“Now the Regime is getting another 87k IRS agents to wield against its adversaries? Banana Republic,” DeSantis said.
Elsewhere, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) noted on Twitter that the midterm elections aren’t far off. Trump has hinted that he will run for president again in 2024, and teased last week that he could make an official announcement soon, either before or after the November elections.
“Time will tell regarding this most recent investigation. However, launching such an investigation of a former President this close to an election is beyond problematic,” Graham wrote.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) questioned why the FBI had declined to raid the homes of previous administrations, including the Clintons and Obama.
“Bill and Hillary Clinton took $28,000 worth of furnishings from the White House. Obama violated the Presidential Records Act. Why did the FBI not raid their houses? This is a political witch hunt to take down President Trump,” the GOP lawmaker said.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump address guests at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on Jan. 20, 2021. (ALEX EDELMAN/AFP via Getty Images)
Kevin McCarthy, the Republican minority leader in the House, said in a statement that the justice department had reached “an intolerable state of weaponized politicization” and vowed that, when Republicans take back the House, they will “conduct immediate oversight of the department, follow the facts and leave no stone unturned.”
“Attorney General Garland: preserve your documents and clear your calendar,” he added.
‘Start With Hunter Biden’s Laptop’
Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.) also said on Twitter that the FBI raid on Trump’s home was “unprecedented and highly concerning,” and that “if the FBI is looking for classified info or incriminating evidence, they should start with Hunter Biden’s laptop.” He added the hashtag “#Demdoublestandard.”
Meanwhile, Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, said: “Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Countless times we have examples of Democrats flouting the law and abusing power with no recourse.”
“Democrats continually weaponize the bureaucracy against Republicans. This raid is outrageous. This abuse of power must stop and the only way to do that is to elect Republicans in November,” McDaniel added.
The FBI has declined to comment to The Epoch Times on the alleged raid.
While GOP lawmakers condemned the move, the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump PAC, alleged in a statement that the raid is a “positive sign that Donald Trump may be brought to justice for the myriad of criminal offenses committed by him and his family while President.”
“Never before has a former President’s home been raided in a criminal probe. While this search warrant is seemingly for the mishandling of classified material, it is a serious crime that must be fully investigated,” the group said, adding that the raid is the “first step for law enforcement, or Congress, of holding Donald Trump accountable for the orchestration of a conspiracy to remain in power that resulted in the January 6th attack on our nation’s capital.”
Trump expressed anger at the move, alleging in his Monday statement that it was part of the “political persecution” that has been targeting him now for years “with the now fully debunked Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, Impeachment Hoax #1, Impeachment Hoax #2, and so much more, it just never ends. It is political targeting at the highest level!” he wrote.
“Such an assault could only take place in broken, Third-World Countries,” Trump added. “Sadly, America has now become one of those countries, corrupt at a level not seen before.”
Heather Lang steps down after allegations that Morningstar subsidiary blacklists companies that do business in Israel
A senior executive at the ratings giant Sustainalytics—who spent years working at an anti-Israel advocacy group—announced last week that she is stepping down amid scrutiny of the company’s reliance on sources that critics say lead to bias and discrimination against Israeli companies.
Heather Lang, a onetime official at the anti-Israel activist organization B’Tselem, announced last week her departure as a senior vice president at Sustainalytics, a subsidiary of the corporate-ratings giant Morningstar, after 18 years at the company.
“Tomorrow is my last day at Sustainalytics after an incredible 18-year journey!” wrote Lang in a social media post last week. “It’s been an absolute privilege to work with such wonderful colleagues and friends.”
The news comes as Sustainalytics—one of the major ratings agencies that score companies based on their environmental, social, and governance practices—has facedallegations that its scoring system is biased against Israel and that it downgrades companies that help the Jewish state’s national security operations. Prior to joining Sustainalytics, Lang worked at B’Tselem, a self-described human rights group that asserts that “Israel’s regime of apartheid and occupation is inextricably bound up in human rights violations,” according to its website. NGO Monitor, a watchdog group that monitors Middle East organizations, describes B’Tselem as “part of a network of NGOs that promote artificial and manufactured definitions of apartheid to extend the ongoing campaigns that seek to delegitimize and demonize Israel.”
Morningstar enlisted law firm White & Case to conduct an internal investigation into potential anti-Israel bias at Sustainalytics. This came after the Illinois Investment Policy Board, a state commission, launched a probe into whether the company was in violation of Illinois laws against anti-Israel boycotts.
Lang’s presence at Sustainalytics raises questions about the neutrality of its executives, a week after the Missouri attorney general launched an investigation into allegations of anti-Israel bias at the ratings giant.
Lang did not indicate that her departure is related to the investigation or allegations of bias. But Israel advocates said the company should be cautious about anti-Israel activism among its leadership.
“If Morningstar is serious about rooting out anti-Israel bias in their ranks, it would behoove them to ensure no more of their officers have a history of demonizing the Jewish state,” a former Israeli government official told the Washington Free Beacon.
Sustainalytics referred a request for comment to Morningstar. Morningstar declined to comment on Lang’s departure, telling the Free Beacon that the company “does not support the anti-Israel BDS movement. Matters related to an individual’s employment are confidential.”
According to an online biography of Lang, posted by a conference at which she spoke, she previously worked as a “corporate social responsibility consultant and spent several years living in Israel, working for leading human rights watchdog organization B’Tselem.”
While at B’Tselem, Lang was the editor of the group’s 1999 Human Rights Report, which accused Israel of various humanitarian abuses, including blocking water from Palestinians and discriminatory deportations.
Lang’s prior work for B’Tselem was not mentioned in the White & Case probe.
According to the White & Case investigation, Sustainalytics has relied on research from Who Profits, a group that supports boycott campaigns against Israel.
Still looking for hand-outs despite the fact that African people have been immigrating here for over a hundred years. White workers in factories, mines, etc. could be considered slaves as well. Get over yourself and start working on improving yourselves instead of trying to further weaken what is (by far) the most free nation on the planet [US Patriot]
The ACLU and Human Rights Watch want the United Nations to demand that Joe Biden “take immediate, tangible measures,” including reparations, to “dismantle structural racism” in the United States.
The groups are recommending that the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which will meet later this month, order the United States to “provide effective remedies, including reparations for racial discrimination, including ongoing structural discrimination that flows from the legacies of slavery.”
The ACLU, which ostensibly advocates for Americans’ civil liberties regardless of politics, has a long history of defending left-wing policies. The group in April said it would use “the full force of the law” to allow children to undergo transgender hormone treatment. The ACLU is also a top advocate for the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, the Washington Free Beacon has reported. Human Rights Watch also routinely criticizes the Jewish state, with Ben and Jerry’s basing its anti-Israel boycott on advice from a high-ranking Human Rights Watch employee. Ben and Jerry’s parent company overruled the anti-Semitic boycott following widespread criticism.
While the groups note that Joe Biden has criticized “systemic racism,” they say the president has not gone far enough.
“The Biden administration has shown it can name the problem, but the time has come to take bolder action to radically transform these abusive systems and fully implement U.S. human rights obligations,” ACLU human rights director Jamil Dakwar said in a statement.
One such “bolder action,” the groups say, is creating “a commission to study the need for reparations and develop specific remedies for the enslavement of people in the United States and its myriad legacies.” The ACLU and Human Rights Watch want the government to work against anything that has “a racist effect or impact,” such as “mass incarceration” and concentration of wealth.
Barrington Martin II, a national director of the patriotic group Our America, called the groups’ actions “preposterous” and “oxymoronic.”
“There is not one law on the books or any institution within the United States that seeks to oppress or subjugate any individual or group on the basis of race,” Martin told the Free Beacon. “People from all across the world have come to the United States for decades because of the freedom and equal opportunity America offers for all.”
Florida Democrat Charlie Crist hired Jack Cocchiarella after college Dems chapter ousted young activist over troubling allegations
Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s (R.) top Democratic opponent paid thousands of dollars to a young liberal activist who is facing “campus-wide allegations of sexual assault” at his former Ivy League school.
On July 8, Democrat Charlie Crist’s gubernatorial campaign paid $2,250 to Politically Correct Strategies—a consulting company registered to Gen Z liberal activist and former Dartmouth student Jack Cocchiarella—for “digital consulting.” Just weeks later, on July 28, the prestigious school’s College Democrats chapter revealed it ousted Cocchiarella from the club “in late October 2021, following campus-wide allegations of sexual assault.” Those allegations emerged publicly in a string of December 2021 Redditposts, which accused Cocchiarella of using “his Twitter notoriety and left-wing credentials to position himself as an ally. Then, once people let their guards down, he rapes them.”
Crist, who did not return repeated requests for comment, has remained silent on the accusations facing his campaign aide. By his own logic, that silence means he endorses Cocchiarella’s alleged behavior—in a June 29 tweet, Crist pressed DeSantis to condemn the January 6 riots, writing, “Is it just me, or do you agree that his silence = endorsement?”
Crist is not the only prominent Democrat to hire Cocchiarella following the troubling allegations. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R., Ga.) Democratic opponent, Marcus Flowers, has paid Cocchiarella’s firm more than $40,000 since October 2021, when the activist announced his “new role” as Flowers’s digital director.
Flowers has his own alleged issues with women. In July 2016, the Democrat attempted to dump his ex-wife—Russian national Svetlana Chudinova—at a local homeless shelter, court documents reported by the New Republic show. Flowers did not dispute the incident and instead defended his attempt to offload Chudinova, saying he “felt she had a personality disorder that was not previously disclosed.” In turn, Chudinova accused Flowers of threatening to strike her.
Flowers’s campaign did not return multiple requests for comment.
Cocchiarella, whose Twitter account boasts more than 250,000 followers and includes a photo of the activist smiling alongside Joe Biden, enrolled as a Dartmouth freshman during the 2021-22 school year. While it’s unclear what specific “digital consulting” services he provided Crist, Cocchiarella publicly endorsed the former governor over fellow DeSantis challenger Nikki Fried (D.) just days after Crist’s campaign paid him.
Flowers, meanwhile, routinely replies to Cocchiarella’s tweets to solicit campaign contributions. In October 2021, he called the young activist “an outstanding young man.” In addition to his work with Crist and Flowers, Cocchiarella has collaborated with the Lincoln Project, an anti-Republican super PAC founded by disgraced sexual predator John Weaver.
Cocchiarella reduced his public presence as allegations against him swirled. A notoriously avid Twitter user, Cocchiarella did not send an original tweet for more than a week after Dartmouth College Democrats confirmed the “campus-wide allegations,” instead opting to populate his feed by sharing posts from liberal politicians and journalists. The activist has also blocked users who raised the allegations in his replies.
Cocchiarella during an Aug. 1 podcast appearance did, however, confirm his decision to transfer from Dartmouth to fellow Ivy League school Columbia. The activist did not discuss why he opted to leave Dartmouth after just one year at the college and is yet to publicly address the allegations leveled against him.
Cocchiarella, Dartmouth College Democrats, and Dartmouth’s Title IX office did not return requests for comment.
Kirsten Engel’s support for leftist groups could alienate voters
An Arizona Democrat hoping to flip a Republican-held House seat promoted the radical immigration group whose members chased Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D., Ariz.) into a bathroom, among other left-wing activists.
Kirsten Engel, a law professor at the University of Arizona, raved about her meeting with Living United for Change in Arizona, praising the pro-immigration group’s “efforts to help register voters.” Activists with the pro-immigration group stalked and filmed Sinema in a bathroom last year in protest over her opposition to a $3.5 trillion spending bill. The group has also called for called for the Phoenix city council to defund the city’s police department.
This was only the latest instance where Engel boosted radical progressive groups. As a state senator in 2020, Engel urged Democrats to “consider donating to, getting involved with, and learning from” several left-wing organizations to advance the Black Lives Matter cause, including the Minnesota Freedom Fund and Showing Up For Racial Justice.
The Freedom Fund has come under scrutiny for posting bail for violent criminals, including a domestic abuser later charged with murder. Showing Up For Racial Justice, a coalition of white civil rights activists, publishes a “defund the police toolkit” and supports other drastic reforms to the criminal justice system. Engel said in support of the groups that it was up to “white Americans” to “commit ourselves to unlearning the racism all around us so we can dismantle it in our institutions.”
Engel’s support for the anti-police groups could complicate Democrats’ efforts to flip Arizona’s Sixth Congressional District, a seat that is crucial to maintaining majority control of the House. Engel, who left the state senate last year, will face Republican nominee Juan Ciscomani in November’s general election. Rep. David Schweikert (R.), who currently represents the sixth district, is running in Arizona’s first district after the state’s congressional maps were redrawn.
Engel, who touts her criminal justice reform efforts on the campaign trail, endorsed the Minnesota Freedom Fund and Showing Up For Racial Justice in a June 2020 call-to-action decrying “state-sponsored violence” in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death.
“The broader public is finally becoming aware of the racist violence at the hands of law enforcement that has been so devastating to our brothers and sisters in the Black community,” wrote Engel.
The Minnesota Freedom Fund raised tens of millions of dollars in donations thanks to the help of Democrats like Engel and Vice President Kamala Harris. Harris called on her followers to “chip in now” to contribute to the fund in order to pay for bail for protesters arrested at anti-police protests. Christina Bohannan, the Democratic nominee for a House seat in Iowa, also solicited contributions for the Freedom Fund, the Washington Free Beaconreported.
The Freedom Fund paid the bail for relatively few protesters, and instead used most of its money to free inmates arrested on other charges. The fund helped free a domestic abuser, George Howard, who was later arrested on murder charges in a road rage incident. Another bail recipient, Timothy Wayne Columbus, was freed while in jail on charges of sexually molesting an 8-year-old girl.
Engel’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
‘I don’t want to answer that question because we have not—that’s not—yeah, I don’t want to answer that question,’ Rep. Cori Bush (D.) told reporters
Joe Biden, whose average approval rating sits at just 39.6 percent, insists Democratic voters want him to seek reelection in 2024. Several members of Biden’s own party, however, are refusing to back the 79-year-old president.
“I don’t want to answer that question because we have not—that’s not—yeah, I don’t want to answer that question,” Rep. Cori Bush (D., Mo.) told reporters last month when asked whether she would back Biden in the next presidential election.
In June, Toyota warned buyers of its bZ4X electric SUV not to drive their vehicles for fear the wheels could fall off. Toyota said at the time the cause was a mystery, but it would look into the glitch.
Toyota has not yet found a solution to the problem and is offering to buy back the SUV from its owners, according to CNN.
“We know that our customers have many choices when it comes to purchasing a vehicle. We appreciate their loyalty and are supporting them through this recall,” Toyota said in a statement, according to The Verge. “However, if a customer does not want to proceed with the provided options, we will offer to repurchase their bZ4X.”
Plan B for owners who want to keep a vehicle they may never be able to drive is to have free use of another Toyota vehicle until such time as Toyota figures out what went wrong and how to fix it.
Toyota offers to buy back recalled bZ4X fully electric SUV from customers | A headline writer’s dream. Toyota’s first full #EV recalled and a buyback offer literally because the wheels keep falling off! How can a car maker get something so basic, so wrong? https://t.co/lDJo4u43Zrpic.twitter.com/n9lcYPTgIo
As part of that deal, Toyota will pay $5,000 toward an owner’s car payments or as a partial refund. Toyota also said that it will extend the factory warranty on the bZ4X by whatever length of time it becomes before an owner gets her or his vehicle back, according to CNN.
The offer for those who do not sell their vehicle back also includes free EV charging once the owners get the vehicle back and the cost of gasoline for their loaner, according to Autoweek.
It was unclear in the announcement how owners of the vehicle, whose price starts at $43,215, would handle dealer markups, according to Car and Driver.
In June, the company announced that all 2,700 of its new electric bZ4X SUVs were a danger to their drivers, with only 260 to date having been delivered in the United States.
“After low-mileage use, all of the hub bolts on the wheel can loosen to the point where the wheel can detach from the vehicle,” Toyota said in a June 23 statement on its website.
“If a wheel detaches from the vehicle while driving, it could result in a loss of vehicle control, increasing the risk of a crash,” the company said. “The cause of the issue and the driving patterns under which this issue could occur are still under investigation. No one should drive these vehicles until the remedy is performed,” Toyota said.
“No remedy is available at this time,” Toyota said in its June release.
Toyota’s somehow gone from “The best built cars in the world” to “The hub bolts loosen which may cause a wheel to fall off, & almost two months later we don’t know how to fix it”https://t.co/wOJjNc44pW
In a column for Bloomberg, Anjani Trivedi, who covers industrial companies in Asia, wrote, “If that’s the level of quality and safety traditional auto giants are willing to commit to, then investors and regulators should increase their scrutiny.”
The bZ4X debuted in Japan in June, according to CNBC.
The company’s president, Akio Toyoda, said in December that Toyota planned “to roll out 30 BEV models by 2030.”
“Toyota has been under pressure to up its game in EVs, so will be very disappointed that a recall has been necessary on its first mass-market electric cars,” David Leggett, automotive editor at GlobalData, told CNBC.
House GOP leaders have pledged to take action on the “weaponized politicization” of the Department of Justice (DOJ) “when Republicans take back the House” in the midterm elections, after federal agents raided former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property on Monday.
“I’ve seen enough,” House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in a statement late Monday. “The Department of Justice has reached an intolerable state of weaponized politicization.”
“When Republicans take back the House, we will conduct immediate oversight of this department, follow the facts, and leave no stone unturned,” McCarthy added.
“Attorney General Garland: preserve your documents and clear your calendar,” McCarthy said.
McCarthy’s comment came after the FBI raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property on Monday. Trump has characterized the raid as “prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical left Democrats who desperately don’t want [him] to run for President in 2024.”
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Ranking Member on the House Judiciary Committee, which provides oversight over the DOJ, called on House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) to bring FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland onto the House floor for questioning on Friday.
“What was on the warrant? What were you really doing? What were you looking for? Why not talk to President Trump and have him give the information you’re after?” Jordan asked in an interview with Fox on Monday night. “We deserve answers now, and this Friday would be a good time.”
“Jerry Nadler: call up Christopher Wray, call up Merrick Garland, bring them in front of the House Judiciary Committee, so we ask them the questions that the American people deserve the answers to.”
Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), House Minority Whip, called the raid the “weaponization of the FBI by Biden’s DOJ against his political opponent.”
“Let’s be clear: This is a brazen weaponization of the FBI by Biden’s DOJ against his political opponent—while giving their political allies free passes,” Scalise said in a statement published late Monday. “It’s exactly why the IRS shouldn’t get an army of 87,000 more agents.”
“House Republicans will hold them accountable next year,” the lawmaker added.
Rep. Stefanik, chair of the House Republican Conference, called Monday “a dark day in American history” and said that the “political weaponization of the FBI and Department of Justice is an actual threat to democracy.”
“There is a reason that Americans no longer trust these agencies,” Stefanik said in a Monday statement. “This is the same corrupt agency that illegally fabricated FISA warrants, knowingly deceived Americans about Russian ‘collusion’ for years, and weaponized itself to perpetuate this hoax with their all-too-eager mainstream media accomplices.”
“There must be an immediate investigation and accountability into Joe Biden and his Administration’s weaponizing this department against their political opponents—the likely 2024 Republican candidate for President of the United States,” the congresswoman added.
Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), vice chair of the House Republican Conference and a part of Trump’s legal defense team during the Democrats’ 2019 attempted impeachment of Trump, said Biden and Garland “completely weaponized the DOJ” and “eroded the people’s faith in our system of justice.”
“Today’s raid on the former President’s home in the middle of an election season looks like another egregious & unprecedented abuse of power,” Johnson said in a statement on Monday.
“We will restore order & accountability as soon as we regain the gavels for a Republican majority in November. It can’t happen soon enough!” he added.
Former President Donald Trump said his Florida Mar-a-Lago home is “under siege” and “occupied by a group of FBI agents” in a statement late Aug. 8.
“These are dark times for our Nation, as my beautiful home, Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
“After working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate,” Trump said.
The FBI declined to comment on a press inquiry from The Epoch Times. Its parent agency, the Department of Justice (DOJ), did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump’s lawyer Christina Bobb confirmed with CNN on Monday night that the FBI seized documents from Mar-a-Lago.
“President Trump and his legal team have been cooperative with FBI and DOJ officials every step of the way. The FBI did conduct an unannounced raid and seized paper,” Bobb said.
The alleged raid by the FBI came two days after Trump’s latest hint at a 2024 run, in which he stopped short of giving an official announcement.
“Well, it’s not a long period, regardless, whether you go before or after, certainly not a very long period of time,” the former president said when responding to questions from the press before he took the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas, Texas, on Saturday.
“It’s coming,” Trump said, “and I think people are going to be very happy.”
“Our country has never been in a position like this. We lost everything. We’ve lost energy independence. We’ve lost our prestige. We’ve lost every single thing you can lose,” Trump said during the event, noting the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which he previously called “the greatest tactical mistake in history,” and the border crisis.
A police car outside former President Donald Trump’s residence in Mar-a-Lago, Palm Beach, Fla., on Aug. 8, 2022. (Giorgio Viera/AFP via Getty Images)
Lawmakers React
‘Weaponized’ Justice System
The 45th president said during his speech that he may be the “most persecuted” person in the history of America.
“A friend of mine recently said that I was the most persecuted person in the history of our country,” Trump said during his speech at CPAC. “And then I thought about it, because I didn’t have time to think much because I’m always being persecuted, and I felt he may very well be right.”
Trump called the raid “prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want [him] to run for President in 2024, especially based on recent polls,” adding that Democrats “will likewise do anything to stop Republicans and Conservatives in the upcoming Midterm Elections.”
“Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before,” Trump said.
During an America First Policy Institute event in July, Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), who was part of Trump’s legal defense team during the Democrats’ 2019 attempted impeachment of Trump, told The Epoch Times in an interview that the Biden administration has completely “weaponized” the Department of Justice (DOJ).
By design, the American justice system “is a bulwark against tyranny,” Johnson said. “But if the Department of Justice, for example, is weaponized for political purposes—which is what we’re seeing right now in the Biden ministration—that jeopardizes that foundational pillar itself.”
“Today’s raid on the former President’s home in the middle of an election season looks like another egregious & unprecedented abuse of power,” Johnson said in a statement on Monday.
“We will restore order & accountability as soon as we regain the gavels for a Republican majority in November. It can’t happen soon enough!” Johnson added.
‘Third-World Marxist Dictatorship’
“Such an assault could only take place in broken, Third-World Countries,” Trump said in his Monday statement. “Sadly, America has now become one of those Countries, corrupt at a level not seen before.”
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) echoed Trump’s comment.
“Using government power to persecute political opponents is something we have seen many times from 3rd world Marxist dictatorships,” Rubio said in a statement on Twitter late Monday. “But never before in America.
“After today[‘]s raid on Mar A Lago what do you think the left plans to use those 87,000 new IRS agents for?
“The FBI isn’t doing anything about the groups vandalizing Catholic Churches, firebombing Pro-Life groups or threatening Supreme Court justices. But they find time to raid Mar A Lago,” Rubio said.
Outcry from Republicans
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem said in a statement on Monday: “The FBI raid on President Trump’s home is an unprecedented political weaponization of the Justice Department. They’ve been after President Trump as a candidate, as President, and now as a former President. Using the criminal justice system in this manner is un-American.”
“The DOJ & FBI are being weaponized like never before to target political opponents. This Admin has thrown the rule of law and faith in our democratic institutions out the door,” said Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.) in a Monday Twitter post. “Joe Biden and Merrick Garland must answer immediately for today’s raid against an American president.”
“The inconsistent and partisan application of the law by the FBI has gone too far,” Rep. Diana Harshbarger (R-Tenn.) said on Monday. “The Democrats, for too long, have used our government agencies from the FBI to the IRS to target their political opponents. This inconceivable raid is an attack on our Republic.”
“This action, a raid on a former President and political rival, is something we would expect from Putin on his rivals… not here, not in the USA,” Rep. Dan Meuser (R-Pa.) said.
“The weaponization and politicalization of federal agencies is egregious and scary. These are Gestapo-like tactics. If the FBI can do this to President Trump, what do you think 87,000 new IRS agents will do to the American people?” Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) said. “Did Biden sign off on this raid? The American people deserve answers.”
“I stood up to America’s bureaucratic corruption, I restored power to the people, and truly delivered for our Country, like we have never seen before. The establishment hated it,” Trump said in his Monday statement.
“Now, as they watch my endorsed candidates win big victories, and see my dominance in all polls, they are trying to stop me, and the Republican Party, once more. The lawlessness, political persecution, and Witch Hunt must be exposed and stopped,” Trump said.
“I will continue to fight for the Great American People!”
THE CANDIDATE’S OWN BALLOT BEING RETURNED WILL SET ALARM BELLS RINGING.
Joe Kent, candidate for Washington’s 3rd Congressional district, has had his own ballot rejected by the state, The National Pulse can exclusively reveal.
Kent, who is endorsed by President Trump, submitted his ballot to the county auditor’s office himself, on August 2nd 2022. It was originally sent to him on July 17th.
The National Pulse has obtained an image of the notification of Kent’s rejected ballot:
KENT’S REJECTED BALLOT.
Kent told The National Pulse that he had to go into the offices of the election administrators on Monday, August 8th, in order to verify his own signature – a process that many older voters may be unable to attend to so easily – so that his vote would count.
“It’s a mess of a system,” Kent told The National Pulse.
The primary election in WA-3 is curious enough by itself, using a non-partisan, top-two system, “in which all candidates appear on the same ballot, for congressional and state-level elections. The top two vote-getters move on to the general election, regardless of their party affiliation.”
But Kent’s primary appears to have had especially strange problems, with the count still not concluded almost a week since election day. At the time of writing, around 81 percent of ballots (183,000) have been counted. Another twenty-odd thousand remain.
VOTE TOTALS AS ON MONDAY AFTERNOON, EST.
Kent is currently running 0.1 percent behind establishment Republican Jaime Herrera Beutler, who voted to impeach President Trump. Critics wrote off Kent’s chances on election day, but the former Green Beret who served 11 combat tours and won six bronze stars has clawed his way back as the votes have trickled in.
Now, critics suspect there could be foul play in certain counties, where votes for Kent are being rejected, including his own.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has criticized Democrats for pushing their so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which he warns is a “terrible bill.”
The bill will double the size of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). But IRS agents are not designed to go after “billionaires and big corporations,” Cruz said in an interview with Fox News. “They’re designed to come after small businesses and working families across this country … The Democrats are making the IRS bigger than the Pentagon, plus the Department of State, plus the FBI, plus the Border Patrol combined … This is a massive power grab.”
Senate Democrats passed the Inflation Reduction Act on Aug. 7 with a 51 to 50 vote, with Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris casting her tie-breaking vote in favor of her party. The estimated $740 billion package now heads to the House for vote.
Over $300 billion will go to climate change and energy, which is the largest clean energy investment made by a federal government in American history. It also includes tax credits for electric vehicles. The bill institutes a 15 percent minimum tax for corporations making over $1 billion a year.
Cruz warned that the Inflation Reduction Act will “drive up gas prices” and “kill manufacturing jobs.” The bill has “billions in new taxes” charged against U.S. gas and oil production, a decision that will raise gas prices at the pump, he said.
According to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the bill will “reduce” the U.S. budget deficit.
But a recent report by the Congressional Budget Office (CRO) shows that even though the budget deficit will be lowered by $101.5 billion over a 10-year period, the deficit will actually increase by $24.6 billion in the first six years between 2022 and 2027.
Widespread Criticism
Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas on Saturday, former president Donald Trump warned that the Inflation Reduction Act will worsen inflation, which is already at a four-decade high.
Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) will pay a political price for backing the spending bill, he predicted.
In an Aug. 8 Twitter post, Sen. Masha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) called the $80 billion set aside to double the number of IRS agents as practically giving “every American a personalized tax auditor.”
Instead of increasing taxes, the government should be focusing on reducing them, she insisted. The Democrats’ “socialist agenda” will make the life of Tennesseans “more difficult and expensive.”
“It’s a special kind of stupid to raise taxes during both a recession and inflation—that’s called stagflation, which is what we have right now as a result of Biden’s policies,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said on Twitter.
There are also worries about the 15 percent book minimum tax affecting small and mid-sized businesses that make below $1 billion a year.
An analysis of the tax rules by Americans for Tax Reform states that the minimum tax will be applicable to any company that has private equity in its capital structure, since the firm will be considered a subsidiary of the private equity firm for tax purposes.
Posts shared on Facebook that claim the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) classified monkeypox as an airborne virus, it can cause paralysis, and can last months are false, officials said.
Facebook posts containing the claims reviewed by The Epoch Times show they both have a BBC News logo and credit the World Health Organization and CDC. One of the posts says, “CDC has now classified this disease as airborne and anyone within 15 feet can catch it,” while it adds that it is now being classified as a form of herpes, the illness can last up to four months, and it can lead to paralyzation.
Under the Facebook post, some said the information is fake and one said that it’s “trying to scare us to take more vaccine shots.” The person added, “Only way it can spread is through contact from someone who has it, kissing, sex, cuddling.”
A spokesperson for the BBC told Reuters and The Associated Press the news outlet did not make the images. A spokesperson for the CDC told the Associated Press that the post’s claims “are not correct.”
The CDC, WHO, and other health organizations have not classified monkeypox as “airborne,” and they have said it spreads via close, prolonged contact from one person to another person. Homosexual males are the primary spreaders of the virus, officials say.
CDC spokesperson Kate Fowlie told AP that the virus “is not known to linger in the air and is not transmitted during short periods of shared airspace.” She added, “In the current monkeypox outbreak, we know that those with the disease generally describe close, sustained physical contact with other people who are infected with the virus.”
Transmission is primarily through skin-to-skin contact, and “direct contact with monkeypox rash, scabs, or body fluids from a person with monkeypox,” according to the CDC website.
“Touching objects, fabrics (clothing, bedding, or towels), and surfaces that have been used by someone” infected with monkeypox can also transmit the virus, the agency says.
Paralysis is not generally associated with monkeypox, according to health agencies, and the virus doesn’t last for four months, but rather between two and four weeks, officials say.
Symptoms of the virus include fever, swollen lymph nodes, malaise, and a rash or lesions that may initially be mistaken for chickenpox or a sexually transmitted disease.
As for the claim about it being a form of herpes, monkeypox is classified as a pox virus in the poxviridae family related to smallpox, cowpox, and others. Herpes, meanwhile, is within the herpesviridae family.
Outraged parents launched a lawsuit against Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) in Virginia for teaching inappropriate, sexualized material to children, and other violations of state constitutional rights protecting parents and children.
America First Legal on July 21 served discovery requests seeking answers from LCPS, School District Superintendent Scott Ziegler, and several other school board officials on behalf of 11 parents pressing charges.
LCPS was given three weeks to respond. They did not reply, except in “saying that they’re not going to respond,” said the lawsuit’s main plaintiff, Clint Thomas, to The Epoch Times.
On the first day of the school year, two of Thomas’s daughters were forced to declare their gender pronouns publicly in class. All five of his children have gone through LCPS.
The lawsuit takes aim at LCPS’s Policy 8040 and Regulation 8040, which Thomas says “is trying to stifle [parents] from even knowing if the children are expressing different genders in school.”
Clint Thomas, his wife, and one of his daughters speak to reporters outside the Loudoun County Public Schools administration building in Ashburn, Va., on Jan. 25, 2022. (Terri Wu/The Epoch Times)
“There’s just an overarching theme trying to gain information about private matters in our home, survey after survey being issued, inappropriate surveys being issued asking students about their sex lives.”
Parents have observed “overtly pedophilic, highly sexualized books” in school libraries, and class assignments with “highly sexualized” and “misogynistic” content, Thomas added.
“It’s all basically about race theory, gender theory. … They’ve been forced to sit through homeroom especially during Pride Month and basically watch videos of people who are trying to change their biological sex.”
The parents accuse LCPS of “knowingly, systematically, and willfully violating the Plaintiffs’ fundamental constitutional rights to care for, nurture, and direct the education, moral instruction, and upbringing of their children.”
Public education should be about academic instruction, said Thomas. Values and moral instruction are for the parents to determine.
A parent speaks out against board actions during a Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) board meeting in Ashburn, Va., on Oct. 12, 2021. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)Parents speak out at a rally outside the Loudoun County Public School administration building on June 22, 2022. (Terri Wu/The Epoch Times)
For the past year and a half, Loudoun County has been the main battleground for parents and school boards contending over matters of woke content, CRT, mask mandates, sexualized content, and the forcing of young children to use bathrooms and locker rooms with members of the opposite sex.
During COVID lockdowns in 2021, thousands of parents took notice of what their kids were learning in class, said Thomas. Since then, it’s “just been one thing after another,” prompting parents into action.
Parent protests were galvanized in May 2021 by the sexual assault of a female student by a 15-year-old male in a girl’s bathroom in Louden County’s Stone Bridge High School.
This was exacerbated when State Prosecutor Buta Biberaj tried to jail parent Scott Smith, the girl’s father, for protesting the bathroom policy that led to her getting raped.
The lawsuit between the parents and LCPS is still in the early stages, the father of five said.
He speculates what aim lies at the heart of the woke education agenda fundamentally.
“The liberal agenda is no longer about providing a level playing field,” said Thomas. “It’s really about tearing down everything traditional. I think that’s the ultimate sinister reality of the equity agenda. It’s not about equality … it’s really tearing down America.”
A doctor who was banned from Twitter for posting about COVID-19 vaccines is willing to serve as the lead plaintiff in a potential class-action lawsuit against the social media company, his lawyer has informed the tech giant.
Dr. Andrew Bostom “stands with a growing number of similarly situated people who have had their Twitter accounts suspended for sharing their views and opinions on COVID-19,” James Lawrence III, Bostom’s lawyer, told Twitter in a letter dated Aug. 6.
“Dr. Bostom is ready, willing, and able to serve as a lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit against Twitter for breach of contract if that becomes necessary,” Lawrence added.
Bostom, with the Brown University Center For Primary Care and Prevention, was permanently suspended in June after sharing the results of a study that linked Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine with lower sperm and semen concentration in men.
After Lawrence contacted Twitter on Bostom’s behalf, the company reversed the suspension, admitting he did not appear to violate any rules with the post.
Just two weeks later, Bostom was banned for asserting that the only randomized controlled trial data on children shows zero hospitalizations prevented by COVID-19 vaccination, while trial data from adults showed the vaccines caused more severe adverse events than the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations it prevented.
Twitter told Bostom in the suspension notice that he violated the company’s policy on spreading misleading information related to COVID-19.
New Letter
But the post does not violate the policy, Lawrence told Vijaya Gadde, head of legal, policy, and trust at Twitter.
The first portion of the comment is backed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s briefing document (pdf) analyzing Pfizer trial data in children aged 6 months to 23 months, the lawyer said, noting that there were zero hospitalizations in the placebo arm but one in the vaccinated arm.
The second portion is supported by a recent paper that analyzed serious adverse events from the original Pfizer and Moderna vaccine trials and concluded that people who were vaccinated were at higher risk of an event than those who did not get a shot.
“His comments can be substantiated by actual pediatric and adult data. This is not ‘misinformation’ by any means, but rather a restating of actual scientific analysis of the data from clinical trials of Pfizer and Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccines,” Lawrence wrote.
Both the vaccines are built on messenger RNA, or mRNA, technology.
Even if the comment did violate Twitter’s policy, the company failed to follow its own five-strikes rule, which gives users five violations before a ban, the lawyer said.
He recently represented journalist Alex Berenson in a case against Twitter in which a judge said Twitter violated its own rule in its ban of Berenson. The suit was settled, and Berenson was reinstated.
Twitter is being urged to restore Bostom’s account by 8 p.m. on Aug. 12.
Former President Donald Trump has warned Americans to brace for something “a lot worse than a recession” while blaming the Biden administration’s poor stewardship of the economy for soaring inflation and denouncing the tax hikes in the latest Democrat spending bill.
Trump made the remarks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas on Saturday, where the former president raised the alarm on the state of the union.
“Our country is being shot. It’s being destroyed,” Trump told attendees, while touting his administration’s record on the economy and national security.
Trump spoke of “creating the most secure border in American history, record tax and regulation cuts, $1.87 gasoline, no inflation, low interest rates, record growth in real wages, record growth in our economy.”
Former President Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas on August 6, 2022. (Bobby Sanchez for The Epoch Times)
Soaring Inflation, Recession
During Trump’s tenure, the highest the Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation gauge came in at 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.
In his speech, Trump drew a contrast with the economy under Joe Biden, blaming the president for the highest inflation in decades that Trump estimates is costing American families as much as $7,000 a year.
“After the pandemic, we handed the radical Democrats the fastest economic recovery ever recorded, the history of our country, ever recorded,” Trump continued. “They’ve turned that into two straight quarters of negative economic growth, also known, despite their protestation to the contrary, as a recession.”
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.
Despite a number of economists arguing that the United States is in a recession based on the two-consecutive-quarters rule, the Biden administration insists that the economy isn’t in a recession, citing NBER’s consideration of a broader range of indicators.
A key argument against recession made by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and others in the Biden administration is that the U.S. labor market remains tight, with unemployment at 3.5 percent and, at 10.7 million, the number of job openings remaining well above the 6 million or so people classified as unemployed.
Joe Biden gives remarks during a meeting on the economy with CEOs and members of his Cabinet in the South Court Auditorium of the White House on July 28, 2022. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Worse Than Recession
In his CPAC speech, Trump then issued an ominous warning that, absent a course correction, the recession could spiral into something even worse.
“Just hope that the recession doesn’t turn into a depression, because the way they’re doing things, it could be a lot worse than a recession,” Trump said, echoing similar remarks he made at a rally in Arizona at the end of July, where he warned that “we’re going to have a serious problem” unless political change takes place.
“We got to get this act in order, we have to get this country going, or we’re going to have a serious problem,” Trump said at a rally in Arizona, warning that “we’re going to have a much bigger problem than recession. We’ll have a depression.”
During his appearance at CPAC, Trump issued a call for urgent action at the polls in the upcoming midterms.
“The future of our country is at stake. We don’t have time to wait years and years. We won’t have a country left. What I used to say about Venezuela is true. We have to save the economy, defeat the Biden, Pelosi, Schumer tax hike, which is happening right now tonight,” Trump continued, referring to the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” that cleared the Senate not long after his speech.
Senators passed the sweeping bill, estimated at $740 billion, in a 51–50 vote on Aug. 7, with the package next going to the House for consideration.
During the deliberations, Senate Democrats rejected an amendment offered by Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) that sought to ban any of the $80 billion for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) from being used to target Americans making less than $400,000 per year.
“My colleagues claim this massive funding boost will allow the IRS to go after millionaires, billionaires and so-called rich ‘tax cheats,’ but the reality is a significant portion raised from their IRS funding bloat would come from taxpayers with income below $400,000,” Crapo said in a statement.
Crapo’s amendment was rejected on a party-line vote, with the Democrat bill including softer language that features a non-binding statement of intention not to squeeze more revenue from America’s middle class.
Tax Hikes
According to an analysis by Americans for Tax Reform, a U.S. advocacy group, the spending bill includes a number of tax hikes on American households and businesses.
This includes a $6.5 billion natural gas tax that ATR says will increase household energy bills, a $12 billion crude oil tax that will end up being passed on to drivers in the form of higher gas prices, and a $52 billion income tax hike on mid-sized and family businesses.
In a separate analysis, ATR said that the Democrat bill’s changes to the book tax threaten small businesses.
Elaborating on that theme, economist and author Antonio Graceffo wrote in an op-ed for The Epoch Times that the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” would drive up prices for American households.
“Nearly half of these new taxes will be paid by manufacturers, creating disincentives to produce. Diminished industrial output will drive up the cost of goods and reduce the variety and quantity of goods available on store shelves,” Graceffo wrote.
“Beyond the manufacturing sector, the act increases taxes on businesses in general, which, combined with higher interest rates will decrease new investment and hamper job creation. Ultimately, these increased costs will be passed on to customers,” he added.
‘We Have to Win’
During his CPAC speech, Trump revealed what he sees as the key to bringing the country and its economy back on track.
“We have to win an earth-shattering victory in 2022. We have to do it, coming up in November,” Trump said.
“This election needs to be a national referendum on the horrendous catastrophes the radical Democrats have inflicted on our country,” he continued.
“The Republican party needs to campaign on a clear pledge that, if they are given power, they’re going to fight with everything they have to shut down the border, stop the crime wave, beat inflation, and hold the Biden administration accountable. They have to hold it accountable. Job number one for the next Congress,” Trump said.
The national midterm election takes place on Nov. 8, with 34 Senate seats and all 435 House seats up for grabs.
As the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol continues its effort to prove allegations of insurrection against former President Donald Trump and his supporters, Capitol Police and House Democrats continue to block all efforts to force the release of all surveillance video footage and emails, which could possibly exonerate those being accused of wrongdoing. Now, Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-Texas) is citing a United States Code that could legally force the release of that evidence.
In a July, 29, 2022 letter to Capitol Police Board Chair William J. Walker, obtained by The Epoch Times, Gohmert—backed by the signatures of 23 additional GOP lawmakers—demanded the release of footage captured on Capitol Hill security cameras on Jan. 6, 2021, currently being withheld under “sovereign immunity.”
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) questions Attorney General William Barr who appears before the House Oversight Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington on July 28, 2020. (Matt McClain-Pool/Getty Images)
“As you must be aware,” Gohmert wrote, “2 U.S.C. § 1979 states that ‘any Member … of either House of Congress’ can ‘obtain information from the Capitol Police regarding the operations and activities of the Capitol Police that affect the Senate and House of Representatives.’ Subsection (c) makes clear that nothing in that law may be construed to prevent us, as Members of the House of Representatives from our ability to obtain those videos.”
Gohmert concluded that “Releasing this information is absolutely essential to proper governance and truth to protect and perpetuate this self, governing nation.”
‘It’s About Revenge’
As The Epoch Times reported July 5, attorneys of Jan. 6 prisoners and defendants have provided evidence in several cases that indicate the government is manufacturing evidence to arrest and incarcerate people who attended the protest at the Capitol. In the meantime, Gohmert insists the government is also hiding evidence that could be used in the defense of these people.
“That’s exactly what they’re doing,” Gohmert reiterated, noting how he himself has been a victim of the Jan. 6 Committee’s “Soviet-style propaganda.”
Reports disclose how Cassidy Hutchinson, former aide to the then-Whitehouse Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, told the Committee during her June deposition that Gohmert asked then-President Donald Trump for a pardon.
Gohmert demanded a release of the full, unedited video and transcript of Hutchinson’s deposition, saying the way the video was presented erased the fact that he was actually seeking pardons for “very deserving military members, former military, and one civilian servant.”
“I’ve been personally affected by the lies created by using tape,” Gohmert told The Epoch Times. “They had Cassidy Hutchinson saying I requested a pardon without getting the full context. I have never asked for a pardon for myself. I’ve never done anything that needed a pardon. But I was requesting pardons for a number of people that have been screwed over by the justice system.”
While a spokesperson for the Capitol Police declined to comment on the letter to The Washington Times, they did push back on allegations that Jan. 6 prisoners and defendants were not provided full access to video that has been provided to the U.S. Attorney’s Office (USAO).
“Every January 6th defendant has access to the same footage, which is everything the USAO is releasing,” the spokesperson told The Washington Times. “They do not just get what is relevant to them.”
The Road to 2 U.S.C. § 1979
In a May 19, 2022 letter (pdf) to Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), Select Committee Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) wrote that the Board was seeking the Congressman’s “voluntary cooperation” in advancing their investigation.
“Based on our review of evidence in the Select Committee’s possession,” Thompson said, “we believe you have information regarding a tour you led through parts of the Capitol complex on January 5, 2021.”
“The American people deserve a full and accurate accounting of what happened on January 6th,” Thompson’s two-page letter concluded. “We aim to make informed legislative recommendations taking account of all relevant facts. Thank you in advance for your consideration of this request.”
The letter was also signed by the Committee Vice Chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.).
Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.) speaks during a hearing in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on May 6, 2019. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
In an immediate same-day response, Committee on House Administration Ranking Member Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.) and Committee Member Loudermilk issued a joint press release, calling out the Select Committee for its false accusations.
“A constituent family with young children meeting with their Member of Congress in the House Office Buildings is not a suspicious group or ‘reconnaissance tour,’” the letter states. “The family never entered the Capitol building.”
“The 1/6 political circus released the letter to the press before even notifying Mr. Loudermilk, who has still not received a copy,” the letter accuses. “The Select Committee is once again pushing a verifiably false narrative that Republicans conducted ‘reconnaissance tours’ on January 5th. The facts speak for themselves; no place that the family went on the 5th was breached on the 6th, the family did not enter the Capitol grounds on the 6th, and no one in that family has been investigated or charged in connection to January 6th.”
In a letter dated May 20, 2022, addressed to Capitol Police Board Chair William Walker and members Karen Gibson and J. Brett Blanton, Davis demanded the release of “all January 5th Capitol Tapes.”
“If the Board does not release the relevant footage in a timely manner, I will have no choice but to exercise my authority under 2 U.S.C. § 1979 to release the footage myself.”
Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Il.) speaks in Washington on Jan. 9, 2020. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
On June 15, 2022, Thompson sent another letter (pdf) to Loudermilk, again accusing him of personally escorting individuals through the Capitol Building for the purposes of conducting reconnaissance ahead of the rallies on Jan. 6. Thompson also reminded Loudermilk that the Committee had “invited” him to meet with them on May 19, 2022, about the “evidence,” which consisted of surveillance footage of Loudermilk leading a “tour of approximately ten individuals” through areas that are “not typically of interest to tourists, including hallways, staircases and security checkpoints.”
“Surveillance footage shows a tour of approximately ten individuals led by you to areas in the Rayburn, Longworth, and Cannon House Office Buildings, as well as the entrances to tunnels leading to the U.S. Capitol,” Thompson said in his letter. “The below image shows you leading individuals on the tour:”
Screenshot of image from a June 15, 2022 letter written by Select Committee Chairman Bernie G. Thompson to United States Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), accusing him of personally escorting individuals through the Capitol Building for the purposes of conducting reconnaissance ahead of the rallies on Jan. 6. (Letter from the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol)
Two additional images in the letter show “an individual appearing to photograph a staircase in the basement of the Longworth House Office Building” while Loudermilk speaks “with others nearby,” and of people from Loudermilk’s tour “taking photographs of the tunnel leading from the Rayburn House Office Building to the Capitol.”
Images from a June 15, 2022 letter sent by Select Committee Chairman Bernie G. Thompson to United States Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), showing members of the Congressman’s tour taking photos. (Letter from the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol)
Loudermilk did not comply with the interview request.
On June 16, 2022, the Committee released surveillance footage of Loudermilk’s “tour,” overlayed with graphics and preceded by selected footage from other videos that add to their narrative of Loudermilk’s supposed guilt.
The Problems with Pick-and-Choose
For Mike Howell, senior advisor for Government Relations at The Heritage Foundation, the threat by Davis to release the Jan. 5 footage of Loudermilk, if the Capitol Police do not, raises a serious question.
Mile Howell, Senior Advisor of Government Relations at The Heritage Foundation. (Courtesy of Mike Howell)
Howell noted how Davis only threatened to release video footage that pertained to the Loudermilk incident and insisted he had the authority to do so.
“The question that’s been percolating is, ‘If you have the authority to release the tape from January fifth, why are you not releasing all of the tapes?’ That would be of major importance because there are a lot of major criminal cases coming down and defense attorneys have had problems trying to get access to these tapes themselves,” he told The Epoch Times.
Gohmert agreed the Committee should not be allowed “to just pick-and-choose which sections they show.”
“Yes, they should be able to show the defense what they’re going to use in prosecution. But they are also required to show the things that were more exonerating and exculpatory and that does not appear to have happened at all,” he said.
Howell sees at least two problems with this game of pick-and-choose.
First, the request by Davis only to release a segment of video he believes will prove his point is no different than the Jan. 6 Committee “selectively releasing portions they think show the best side of their version of events.”
Second: “If the authority exists, and Davis has the power through this statute to release the footage from Jan. 5,” Howell surmised, “why haven’t the tapes already been released in full?”
While Howell did remark that some will cite security issues as the reason for withholding most of the footage captured by cameras at the Capitol, he said he’s “got news for them.”
“There are cameras all over the Capitol,” Howell countered. “So it’s not a matter of special camera angles. I think the real reason why they’re not being released is because it can potentially show information and video footage that could be helpful to people being charged by the Department of Justice as well as damaging to the narrative that the January 6 Committee is trying to establish.”
According to a sworn affidavit from Capitol Police General Counsel Thomas DiBiase, surveillance camera footage from the U.S. Capitol Police’s extensive system of cameras on U.S. Capitol grounds states “disclosure of any footage from these cameras is strictly limited and subject to a policy that regulates the release of footage.”
“Per Department 1000.002, Retrieval of Archived Video (see attachment 1), the release of any footage from the Department’s CCV system must be approved by the Assistant Chief of Police for Operations.”
Howell said the tapes need to be released to give people a “full accounting” of what happened on Jan. 2, 2021 and allow attorneys to go through the footage to find out if there is anything in there that may be helpful to their clients.
“In the minds of many Americans and Democrats on Capitol Hill, this event has been made out to be akin to 9/11.” Howell said. “So, the question is, why can’t the American people see what actually happened that day. I think there’s massive public interest in this, and that outweighs any other concerns, so the tapes belong in the public.”
‘Why Are You Only Threatening’
While Howell finds Davis’s threat to release the Loudermilk video a bit curious, he isn’t surprised. At the time, when Davis made the threat, he was struggling through a primary challenge against fellow Republican and Trump-endorsed candidate Mary Miller after redistricting pitted the two incumbent Republicans against each other.
“So he, in an effort to shore up some bona fides on the right, basically threatened to release these tapes,” Howell surmised. “Now he’s lost his primary and nothing has happened. He hasn’t released the tapes and he hasn’t said anything else since.”
Still, Howell believes the House Administration Committee—to which the Capitol Police reports and of which Davis still serves as ranking member—does have the power and authority to demand the release of the surveillance footage.
“They aren’t an independent police agency,” Howell noted of the Capitol Police. “They report to Congress. So Congress can tell Capitol Police what to do. I’m surprised more people haven’t picked up on it. You have the tapes and you can release them? Why are you only threatening to release them?”
Gohmert said “these tactics are things that were supposed to be left behind 70 or more years ago. We had evolved to a justice system that was the fairest in the history of the world. Now, this Justice Department and the majority in the House are taking us back six or seven decades and they’ve gone beyond how bad it used to be and they’re approaching a Soviet-style justice system. Stalin would be proud of what they’re doing. It’s grossly unfair, grossly unjust. It doesn’t resemble the justice system at all.”
Like Howell, Gohmert also wants to know why Davis only demanded the release of surveillance footage that might prove the innocence of his colleague, just as the members of the Select Committee are selecting bits and pieces they think will prove the guilt of their political enemies.
The Next Step
Asked for the next step, Gohmert said he is going to give the Capitol Police a chance to respond to his letter.
“It they don’t respond quickly, I think we do need to take legal action,” he said. “If they respond and say, ‘you’re not entitled to it, we’ve ignored lots of laws already and this is just one more law we’ll ignore,’ then we have got to—for the sake of the country, for the sake of our justice system and for the sake of truth—stand up and hold the Justice Department accountable for their violations of the law.”
Another thing bothering Gohmert is what he is learning through talking to Jan. 6 prisoners “en mass at the D.C. Jail.”
“I have been deeply concerned and a lot of us have been demanding that all of the video be released for months,” Gohmert explained. “The Supreme Court made clear that the Department of Justice has to release any potentially exonerating or exculpatory evidence to the defense. They put so much pressure on defendants and kept many of them in jail so that they just agree to plea guilty without ever seeing the exculpatory evidence, which is absolutely outrageous because that lets the DOJ off the hook.”
Gohmert said it was the moment he learned that 2 U.S.C. § 1979 isn’t a House rule, but that it’s actually a law, that he knew he had to take a stand, and while he knows that there are still some members of the Capitol Police who “want to see right prevail and truth and justice prevail” he said he “can only hope they will do the right thing” and release the surveillance footage.
“If they’re not willing to do it,” Gohmert vowed, “we’ve got to go to court as quickly as possible and require them to produce [the video]. This is a law. This is not a suggestion. It is absolutely imperative that Congress have access to all of that. So, that’s why we made the request and then sent the letter out so we could get it out as quickly as possible.”
“It will be interesting to know who’s been holding up the video,” Gohmert speculated, “because some of the people who have refused to answer questions” may soon “have to respond after their subpoenaed and drug into court.”
The Epoch Times reached out to Davis, the Capitol Police, and the Office of the Inspector General.
Jennette McCurdy was a mainstay for years as character Sam Puckett on Nickelodeon’s “iCarly.” But in a new memoir, she alleged her time at the network was far from the happy, free-spirited character she portrayed on the screen.
Vanity Fair published an excerpt Friday of McCurdy’s new memoir, “I’m Glad My Mom Died.” In it, McCurdy detailed the treatment she was allegedly subject to while working on the show.
At the beginning of the excerpt, McCurdy described a dinner she had with “The Creator,” an anonymous character in the memoir.
McCurdy wrote that “The Creator” pressured her to consume alcohol, which she initially refused.
“I’ve never had alcohol before,” McCurdy said in the excerpt. “And I’m only eighteen. Couldn’t I get in trouble?”
“The Creator” told her the stars of “Victorious,” another popular show on Nickelodeon, got “drunk together all the time,” McCurdy wrote.
“The iCarly kids are so wholesome,” he said, according to the excerpt. “We need to give you guys a little edge.”
McCurdy wrote that she eventually took a sip of alcohol, and she told “The Creator” she enjoyed it. After he pressured her further, she admitted she did not like the taste of the drink.
“The Creator laughs,” McCurdy wrote. “I’ve done well. I’ve pleased him. Mission accomplished. It’s the same mission I have every time I get dinner with him, which has gotten more and more frequent lately as my new contract for the spin-off he promised me is being worked out.
“The Creator is doing the thing that I’ve heard from my co-stars he does with every new star of a show that he’s making — he takes you under his wing. You’re his favorite. For now. I like being his favorite for now. I feel like I’m doing something right.”
McCurdy said this uncomfortable dinner was just one of many questionable interactions she had with “The Creator,” interactions that crossed from ugly into creepy, into abusive.
In another scene she described, “The Creator” put his hand on her knee at dinner, then said he thought she was cold.
He draped his jacket around her, then patted her shoulders, then began to massage her.
“My shoulders do have a lot of knots in them, but I don’t want The Creator to be the one rubbing them out,” McCurdy wrote. “I want to say something, to tell him to stop, but I’m so scared of offending him.”
Eventually, she wrote, Nickelodeon offered her $300,000 when it canceled “Sam & Cat,” if she would promise not to talk about her experiences at Nickelodeon.
“What the f***?” McCurdy wrote, describing her thoughts at the time. (She didn’t use asterisks.) “Nickelodeon is offering me three hundred thousand dollars in hush money to not talk publicly about my experience on the show?
“My personal experience of The Creator’s abuse? This is a network with shows made for children. Shouldn’t they have some sort of moral compass? Shouldn’t they at least try to report to some sort of ethical standard?”
McCurdy wrote that she ultimately decided not to take the money, but that did not erase her experiences.
While “The Creator” is never named in the book, Yahoo! Entertainment reported that producer Dan Schneider was the creator of “iCarly.” ViacomCBS launched an investigation into his behavior before he left the network in 2018, according to a July report in Deadline.
She also described an incident from the show “Sam & Cat,” the “iCarly” spinoff show featuring her “iCarly” character and actress/singer Ariana Grande as the Cat Valentine character from “Victorious,” Yahoo! Entertainment reported.
McCurdy alleged Grande was allowed to pursue other career opportunities during the show, but she was not.
“What finally undid me was when Ariana came whistle-toning in with excitement because she had spent the previous evening playing charades at Tom Hanks’s house,” McCurdy wrote. “That was the moment I broke.”
On top of her issues at the network, McCurdy wrote that her home life was incredibly challenging.
According to Yahoo! Entertainment, she described to her mother that she was embarrassed of being pictured in a bikini during a wardrobe fitting.
Her mother reportedly told her to ignore her issues at the network because “everyone wants what you have.”
Supply chain woes have more companies eyeing manufacturing here at home
It wasn’t long ago that Sherman, Texas, might have been best known as the birthplace of Buck Owens, the late country-and-western star, or as the home of Austin College, one of the state’s oldest colleges. More recently, however, the city of nearly 44,000 people located about 65 miles north of Dallas has had something else to brag about: a growing reputation as a center of high-tech manufacturing.
In June, Taiwan-based semiconductor manufacturer GlobalWafers announced plans to build a state-of-the-art, $5 billion silicon wafer factory in Sherman, which beat competing sites in South Korea and Ohio for the facility. The plant will produce advanced, 300-millimeter wafers—which are currently manufactured in Asia—and could support as many as 1,500 jobs over time.
The GlobalWafers announcement came on the heels of Dallas-based Texas Instruments saying that it would put up as many as four new semiconductor (or chip) manufacturing plants in Sherman, potentially investing $30 billion and employing up to 3,000 people. Before selecting the North Texas city, the company had considered Singapore for the facilities, which also will produce 300-millimeter wafers.
The latest developments are a far cry from previous decades in Sherman, when factories there making surgical dressings and automotive glass products were shuttered, with some of the jobs going to other countries.
“We’ve suffered our ups and down,” Sherman Mayor David Plyler said. “But as the economy changed and we started telling our story, things turned. Now folks want to be here.”
Sherman’s success at luring new factories underscores how some cities and towns across the country are enjoying a manufacturing renaissance. That renaissance comes after the United States spent decades shipping manufacturing jobs overseas—mainly to lower-cost suppliers in East Asia, especially China. In 1990, the United States made 37 percent of the world’s computer chips, a figure that since has fallen to about 12 percent. Now, however, some of the manufacturing is coming back, promising communities new jobs and new life.
The return of manufacturing to the United States, known as “reshoring,” got a kick-start in about 2010. But it took on new urgency after COVID-19 lockdowns revealed vulnerabilities in global supply chains. Shipping costs soared and ports were logjammed, resulting in shortages of products ranging from masks and toilet paper to computer chips, which are critical components in everything from smartphones and computers to appliances and automobiles.
“You’ve got by far the most momentum we’ve had at any time in the 12 years we’ve been tracking it,” said Harry Moser, founder and president of the Reshoring Initiative, a nonprofit that promotes the “return-manufacturing-home” message. “Where I’ve had to go to companies in the past and sort of hustle them, now I get more calls from companies saying, ‘I’ve been told we have to get our work out of China and find a source in the U.S. Can you help me find a source?’”
While other kinds of manufacturing are experiencing a U.S. revival as well—there are plans for more than a dozen new electric vehicle battery factories in the South and Midwest, for example—semiconductor plants have taken center stage lately, in part because of the $280 billion CHIPS and Science Act.
The bipartisan measure, which passed the House and Senate last week and was headed to Joe Biden’s desk, provides $52 billion in federal subsidies for domestic chipmaking. Both GlobalWafers and California-based Intel, which plans to build two big semiconductor plants in Licking County, Ohio, had stated that the projects in Sherman and Ohio might not have proceeded as planned unless the legislation was successful. The Biden administration pushed the measure partly on national security grounds, citing U.S. reliance on China for “mature” chips, as well as China’s threats against the island of Taiwan, which the United States has depended on for the most advanced chips.
Offshoring Declines
As recently as the 1970s, the United States had a robust manufacturing sector and balanced trade. The country ran a trade surplus of $8.9 billion in 1975, and manufacturing employment in June 1979 climbed to a record 19.5 million. After that, however, both figures went south. Manufacturing employment plunged to 11.5 million in 2010 before recovering some to 12.5 million in 2021. And the export-import trade balance has been underwater for more than 45 years, with a record deficit of about $860 billion in 2021.
It’s also been about four decades since U.S. companies started “offshoring” jobs overseas. Attracted by the lower cost of labor in Latin America and Asian countries such as China, manufacturers in industries including textiles, steel, and electronics decided to relocate some of their operations there, ostensibly to stay competitive by paring production costs. By 2011, however, an analysis by the Boston Consulting Group was questioning this strategy. The influential consulting firm stated that China’s labor-cost advantage was quickly eroding and predicted that, by 2015, “manufacturing in some parts of the U.S. will be just as economical as manufacturing in China.”
Companies such as Caterpillar and General Electric got the message. Over the past 12 years, the rate of offshoring has declined, while the rate of “reshoring plus foreign direct investment (FDI)” in the United States has been accelerating, Moser said. Combined, the latter two categories were responsible for a record 261,000 manufacturing job announcements last year, up from 6,000 in 2010, he said. That brought the total number of jobs announced because of reshoring and FDI since 2010 to more than 1.3 million.
Most of the jobs came back from Asia. Eliminating the trade deficit by making in the United States what’s currently being imported would result over time in a 40 percent increase in domestic manufacturing, generating 5 million more manufacturing jobs, he said.
The best candidates for reshoring include companies in those manufacturing sectors with high freight costs, volatile demand, frequent design changes, and processes that can be automated, Moser said. Among them are machinery, transportation equipment, appliances, electric batteries, semiconductors, personal protection equipment, pharmaceuticals, and rare earth materials. To help companies better understand the benefits of reshoring, his nonprofit has developed something called a “Total Cost of Ownership Estimator” (TCO). The TCO is a free online tool that calculates the “true” total cost of outsourced products, including such factors as overhead, balance sheets, corporate strategy—and risk.
Risks such as the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s war on Ukraine pale in comparison to the risk of China “decoupling,” which these days hangs over companies like the sword of Damocles, according to Moser.
“I tell companies, ‘Figure out what you can bring back now, and get it back here now—or if you have to, get it to Mexico,” he said. “Because if the [expletive] hits the fan and nothing is coming from China to anyone, you’re going to be one of 30,000 companies trying to find a foundry or a machine shop, and you’re not going to get it.”
Hitendra Chaturvedi, a professor of supply chain management at Arizona State University, agrees that Mexico is a good alternative location for U.S. companies exiting China. “Nearshoring” from China to Mexico—as well as to Latin America and Canada—would make supply more accessible, he said. And manufacturing in Mexico is about 20 percent cheaper than in China.
Besides considering the advantages of nearshoring, Chaturvedi suggested a more targeted approach to reshoring itself.
“We should not take a shotgun approach to this,” he said. “You don’t want low-paying sewing jobs coming back to the U.S. You want high-paying jobs. I want us to focus strategically on sectors that we want to onshore.”
‘Just Getting Started’
For its part, Sherman attracted the two new chip facilities with incentives such as tax abatements, in Texas Instruments’ case, and a package of cash, cheap land, and other breaks for GlobalWafers. The Taiwan-based company also received a $15 million grant from the Texas Enterprise Fund, the state’s “deal-closing” fund, and is eligible for more incentives under the CHIPS Act. The CHIPS subsidies should also benefit Texas Instruments’s Sherman projects (as well as South Korea-based Samsung’s plans to build multiple semiconductor plants in the Austin area).
Plyler said his city also touted its ample workforce, abundant water supply, “business-friendly” approach, and diversified economy. Among the city’s top employers are Tyson Foods, beverage company Sunny Delight, and II-VI, a high-tech optical firm and Apple supplier.
“We’ve taken a lot of hassles out of City Hall for developers and people who want to come in and start a business,” he said. “We walk them through the process of getting permitted, sometimes in a fast-track manner. Making that process easy goes a long way in getting some of these projects off the ground.”
As a result of Sherman’s success, smaller towns around the city are preparing to accommodate the Texas Instruments and GlobalWafers workers with new housing, and industrial facilities for high-tech suppliers and vendors “are really hopping” in the region, the Dallas Business Journal reported.
“We’re expecting a lot of businesses to fill in,” Plyler said. “We’re expecting a lot of new restaurants, a lot of quality-of-life improvements. I think we’re just getting started.”
WASHINGTON—Lawmakers and experts highlighted the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) history of violence and bloodshed, while recognizing a new milestone reached by a global movement calling for people to relinquish their ties to the world’s largest communist regime.
The number of Chinese who have severed their ties to Chinese communist organizations reached over 400 million on Aug. 3, according to the Global Center for Quitting the CCP, an organization dedicated to processing and tracking online declarations denouncing CCP memberships. The global movement is known as “tuidang,” which means “quit the Party” in English.
“The Chinese Communist Party has the blood of tens of millions of Chinese on its hands, so it is no wonder that over 400 million Chinese civilians have left the CCP over the past two decades,” said Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) in an emailed statement.
“Mao’s Great Famine, Tiananmen Square, the persecution of the Falun Gong, and the genocide of Uyghur Muslims are all proof that the CCP only cares about its grip on power,” continued Burchett, who sits on the Asia subcommittee of the House Committee of Foreign Affairs.
“Chinese people would be better served by an open and truly representative government, so I hope the tuidang movement picks up steam.”
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) (L) shakes hands with Defence Under Secretary for Intelligence and Security Ronald Moultrie, after a hearing on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena on Capitol Hill in Washington on May 17, 2022. (Jose Luis Magana/AFP via Getty Images)
A ‘Self-Healing’ Movement
In the past decades, more and more Chinese have been questioning the CCP’s representation of the people, according to Ryan, one of the authors of “Nine Commentaries of Communist Party,” a 2004 book first published by the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times that inspired the global movement. Ryan is an alias used to protect his identity and family in China.
Ryan described the tuidang as a “self-healing” and “self-redemption” movement. According to him, Nine Commentaries helped the Chinese people unwind decades of CCP propaganda that instilled the idea that the Party equates to China, and the Chinese civilization. People were finally able to separate the CCP from the people, and the nation.
Before the book systematically illustrated the Party’s history of deceit and use of mass struggle to solidify its power over society, the CCP had controlled the Chinese people and dictated their mentality without the people’s knowledge, said Ryan. While he himself grew up in this environment, Ryan credited his belief in Falun Gong for helping him to transcend the communist regime’s indoctrination.
Falun Gong is a spiritual practice involving meditative exercises and a set of moral teachings underpinned by the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.
Putting these principles into practice helped Ryan to extricate himself from the CCP’s hold on people’s psyche. This is because the Party has been able to manipulate and control the populace by appealing to the ignoble parts of human nature: greed, fear, and jealousy, he said. Such a tactic is most clearly shown in the CCP’s continual efforts in its 100-year history to pitch one group of society against another for no other reason than to consolidate its own grip on power, and eliminate threats to its control.
Falun Gong, itself, became singled as a target of the CCP’s wrath in 1999, after the Party deemed the spiritual disciplines’ huge popularity—with up to 100 million people practicing—a threat to its hold on power. The CCP has sought to wipe out the spiritual discipline with an all-society-wide campaign of arrest, torture, and vilification for the past 23 years and counting.
“Whether Chinese people have read the ‘Nine Commentaries’ or not, they have begun to discuss social issues with the verbiage and logic presented in the book,” Ryan said about the book’s impact. “Their mentality change is as important as the action of quitting the Party.”
Chinese people have quit the Party or its affiliate organizations by submitting online statements to the Global Center for Quitting the CCP. Most use an alias to do so.
“Chinese as a group are rediscovering their identity, one that is separate from the CCP,” Ryan added.
Andrew Bremberg, president of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, in Washington on Feb. 3, 2022. (Bao Qiu/The Epoch Times)
‘An Exemplar’
Ambassador Andrew Bremberg, president of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, a Washington-based advocacy group, highlighted the tuidang movement as a model for peaceful resistance against communist oppression.
“Congratulations to the Tuidang movement for reaching a new milestone. Tuidang is an exemplar of a peaceful, civil society movement where activists reach the conscience of their fellow citizens and persuade them to renounce communist ideology and control,” he said in an emailed statement.
“The efforts of the movement to end communist domination are admirable, and the free world must stand with the people of China in such brave acts of resistance against the tyranny of the Chinese Communist Party,” Bremberg continued.
Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio) on the House Energy and Commerce Committee welcomed the latest progress of the tuidang movement in an emailed statement: “This week’s milestone is a clear signal to the CCP that their oppressive ways will not stand forever, and personal freedom will eventually carry the day, even in their own country. This is progress for those who stand against communism and the harm its policies have across the globe.”
Ryan said he has also seen the knock-on effects of the movement in the United States. It’s now the norm for U.S. officials to clarify that they don’t target the Chinese people or China the nation when they criticize the CCP.
Communist Insider Decouples from the CCP
Cai Xia, a former professor at the CCP’s elite Central Party School in Beijing, was a Party insider.
Now based in Washington, Cai, in a January interview with The Epoch Times’ sister media outlet NTD, described her journey of how she walked away from the CCP.
The first time Cai thought of quitting the Party was in 2016. She had retired from teaching then and was living in Beijing. The impetus for her change in thinking was statements made by Ren Zhiqiang, an outspoken real estate tycoon in China, who questioned whether the government was the same as the Party and criticized the CCP for “taking the taxpayers’ money but not working for them.” That was his response to the CCP general secretary Xi Jinping’s statement that “the media’s last name is ‘dang’”—a term referring to the CCP.
Chinese real estate mogul Ren Zhiqiang poses for photos in his office in Beijing on Dec. 3, 2012. (Color China Photo via AP)
Known as “Ren the canon” for being vocal in criticizing the Party, the real estate mogul is a “red princeling”, a term for descendants of former CCP senior officials. Thus many thought Ren would get into trouble but wouldn’t have to pay a hefty price. However, Ren was sentenced to 18 years in September 2020 for alleged graft after criticizing the CCP for its mishandling of the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, which led to the global pandemic.
Cai told NTD that the Party school reprimanded her in 2016 for publishing an article supporting Ren. “I didn’t have a voice because the Party discipline bound me, and I was considered a CCP member first and foremost,” said Cai. “I would rather have abandoned my CCP member identity to keep my right to speak up.”
Cai had written a formal application to quit the CCP then. But her friends persuaded her not to submit it because of the expected financial retaliation, including losing her pension. When Ren was sentenced to 18 years in 2020, Cai again wanted to quit the Party. At that time, she was in the United States. Once again, her friends in the United States persuaded her not to leave the Party so that she could keep her pension income.
But the decision was ultimately made for her. The Party expelled her on Aug. 17, 2020.
Cai said she felt “completely relieved” upon receiving the news.
“I completely decoupled with the Party. From then on, I would have no relationship, economic or interest involvement, with the Party anymore,” she said.
Cai’s transition from a CCP insider to a member of ordinary Chinese citizens brought her sense of happiness mixed with relief. She acknowledged that she had to deal with some financial difficulties due to the loss of her pension, but it was something that she could overcome.
“Once you have joined the Party, you don’t have the freedom to quit it. They strictly forbid members from quitting the Party,” Cai told NTD, adding that this was equivalent to making people accomplices to the CCP’s criminal activities.
She urged people to have the courage to break this bind. Such an act doesn’t only amount to the liberation of a person’s mind and spirit, Cai said.
It will also “offer a person an added layer of protection when China goes through a transition in the future,” she said.
“The Party is evil; it doesn’t mean the 90 million members are all like that.”
Hundred of people march in a parade in downtown Toronto on Aug. 6, 2022, to celebrate 400 million Chinese people quitting the Chinese Communist Party and its affiliated organizations. (Evan Ning/The Epoch Times)
Renouncing Their Pledge
Many Chinese who quit the communist organizations state their reason as wanting to rid themselves of the CCP’s control and avoid being considered an affiliate if or when the CCP is held accountable in or outside China.
These people also include those who were once members of the CCP’s junior organizations: the Young Pioneers for elementary- and middle-school-aged children, and the Communist Youth League for those who are middle- and high-school-aged.
Although memberships in these organizations are not mandatory on paper, they are in practice. Students who haven’t joined these two groups by a certain age face increasing pressure and even discrimination in being eligible to receive education benefits.
With each progressive level from the Young Pioneers up until fully-fledged Party member, the initiates’ pledge evolves from “contributing to” to “fighting for,” and eventually, “ready to sacrifice everything for” the CCP.
Even though the membership in the Young Pioneers supposedly ends at 14 and the Youth League at 28, members don’t go through a formal process to rescind their pledge to the CCP. Therefore anyone who has ever been a member of these youth organizations is encouraged to submit a statement withdrawing their affiliation at the Global Center for Quitting the CCP platform.
This explains why the 400 million figure who have quit the CCP organizations vastly outstrips the official number of CCP members, which is 90 million.
The movement was also welcomed by Rep. Bill Posey (R-Fla.), a member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology: “We spent decades fighting the Cold War to stop the spread of communism because we knew back then that it is evil and capable of great atrocities.
“The Chinese Communist Party is not only a great threat to democracy and freedom but also our national security. We must stop its growing influence around the world and here at home.”
Twitter has permanently banned author James Lindsay for calling a transgender attorney a “child sexualization specialist” on the social media platform.
Lindsay said he made the comment after Alejandro Caraballo, a clinical instructor at Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic who previously worked as staff attorney for the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund, accused him of being racist and sexist.
Caraballo celebrated and took credit for Lindsay’s suspension, saying, “Tell James, I want him to know it was me” in a post on Twitter.
Over the last two weeks, Lindsay said, trans activists have banded together, targeted him, and claimed responsibility for a “mass reporting” campaign—which is against Twitter rules.
“They not only launched a massive reporting [campaign], but they bragged that they did it,” he told The Epoch Times on Aug. 5, the day he was banned. “Twitter has a terms of service agreement that you can’t mass report or induce mass reporting. It’s considered targeted harassment, and it’s against the terms of service to do it, but nobody ever enforces it—ever.”
The Twitter headquarters in San Francisco on April 26, 2022. (Amy Osborne/AFP via Getty Images)
He was previously twice locked out of his @conceptualjames Twitter account, once on July 21 for responding “ok groomer” to Ari Drennen, an LGBTQ program director at Media Matters, and again on July 26 for using the word “groomer” in old Twitter posts that trans activists publicized.
Drennen, who took credit for getting Lindsay locked out of his account on July 21, wrote an article published online July 22 suggesting Twitter suspend users “slandering LGBTQ people as ‘groomers’” and calling Lindsay a “right-wing CRT alarmist.”
To get back into his Twitter account in that case, Lindsay said he was “forced to confess” the “ok groomer” comment violated Twitter rules because “it’s the only way to get your account back unless you want to get locked into appeal limbo.”
Lindsay has since appealed the permanent ban. When prompted to “describe the problem” to Twitter, he wrote: “The problem is that you arbitrarily changed the rules and suspended my account after repeatedly forcing me to lie to admissions of guilt for ‘violations’ that aren’t real. You should un-suspend my account and correct your biased and arbitrary policy enforcement.”
Ironically, Lindsay said that he felt like he was “let out of prison” after the ban.
“I don’t know why I want to go back. It’s so strange how immediate it is that I just feel relief that I’m not on there anymore,” Lindsay said. “The only reason I want it back as a matter of practicality, because it drives something like 80-something percent of my traffic to my website.”
He accused Twitter of using tactics similar to those of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to coerce people into confessing to fake crimes.
A small group of Beijing residents walk in February 1967 in downtown Beijing, past a huge poster showing Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong, during the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.” (Jean Vincent/AFP via Getty Images)
“That is a tactic of Maoism—a communist tactic to force people to confess to crimes to be able to get leniency. That’s literally how Mao ran his prisons in CCP-controlled China in the ’50s,” he said.
The term “groomer” has several meanings, and although it can refer to pedophilia, it can also mean a recruiter who “grooms” someone into a cult, club, or organization, or a person who “grooms” another for a job or position, he said.
Lindsay contends he used the term “groomer” to describe someone involved in what he views the “cult indoctrination” of others into the trans activism or and gender ideology movement and was not accusing anyone of pedophilia.
“I would not accuse anybody of that without substantive evidence. It’s a horrific accusation,” he said.
He has admitted publicly that he openly criticizes those involved “defending and engaging in cult grooming into a gender ideology rooted in queer Marxist theory.”
People protest a school board’s pro-transgender policy outside of a middle school in Falls Church, Va., on June 16, 2022. (Terri Wu/The Epoch Times)
“It’s weird because the cult indoctrination is sex, gender, and sexuality, and so they’re indoctrinating people with concepts of sexuality which sexualizes children, but that’s not the same thing specifically as pedophilia, which is also the sexualization of children. There is this weird double meaning, or two meanings to the word,” he said.
Lindsay has produced a series of podcasts called “Groomer Schools” for his website, New Discourses, which has been very popular, he said.
“So, I’ve been calling these people ‘groomers’ for months. I started doing it back in October,” he said. “[It wasn’t] ambiguous in terms of what it means until 10 minutes ago.”
Twitter did not respond to an inquiry about Lindsay’s allegations that activists had launched a mass reporting campaign against him, but told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement on Aug. 5 that his account was “permanently suspended” for “hateful conduct” according to Twitter policies.
While Lindsay opposes “cancel culture” on social media, especially for expressing an opinion on an issue, he said people who abuse their positions or power to impose an ideology on school children “should be fired.”
Students walk outside Hewes Middle School in Tustin, Calif., on Aug. 12, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)
As the author of several books, including “Race Marxism” and “Social (In)Justice,” that delve deep into today’s culture wars, Lindsay is no stranger to controversy, but he has never been banned from Twitter for his opinions on critical race theory, for example.
“It’s not the broader constellation of things I’m calling out; it is specifically that they want to protect the transsexual ideological grooming of children, and it is huge and it is coordinated,” he said. “There is a vested interest in protecting this specific thing, and I don’t know why that is.”
Tiffany Justice, co-founder of national parental rights organization Moms for Liberty, was recently locked out of the group’s Twitter account for a week over a post condemning controversial proposed legislation that would make California a transgender sanctuary state, and for also challenging gender ideology.
She wrote on Twitter July 25, “Gender dysphoria is a mental health disorder that is being normalized by predators across the USA. California kids are at extreme risk from predatory adults. Now they want to ‘liberate’ children all over the country. Does a double mastectomy on a preteen sound like progress?”
After Justice deleted the post, the Moms for Liberty Twitter account was unlocked.
Media Matters has also accused Twitter account Libs of Tik Tok, Gays Against Groomers founder Jaimee Michell, and others of slandering people with the term groomer.
Last week, Twitter also locked the Gays Against Groomers account. The group had posted: “Damaged people damage people. The internet is a dangerous place for kids, especially when you have radical alphabet activists openly grooming them. Protect your children from these people at all costs.”
President Donald Trump said on Aug. 7 that if he returns to the White House in 2025 he’ll rehire the service members who lost their jobs by refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine.
“I think it’s a disgrace what happened to them,” Trump said, answering a reporter’s question.
Trump was responding to questions from the press before he took the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas on Saturday.
“I’d let them back. I’d give back pay,” Trump said. “So I would give them their back pay and I would let them back, and they understand that. They know it.”
Back pay is “a common remedy for wage violations” where “the employer makes up the difference between what the employee was paid and the amount he or she should have been paid,” according to the Department of Labor.
Trump’s comments came weeks after the U.S. army announced plans to cut more than 60,000 guards and reserve soldiers for refusing COVID-19 vaccines.
“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,” a July 1 statement on the U.S. Army’s website reads.
More than 19,000 U.S. Army personnel have refused to take the COVID-19 vaccine, as of July 14, 2022, according to U.S. Army data. The Army approved a total of 24 medical and 19 religious exemptions from the COVID-19 vaccine.
Jan. 6 Pardons
In response to another question, Trump said he’ll “very strongly” consider pardoning nonviolent political prisoners who have been indicted as a result of participating in the January 6 Capitol breach.
“We’ll certainly be looking at it, and very strongly,” Trump said, adding that he has made previous statements about potentially pardoning January 6 political prisoners.
“I think many people are being treated very unfair … having to do with that. And we will be looking at that very strongly,” Trump said. “I think you know the answer.”
The president hinted strongly at but stopped short of announcing a 2024 run.
“Well, it’s not a long period, regardless, whether you go before or after, certainly not a very long period of time,” the former president said. He raised the same point in an interview with the New Yorker earlier this year, when he said he’s undecided on whether to announce his decision on a 2024 run before or after the midterms.
“It’s coming,” Trump said, “and I think people are going to be very happy.”
“Our country has never been in a position like this. We lost everything. We’ve lost energy independence. We’ve lost our prestige. We’ve lost every single thing you can lose,” Trump said, noting the withdrawal from Afghanistan—which he previously called “the greatest tactical mistake in history“—and the border crisis.
“So we’ll be making an announcement in the not-too-distance future.”
Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano, the Republican gubernatorial nominee, is scheduled to meet on Aug. 9 with the House’s Jan. 6 committee. While it was to be a voluntary interview, the committee is now demanding a compelled deposition.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, following his win in the Pennsylvania Republican primary, gives a victory speech at his election night party at The Orchards in Chambersburg, Pa., on May 17, 2022. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
“Your committee is not legally able to conduct compelled depositions, which is why all of my clients have all offered to participate in voluntary interviews,” Mastriano’s attorney, Timothy C. Parlatore, wrote in an Aug. 5 letter to the committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol breach.
“Although Senator Mastriano is happy to cooperate with your committee, as he has nothing to hide, I do have concerns that are particular to him, given the conduct of the committee up to this point.”
Parlatore believes the Jan. 6 committee may try to influence Pennsylvania’s election.
“Given the committee’s demonstrated propensity for releasing edited clips of interviews without the requisite context to support a false partisan narrative,” Parlatore wrote, “I am concerned that there is a risk that your committee will do the same to Senator Mastriano.
“Members of your party like Sean Patrick Maloney, Democratic Campaign Chair, have openly admitted that the goal of the hearings you are conducting is intended to paint the Republican party as irresponsible and power hungry ahead of the midterms.
“For this reason, my client has legitimate concerns that your committee may attempt to influence the outcome of the Pennsylvania state elections through the dissemination of disinformation.”
A spokesperson for the Jan. 6 committee didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.
Parlatore’s letter indicates that he’s willing to allow the meeting if he can make his own recording of the interview, which could be released if the committee releases edited recordings of Mastriano that need more context.
“I was informed by your staffer that you rejected this proposal and refused to make any counterproposals because you wish to retain sole dominion over the public narrative,” the letter says.
“Obviously, your refusal to even discuss this is concerning, as there is no downside to me holding a second recording of the interview, unless the committee does, in fact, intend to engage in disinformation with Senator Mastriano’s interview and is afraid of any accountability for that disinformation.”
The lack of a truly bipartisan committee infringes on the rights of the witnesses and serves no legitimate investigative purpose, Parlatore said.
“My client has significant concerns that he is being set up for sanctions due to the Committee’s refusal to respect the bounds of privilege and lack of any opposing viewpoints to act as a counterbalance,” the letter states.
Parlatore said Mastriano would appear for a deposition if the committee gets a ranking minority member designation from the Republican steering committee.
But before Mastriano would testify in that scenario, Parlatore said he would review the Regulations for Use of Deposition Authority to determine if all provisions had been met. If not, he and Mastriano would leave the session and return only in the event that all provisions in the rules are met the by committee, a judge rules that the committee doesn’t need to comply with the rules, or they agree to a voluntary interview.
Mastriano attended the Jan. 6, 2021, rally in Washington with numerous other people. He has cooperated with the committee so far, providing documents that have been requested.
Joe Biden and congressional Democrats are trying to reinstate the federal assault weapon ban that was in effect for 10 years because—they claim—it reduced gun crime. The bill, which just passed the House, will soon get a vote in the Senate.
In the effort to get it passed, Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) made some grand claims, which they called “facts,” about the previous ban on rifles leading to decreasing crime. But those facts don’t appear to be backed up by evidence.
“Supporters of the bans are calling their assertions ‘facts,’ in an effort to mislead the public,” Lawrence Keane, senior vice president and general counsel of the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) told The Epoch Times. “Many of the Democratic Members of Congress were purposefully misleading in their assertions that the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban reduced crime. This level of willful ignorance would be comical if the effects of what they are trying to do wasn’t so blatantly unconstitutional.”
The ban was in effect from 1994 to 2004.
Pelosi
During that time, “we witnessed gun crime with assault weapons drop by up to 40 percent,” Pelosi said on the House floor during the recent debate.
“The number of murders with rifles actually increased slightly when the ban went into effect,” John R Lott Jr., the president of Crime Research, told The Epoch Times, referring to data from the FBI’s annual release of reports from law enforcement agencies on homicides by weapon type. Lott also pointed out that no one collects data on all crimes committed with so-called assault weapons.
The term “assault weapon” is a political phrase referring to semi-automatic rifles with various cosmetic features. The House bill calls an “assault weapon” a rifle that has one feature such as a pistol grip, folding stock, or grenade launcher.
While Pelosi makes it sound like there’s a grave risk of being killed by a rifle, it’s actually a rare crime. Lott has reported that the percentage of firearm murders with any type of rifles was 4.8 percent prior to the ban starting in September 1994. During the 10-year ban, homicide by rifle was 4.9 percent of all murders. Then rifle homicides dropped to 3.6 percent after the ban expired in 2004.
The speaker did not cite the source of her statistics. She could be referring to how all violent crime went down since the spike in the 1980s, which would include the small number of murders by rifles.
You can see this in this graphic of the FBI data. The decrease was dramatic.
There were 15,463 homicides by gun in 1994 when the ban went into effect and 724 were by rifles. When the ban expired in 2004, there were 9,385 homicides and 403 of them were by rifle.
“The falling crime rates are more likely due to many other factors than firearm ownership, including a concerted effort and focus on prosecuting criminals,” explained Keane.
Pelosi’s press office did not respond to a request for information on the source of her data.
Studies
Furthermore, there is no study that has proven that the gun control law had a direct effect on crime reduction. Quite the opposite, Rand’s “Study of Gun Policy” in 2018 (pdf) looked at various studies on the impact of the law on violent crime and concluded that “available evidence is inconclusive for the effect of assault weapon bans on total homicides and firearm homicides.”
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) also published a report in 2003 on evaluating the effectiveness of firearms laws and studied the assault weapon ban. It said that studies were “inconsistent” and thus concluded that, “evidence was insufficient to determine the effectiveness” of the law.
Ownership of these so-called assault weapons increased during the ban. Keane, the powerful gun lobbyist, pointed out that during the ban, what his organization calls Modern Sporting Rifles continued to be legally manufactured and sold if they did not have two of the cosmetic features necessary for the rifle to be banned.
Biden has been pushing incessantly for it to be reinstated since he took office on the basis that it decreased mass shootings. He said in July: “Assault weapons need to be banned. They were banned. I led the fight in 1994. And then, under pressure from the NRA and the gun manufacturers and others, that ban was lifted in 2004.”
NRA stands for National Rifle Association.
Biden also said on June 2, “In the 10 years it was law, mass shootings went down. But after Republicans let the law expire in 2004 and those weapons were allowed to be sold again, mass shootings tripled. Those are the facts.”
But an Epoch Times investigation into mass shootings showed that they are extremely rare and went up and down during the time period in question. As you can see in this graphic, there was no pattern of mass shootings in that 10-year period.
The White House press office did not respond to a request for the source of the president’s data.
Pelosi echoed Biden with her own statistic, saying in a speech that “since the ban expired, the number of mass shooting deaths has grown by nearly 500 percent.”
That’s not true.
“Mass public shootings with assault weapons in the ten years after the ban sunset increased to six compared to the four that occurred in the ten years during the ban,” Lott reported in his analysis. He also reports that total mass public shootings increased between those two ten-year periods, almost doubling, but the increase occurred with non-assault weapons.
“If Pelosi’s claim is correct, we should see a drop in the percent of attacks with assault weapons during the federal ban period and then an increase in the post-ban period, but the exact opposite is true,” said Lott, the author of the new book Gun Control Myths.
Furthermore, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service studied the impact of the 1994 assault weapon ban and concluded: “Significantly while tragic and shocking, public mass shootings account for few of the murders or non-negligent homicides related to firearms that occur annually in the United States.”
Motivation?
Why are top Democrats focusing public attention on legislation from so long ago that had no impact on violence?
“They are living in a 1994 mindset because we have an anti-gun political class that is still using the same old talking points when it comes to assault weapons,” said an insider at a group that aims to protect Second Amendment rights. “They are highlighting the most emotionally compelling crimes [mass shootings] that are extremely rare—less than 1 percent of all gun deaths—to confuse and scare the public, but it’s not working anymore.”
Keane echoed this, saying, “These are the same politicians that manufacture terms to scare the American public with the term ‘assault weapon’ to purposefully mislead the American public and confuse Modern Sporting Rifles with the military’s automatic rifles.”
While these kinds of scare tactics on “assault weapons” worked back in the days of the first ban, modern-style rifles have become much more popular and are in common use. The NSSF, reported this month that there are now 24.4 million Modern Sporting Rifles in circulation in America. The trade association for gun manufacturers noted that means there are more of the AR-15 and AK-style rifles “in circulation today than there are Ford F-Series trucks on the road.”
This is a large part of the reason that the polls now work against the old talking points that Pelosi and Biden are using. Quinnipiac reported in June (pdf) that support for a nationwide ban on the sale of assault weapons—50 percent—was the lowest level of support among registered voters since the poll question was first asked in February 2013.
Now that so many Americans own or know friends and family who own AR-style rifles, they don’t seem as scary. So when this bill gets voted on in the Senate, the public should be aware that banning these commonly owned rifles will not do anything about the serious crime problem in America.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) used COVID-19 for biological warfare, according to a new report by nine experts with the Center for Security Policy (CSP).
Generals, medical experts, and foreign policy experts including former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra and former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense Lieutenant General William “Jerry” Boykin contributed to the report, which is available in book form on Amazon.
The report, titled “The CCP is at War with America,” stated that there is no evidence COVID-19 was a natural virus, arguing that there is significant evidence it came from a CCP lab. It also stated that the CCP deliberately allowed the virus to spread worldwide by allowing international flights while locking down movement within China.
The CSP describes the report as an “exercise in competitive analysis that strongly challenges the Director of National Intelligence’s September 2021 conclusion.”
The Plague War
U.S. intelligence experts in 2021 concluded that they might never know for certain where COVID-19 came from. But the CSP put the blame squarely on the Chinese communist regime.
“The preponderance of evidence indicates that SARS-CoV-2 was lab-manufactured,” the report stated. “In any event, Beijing acted with murderous intent in spreading the disease beyond China’s borders.”
As proof of these claims, the report pointed to genetic features of COVID-19 not found in natural viruses. It noted that China’s military has a biological warfare program.
Finally, it highlighted that the Chinese regime restricted internal travel to stop the spread of COVID-19 but kept its international borders open. At the same time, it bought up global supplies of personal protective gear.
Even if the original release of the virus was an accident, its worldwide spread was intentional, the report stated. The likely motive was to ensure that the rest of the world would be set back economically by the virus to the same degree China would be.
The cover of The CCP is at War with America report on Amazon. Screenshot taken Aug. 5, 2022. (Jackson Elliott/The Epoch Times)
“Xi’s regime clearly saw the imperative need to ensure that it would not suffer economic privation alone, to the advantage of its enemies, especially the United States,” the report read. “Actively spreading the virus was, thus, a means of waging economic warfare, and the Chinese Communists applied themselves to doing so with a vengeance.”
According to the report, the CCP worked to spread its COVID-19 quarantine policies around the world so it could weather the pandemic at an advantage. The damage COVID-19 measures did to America’s economy put the CCP ahead.
“A principal beneficiary of such economic trauma would be the Chinese Communist Party,” the report read.
Weapons of Choice
The report also stated that the Chinese regime has a history of biological warfare. In the early 1990s, Chinese general Chi Haotian told China’s biological weapons program that it should depopulate America so China could take it over, according to the report. But China kept these plans secret.
“Right now, it is not the time to openly break with [America],” the general said. “Our reform and opening to the outside world still rely on their capital and technology.”
Biological weapons could be China’s road to world domination, the report stated. Chinese military journals have openly published articles about genetically-targeted biological warfare. China has collected genetic profiles of foreigners while keeping a close guard on the genetic profiles of Chinese people, it added.
“If Chinese scientists succeed in designing pathogens targeting only foreigners, the next germ, virus, or microbe from China could end non-Chinese societies,” the report stated.
“Xi will be the first supremo to possess a weapon making worldwide Chinese rule possible,” it read.
The report suggested that COVID-19 fatalities outside China should be considered “murder victims.”
The paper offered several conclusions. These include that the CCP and any who colluded with it must be held accountable for the pandemic’s results; the government shouldn’t impose vaccine mandates on the vulnerable; the United States should develop deterrents against Chinese bioweapons; and future medical health measures shouldn’t follow Chinese totalitarian lockdown advice.
“We must never again allow our constitutional freedoms to be denied on the pretext of a public health emergency, especially at the insistence of foreign powers, let alone our mortal enemy,” the report stated.
An election official from an Arizona county has resigned after allegations of voter irregularities and a ballot shortage on primary elections day.
The Pinal County government confirmed that “David Frisk is no longer in the position of Elections Director and is no longer employed by Pinal County” in a statement on Thursday–two days after Arizona’s primary election day—after a shortage of ballots on primary election day and thousands of early ballots were sent to the wrong voters leading up to the primaries.
Frisk was in charge of ordering the right number of ballots for primary election day, Jeffrey McClure, Chairman of the Pinal County Board of Supervisors, told reporters in a press conference on Wednesday.
“I’m not sure how the ballot shortage happened,” McClure said. “We opened the boxes, and there weren’t enough ballots.”
“As a Board, we are deeply embarrassed and frustrated by the mistakes that have been made in this primary election,” McClure said in a Thursday statement, “and as such, we are taking immediate steps to ensure the November election runs smoothly, as elections in Pinal County have historically done prior to this primary.”
The Arizona primaries on Tuesday included Republican races for the U.S. Senate, U.S. House, secretary of state, the state legislature, and the high-profile gubernatorial race between Kari Lake and Karrin Taylor Robson.
Ballot Shortage
The Pinal County confirmed the ballot shortage late Tuesday, citing an “unprecedented demand for in-person ballots” causing “a ballot shortage in certain, limited precincts.”
The county said it continued to print ballots and distributed them to the affected polling site during primaries day.
Pinal County Attorney Kent Volkmer during the press conference that approximately 25 precincts, each with a single voting station, out of 95 precincts were affected by the shortage. Volkmer added that about 750 out of 50,000 voters were affected.
When asked if the volume of ballots were sufficient to impact any results of the race, Volkmer said it is a “difficult question,” noting that only 10 votes were used to separate winners in some municipal races.
“There were those people that felt that they were disenfranchised,” Volkmer said. “They were saying, ‘I didn’t get to vote because I had to go somewhere else. We did everything we could. We offered them the ability to wait, as long as they were capable of waiting.”
Volkmer asserted that both Republican and Democratic races were affected, saying the mistake was “widespread” and an “equal opportunity.”
McClure told local media station FOX10 that he had “not seen evidence of a nefarious act,” referring to intentional voter fraud.
‘Comprehensive Failure’
The Republican National Committee (RNC) described the ballot shortage—along with numerous other issues—as a “comprehensive failure” that affected “Republican heavy-precincts” across the state.
The RNC told The Epoch Times in a statement on Thursday that it found at least 12 precinct voting locations ran out of Republican ballots throughout Election Day, describing it as “inexcusable in a precinct voting location system.”
“At least one voting location was not opened at 6 AM and did not open until 10 AM; there were disabled voting machines not plugged in or with the appropriate paper to use, disenfranchising disabled voters,” the RNC added.
In addition, the RNC noted that 63,000 early mail ballots “were sent to the wrong voters due to a misprint regarding municipal elections” and caused confusion. McClure said during the Wednesday press conference that this error contributed in part to the Election Day shortage of ballots.
“I appreciate that the elections director taking responsibility for these bad ballots that were printed out, but it leaves the voter with very very little confidence in the integrity of the election,” Kelli Ward, chairwoman of the Arizona Republican Party, said in an interview with Lindell TV regarding the erroneous ballots.
“People who shouldn’t have been able to vote in the election were given an opportunity to vote,” Ward said, adding that she’s hearing stories that similar irregularities have been happening in other counties in Arizona as well.
Arizona’s Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, said in a statement in July that her office had completed an “extensive investigation” following the error in the 63,000 early ballots. Hobbs said the state’s voter registration database “did not contribute to the errors on the ballots” and “continues to be secure and reliable for the 2022 Elections.”
Considering all errors leading up to and on Election Day, the RNC noted the importance of having election integrity programs with poll watchers at the ballot box.
“This is a comprehensive failure that disenfranchises Arizonans and exemplifies why Republican-led efforts for transparency at the ballot box are so important,” the RNC said.
Election Integrity Program
Poll watchers—trained in an election integrity program run jointly by the Arizona GOP and the RNC—deployed statewide were able to identify and respond quickly to ballot irregularities on primary elections day, according to the Arizona GOP.
“Because the Republican Party of Arizona and the RNC have built a robust election integrity program, in which we recruited thousands of election volunteers, we were ready to respond as Pinal County’s election debacle unfolded yesterday,” a spokesperson from the Arizona Republican Party told The Epoch Times on Thursday.
“We had hundreds of poll observers deployed statewide, allowing us to quickly identify the issues in Pinal County yesterday—like multiple Republican-heavy precincts running out of GOP ballots or a polling location not opening on time—and elevate them to our team of election attorneys,” the spokesperson continued.
Poll watchers observe the conduct of the election and report irregularities and violations of the Election Code, if any, to election officials. All political parties are allowed to hire election workers to observe all parts of election administration.
The RNC told The Epoch Times that the poll-watching program in Arizona is part of its “multi-million-dollar investment” in its election integrity program for the 2022 cycle.
Its 2022 cycle election integrity program includes hiring “17 state Election Integrity directors, 29 in-state election integrity counsels, and recruiting tens of thousands of poll workers and poll watchers in battleground states across the country,” the RNC said, adding that it spent 2021 cycle consisted of “spending more than $40 million on election protection efforts in battleground states across the country.”
“The RNC’s stance on election integrity is that we should make it easier to vote, and harder to cheat,” the RNC said. “That means ensuring our elections have: Voter ID, absentee signature matching and safeguards, bipartisan observers, updated voter rolls, and timely processing and counting of ballots.”
Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, told hundreds of conservatives in Texas on Thursday that his country defeated communism—and now America must do the same.
Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas, Orban told the crowd that America is fighting for its life against progressives and globalists, which are communists.
“Don’t be afraid to call your enemies by their name,” he said. “They hate me and slander me and my country, as they hate you and slander you and the America you stand for.”
Orban said the Democrats in the United States were not fond of him and wanted Hungary to move away from being a Christian nationalist state.
“They did not want me to be here, and they made every effort to drive a wedge between us,” he said.
Orban has been criticized as a right-wing Christian nationalist. His anti-immigration stance drew condemnation from the United States and the international community recently after he said Hungarians did not want to become “peoples of mixed race.”
Orban later clarified that the issue isn’t as much about race as it is about culture. While not mentioning the controversy directly, he noted that a Christian politician “cannot be racist.”
‘Lone Star State of Europe’
Orban’s anti-immigration policy earned him a warm welcome in Texas, which is overwhelmed with illegal immigrants under Joe Biden’s border policies.
Orban praised CPAC’s host state of Texas for its independence and freedom, calling Hungary the “Lone Star State of Europe,” much to the delight of the crowd.
The prime minister said that massive immigration is a globalist goal. George Soros, a Hungarian by birth, has an army of followers in institutions across the globe who want to create a post-Western world.
In 2015, Orban said 400,000 illegal immigrants came to Hungary’s borders, but Hungary built a wall and reduced illegal immigration to zero.
Orban’s speech outlined how America and Hungary, which he sees as fighting a common enemy on two fronts, can win against the Marxist movement trying to destroy western civilization. For better or worse, the world looks to America as a great power that will lead the world into the future, he said.
“The West is at war with itself,” he said. “The globalists can all go to hell. I have gone to Texas,” he said, prompting wild clapping and cheers.
Orban said the fight against the far-left starts with understanding that they want to drive a wedge between people and their faith and destroy families. Nazi Germany was able to succeed in a godless environment, he said.
“You must play to win. Play by your own rules,” he said. “This war is a culture war.”
Progressives change language to disguise their Marxist agenda, he said. The ideology wants to destroy the family because Marxism sees it as an oppressive patriarchal system.
Gender ideology and the sexualization of children is an idea of the left meant to harm families. In Hungary, a mother is a woman, and a father is a man. Order is necessary for any free country, meaning law enforcement is respected, he said.
In Hungary, large families are encouraged through tax breaks for having more than two children. With those policies in place, Hungary has seen marriages double and abortions cut in half over the past decade, he said.
“We need a strong America with a strong leader,” he said, adding America must lead the world to defeat the globalists.
The path to victory starts with taking back institutions and turning to faith in God. Orban said America has two years to get ready, alluding to the next presidential election.
Enemies in the media would not view his speech in a favorable light, said Orban, who met with former President Donald Trump before his appearance at CPAC.
“I can already see tomorrow’s headlines: Far-right European racist, anti-Semite strongman, the Trojan horse of Putin, holds a speech at the conservative conference,” he said.
Texas gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke, who has taken thousands from teachers’ unions, says parents shouldn’t question teachers
Texas Democratic gubernatorial nominee Beto O’Rourke said this week that “we don’t need to tell” teachers “what version of history” they are “allowed to teach,” a statement similar to a remark that in part cost Democrat Terry McAuliffe the governorship of Virginia.
O’Rourke, who is best known for losing a Senate campaign and a presidential primary, went on to dismiss parental concerns about critical race theory, which he said he had “never heard of before last year.” Instead of asking questions, he said, Texans need to treat a teacher with “the respect that she has earned, that she is owed.”
O’Rourke has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from teachers’ unions.
McAuliffe, who lost the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial election to Republican Glenn Youngkin, made a similar statement that likely cost him votes. “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach,” McAuliffe said during a televised debate. At least one poll found before the election that parents of school-aged children opposed McAuliffe by nearly 20 points, The Hillreported in October.
O’Rourke has flip-flopped on critical race theory, which teaches that the United States is systemically racist, several times during his gubernatorial bid. He opposed a Republican bill to ban the theory from classrooms, saying in February that students should learn that “so much of the wealth and opportunity in this state was actually created by people who had no choice in the deal whatsoever.” He said just one month later, however, that he does not think critical race theory “should be taught in our schools.”
Education has become a hot-button issue in the Texas gubernatorial race. Republican incumbent Greg Abbott and O’Rourke have clashed extensively over school choice, with O’Rourke saying the idea of letting parents decide what schools their children should attend is “radical.” A plurality of Texans, including an overwhelming majority of Hispanic Texans, support Abbott’s school voucher program, polls have found.
The Biden administration is poised to deny free school lunch funding from a Florida Christian school that refuses to comply with the administration’s LGBT mandates, despite the school’s qualification for a religious exemption.
Grant Park Christian Academy in Tampa, Fla., represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, is suing Joe Biden and Florida agriculture commissioner Nikki Fried for enforcing the Biden administration requirement that schools comply with its LGBT mandates or lose federal school lunch funding.
In May, the Biden administration redefined the meaning of “sex” in Title IX to include sexual orientation and gender identity, forcing schools to permit transgender students to use male or female bathrooms and play sports with either sex in order to receive National School Lunch Program funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. More than half of state attorneys general rejected the memorandum, with Florida attorney general Ashley Moody saying the Biden administration was “using hungry children to advance a political agenda,” the Washington Free Beaconreported.
The Florida school refused to substitute gender identity for biological sex, costing them their ability to feed two meals and snacks daily to their 56 students when the fall semester starts. If Grant Park’s application is not approved by Aug. 10, the school will not be reimbursed for the meals it serves students. ADF legal counsel Erica Steinmiller-Perdomo said Fried should not block Grant Park’s school lunch funding, as Title IX provides a religious exemption.
“For five years, this Christian school has received funding to provide nutritious meals to dozens of low-income children in the community,” Steinmiller-Perdomo said. “Commissioner Fried and the Biden administration are trying to rewrite the law and ignore the exemption in an attempt to force this school to choose between violating its religious beliefs or providing lunches to children.”
Florida’s governor on Aug. 4 suspended a state prosecutor who has vowed not to enforce laws related to abortion.
Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended State Attorney Andrew Warren of the 13th Judicial Circuit due to “neglect of duty.”
In the order (pdf) outlining the move, DeSantis cites Warren recently declaring he wouldn’t enforce laws that largely prohibit late-term abortions.
Warren and other prosecutors signed a document in June that said “enforcing abortion bans runs counter to the obligations and interests we are sworn to uphold.”
“We decline to use our offices’ resources to criminalize reproductive health decisions and commit to exercise our well-settled discretion and refrain from prosecuting those who … provide, or support abortions,” the prosecutors stated.
No other state attorneys in Florida signed the document.
One Florida law bars doctors from performing abortions during the third trimester, or after a fetus achieves viability. Another law bans abortions, with exceptions, after a fetus reaches 15 weeks of age.
Warren “has put himself publicly above the law,” DeSantis, a Republican, told reporters during a press conference.
Warren’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.
Policies and Other Statements
The governor’s order also cites how Warren’s office has avoided prosecuting people who commit misdemeanors such as resisting arrest without violence, stating that the policies aren’t “a proper exercise of prosecutorial discretion” and also usurp the authority of the Florida Legislature by not enforcing the law.
The order also notes that Warren in 2021 signed a separate statement with other prosecutors regarding biological males using female bathrooms and vice versa.
The prosecutors pledged to “not promote the criminalization of gender-affirming healthcare or transgender people.” Gender-affirming is a term used to describe sex change operations and other procedures meant to facilitate a person’s change from male to female or female to male.
The joint statement said that bills that criminalize such treatments “do not promote public safety, community trust, or fiscal responsibility,” and suggested that they wouldn’t be enforced.
DeSantis appointed Susan Lopez to replace Warren while the suspension is in place. Lopez was appointed by DeSantis in 2021 to be a judge on the Hillsborough County Court, and she previously served as an assistant prosecutor in the 13th Judicial Circuit.
“I have the utmost respect for our state laws and I understand the important role that the state attorney plays in ensuring the safety of our community and the enforcement of our laws,” Lopez said in a statement. “I want to thank the Governor for placing his trust in me, and I promise that I will faithfully execute the duties of this office.”
DeSantis’s office has expressed ‘serious concerns’
With less than a week to go before the official kickoff of Florida’s 2022 primary election cycle, documents obtained exclusively by The Epoch Times expose how one supervisor of elections has repeatedly overstepped his authority to implement COVID-19 mandates and voting procedures that appear to challenge numerous Florida laws.
Early voting in Florida runs between Aug. 13 to 20, and “Each county Supervisor of Elections may offer more days of early voting from one or more of the following days: August 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 21.” Florida’s Primary Election day is Aug. 23.
In a letter dated Nov. 4, 2021, Paul Stamoulis, Supervisor of Elections for Florida’s Charlotte County informed “all applicants interested in serving as a Poll Worker” that they were “required to complete an enclosed Certification form,” verifying that they had “been inoculated for the COVID-19 virus.”
Applicants were told they had to identify the type of vaccine they received and the dates the vaccine was administered. By signing the form, applicants were also acknowledging that they understood they would be required to wear a mask or a face shield, covering their nose and mouth, “at all times.” Applicants who could not “comply with this new policy” for “whatever reason,” were told they were “ineligible to work the 2022 Elections.”
Paul Stamoulis, Supervisor of Elections for Charlotte County, Florida. (Charlotte County Supervisor of elections website)
On April 2, 2021, seven months before Stamoulis mailed his letters, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed Executive Order 21-81 (pdf), banning vaccine mandates and “so-called COVID-19 vaccine passports,” saying it “would create two classes of citizens based on vaccination.”
On May 3, 2021, six months before Stamoulis mailed his letters, DeSantis issued Executive Order 21-101 (pdf), which suspended all local COVID-19 restrictions and mandates on individuals and businesses, and further stated that “no county or municipality may renew or enact an emergency order or ordinance, using a local state of emergency … that imposes restrictions or mandates upon businesses or individuals due to the COVID-19 emergency.”
The order was effective immediately. The same day, DeSantis signed Executive Order 21-102 (pdf) suspending all remaining states of emergency effective July 1, 2021, four months before Stamoulis mailed his letters.
Due to immediate backlash, Stamoulis rescinded this vaccine mandate policy.
Pandemic Procedures
But after his failure to force a vaccine mandate on local poll workers, Stamoulis has released a new set of polling room procedures that would prohibit voters from entering any one of their three early voting locations.
According to Page 8 of Stamoulis’s “Polling Location Pandemic Procedures 2022” manual, Stamoulis wants poll deputies to take the temperature of every voter—including accompanying children or any assistors they bring to help mark and cast their ballots—who wants to cast a ballot during Charlotte County’s 15-day early voting period.
Deputies duties from “Polling Location Pandemic Procedures 2022” issued by the Supervisor of Elections for Charlotte County, Fla., Paul Stamoulis as seen in July 2022. (Screenshot)
Under the heading, “CHANGES DURING COVID,” the new manual says “each location would be provided with a thermometer,” and “Deputies stationed at the entry to the polling location” will be responsible for that thermometer throughout the day.” Deputies will also “instruct that “EVERYONE WISHING TO ENTER A POLLING LOCATION IS TO HAVE HIS OR HER TEMP CHECKED (kids, assistors, poll watchers, etc.).”
If anyone registers a temperature of 100 degrees or more, “claims to be uncomfortable entering the location” or “claims to feel ill and does not want to enter the polling location” or “refuses to have their temp taken,” a costly, resource and time-consuming procedure ensues.
‘Alternate Voting’ Procedures
When any of the aforementioned situations take place, the “Alternate Voting” procedures are to be implemented.
The deputy must stop attending to their other outside duties—which include ensuring that only voters and qualified individuals are admitted into the polling room, maintaining the peace outside, and ensuring enforcement of the 150 feet “No Solicitation Zone”—in order to find the clerk, at which time the clerk must also stop performing their many inside duties, such as assisting voters casting a provisional ballot, providing assistance to the EViD Operator/Inspector who operates the electronic poll book when they are unable to locate a voter in the registry, ensuring the maintenance of adequate supplies, filling in for poll workers who are on breaks, and managing the overall voting process within the polling location.
Screenshot of mandatory procedures to be followed for deputy and clerk responsibilities if a voter registers a temperature of 100 degrees or more that are being imposed by the Supervisor of Elections for Charlotte County, Fla., for the 2022 Primary Election Cycle. (Screenshot)
Under the heading, “DEPUTY AND CLERK RESPONSIBILITIES,” it describes how the clerk must next go outside and approach the voter, “wearing a mask and single use gloves.” Then, the Clerk is to “explain the new Alternate Voting process” and “request the voter’s photo/signature identification and inform the voter they will be right back.” The clerk must then go back inside and interrupt the check-in procedure of a voter—who already went through the temperature screening process—in order to have the EViD Operator/Inspector force the machine to issue a voting pass, as the voter has not yet provided a signature for verification purposes.
One Voter, Three Poll Workers
Now the clerk goes back outside, with the voter’s ID, Voting Pass, Signature Slip, ballot, and secrecy sleeve. After having the voter sign the Signature Slip, the clerk then compares the signature with the signature on the voter’s ID. If all is well, the voter is directed to a voting booth that has been set up outside, in the Florida summer heat, to mark their ballot.
The deputy must now juggle their normal duties with monitoring the voter to make sure they don’t leave with the ballot and/or that they aren’t approached by a third person. Once the voter has completed their ballot, they are told they must take their ballot to the deputy, who is not permitted to touch the ballot, so the deputy can go inside to get the clerk, who must again stop what they were doing inside in order to go back outside to get the voter’s ballot.
A clerks additional responsibilities listed in the “Alternate Voting” procedures created by Paul Stamoulis in the “Polling Location Pandemic Procedures 2022” for Charlotte County, Fla. (Screenshot)
Now the clerk must explain to the voter that they are going to take their ballot away from them and go inside the polling room where they will cast the voter’s ballot into the tabulator. In the meantime, a third poll worker, the assistant clerk, must also stop their inside duties, which consisted of covering for the clerk in their absence, in order to document the procedure for the voter with a “recording device,” leaving no one left to assist voters and other poll workers with ballot casting and check in issues. “The Assistant Clerk records the ballot going from the voter to insertion into the DS200,” the manual describes. Then the clerk “returns to show the voter the video that their ballot was tabulated.”
“Once the voter sees the video it is deleted (in front of the voter).”
Florida Election Laws
According to Fla. Stat. § 102.031, “No photography is permitted in the polling room or early voting area.” Florida’s Voter’s Bill of Rights states that an elector has the right to “Vote free from coercion or intimidation by elections officers or any other person.”
According to Fla. Stat. § 104.20, “Any elector who, except as provided by law, allows his or her ballot to be seen by any person; takes or removes, or attempts to take or remove, any ballot from the polling place before the close of the polls; places any mark on his or her ballot by which it may be identified; endeavors to induce any elector to show how he or she voted; aids or attempts to aid any elector unlawfully; or prints or procures to be printed, or has in his or her possession, any copies of any ballot prepared to be voted is guilty of a misdemeanor of the first degree.”
Forcing a voter to have possession of their ballot outside of the polling location, where anyone could walk up and see it, subjects the voter to committing a third-degree felony.
Stamoulis Responds
When asked by The Epoch Times about his policies and procedures that appear to violate at least three executive orders and several statutes in Florida’s election laws, Stamoulis said in an email: “Regarding the sanitizing and social distancing issues, please see Governor Ron DeSantis’ Executive Order cited, in part, below.” He then pasted the following:
STATE OF FLORIDA OFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR EXECUTIVE ORDER NUMBER 20-149 Section 3. Election Administration Coordination A. Each Supervisor of Elections shall ensure proper social distancing and cleaning procedures are implemented for Early Voting and Election Day, insofar as is practicable. This may include, but is not limited to, spacing out voting stations, the use of physical barriers for poll workers interacting with voters, providing personal protective equipment to poll workers and making hand sanitizer and other cleaning products readily available.
DeSantis signed Executive Order 20-149 (pdf) on June 17, 2020. The three aforementioned Executive Orders superseded that one.
“Masks are optional but not required of voters or poll workers in Florida,” Stamoulis said further.
However, his manual clearly states on Page 6, under the heading, “WHAT WE EXPECT OUR VOTERS TO DO FOR OUR COMMUNITY,” that voters are expected to “Arrive with sanitized hands and a face mask.” Under the heading “WHAT WE WILL DO FOR YOU,” it says poll workers will “Provide masks for those without.”
“We are awaiting a ruling on the temperature issue,” Stamoulis added.
However, on the last page of his manual, Stamoulis insists “THE SUPERVISOR OF ELECTIONS IS THE FINAL AUTHORITY WHEN IT COMES TO DECISIONS SURROUNDING COVID IN OUR OFFICES AND POLLING LOCATIONS.”
“In response to me being the final authority on COVID issues, please be advised that I follow the law in all matters, including Executive Orders, no exceptions,” Stamoulis insisted.
Rebuttal from DeSantis Office
The office of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis disagrees.
“Florida law is the final authority when it comes to elections in the state,” DeSantis’s Executive Press Secretary Christina Pushaw told The Epoch Times. “Supervisors of Elections must follow state law. If a supervisor is found to be in violation of the law, the governor has the authority to suspend that person from office.”
Under state law, Pushaw asserted that Floridians cannot be required to wear a mask by any government official or entity, which means that a mask mandate for voting would not be permissible.
“Beyond the mask issue, this document as a whole is concerning because it could scare citizens into thinking they must comply or simply not show up,” Pushaw explained. “In other words, this could be seen as voter suppression. It needs to be rectified to be clear to voters about their rights. We do not accept ‘COVID protocols’ that could suppress legal votes or prevent anyone from voting in person.”
Florida Department of State Weighs In
The Epoch Times also reached out to the Florida Department of State for comment.
“We were made aware of the document and reached out to Charlotte County Supervisor of Elections (SOE) Stamoulis to discuss,” FLDOS Director of External Affairs, Mark R. Ard, told The Epoch Times. “After our conversation, Supervisor Stamoulis understands the concerns presented within the document in question and is revising his policy so that all voters in Charlotte County will [have] equal access to ballots and there are no restrictions on voting. We appreciate Supervisor Stamoulis for being very collaborative throughout the process as we continue to work together to ensure safe, transparent elections in Florida.”
The Epoch Times has asked for an update on how the policy has been revised, but has not heard back from either Stamoulis or Ard as of press time.
Questionable Equipment Security
During the course of the investigation, The Epoch Times also received another manual, which raises serious questions regarding election equipment security at “polling locations that do not have a secured/locked room to store equipment.” According to the “2022 Election Cycle” training manual for “Clerks and Assistant Clerks,” the Charlotte County SOE’s security procedure for storing EViDs and ballot tabulators at unsecured locations consists of laying a large tarp “flat on the floor,” placing the equipment on the tarp, pulling the tarp over the equipment and fitting the U-bar of a combination lock through grommeted holes.
Equipment security procedures from the 2022 Election Cycle training manual for clerks and assistant clerks for the Supervisor of Elections in Charlotte County, Fla. (Screenshot)
While the manual indicates “there should be no holes to allow access” to the equipment inside the tarp, there is nothing to prevent anyone with a pair of scissors from cutting through the tarp to access the equipment. Should any of the seals be found broken, the equipment would have to be replaced. This is not a simple matter as there is a complicated procedure involved in staging an EViD for an election.
A meticulous and time-consuming Logic and Accuracy Testing procedure must also be performed with ballot tabulators, including the DS200 (pdf), used by Charlotte County, and the ritual must be witnessed and verified by a canvassing board. Considering the high cost of election equipment, odds are that there are limited spare ready-to-go ballot tabulators and EViDs sitting around in some other secure location ready for use when security measures at a polling location have failed.
‘Serious Concerns’
Pushaw said that given the Pandemic Procedures manual is already in the hands of poll workers, some of them are still going to believe that they must enforce the outlined rules.
“Our position is that these policies need to be revised to make clear that voters cannot be required to participate in COVID protocols in order to exercise their right to vote,” Pushaw asserted. “More broadly, no official anywhere in the state is permitted to enact policies that violate Florida law. To summarize, we have serious concerns about this document and this Supervisor’s approach to elections administration.”
Correction: The headline of this article has been updated to more accurately describe the election concerns.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis this week called for lawsuits against doctors who perform transgender operations.
“They don’t tell you what that is—they are actually giving very young girls double mastectomies, they want to castrate these young boys,” DeSantis said at an event in Florida on Wednesday, referring to such procedures. “Both from the health and children wellbeing perspective, you don’t disfigure 10, 12, 13-year-old kids based on gender dysphoria, 80 percent of it resolves anyways by the time they get older. So why would you be doing this?”
“I think these doctors need to get sued for what’s happening,” DeSantis said in conclusion. He didn’t say whether his administration would be taking steps to make it easier for individuals to file lawsuits against the doctors.
Earlier this year, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo issued statewide public health guidelines to restrict certain treatments for children and adolescents. It came after the Biden administration promoted its own guidelines on “gender-affirming care,” including hormone drugs, puberty blocker drugs, surgeries, and social transitioning for kids.
And in a letter to the Florida Board of Medicine in June, the Republican governor’s administration called on physicians to stop performing medical procedures on children who are said to have gender dysphoria.
“Available medical literature provides insufficient evidence that sex reassignment through medical interventions is a safe and effective treatment for gender dysphoria,” the letter said, adding that the state “must do more to protect children from politics-based medicine.”
Gender Ideology in Schools
More than a week ago, 22 states filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration over a new rule that would threaten to withhold funding to schools for meal programs unless states comply with its policies around the teaching of gender identity and sexual orientation in class.
Republican attorneys general from Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Tennessee, Indiana, and West Virginia have signed the lawsuit. The challenge was filed (pdf) against the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“The Biden administration’s sweeping rhetoric treats normal practices, such as sex-separated bathrooms and athletics, as ‘discriminatory’ even though DOJ [Justice Department] and the Department of Education treated those as legal, nondiscriminatory practices as recently as last year,” the suit stated.
In Congress, several Republican lawmakers in late June introduced a bill that allows individuals to sue doctors who performed gender transition surgery when they were minors. The measure allows a 30-year statute of limitation in most cases, prohibits federal health funds from going to states that force medical practitioners to perform transition procedures, and makes it clear that federal law cannot be construed to force practitioners to offer such procedures.
“Gender-transition procedures aren’t safe or appropriate for children,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), one of the lawmakers who co-sponsored the bill, said in a news release. “Unfortunately, radical doctors in the United States perform dangerous, experimental, and even sterilizing gender-transition procedures on young kids, who cannot even provide informed consent.”
A Minnesota school district is spending millions of dollars to racially diversify elementary school math lessons as student proficiency scores plummet.
Minneapolis Public Schools will spend more than $2 million to incorporate “ethnic, racial, and cultural diversity” into the K-5 math curriculum, according to a June school board presentation reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. The new curriculum, which will be implemented in the fall, “reflects the lived experiences of our Minneapolis students and develops positive math identity,” a school district executive director said at a June 14 school board meeting, by adding “cultural and linguistically responsive materials.”
Less than half of Minneapolis Public School elementary students, 43 percent, are proficient in math, 14 points lower than the Minnesota average.
Minneapolis is not the first school district to prioritize “diversity, equity, and inclusion” initiatives over academics. Public schools in Montgomery County, Maryland, in July amended their fourth- and fifth-grade social studies curriculum to include “Social Justice Standards” for “antiracist” education, even though about half of its students lack proficiency in math and language arts, the Free Beaconreported. Seattle’s school district spent $5 million on DEI initiatives, allotting only $4.5 million to math, science, and literacy. Virginia Democrats have proposed eliminating most advanced math courses in the name of equity.
Minneapolis Public Schools approved two contracts with the Math Learning Center to purchase the DEI curricula, one to buy the K-2 math curriculum for an amount not exceeding $1,149,539.35 and one to buy the Grades 3-5 curriculum for an amount not exceeding $1,028,960.55.
The school district solicited parent feedback by dividing parents by race and ethnicity to discuss the proposed changes in “culturally specific” focus groups.
The diversified curriculum has been a “shared priority for a number of years,” Superintendent Ed Graff said at the meeting. The school district told the Free Beacon the math curriculum will “contribute to an understanding of ethnic, racial, and cultural diversity” and “create culturally inclusive materials and learning experiences.”
Update 4:08 p.m.: This piece has been updated with comment from the school district.
University has not said whether it will open a full investigation into Kevin Kruse
Princeton University is “reviewing” the plagiarism allegations against progressive history professor Kevin Kruse, the university’s student newspaper reported on Tuesday—over half a year after they were first raised.
“We are carefully reviewing the concerns that have been shared with the University, and will handle them in accordance with University policy,” Princeton University spokesman Michael Hotchkiss told Daily Princetonian. Hotchkiss did not say whether Princeton would open a full investigation into the allegations.
The review follows months of silence by the university, which says it “overlooked” a December 6 email from the economic historian Phil Magness about possible instances of plagiarism in Kruse’s academic work. Magness didn’t receive a substantive reply from the university until June 17, three days after he published an article in Reason outlining the evidence that Kruse repeatedly plagiarized other scholars’ books.
“We take such allegations very seriously, and we will carefully consider the concerns you have raised,” Deputy Dean of the Faculty Toni Turano told Magness in an email reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. “Please feel free to send us any additional information to explain and support your allegations.”
In public, Princeton has been much less solicitous. It has not posted an official statement on any university website, nor did it reply to Reason‘s or the Free Beacon‘s requests for comment when the story first broke.
The hushed delays accentuate the contrast between Princeton’s treatment of Kruse and its treatment of Joshua Katz, the star classics professor who criticized the school’s racial politics. University officials condemned Katz—and implied publicly they were investigating him—days after he published his criticisms in a July 2020 essay for Quillette. When they received “new information” about a consensual relationship he’d had with a student over a decade earlier, it took them less than a month to launch a formal investigation, which resulted in his dismissal in May.
The contrast between Katz and Kruse has raised eyebrows among alumni and current students, who say it suggests a political double standard at the Ivy League school.
“Will Professor Kruse face Katz’s fate—stripped of tenure and fired?” Princeton senior Abigail Anthony asked in National Review. “If so, Princeton students will learn a lesson in whom not to copy from. If not, they will learn instead that the rules don’t apply to the people with power and the ‘correct’ opinions.”
Kruse has made a name for himself by accusing conservatives—especially Christian conservatives—of distorting history, prompting the Chronicle of Higher Education to dub him “history’s attack dog.” Those attacks became less frequent after the plagiarism allegations came to light: Kruse, who would regularly post Twitter threads attacking Republicans, has not been active on the platform since June 14.
Georgia governor Brian Kemp (R.) and the state’s Department of Revenue unveiled policies this week aimed at supporting pregnant women and children in the foster care system. The move comes amid accusations from Democrats in the wake of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade that Republicans d0 not prioritize the well-being of mothers or children after they are born.
Georgia’s Department of Revenue updated its guidance Monday to allow women to claim their unborn children as dependents on their tax returns. Per Georgia state law, this entitles pregnant women to a $3,000 tax exemption for each additional dependent. Georgia defines an unborn child as a fetus that is at least six weeks old and has a heartbeat.
The next day, Kemp announced that the state would pay for a marketing campaign “to help recruit and retain more foster parents” in Georgia.
“Our state believes in protecting life at all stages,” Kemp said in a statement. “And we’re committed to achieving this goal. We hope this new campaign reaches more who are ready to answer this call.”
Georgia’s new slate of pro-family policies comes following criticism from progressives alleging that Republicans who support regulation of abortion do not care to support pregnant mothers or children in the foster care system.
“Not only do [Republicans] want to force women to have children if they are pregnant,” Sen. Mazie Hirono (D., Hawaii) said, “but when they do have them, they don’t want to provide any support for them.”
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D., Calif.) similarly argued that “Republicans don’t care about helping children after they’re born with child tax credits, affordable education, or removing guns that kill kids in schools. They’re more focused on controlling women’s health care choices through government mandated pregnancies.”
Nationally, the GOP has advocated measures that would extend benefits to pregnant mothers. Congressional Republicans introduced a bill in July, for instance, that would require men to pay child support starting at conception.
Gabriel Nadales and Barrington Martin II say young Americans should ‘speak confidently about why they love this country’
After turning away from left-wing politics, a former Antifa activist and Democratic politician are launching a new campaign to challenge what they see as pervasive anti-Americanism among the country’s youth.
Gabriel Nadales, an Antifa protester turned conservative activist, and Barrington Martin II, a former Democratic congressional candidate, launched a half-million-dollar ad buy last week through their new group Our America, aimed at empowering young people across the United States to “celebrate a pride in, connection to, and a responsibility for our community and country.” The organization, whose advisory team includes conservative commentator Deroy Murdock, will also spend $2 million to produce online content that promotes what they say are America’s unifying values: patriotism, freedom of expression, respect, dignity, and equal opportunity.
“Our America is specifically here to give people the full faith and confidence to be able to speak confidently about why they love this country,” Martin, who primaried the late Democratic congressman John Lewis (Ga.) in 2020, told the Washington Free Beacon. “When I say ‘I love this country, it’s one of the greatest gifts in the world,’ you shouldn’t scoff at me when we are all Americans.”
Just 58 percent of Americans ages 18-29 believe the United States is “one of the greatest countries” in the world, according to a Pew Research survey in December, compared with 75 percent of Americans across all age groups. Nadales and Martin aim to bolster patriotic views among young Americans by challenging the narrative, promoted by left-wing media, politicians, and activists, that America is systemically racist and oppressive. Left-wing pundits like MSNBC host Al Sharpton, for example, spent Independence Day criticizing the United States, saying, “We’ve gone from Jim Crow to Jane Crow.” Wisconsin Democratic Senate candidate Mandela Barnes that same month called the founding of the United States “awful.”
Still, almost 90 percent of Americans of all races “love” the United States, Our America polling shared with the Free Beacon shows. Yet the minority of the population who believe America is racist and evil are the loudest voices in the room, Martin said.
Nadales, who came to the United States from Mexico as a child, said his public school education encouraged him to believe that America hates immigrants like himself. Nadales said he was recruited by the left-wing movement Antifa, known for its violent rioting and looting in cities such as Portland during the Trump administration, before he graduated high school.
After he became disillusioned with the group’s political extremism, however, he said he realized the far-left movement is a symptom of the division plaguing America.
“They’re incredibly dangerous, and they represent what is wrong with America today that people are so divided that they’re willing to go fight on the streets and recommend violence against one another,” Nadales said.
Nadales said Our America hopes to provide an uplifting message about the United States, bridging political differences with peaceful civil discourse.
“The American dream is not about having a fancy car,” Nadales said. “It’s the idea that we are not subject to the government. We are free people who are masters of our destinies. We can make our choices and we have the ability to choose to succeed. Your life is up to you and no one can take that away from you.”
Our America, which has 125,000 email subscribers after launching two months ago, will air its ads on TBS, TNT, BET, Univision, and MTV.
Harvard’s Title IX office dismissed allegations of sexual misconduct against anthropologist John Comaroff. That’s not enough for many on campus.
Students and professors at Harvard Law School are demanding the university punish a 77-year-old anthropology professor over allegations of sexual misconduct that Harvard’s own Title IX office has dismissed, according to a July 26 petition from Harvard’s Graduate Student Union.
The petition demands that the law school cancel a class taught by John Comaroff, a renowned anthropologist who has spent the past two years battling allegations that he sexually harassed three graduate students. Harvard’s Office of Dispute Resolution concluded that most of those allegations—including an allegation of sexual assault—were without merit. It found only a minor violation of Title IX, an off-color comment by Comaroff that investigators conceded had “no romantic or sexual intention,” according to Comaroff’s lawyers.
The petition nonetheless accuses Comaroff of sexual “violence” and argues that his presence in the classroom would pose “a serious risk of continued harm.” Its signatories include Harvard Law professor Nikolas Bowie, who sits on the board of the American Civil Liberties Union in Massachusetts, as well as a dozen law students who’ve worked for public defenders.
“It is shocking that an employee union is calling for a Harvard employee to be summarily punished and cast out of the University community based upon allegations that the University’s process found him not responsible for or that have never been investigated,” one of Comaroff’s lawyers, Ruth O’Meara-Costello, said in a statement on Friday. “And it is shocking that signatories to the union’s petition, including law students and a law professor, would join in this demand to substitute mob justice for due process.”
Both ironies reflect a broader identity crisis within legal nonprofits and labor unions, which have begun to take positions at odds with their core missions. The American Civil Liberties Union, for example, has challenged efforts to strengthen due process protections in campus Title IX proceedings. And from theNew York Times to the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, unions at liberal institutions have welcomed the termination of employees who run afoul of progressive shibboleths, as activist organizers replace the old guard.
Harvard’s Graduate Student Union is a microcosm of that process. The three women who accused Comaroff of harassment—Lilia Kilburn, Amulya Mandava, and Margaret Czerwienski—are all active in the union, which has for years lobbied Harvard to take a tougher stand on sexual misconduct. In February, Mandava and Czerwienski were elected as the union’s vice president and sergeant-at-arms, respectively, amid a well-publicized battle with the university over its handling of the Comaroff case.
At least 12 of the law students who’ve joined their cause have worked with groups that promote due process rights for the accused, according to the students’ LinkedIn profiles and personal websites. The petition’s signatories include Christopher Dietz, a former paralegal for the Innocence Project; Dane Underwood, a former law clerk for the Los Angeles Legal Aid Society; Alex Brown, who has clerked for public defenders in four different states; and Sarah Blatt-Herold, who has worked with the Brooklyn Defender Services as well as the “prison abolitionist” group Black and Pink.
Reached for comment, Underwood defended his decision to sign the petition.
“I see no tension between my work in legal services—which supports people caught in systems over which they have little power—and my opposition to the class taught by John Comaroff—a tenured professor at a $53 billion university, who used his position of power to sexually harass students,” Underwood said. Bowie and the other students did not respond to requests for comment.
The Comaroff controversy began in May 2020 when Kilburn, Mandava, and Czerwienski lodged a Title IX complaint against the 77-year-old anthropologist. The complaint contained a litany of lurid allegations: that Comaroff had kissed and touched Kilburn without her consent; that he’d fantasized aloud about her being raped; and that he retaliated against Mandava and Czerwienski for attempting to bring his conduct to light.
Harvard investigators determined that Comaroff never touched Kilburn inappropriately, but had warned her against traveling to Cameroon with her same-sex partner—because, he said, gay people in the country are often targeted for “corrective rape,” a practice that has been documented extensively by human rights groups and the U.S. government.
The school also found that Comaroff, who grew up in South Africa and studies African society, violated Title IX by conveying that warning in an inappropriate tone, and that some of his comments to Mandava violated the school’s guidelines for “professional conduct.” It did not find that he retaliated against any of the women. Harvard placed Comaroff on leave in January for the Spring 2022 semester and barred him from teaching required courses for at least a year.
But those sanctions didn’t satisfy Comaroff’s accusers, who in February filed a lawsuit alleging that Harvard had “ignored” their harassment. They also made new accusations against him on the basis of “information and belief”—legalese for second-hand information that the plaintiff can’t verify.
The new accusations have “have not been proved or even investigated,” O’Meara-Costello’s statement said, “and their credibility is extremely doubtful.” That didn’t stop the petition from treating them as fact, asserting that “the public evidence in Comaroff’s case warrants further steps toward harm reduction.”
The first step, the signatories say, is “an open acknowledgment” that Comaroff’s “multiple acts of sex-based discrimination” went “unchecked for years.” They also call on Harvard to “de-list” Comaroff’s Fall elective, “the Anthropology of Law,” and hint that he should have his tenure revoked.
“Tenure exists to protect the academic freedom of scholars to cultivate a rich and vibrant academic community,” the petition reads, “not to protect the freedom of tenured individuals to erode the very conditions of mutual respect and safety required for such a community to exist.”
The signatories demand that Harvard make public its policies on revoking tenure, a punishment they say may be necessary to “stop discrimination.”
Comaroff’s lawyers say the petition bodes ill for the university.
“Everyone who works, studies, and teaches at Harvard, including the signatories to this petition,” O’Meara-Costello’s statement said, “should be gravely concerned by the idea that untested accusations should lead, without investigation, to serious adverse actions like those demanded in this petition.”
Two doctors and a former Harvard Medical School professor have signed onto the lawsuit that alleges the U.S. government and Big Tech colluded to censor dissenting voices.
Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, who was fired for refusing to get a COVID-19 vaccine, also joined the legal action.
All three say they have been affected by Big Tech censorship, and believe the punitive measures have been influenced or directed by government officials.
In April 2021, for instance, Google-owned YouTube deleted a video of Bhattacharya and Kulldorff questioning whether masks were effective in stopping the spread of SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19.
Kulldorff, a former Harvard Medical School professor who now works at the Brownstone Institute, was also suspended by Twitter for several weeks after positing that masks give people a false sense of security, which makes them more likely to expose themselves to the illness. That’s the same theory put forth by top U.S. officials until they pivoted to endorsing widespread mask-wearing months after the pandemic started.
Kheriaty also says he was censored by Twitter.
“I have always shared peer-reviewed research findings as well as my own opinions and perspectives on Twitter and LinkedIn. It was not until I began posting information about COVID and our COVID response policies, however, that I encountered censorship on the Twitter platform,” he wrote in a declaration filed in the new case.
Multiple platforms, meanwhile, took action against the declaration, which called for focused protection of the elderly while letting the rest of society live their lives normally and was vociferously opposed by top U.S. health officials, including then-National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins.
Search results on Google initially placed the declaration’s website near the top but soon ranked it lower than articles that were critical of the document, according to declarations from Bhattacharya and Kulldorff. Reddit removed links to the declaration and Facebook removed a page dedicated to the document, though it later restored it.
Stanford University professor of medicine Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a founding fellow of Hillsdale College’s Academy for Science and Freedom, at the Hillsdale College Kirby Center in Washington on March 17, 2022. (Bao Qiu/The Epoch Times)
‘Self-Censor’
The scientists say they’ve had to “self-censor” in order to try to remain on the platforms.
That has sometimes meant not posting at all, and other times posting by using “imaginative phrasing,” Kulldorff said.
They also say the timing of the censorship decisions support the assertion that the moves were induced by the government, including how censorship of the declaration happened soon after Collins called for a “quick and devastating … take-down” of the document in private and disparaged it in public.
“These are clear indications to me that government is in collaboration with Big Tech to suppress scientific dissent,” Bhattacharya told The Epoch Times.
Government officials such as former White House press secretary Jen Psaki have openly admitted to flagging “problematic posts” for Facebook and raising issues with posts on Twitter, the complaint notes, while some of the platforms have acknowledged consulting with government officials on content moderation.
“The government’s sweeping campaign to suppress the perspectives of the plaintiffs, and others like them, represents the most severe abrogation of the First Amendment in modern times, and we look forward to seeing this constitutional atrocity rectified in a court of law,” Jenin Younes, a lawyer for the New Civil Liberties Alliance, which is representing the new plaintiffs, said in a statement.
The revised effort drops one defendant, Psaki, who is no longer with the federal government, and adds a number of others.
Carol Crawford with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); the U.S. Census Bureau; Jennifer Shopkorn, a senior adviser for the bureau; the Department of Commerce; Robert Silvers and Samantha Vinograd, Department of Homeland Security officials; the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency; Jen Easterly, director of the agency; and Gina McCarthy, a White House national climate adviser were named as defendants.
None were named in the original filing.
Joe Biden, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas were among the defendants named in both complaints.
The messages show Crawford and colleagues met with and discussed taking action against alleged COVID-19 misinformation.
The Census Bureau was involved in the coordination, according to the missives.
The messages, the amended filing states, “confirm the allegations of collusion between [government] officials and social-media platforms to censor disfavored speech, speakers, and viewpoints, as alleged herein.”
PUNTA GORDA, Fla.—Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis says he won’t declare a state of emergency over the monkeypox outbreak even though the state currently has more than 500 reported cases.
The governor said at a news conference on Aug. 3 that he doesn’t believe issuing a public health emergency is necessary, nor does he think Floridians should fear the disease.
“Any of the politicians trying to scare you about this, do not listen to their nonsense,” he said. “Anything we deal with from a public perspective, we are not doing fear. We are going to do facts.”
States that declare emergencies are going to eventually “abuse those emergency powers to restrict your freedom,” DeSantis said. “You have to deal with this rationally and do not use it for political gain.
Florida Surgeon General Joe Lapado, who stood with the governor, said that the “efficacy” of the Jynneos vaccine being given out as protection from monkeypox “remains uncertain.”
“You should know there’s very little data on this vaccine,” he said. “We need to learn more and we need to make rational decisions.”
Ladapo said a small study done in Africa in the 1980s showed the Jynneous vaccine was at least 85 percent effective against monkeypox.
He reported that Florida has received about 24,000 doses of the vaccine from the national stockpile and distributed about 8,500 doses.
Florida asked for and received 36,800 doses through July 27, Ladapo said.
The federal government has allocated a little over 109,000 doses to Florida.
The Jynneos vaccine consists of a two-dose series given four weeks apart.
California, New York, and Illinois have declared states of emergency over the monkeypox outbreak. The announcement of an emergency has been known to help with logistics and coordination between state and local departments working to respond to the emergency.
Florida has 525 reported cases, including 372 concentrated in the Miami-Dade and Broward County areas.
Ladapo said “he is certain there are many more unknown cases,” with most being male.
“Somewhere around 98 percent, maybe 99 percent, are men. Just a handful of cases are women,” he said. “All those cases have been transmitted by physical contact, basically sexual contact for the most part.”
“There have been some reports of cases in kids that are connected with adults who have acquired the infection probably from sexual contact,” Ladapo added. “In Florida, we have one case of a health provider who contracted it through a needle stick. There have been no fatalities.”
In July, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared monkeypox a global health emergency with more than 25,000 monkeypox cases reported in at least 78 countries, according to WHO data.
The Biden administration is considering whether to declare a public health emergency in the United States in order to make treatments easier for patients to get.
There are currently 6,326 confirmed cases of monkeypox in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Florida has the fourth-highest number of cases in the country.
Finally…a bit of truth about black culture. Stop blaming; start listening; start learning. [US Patriot]
Black Americans in urban areas are suffering the consequences of the progressive Democrats’ anti-police “soft on crime” policies, despite the fact that these are the communities the policies were supposedly going to help, said Horace Cooper, senior fellow with the National Center for Public Policy Research, in a recent NTD interview.
Cooper told NTD that because progressives Democrats are too soft on crime and conservatives are afraid of being called racist by the left, crime has come to an all-time high in urban areas and is disproportionately harming black people.
The black community wants criminals to be prosecuted, said Cooper.
“I would argue that it would be smart to stand up, find out where black Americans are, and champion the kinds of policies and issues that interest them,” he said. “On the issue of crime, black Americans are ready to bring in law enforcement, are ready to increase penalties, and they are ready to stop the violent wave of crime that we see.”
Cooper is also chairman of the board for Project 21, which established a network of black conservative and libertarian leaders in 1992 to highlight the diversity of viewpoints within the black community.
Project 21 has identified 10 key areas for reform that, if accomplished, would help black Americans reach their potential and attain the American dream.
Black Americans Want Less Crime
Cooper said that out of the 10 areas, one of the key issues that need to be addressed is the crime in black communities.
“We have a ‘Blueprint for a Better Deal for Black America’ that we’re releasing this fall, and one of the core issues is going to be the idea of crime control,” said Cooper.
Crime disproportionality affects black communities, and the people who live there don’t support policies like “Defund the Police,” he said.
“During the Rodney King riots, during George H.W. Bush’s presidency, there were a lot of voices that came out that said when you saw this violence, when you saw this mayhem, that it was justifiable. It was a natural outworking. ‘This is what blacks just do,’” Cooper said.
“In fact, most black Americans don’t believe that this kind of behavior is acceptable.”
In a Gallup poll conducted in June 2020 at the height of the George Floyd riots, 61 percent of black people surveyed said they wanted to keep the same level of policing in their neighborhoods, and another 20 percent said they wanted more police presence.
Protesters gather in front of a liquor store in flames near the Third Police Precinct in Minneapolis on May 28, 2020. (Kerem Yucel/AFP via Getty Images)
In late 2021, a consortium of news organizations surveyed 800 voters in Minneapolis, where George Floyd died in police custody, and asked them what they thought of the city’s police department. Three-quarters of the black respondents said the city shouldn’t reduce its police force.
Cooper said that Democrats and the Biden administration do not understand what the black community really wants, and instead perpetuate racist ideas about blacks.
“We’re seeing the outworking of that during the Biden administration, this tacit idea that it’s criminals who are the victims, and if you really want to support blacks, you’ve got to support criminals.”
In addition, Democrats install radical prosecutors who double-down on this narrative in Democrat-run inner cities, he said.
“We’re seeing what I would call the ‘woke prosecutors’ who actively say to criminals, ‘there will be no accountability. There will be no punishment.’”
‘Woke’ Prosecutors Won’t Punish Criminals
Cooper said that while black men make up just 7.5 percent of the American population, they commit 40 percent of all violent crime.
“That’s staggering,” he said. “But these woke prosecutors and their supporters, they say, ‘Well, the truth is just America’s unfair, America is bigoted, America systematically mistreats,’ and that these people who prey on the rest of us, ‘They’re not predators. They’re just fighting back.’”
The problem with this narrative is that there is no evidence to support those claims, Cooper said. The way to stop this type of predatory behavior is to punish it, he added.
“Increase the penalty, increase punishment, decrease bad behavior,” he said.
Cooper said that under President Donald Trump, black Americans were doing much better economically, and the number one issue for the community as a whole is not racism, but inflation, and how to give their families a great quality of life, “kitchen table issues,” said Cooper.
Under Trump, black Americans prospered, Cooper said, adding that as a whole, they were able to purchase new vehicles, open new businesses, put aside money for savings, and even take real vacations.
“In the last 18 months, all those trends have reversed,” he said. “And black Americans are being the hardest hit.”
Leaked document is labelled as “Unclassified/Law Enforcement Sensitive” that is for “FBI Internal Use Only.”
Under the “Symbols” category of the document, “2A” is listed with the following explanation: “MVEs justify their existence with the Second Amendment, due to the mention of a ‘well regulated Militia,’ as well as the right to bear arms.”
“Revolutionary War imagery” such as the “Gadsden Flag” and the “Betsy Ross Flag” are cited in the document under “Commonly Referenced Historical Imagery or Quotes.”
[WASHINGTON, D.C. – Aug. 2, 2022] Project Veritas released a newly leaked document today provided by an FBI whistleblower, which shows how the Bureau classifies American citizens it deems to be potential “Militia Violent Extremists” [MVEs].
In the document, the FBI cites symbols, images, phrases, events, and individuals that agents should look out for when identifying alleged domestic terrorists.
The “Unclassified/Law Enforcement Sensitive” document says it is for “FBI Internal Use Only.”
Of note, under the “Symbols” section, is a prominent citation of the Second Amendment, where it explains that “MVEs justify their existence with the Second Amendment, due to the mention of a ‘well regulated Militia,’ as well as the right to bear arms.”
Right below that, under the “Commonly Referenced Historical Imagery and Quotes” section, Revolutionary War images such as the Gadsden Flag and the Betsy Ross Flag are listed. Each flag displayed in the document comes with a brief description of what it means.
Under the “Common Phrases and References” section of the leaked document, Ashli Babbitt is cited as a person that MVEs consider to be a Martyr.
The same document also refers to Ruby Ridge, Waco, and even Timothy McVeigh, tying in traditional American ideas and symbols with radical and/or violent events in the past.
About Project Veritas
James O’Keefe established Project Veritas in 2010 as a non-profit journalism enterprise to continue his undercover reporting work. Today, Project Veritas investigates and exposes corruption, dishonesty, self-dealing, waste, fraud, and other misconduct in both public and private institutions to achieve a more ethical and transparent society and to engage in litigation to: protect, defend and expand human and civil rights secured by law, specifically First Amendment rights including promoting the free exchange of ideas in a digital world; combat and defeat censorship of any ideology; promote truthful reporting; and defend freedom of speech and association issues including the right to anonymity. O’Keefe serves as the CEO and Chairman of the Board so that he can continue to lead and teach his fellow journalists, as well as protect and nurture the Project Veritas culture.
Project Veritas is a registered 501(c)3 organization. Project Veritas does not advocate specific resolutions to the issues raised through its investigations.
If Republicans aggressively communicate the details of the Manchin-Schumer bill, it will become prohibitively expensive for any Democrats to vote for it.
During the August break, every Republican House and Senate candidate should challenge their Democrat opponents to defend the new, destructive, and unpopular Joe Manchin-Chuck Schumer bill.
Democrats hope to camouflage the bill by calling it the “Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.” In the business world, this title would lead to a lawsuit over false advertising. As I wrote in my latest best-selling book, “Defeating Big Government Socialism,” this kind of dishonest branding is standard procedure for the Orwellian party that modern Democrats have become. An accurate title of the bill would be the “Higher Taxes, Bigger IRS, and More Inflation Act of 2022.”
If Republicans aggressively communicate the details of the Manchin-Schumer bill, it will become prohibitively expensive for any Democrats to vote for it.
Scott Rasmussen highlighted the American public’s opposition to this bill once it is accurately explained. In a poll this weekend, Rasmussen discovered that 55 percent of Americans favor cutting government spending and taxes, while only 23 percent favor higher taxes and spending. Just on this overview Republican candidates will have a more than 2:1 majority opposing higher taxes and bigger spending. And by 44 percent to 17 percent Americans believe higher taxes and government spending will increase inflation.
According to Rasmussen, “when told half the tax burden will fall on manufacturing industries, 63% say it is likely to make supply chain problems worse.” Only 19 percent of Americans think the bill’s so-called book tax will not affect the supply chain. I would add that increasing taxes on our manufacturing industries when we are competing with China is totally backward-thinking – and virtually suicidal in terms of national security.
Democrats should also take notice: The pain caused by the bad energy policies supported in the bill is undermining support for green policies. Some 66 percent of Americans now think reducing the price of gas is more important than reductions carbon emissions.
In fact, according to Rasmussen, 46 percent say more spending on climate change and clean energy programs will increase the price of gasoline, while only 21 percent think it will lower the price of gas.
When told the new Manchin-Schumer bill will lead to 86,000 additional Internal Revenue Service agents (the IRS currently has 78,661 full-time staff) the American people oppose it by 53 percent to 31 percent. But the intensity factor is huge. Some 29 percent strongly oppose the plan while only 9 percent strongly favor it. That is a more than 3:1 opposition at the extremes.
When people realize most of these IRS agents will not be going after billionaires and big companies – but instead will be auditing waitresses, uber drivers, self-employed people, and small businesses – I expect the opposition will grow even more intense.
As Rasmussen described it, “The new legislation being considered would double the size of the IRS so that the agency can conduct audits on an additional 1.2 million taxpayers every year. The agency has set a goal of increasing the audits of small business owners by 50%.”
Finally, despite the Democrats’ deeply dishonest title, the bill will increase the rate of inflation in the near term – not reduce it.
As the Daily Wire reported, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania found that the bill “could lead to a slight increase in inflation over the next two years.” While the bill is expected to eventually reduce inflation after 2024, the Wharton School study found: “These point estimates are statistically indistinguishable from zero, thereby indicating low confidence that the legislation will have any impact on inflation.” So, not only will the bill increase inflation over the next few years, it will ultimately have no impact long-term.
The Manchin-Schumer bill is an enormous opportunity for Republicans – and a genuine learning moment for the American people.
It is crystal clear that the current economic performance failures of the Democrats are caused by the underlying destructive policies they promote. Further, Republicans should also clearly expose the consistently dishonest and hypocritical language Democrats use to try to fool Americans.
Every Republican candidate for House and Senate should challenge his or her Democratic opponent to a series of focused debates during the August recess. Republicans should assert that the Manchin-Schumer bill is a higher tax, bigger IRS, more inflation bill which will be bad for America. Every Democrat should be made to debate the point.
When Democrats try to hide behind the bill’s phony title and dishonest talking points, Republicans should be ready to challenge them on substance with clear examples.
Republican Georgia Senate Nominee Herschel Walker has already challenged Sen. Raphael Warnock to defend the bill. After saying for weeks that Walker was afraid to debate, Warnock is now avoiding his opponent.
Take note of every Democrat who refuses to defend the bill. Their reluctance will demonstrate just how bad it is.
This is a great opportunity for Republicans to define the real choice for November.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has claimed that there was no known association between heart inflammation and COVID-19 vaccines as late as October 2021.
CDC officials made the claim, which is false, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request for reports from a CDC team that is focused on analyzing the risk of post-vaccination myocarditis and pericarditis, two forms of heart inflammation. Both began detected at higher-than-expected rates after COVID-19 vaccination in the spring of 2021.
The team focuses on studying data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a passive surveillance system co-run by the CDC and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The date range for the search was April 2, 2021, to Oct. 2, 2021.
“The National Center for Emerging Zoonotic Infectious Diseases performed a search of our records that failed to reveal any documents pertaining to your request,” Roger Andoh, a CDC records officer, told The Epoch Times. The center is part of the CDC.
No abstractions or reports were available because “an association between myocarditis and mRNA COVID-19 vaccination was not known at that time,” Andoh added.
Both the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines are built on messenger RNA (mRNA) technology.
Earliest Myocarditis Reports
Reports of heart inflammation after COVID-19 vaccination were first made public in April 2021 by the U.S. military, which detected the issue along with Israeli authorities well before the CDC.
While Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC’s director, said that month that the agency had looked for a safety signal in its data and found none, by the end of June CDC researchers were saying that the available data “suggest an association with immunization,” and in August described (pdf) the issue as a “harm” from vaccination.
The claim that the link wasn’t known “is provably false,” Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center, told The Epoch Times via email. “Either the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing at CDC, or federal health officials are disseminating misinformation about what they knew about myocarditis following mRNA COVID vaccines and when they knew it.”
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said that the FOIA response “raises even more questions about the agency’s honesty, transparency, and use, or lack thereof, of its safety surveillance systems, such as VAERS, to detect COVID-19 vaccine adverse events.”
“I have sent twoletters to the CDC about the agency’s inability to find records demonstrating its use of the vaccine surveillance systems. To date, the CDC has failed to respond to my letters,” he added.
A nurse prepares the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine in Southfield, Mich., on Nov. 5, 2021. (Jeff Kowalsky/AFP via Getty Images)
‘Correction’
“Apparently CDC needs to make a correction!” a spokeswoman for the agency told The Epoch Times in an email.
The agency is acknowledging that by June 2021, data began to indicate a link between the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines and heart inflammation, outlined that month in twopresentations made to government vaccine advisory panels.
“Additional data accumulated in subsequent months, ultimately leading to the conclusion that a causative association did indeed exist. However, such a conclusion required time to accumulate and analyze data,” the spokeswoman said.
It remains unclear how the CDC looked for a signal in April 2021. The CDC has declined to provide any details.
The CDC’s records office did not respond to a request for comment.
The correction is the second time in recent weeks that the agency has backtracked on a claim.
Andoh in June told the nonprofit Children’s Health Defense that staff from the agency’s Immunization and Safety Office informed him that the agency would not perform data mining on VAERS, even though several CDC documents said the agency would perform the analyses.
Questioned about the matter, Dr. John Su, a CDC official, told The Epoch Times that the agency started performing the data mining in February 2021.
Noting the conflicting statements, Johnson wrote to Walensky asking her for answers. “CDC’s assertion and Dr. Su’s statement cannot both be true,” he said.
‘That pill makes people seem crazy, insane,’ says a persecuted Uyghur man
“You will no longer shout after I give you a shot,” said the director of the Hebei Provincial Brainwashing Center in China, while threatening a Falun Gong adherent who kept saying out loud, “Falun Gong is good!”
Hua Fengxiang was arrested for his belief in the persecuted spiritual practice of Falun Gong. Yuan Shuqian, who has been serving as the director of the brainwashing center since 2001, ordered his officers to stuff a towel in Hua’s mouth before forcibly injecting him with an unidentified drug. Shortly after the shot, Hua’s health deteriorated, his spine became distorted, his neck became stiff, and he had difficulty walking, reported Minghui.org, a U.S.-based nonprofit organization that provides firsthand information on the ongoing persecution of Falun Gong.
Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa) is a mind-body practice rooted in the universal principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. The officially atheist Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been persecuting the practice since July 20, 1999. Over the past 23 years, tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have been arrested, detained, tortured, and even killed for their organs. Adherents are routinely tortured in detention centers, brainwashing centers, and mental hospitals.
Over a decade ago, the U.S. Department of State expressed concerns over China’s “ankang” facilities, or psychiatric hospitals (the Chinese term ironically translates as “peace and health” facilities), which are under the direct administration of the Ministry of Public Security. The report stated that these “high-security psychiatric hospitals”—meant for the “criminally insane”—even housed Falun Gong practitioners, other underground religious believers, and political activists together with mentally ill patients. Those detained in these hospitals were allegedly “medicated against their will and forcibly subjected to electric shock treatment.”
Whether an individual is diagnosed with mental disorders, what medications he is given and how they are administered, and when he is released are all under police control.
Falun Gong practitioners march down Pennsylvania Avenue to commemorate the 23rd anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party’s persecution of the spiritual practice in China, in Washington on July 21, 2022. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)In this undated photo, children practice Falun Gong meditation in China before the Chinese Communist Party began its persecution of the spiritual practice in July 1999. (Courtesy of Minghui.org)
China’s first Mental Health Code that came into effect on May 1, 2013, states that people with “severe symptoms” and those who present a “danger of harming others” can be forcibly detained in mental hospitals, according to the Minghui report titled “The 20-Year Persecution of Falun Gong in China.” The 437-page book, which extensively details the brutality faced by Falun Gong practitioners, says that the code doesn’t protect citizens from “being arbitrarily labeled as mentally ill,” and that there is a “huge gray area that police and relevant government agencies have exploited” in persecuting Falun Gong while deciding if any person is of any potential threat to the safety and security of others.
“There is no third-party oversight of ankang facilities. Police departments both administer ankang hospitals and decide who to take to these facilities. Whether an individual is diagnosed with mental disorders, what medications he is given and how they are administered, and when he is released are all under police control,” states the report.
Minghui.org has documented over 100 different torture methods used by the CCP to coerce Falun Gong adherents into renouncing their belief. Forced administration of unknown nerve-damaging drugs is one of the most common tools of persecution.
The side effects from the unidentified drugs include heart problems, stiffness of tongue, memory loss, numbness of body, damaging effects on the central nervous system, loss of speech, and vision problems, as reported in the few selected cases that follow.
Torture reenactment of forced drug injections. (Courtesy of Minghui.org)
Peng Yuxin, 55, from Hefei City, Anhui province, was injected with toxic medications for a total of six times before his release from prison in 2020. He lost almost all his ability to speak, and could only utter a few words. Moreover, he could not write his own address. He nodded his head when asked if he was injected with drugs.
Liang Zhiqin, a Falun Gong adherent from Tangshan City, Hebei province, was tied up and injected twice with toxic drugs when she was detained at the Tangshan City Ankang Hospital in 2000. She lost consciousness and had acute cardiac problems and chest pain after the first injection. Her memory became worse after she was released in September 2001. She often gave the wrong change to customers when helping at her family’s business. “I was on the verge of death,” Liang recalled. “I was in so much pain that my eyes could not even move. My tongue became rigid, and my mind was unclear.”
Yang Baochun, from Handan City, Hebei province, was arrested in the winter of 2000. The guards at Handan Forced Labor Camp poured hot water on his feet after ordering him to stand barefooted in the snow. The torture resulted in an infection in his blistered leg and his right leg had to be amputated. The authorities covered up the incident saying Yang was insane and his infection was self-inflicted. To back their claims, he was sent to Ankang Mental Hospital in Feixiang County, where he was given food with unidentified drugs mixed in. He was released in 2004, but only to be arrested again in 2005; he was imprisoned and tortured at the Yongkang Mental Hospital, which left him truly insane.
Xu Guiqin, from Taian City, Shandong province, was arrested in 2001 and sent to No. 1 Female Labor Camp in Jinan City. Two days before her release, she was beaten for several hours and forcibly injected with four bottles of drugs that damage the central nervous system, leading to numbness of the body, swelling of the face, severe memory loss, anorexia, and dizziness. When she was released, the guards told the family, “Watch out for her and don’t let her go by herself, or her life will be at risk.” However, she died nine days later due to failure of her nervous system.
Li Zhongming, from Luzhou City, Sichuan province, was saying out loud “Falun Dafa is good! Truthfulness, compassion, forbearance is good!” when she was arrested from her home in 2011. Her shouts attracted the attention of people, who saw police officers injecting something into Li’s arms. Immediately, she could not speak; her mouth and tongue became stiff as saliva dripped from her mouth.
Gao Yumin, a police officer from Fuxin City, Liaoning province, was previously involved in persecuting Falun Gong practitioners. However, after he learned more about the spiritual system and the CCP’s propaganda against it, he started practicing it too; like any other adherent, he too was arrested and severely tortured. Two months before his 3 1/2-year term expired, he was injected with a high dose of nerve-damaging drugs, rendering his intelligence to that of a 3-year-old child. His family later found through the urine sample test that the concentration of the drug in his body was so high that it could poison him.
Uyghur men and women detained in Xinjiang re-education camps in China are forcibly given drugs that can negatively affect their fertility.
Omir Bekli, a Kazakhstan national born in Xinjiang, told The Epoch Times how Uyghur men, including himself, were forced to take a pill daily “to stop their sexual feelings forever.” Bekli, who was detained for six months in 2017, said that he “survived” by hiding the pill under his tongue and spitting it out later.
“That pill makes people seem crazy, insane, and as if they don’t know what they’re doing. They just do as they’re told. It’s as if they’re high. You can see they’re not normal,” he said.
Uyghur Omir Bekli, 42, a former detainee in Xinjiang, China. (Courtesy of Omir Bekli)
Gulbakhar Jalilova, a Uyghur and Kazakhstan national who was detained for 15 months in an internment camp in Xinjiang, told The Epoch Times that one fellow inmate died after being injected.
“She was injected but her body was still warm, and other girls were ordered to wash her body. She just died like that in front of me,” she said.
Gulbakhar added that they were given unknown medicine every day and injected with a drug every month. “The injection makes you feel like you have no memory,” she said. “You don’t miss your family, you don’t feel like you want to get out. You feel nothing—it’s a very strange feeling.”
Businesswoman Gulbakhar Jalilova, 54, a former Uyghur detainee in Xinjiang, China. (Supplied by Gulbakhar Jalilova)
A house Christian from Sichuan province was detained for 10 months in 2018, after the church was raided. While in detention, he was locked in solitary confinement and became suicidal, leading him to bang himself against the wall.
Once, when he was “groggy” and couldn’t open his eyes, a few police officers grabbed him and pinned him to the ground, he told Radio Free Asia (RFA). “They injected me with some drug, and brought me back to consciousness,” he said.
Human-rights activists such as lawyers have also been subjected to forced medications.
Jiang Tianyong, a prominent human rights lawyer in China, was forced to take an unidentified medication twice a day while detained in prison in 2018. His wife told RFA that the drugs had caused his memory to deteriorate. ChinaAid reported in its Annual Persecution Report 2020 that Jiang’s vision was also affected.
Beijing human-rights lawyer Jiang Tianyong. (The Epoch Times)
The Deep State Cabal inside the DOJ and FBI went out of their way to hinder the investigation of Hunter Biden’s laptop just weeks before the 2020 Presidential election. By blocking the disastrous news, it kept America in the dark and aided Biden’s so-called victory.
When America was being distracted with COVID, mandates, lockdowns, and BLM riots, our freedom was being taken away without most people noticing because our government was conspiring against us.
How can we trust our so-called “top law-enforcement” agency to do their job when they actively hid Hunter’s investigation in a RESTRICTED SUBFOLDER on their network?
Now Biden’s handpicked Attorney General has no problem turning a blind eye to the actions of the Biden family. This isn’t just refusing to investigate Hunter’s laptop, this is ACTIVELY HIDING EVIDENCE so no one else would investigate.
That’s why you and I must continue to stand up to them.
We need to let these Deep State hooligans know that we’re going to do the job they were supposed to do. I’m opening up a congressional investigation into the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop and exposing the criminality of Hunter and the Big Guy. I told you my blood is boiling, right?
If the DOJ didn’t cover up Hunter’s crimes and the intelligence officials didn’t peddle the lie that Hunter’s Laptop was “Russian Disinformation,”Donald Trump might still be President.
The 18-month-long nightmare we all have been living under Biden’s illegitimate reign would not have happened.
No hyper-inflation. No borrowing trillions of dollars to pay for Marxist social programs. No baby formula shortages or selling of oil reserves to Hunter’s friends in China.
That’s what the DOJ took away from us when they covered for the Biden family’s criminal enterprise.
Here’s the problem. The Swamp knows I’m a woman of my word. They know that I will not rest until Congress finally investigates Hunter and impeaches Joe Biden.
That’s why they have been working overtime to make sure I’m not in Congress after November. From filing lawsuits to kick me off the ballot to donating millions to my Democrat opponent, I’m having everything AND the kitchen sink thrown at me.
Do you really think Nancy Pelosi has ignored the behavior from AOC and the Jihad Squad by mistake?
Do you think the Democrats accidentally forgot to sanction their own member who gave the middle finger on National TV to GOP Members of Congress at the Congressional Baseball game the other day?
Somehow no one is being held accountable for their actions… except me. Because in Washington, some people do as they’re told while I’m fighting to do what Americans expect from their duly elected Representatives—SERVE THE PEOPLE!
That’s why we can’t let Hunter and Brandon get away with it simply because I wasn’t there to lead the charge in Congress. Help me win so I can investigate Hunter and impeach Joe Biden! Please donate today.
Thank you. God Bless America. Marjorie Taylor Greene Congresswoman (R-GA)
Executives at CNN’s parent company are struggling to set a new direction for the network amid declining viewership and the lowest profits in years, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
With former President Donald Trump mostly out of the political picture, CNN has struggled to retain an audience that tuned in for a reliable stream of partisan content directed against Trump.
It has had an average primetime viewership of 639,000 this quarter, a 27 percent drop from a year ago.
The network’s ratings trail even those of MSNBC, which itself has seen a decline in primetime viewership of 23 percent, according to the Times.
Meanwhile, Fox News — the only large media company in the United States generally critical of Joe Biden — has increased its viewership, with a primetime increase of 1 percent relative to 2021.
Executives now expect CNN to make a profit of $950 million this year, well short of the original goal of $1.1 billion, the Times reported.
That would be the network’s lowest yearly profit since before the network reinvented itself with 24/7 criticism of Trump in 2016.
Executives of the media company Discovery have sought to set a new course for CNN after merging with the network’s former parent company, WarnerMedia, earlier this year.
Warner Bros. Discovery management wanted CNN to eschew the network’s “red-hot liberal opining” and instead focus on hard news, Axios reported in February.
Some of the network’s most partisan commentators, such as Brian Stelter and Jim Acosta, are on shaky ground, according to a report in June.
Chris Licht, an experienced television news executive appointed as CNN’s chairman after the departure of Jeff Zucker, has faced questions about his long-term plans for the network.
Some of Licht’s advisers have suggested that CNN sell sponsorships to tech corporations and other advertisers, potentially jeopardizing the network’s claims of editorial independence free of corporate influences, the Times reported.
CNN also is considering expanding its operations in China, a country where freedom of speech is severely curtailed by the communist government.
The collapse of failed streaming service CNN+ has taken a chunk out of the network’s profits. Some personalities the company hired for the service came at a significant expense.
The Times said the network “finds itself facing big questions about how it can continue to expand its business with its moonshot streaming service dead and the traditional TV business in structural decline.”
Warner Bros. Discovery could implement wide-ranging cuts at CNN if the network’s bottom line doesn’t improve.
Licht emphasized at a recent meeting that the network wasn’t considering job layoffs.
“No one has said to me, ‘You’re going to have to go cut this,’” he told employees, according to the Times.
“I think there’s an acute understanding that they don’t know our business,” Licht said of Warner Bros. Discovery executives.
Why do the ugliest protest abortion? What are the odds they would ever need one? [US Patriot]
The Atlanta City Council on Monday voted unanimously to allocate $300,000 in taxpayer dollars for a local organization to fund abortions for the city’s residents, an attempt to get around Georgia’s pro-life laws.
Access Reproductive Care-Southeast, which will receive the money, provides “funding and logistical support” to women seeking abortions. Atlanta’s city government passed the measure to provide abortion funding in anticipation of Georgia’s fetal heartbeat bill, which will ban most abortions after six weeks. Because of the bill, Access Reproductive Care-Southeast will likely use the money to subsidize out-of-state travel for abortions.
The Atlanta measure also handicaps investigations of abortion facilities, saying that “no city funds shall be used to record and/or investigate reports of abortion care” and that police should “place reports of abortion-related care at the lowest possible priority.”
Atlanta is one of several blue cities in red states that have tried to evade pro-life state laws. A group of prosecutors funded by Democratic megadonor George Soros in June signed a letter pledging to flout abortion laws.
Councilwoman Liliana Bakhtiari, who sponsored the Atlanta measure, cited racism and inflation as two reasons the city has to subsidize abortions.
“Some of the legislation we see coming down from the states will predominantly impact people of color,” Bakhtiari told Fox 5 Atlanta. “Cost of living is at an all-time high, inflation rates are through the roof.”
Pro-life advocate Suzanne Guy told CBS46 Atlanta that abortion is not the answer.
“Women deserve real help, real hope, and real resources, and [the Atlanta measure] is not real help for women,” Guy said.
Mass shootings are extremely rare in America. But you wouldn’t know that if you listened to politicians and much of the media. Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said in a recent Senate hearing on gun control that there had been 309 mass shootings in America so far this year. CNN reported that “U.S. mass shootings are on pace to match last year—the worst ever.”
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said on the floor that there were 13 mass shootings across the country in just one weekend. Major media outlets like The New York Times, NBC News, and ABC News all reported on the—allegedly—“hundreds” of mass shootings this year.
All of this sounds like a national crisis and terrifying to the public, but fewer than 100 people a year are killed in mass shootings in America. While the horrific murder of young children in their school in Uvalde and the innocent people killed in a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park are terrible tragedies, those events do not mean people are at a high risk of being mass shooting victims.
The way in which politicians who want more gun control bills deliberately scare people about mass shootings is by citing a made-up definition and using statistics from an unofficial database called the Gun Violence Archive.
“Obviously, they are trying to broaden the definition to get as large a number as they can to scare the public,” said Alan M. Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, said in an interview. “But the public cares more about stopping these incidents before they happen. The way to prevent them is not to take away people’s Second Amendment rights, but to make sure those people don’t get the guns to start with—and that is where we are failing.”
Defining ‘Mass Shooting’
The standard government definition of “mass shooting” is four or more people killed in a public place who are chosen indiscriminately.
This definition, crafted by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Center (CRS) in 2013 (pdf), doesn’t count domestic violence and gang or drug-related violence because CRS explained those crime activities already have “federal policies, law enforcement structures, and laws tailored in many instances to specifically address them.” The definition matters for law enforcement and others who study and report on crime and look for solutions.
But then unofficial groups started making up new definitions for “mass shootings” that changed the methodology for counting them, which made the numbers higher. Mass shootings leads to more gun control legislation and increased media attention, according to a Harvard University study.
The left-wing magazine “Mother Jones” has a widely cited database, and it made the definition as three or more killed, which of course increases the data. It also includes domestic violence killings, which CRS explained should not be included because “a killer’s relationship to his or her victims is important” when “driven by a desire for revenge and/or power.” Those two changes in the definition have doubled its count for 2022.
“This oversimplification of ‘mass shootings’ treats all incidents as the same problem when they are different issues that require different solutions,” said Mark Oliva, managing director of public affairs for the National Shootings Sports Foundation, which lobbies for gun companies, told The Epoch Times. “This is what is seized upon by those calling for bans and complete disarmament of law-abiding citizens. The answer they turn to is getting rid of all guns, even for those who obey the law.”
Gun Violence Archive
The biggest change came when the Gun Violence Archive (GVA) changed the definition in its widely cited online database. It considers a “mass shooting” any incident in which there are “four victims shot”—not killed.
Also, it includes the crime categories the CRS said are not relevant.
“The Gun Violence Archive’s definition of ‘mass shooting’ can be misleading since it counts among their numbers gang-related crimes, officer-involved cases, and self-defense usages,” said Oliva. “That leads to a much larger figure being used by Gun Violence Archive, but presents the information without context. This can be confusing for readers since many accept the information as an instance of a lone individual preying on multiple people. That isn’t always the case, especially when looking at gang-related and drug-related incidents.”
GVA did not respond to a request for comment about its methodology. However, when the group’s executive director, Mark Bryant, was asked by the Second Amendment Foundation about the media’s “overhyping and misuse of his data,” Bryant responded, “If the numbers are misleading, the journalist didn’t do their homework.” He added that “When a journalist uses the mass-shooting numbers as their lead, they’re not looking at the whole situation.”
Mass Shooting Statistics
The Rand Corporation did a study on the various groups that count mass shootings and looked at how their definitions changed the results. In 2019, the seven main trackers reported mass shootings for the year ranged wildly from six to 503. Those same groups reported victims of mass shootings that year were as far apart as 60 and 628.
The government does not track mass shootings every year. The FBI releases an annual report on “active shooters” which it defines as one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area. There were 61 active shooter incidents in 2021 and 40 in 2020.
But for mass shootings, the first statistics came from the CRS report in 2013. It looked at the previous three decades and identified a total of 78 public mass shootings that claimed 547 lives.
This year, the Department of Justice released a database of mass shootings in a report from the National Institute of Justice and a group called “The Violence Project.” The database, which can be downloaded by request, shows a total of 176 mass shootings from 1966 to 2021 with a total of 1,259 people killed. That is an annual mean of 23 victims of mass shootings in 55 years.
This graphic shows the data for the most recent 10 years from DoJ and the Violence Project. You can see there have been a total of 55 mass shootings and 516 victims in a decade. (The total number of victims was 108 in 2017 because of the horrific mass shooting in Las Vegas in which 58 people were killed.)
Then there are the GVA statistics. It says there have been 369 mass shootings so far in 2022. It reports there were 692 mass shootings in 2021, 610 in 2020, and 417 in 2019. Even if you were to take all the fatal homicides that the GVA calls “mass shootings” for 2022, there were 379 victims.
Now that so much of the media use the GVA numbers, there is more political and media attention on the rare events. Mass shootings get drastically more focus than the bigger issue of the enormous homicide and crime spike in America. Victims of mass shootings are a tiny percentage of all people killed by firearms each year, as seen in the following graphic.
Media Hype Over Mass Shootings
“It bleeds, it leads” is a common saying in the news business to describe how crime is good for ratings. This is partly why the media has been doing such extensive coverage of the three mass shootings this year in Buffalo, Texas, and Illinois.
While major TV networks use the GVA statistics now, the print media is not as sold into the new system.
The Washington Post is seemingly split on whether it will spin the statistics to create a more dramatic narrative or be accurate. Its Fact Checker column recently wrote that mass shootings occur six times a year on average (based on a 2021 study), but then the paper published a news story with the headline “300 mass shootings so far this year”—based on the GVA.
The “more than 300 mass shootings this year” story has been run repeatedly by media around the country because it sounds terrifying. But the stories don’t say how many victims are involved.
Before the GVA existed, the 2013 congressional report concluded that “While tragic and shocking, public mass shootings account for few of the murders related to firearms that occur annually in the United States.”
Mass shootings are horrible and terrifying for the communities where they occur. The Rand study said the impact of mass shootings is damaging to citizens’ mental health, anxiety, and perception of safety. However, the fact is that the risk of dying in one is extremely unlikely.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with a citation to the 2021 study.
Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, former head of military intelligence and national security adviser, will file a motion against a penalty imposed on him by the Pentagon for allegedly violating the Emolument Clause by giving a paid speech in Russia in 2015.
The Department of Defense decided to charge Flynn’s retirement account for nearly $40,000 he was paid in cash and in-kind services for attending and giving an on-stage interview at a 2015 anniversary event of the Russian state-sponsored RT television.
Flynn previously said his attendance was arranged by his speakers bureau. The Pentagon acknowledged that Flynn informed the department of his attendance, was briefed before, and debriefed after.
“I went and did a classified briefing prior. I did a classified briefing after, which means, you go get a counterintelligence assessment,” he told Balmakov, explaining that people from the relevant government agencies would convey what kind of information they’re looking for from the people he might talk to during the trip.
“Then you try to get the answers for those people. And you come back and you give those answers back,” he said. “That’s normal, you know. Diplomats, retired government officials, like me, would do stuff like that routinely.”
Now, the Pentagon says Flynn violated the Constitution’s Emolument Clause, which prohibits military members from receiving anything of value from foreign governments without authorization.
Flynn said he’s planning to file a motion against the penalty.
“We’ve got to do things by letter, right? And it comes at a legal cost. I mean, this is what they do. They tried to wear us out—all of us. They’re going to try to wear the American people out,” he said.
The RT event was visited by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who briefly sat next to Flynn at a table before giving his speech and leaving, several other attendees previously told The Epoch Times.
Flynn’s attendance was later used by the FBI to open a counterintelligence case against him as part of the Crossfire Hurricane probe of alleged collusion between Russia and the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump. The probe failed to establish any such collusion. The FBI used false information paid for by the campaign of Trump’s opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to get spying warrants on Trump campaign aide Carter Page. At least two of the warrants were invalid and resulted in illegal surveillance, the bureau acknowledged.
The Flynn case was riddled with contradictions and inconsistencies. FBI agents had already decided to close his case by early January 2017, but higher-ups intervened to keep it open on the justification that Flynn may have violated the Logan Act by discussing with foreign diplomats the priorities of the incoming administration during the transition period. DOJ officials at the time rejected the legal theory. The 1799 Logan Act, which prohibits unauthorized diplomacy, has never been successfully prosecuted. The government had only used it twice, more than a century ago.
Flynn was charged in 2017 with lying to the FBI during a January 2017 interview. He pleaded guilty later that year, but then withdrew his plea. The DOJ dropped the charge in 2020, after Attorney General William Barr ordered an outside prosecutor to review the case. Then-head of the District of Columbia U.S. Attorney’s Office, Timothy Shea, concluded that it seemed the FBI’s purpose for interviewing Flynn was to “elicit … false statements and thereby criminalize Mr. Flynn,” which isn’t a legitimate investigative purpose.
Then, in an unusual move, the judge trying the case refused to grant the dismissal, only dropping the case after Trump pardoned Flynn.
Flynn is now suing the FBI and the Department of Justice for their alleged efforts to oust him as Trump’s national security adviser.
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly identified the prosecutor who made the conclusion regarding the dismissal of Michael Flynn’s case. The prosecutor was Timothy Shea. The Epoch Times regrets the error.
Republican lawmakers want to stop the agency from purchasing more
Apparently, the IRS needs a little firepower to help with those audits.
The IRS has stockpiled five million rounds of ammunition and spent $725,000 on bullets this year, according to Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, who has introduced a bill to block future ammunition purchases by the agency.
The Republican lawmaker announced his sponsorship of the Disarm the IRS Act in a July press release. The bill would ban the IRS from acquiring ammunition through direct purchase or otherwise. The bill awaits a potential vote in the House Ways and Means Committee.
Cosponsors of the bill included three additional U.S. House of Representative members: Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.), Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), and Marjorie Taylor Green (R-Ga.).
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) shakes hands with former U.S. President Donald Trump during a rally at the Banks County Dragway in Commerce, Ga., on March 26, 2022. (Megan Varner/Getty Images)
The issue drew national attention after Gaetz appeared on Fox News’ Jesse Waters Primetime last week, saying that the IRS had spent $750,000 in 2022 alone on ammunition.
“Call me old-fashioned, but I thought the heaviest artillery an IRS agent would need would be a calculator, not $725,000 worth of ammunition,” Gaetz said during his appearance on Fox News.
Other bill cosponsors took to social media, questioning the need for a heavily armed tax agency.
“Why is Biden trying to weaponize the IRS?” Rep. Jeff Duncan posted on Twitter on July 7, adding that while the IRS builds up its arsenal, citizen Americans face ammunition shortages.
Rep. Gosar commented on Twitter July 14 that it was time to disarm “this band of highwaymen and stop them from taking our money under the threat of violence.”
While people may not think of the IRS needing weapons and ammunition, it has a criminal investigation division with armed law enforcement to pursue tax felons.
A 2018 report from the Government Accountability Office said the IRS’s Criminal Investigation Division had 2,148 law enforcement officers, 4,461 weapons—including 15 fully automatic firearms—and 5.05 million rounds of ammunition.
According to the Officer Down Memorial Page, four officers with the IRS have died since 1989 from medical conditions or accidents. None was firearm related.
Government Amassing Firepower
But the IRS isn’t the only governmental agency building up massive caches of guns and bullets.
OpenTheBooks.com, a nonprofit government watchdog group, released a report called “The militarization of the U.S. Executive Agencies” in December 2020, detailing how agencies that people wouldn’t normally associate with law enforcement were stockpiling weapons and ammunition.
In this photo illustration, a Rock River Arms AR-15 rifle is seen with ammunition in Miami, Fla., on Dec. 18, 2012. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
The Environmental Protection Agency owns 600 guns. At the same time, special agents at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration are equipped with machine guns and AR15s. Even the Smithsonian Institution employed 620-armed “special agents,” up from zero officers in 2008, according to the report.
Adam Andrzejewski, CEO & founder of OpenTheBooks.com, told The Epoch Times via email that the public should question why these agencies are armed to the teeth. Not only do they wield legal power, but they are also amassing firepower.
“Just who are the federal agencies preparing to battle?” Andrzejewski wrote.
Andrzejewski said there is no public purpose for rank and file, paper-pushing federal agencies to load up on guns, ammunition, and military-style equipment.
“Our data shows that the federal government has become a gun show that never adjourns. Taxpayers need to tell Washington that police powers belong primarily to cities and states, not the feds,” he stated.
Elected officials are often in the spotlight, so when they do something that’s blatantly wrong – and it’s caught on camera – their careers hit a serious roadblock.
New Jersey councilwoman Amy DeGise was involved in a hit-and-run incident on July 19, which involved plowing into a bicyclist and speeding away from the scene of the crime.
That might’ve been the mistake that cost her everything — because now her colleagues are demanding that she resign.
DeGise’s black Nissan Rogue rammed into the bicycle of UberEats delivery man Andrew Black at 8 a.m. The accident happened at an intersection and the impact was so intense, Black’s shoes came off.
His bicycle was obviously wrecked as well, and he flipped painfully onto the pavement.
Despite this, however, DeGise didn’t stick around and see if Black was okay. She fled the scene and the situation has gotten plenty of attention on social media networks.
The video is also making the rounds; traffic cameras caught the disturbing incident clearly:
It seems as if DeGise didn’t even try to slow down, and then she never stopped.
As for Black, he explains the accident as follows to HudPost:
I come up to a light, and I have the right-of-way, and right before I get hit, I look left, suddenly I just hear ‘Ba!’
And then I just get hit, and then I hit the hood, and I roll over, and I’m in such pain.
However, it looks like Black isn’t correct in this case, as it appears DeGise had the right of way. Even so, it’s certainly not a good idea to leave the scene of an accident, especially when personal injury is involved.
Afterward, she was reportedly given a summons for leaving the scene and failing to report it, so this has all the makings of a definite scandal.
DeGise’s colleagues are also calling for her to step down. As Councilman Frank Gilmore told WNBC:
Past being elected, it’s a living human being – it was really hard for me to witness that.
It’s a matter of public trust, it’s a matter of respect, it’s a matter of human decency.
Jersey City councilmember James Solomon went a step further and said he was “horrified” watching the video. He added that DeGise is an elected official and “we’re supposed to hold ourselves to a higher standard.”
Solomon agreed that she should resign, as did former Councilman Chris Gadsden, who said on Twitter that “we have no other choice but to ask her to step down.”
Strangely, this isn’t DeGise’s first brush with the law.
Back in November, she parked illegally and was caught driving with a registration that had expired in 2019. Her car was ultimately hit because it was parked in the wrong place.
Police body cam footage came out shortly after, and it shows DeGise trying to get out of it by saying she had a relative who was “an officer,” and then saying she “was endorsed by the police in Jersey City.”
Unfortunately for DeGise, the officer wasn’t buying any of it, and he impounded the vehicle and gave her the ticket.
Chances are, she’s not going to get off lightly after this hit-and-run incident, either. And no matter what happens, it seems likely that her career as a councilwoman is coming to a close.
Key Takeaways:
New Jersey Councilwoman Amy DeGise was involved in a hit-and-run incident on July 19, where she left the scene.
After the footage came out, several of her fellow elected officials in the state called for her to resign.
It isn’t the first time DeGise was involved in a traffic violation, either.
Vera Sharav was only 3 years old when her world collapsed.
She and her family were chased out of Romania and herded into a concentration camp in Ukraine during World War II, where they were left to wait, and starve.
“The cloud of death was always there,” Sharav told The Epoch Times.
Weekly, a list determined who would be sent where; whether it be a death or slave labor camp, she said.
While at the camp, she said her father died of typhus when she was 5, which had been widespread throughout the camps because of the cold and malnutrition.
After three years at the camp, she was rescued in 1944, she said.
“My mother got wind that a few orphans would be transported out of the camp, so she lied and said I was an orphan to save my life, and that’s how I wound up leaving,” Sharav said.
This began what she called her odyssey as a child without parents, left to her own intuition and keen critical assessment of others’ intentions.
“I had to assess who I could trust to take care of me,” she said.
While on a train to the Port of Constanta, Romania, where there were three boats awaiting to take groups of people to Palestine, she befriended a family. However, upon arrival, she found herself assigned a boat with other orphan children that would separate her from the family with whom she felt she could trust. So she rebelled.
“No matter what, I could not be convinced to get on that boat,” she said. “Miraculously, in the end, they gave in to me.”
Seasick, she fell asleep that night, only to wake up to find that the boat with the orphans had been torpedoed by who she said she found out decades later to have been the Russians.
Though she carried guilt for having survived, she was grateful she resisted because that resistance kept her alive, she said.
“I do not obey authority, and it saved my life.”
Weaponized Medicine
These memories returned in 2020 during the web of COVID-19 restrictions that spun out of control with the help of media propaganda, she said.
“So now, when people are obeying authority mindlessly, giving up their rights to make decisions about their own lives and what goes into their own bodies, I think back to that time,” she said.
Today, Sharav is a medical activist and founder of the Alliance for Human Research Protection, a network of lay people and professionals who work to uphold humanitarian values and ethical standards established in the Hippocratic Oath, the Nuremberg Code, and the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights.
Both Sharav and Schara discussed with The Epoch Times what they saw as parallels between the National Socialist regime in Germany and the current medical directives being carried out in the United States through government funding.
Since the death of his 19-year-old daughter Grace in a hospital in 2021, after having been injected with a combination of drugs that he found out later was part of a federal hospital protocol, Schara called what was happening “genocide.” He has been crusading to tell his daughter’s story and network with others who have had a similar experience while bringing attention to the protocols that he believes amounted to the murder of his daughter, who had Down syndrome.
Under the Nazi regime, Sharav said, medicine was weaponized, as it has been today.
Though the Jews were the primary target, she said, the first medically murdered victims were disabled German infants and children under the age of 3.
This later expanded the operation—titled T4 for the street address of the program’s central office in Berlin—to the disabled of all ages, including the mentally ill and senior citizens, Sharav said.
“The Nazis called them worthless eaters,” she said. “T4 was a concerted effort to be rid of what their propaganda called the ‘economic burden.’”
Schara pointed to a 2021 Medicare Trustee’s Report, which evaluates the cost of keeping the elderly and disabled federally funded.
“Thirty-nine percent of that federal budget goes to those two groups right now, which is $2.2 trillion a year,” Schara said.
On page 11 of the report (pdf), there is a call for “substantial changes” to address financial challenges.
“The sooner solutions are enacted, the more flexible and gradual they can be,” the report states.
For Schara, the implication, while not overtly stated, suggests a call for eugenics that was supported by academic elites early in U.S. history, and later adopted by Nazi Germany.
Ten years after he took power, Adolph Hitler launched his genocide program that had been introduced in incremental steps with the help of propaganda portraying the regime as heroes, Sharav said.
“What happened to Grace, and what happened to many disabled and elderly in Western Europe, Australia, Canada, and the United States in March and April of 2020 was medical murder,” Sharav said.
‘Built on a Lie’
Genocide isn’t new to the United States, Sharav said, as it was Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Oliver Wendell Holmes who voted in favor of the 8-1 majority opinion in the 1921 case Buck v. Bell, which upheld the Virginia Sterilization Act of 1924 and the forced sterilization of Carrie Buck, who was alleged to be mentally defective.
Holmes said it would be better to prevent the mentally disabled from being born than to allow them to “sap the strength of the state” or “let them starve for their imbecility.”
“The principle that sustains compulsory vaccinations is broad enough to cover cutting Fallopian tubes,” the justice wrote in his opinion. “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”
Carrie Buck, however, was never actually mentally disabled, Sharav said.
“Arguments for eugenics are always built on a lie,” Sharav said. “But it’s an ideology that continues to poison public health policies.” And he blames this type of thinking for the medical decisions that ultimately contributed to Grace’s death.
‘The Banality of Evil’
As he continues to try to wrap his mind around what happened to his daughter, Schara says he gained some insight from the writings of Holocaust survivor Hannah Arendt and her concept of the “banality of evil.”
“It opened up a whole different view of the world for me,” Schara said.
Sharav’s experience made her familiar with the concept. The banality of evil is the normalization of mass murder by making it a bureaucratic routine that is handed down as orders through the chain of command to the person who pulls the switch, gives the injection, or turns on the gas, she said.
“No one called it murder,” Sharav said. “The Nazis were very adept at propaganda and language. The Jews were called ‘spreaders of disease,’ not unlike the epithets thrown at those who didn’t take the jab.”
Throughout 2021, the spread of COVID-19 was blamed on “the pandemic of the unvaccinated,” a phrase that was used by Joe Biden and governors such as North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper.
“The whole language of it is dehumanizing,” Sharav said.
‘A Slippery Slope’
Schara applies the concept to the fact that 67 percent of Down syndrome children are aborted in the United States, he said.
“Doctors encourage the mother to get an amnio (amniocentesis) test, and if the test shows Down syndrome or another disability that would complicate the parent’s life, he encourages an abortion,” Schara said.
What Sharav said she’s seen in an unholy union when medicine gets into bed with the government.
“The Hippocratic Oath goes out the window,” she said.
The pledge to “do no harm” got replaced with allegiance to “the greater good,” Sharav said.
The question then remains, who has the authority to decide what’s best for the greater good, Sharav challenged.
What supports the greater good is having respect for the individual, Sharav said, and to pursue policies that advocate for the many over the individual is to open the door to medical practices that will cause harm.
“Look at what Big Pharma is doing now to children, aggressively pursuing them to be jabbed when they aren’t at risk at all from COVID-19,” she said.
It’s a slippery slope that—with the help of advanced technology—society is sliding down rapidly compared to the snail’s pace that it took for Hitler to implement his “Final Solution,” Schara said.
“We’re headed there exceptionally fast,” Schara said. “Today, the ‘Final Solution’ is the reduction of the entire human population under the ‘Sustainable Agenda’ of Agenda 2030.”
Unlike the physical camps that required ink tattoos for identification and guards to manage the prisoners, the new prisons are digital, Sharav said, managed remotely by surveillance through smartphones and cities.
“With smart technology, you can manage billions all at once,” she said. “It’s chilling.”
It’s hard for many to fathom that an elite few would conspire to cause widespread harm, Sharav said.
“People will say, ‘They made a mistake; it was an accident.’ But no, the elite, just like the Nazis, have this arrogance in which they believe they are superior and therefore entitled to rule the rest of us because they think we are inferior,” Sharav said.
Control vs. Faith
Schara said his concern is with an elite ruling class that is godless, believing only in what is measurable and controllable.
He emphasizes his faith in God as a powerful weapon to combat the dark agendas that have escalated beyond the comprehension of the average person, working 60 hours a week just to make ends meet.
“We should not fall trap to the false light that Satan will eventually ride in on to steal more souls. God’s true light protects those who believe,” he said.
“We the People” can reclaim sovereignty by learning to trust in intuition, experience, and the ability to assess lies from truth, Sharav said.
“Stop watching mainstream media,” Sharav said. “They’re all reading from the same script. They have bombarded people with fearmongering, which is exactly the same thing that the Nazis did. That’s how they controlled the population: through fear.”
For Sharav, the mission that has been laid at the feet of people throughout the world is the same as it was for her as a child: “Resist. Wake up. Stop obeying.”
Despite a mother of five’s desperate appeal to the University of Michigan (UM) hospital for a life-saving heart transplant, the state-run facility will not budge from its refusal to consider her for surgery until she is vaccinated against COVID-19.
The university hospital, which has deep ties to vaccine maker Pfizer, also denied 35-year-old Katie Shier’s application for a religious exemption.
In a recent, heart-wrenching email about her condition, Katie Shier describes how the pump she relies on to keep her heart beating has become engulfed in a bacteria that is no longer responding to the series of antibiotics she’s been prescribed by University of Michigan doctors.
As a result, Shier has been repeatedly hospitalized for blood infections. She and her husband Ron are worried it will eventually lead to sepsis, which can be fatal.
“It just feels like no one at UM cares what they are doing to us and to our kids,” Ron Shier told The Epoch Times.
Ron Shier, who works full-time as a mental health counselor, said his children, who range in age from 3 to 11, are constantly worried that mommy is “not coming home from the hospital.”
The University of Michigan (UM) has strong ties to Pfizer, dating back to at least 2008 when it purchased the pharmaceutical company’s giant Ann Arbor facility and all its content.
According to a 2008 press release from the university, the college quickly recruited 13 Pfizer scientists after taking over its facility with most of them still working for the state college today. Ten of them specifically were hired to staff the UM’s College of Pharmacy.
David Canter, senior associate vice president and executive director of UM’s North Campus Research Complex, ran Pfizer pharmaceutical research operation in Ann Arbor; and Scott Larsen, who received the Pfizer Achievement Award in 2007, today is a research professor of medicinal chemistry at the university.
Several executive-level Pfizer employees are also university alumni including Pfizer director Lynne Pauer and 2020 grad Sarah Kusisto, a senior manager at Pfizer’s Portage, Michigan, location.
Also, last year, Pfizer was among three companies that the university’s Tauber Institute for Global Operations chose to receive its annual longevity awards.
According to UM’s website the award is given “in recognition” to companies “for their commitment to operations education through their active participation in Tauber team projects.”
Pfizer also remains a major employer in Michigan, with its largest manufacturing plant located in Kalamazoo where it makes its prescription drug Paxlovid, a pill that the FDA approved last year for the treatment of COVID.
Katie Shier provided The Epoch Times with a notarized authorization to speak to UM about her case. The authorization was sent to the university’s transplant team, clinical ethics services, and CEO Marschall Runge with a request for comment about her case.
It was also sent to the eight-member Board of Regents, elected officials who govern the public hospital. None of them responded.
On July 29, Mary Masson, director of public relations at the university, released a one-line statement by email to The Epoch Times in response to Shier’s case, but refused to answer any questions, even refusing to provide The Epoch Times with her phone number.
“Michigan Medicine does not discuss pending litigation,” was the only response from the taxpayer-funded hospital.
The Epoch Times asked the hospital for a copy of its COVID vaccine mandate policy, if it applied to transplant patients only, and under what circumstance does it grant or consider granting a religious exemption from it.
The Epoch Times never inquired about any pending litigation.
Last month, the Pacific Justice Institute did file a court complaint on behalf of Shier and another university transplant patient against the state college’s Board of Regents seeking declaratory relief from its transplant center’s COVID vaccine policy and its refusal to consider both Shier and the other patient’s request for a religious exemption from it.
The other patient, who is in need of a kidney transplant is not nearly as critical as Shier.
Both were on the list for a transplant but were removed after the university adopted a new policy that the COVID vaccine would be required in order to stay on the list.
The complaint charges that regents “have violated their duty of care to the patients by imposing arbitrary and capricious dictates and effectively giving patients a choice to die or to submit to government-inspired diktats that are not for a legitimate medical purpose.”
Katie Shier told The Epoch Times she is strongly opposed to the vaccine because she believes it is dangerous and will lead to cause her already frail heart, which is functioning at only 7 percent of its full capacity, to fail.
She said she believes their concerns are validated by the growing number of people who have reported experiencing heart problems after getting a COVID injection.
“It’s just an evil experiment on humanity,” said Shier, ” and I don’t want to be part of it.”
Democrats continue to say that “democracy is in danger” if voters don’t give liberals the majority in November, but violence by the left has defined the summer politically so far, conservative observers have told The Epoch Times.
As Democrats continue to use the Jan. 6 Committee hearings over the summer to make a special case that somehow conservatives pose a danger to the country, the violence from the left has been ongoing, one victim told The Epoch Times.
The issues affronting progressives are numerous, including the reversal of Roe v. Wade, non-action on a climate change scheme, and the lack of momentum of progressive policies under Joe Biden, which stand out as sources of anger and mounting frustration for leftist activists.
In June, a pro-life pregnancy center in Buffalo, New York, was burned out, allegedly by the radical leftwing, pro-abortion, militant group Jane’s Revenge, said the health pregnancy center called CompassCare, which helps women keep their babies rather than abort them.
“We actually saw the type of [violent] Jane’s Revenge activity happening around our Buffalo location that they were fomenting with their followers” prior to the firebombing of the clinic Rev. James Harden, CEO of CompassCare, told The Epoch Times.
“So we reported it to local law enforcement as well as the FBI two weeks in advance of the firebombing,” added Harden, who said Molotov cocktails were used to set the blaze to the CompassCare clinic.
Harden blames local and national progressive politicians for the violence, calling measures that the state of New York have taken under Democratic Gov. Kathleen Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James to investigate crisis pregnancy centers like CompassCare as “essentially joining Jane’s Revenge in attacking pro-life pregnancy centers.”
A message written on the wall of a pro-choice pregnancy resource center that was set on fire in Longmont, Colorado, on June 25, 2022. (Longmont Police Department)
Jane’s Revenge
The Jane’s group said that they were also responsible for attacks on pro-family clinics in Dearborn, Michigan, Asheville, North Carolina, and more than a dozen other sites around the country in response to the Supreme Court’s repeal of Roe v. Wade.
“You have seen us in Madison WI, Ft. Collins CO, Reisertown MA, Olympia WA, Des Moines IA, Lynwood WA, Washington DC, Ashville NC, Buffalo NY, Hollywood FL, Vancouver WA, Frederick MA, Denton TX, Gresham OR, Eugene OR, Portland OR, among others, and we work in countless locations invisibly,” said the group in a manifesto published on Abolition Media, an anarchist website.
So far, no arrests have been made in connection with any of the acts claimed by Jane’s Revenge manifesto, although the Catholic News Agency has reported that some youths have been arrested in acts of vandalism not associated with Jane’s Revenge.
Jason Rantz, a conservative talk show host in Seattle, told The Epoch Times that several churches and pro-life crisis pregnancy centers have been attacked in Washington state as well, with no arrests other than one that doesn’t seem to be connected to the abortion issue.
Like CompassCare’s Harden, Rantz makes no bones about pointing the finger for the violence at some progressive politicians, but not all.
“We had a story that I broke several weeks ago where a Democrat state Senator up for reelection … she produced a video that was celebrating the vandalism” against a pro-life billboard in Gorst, Washington.
“They don’t really hide their intent to promote this kind of violent response when they don’t get their way politically,” said Rantz.
Pro-abortion terrorist group Jane’s Revenge leaves threats at Harbor Church in Olympia, Washington on May 22, 2022. (Photo courtesy of Harbor Church)
2020 Redux?
Seattle was the scene of some of the worst violence during the Black Lives Matter protest and riots of the summer of 2020, with sections of the downtown area made unhabitable and unpoliceable for over a month.
While stopping short of calling the 2020 riots a dress rehearsal for today’s more targeted and politically-motivated violence, Rantz does think the violence in 2020 and today are connected in that Democrats think they are best served by allowing the violence to continue.
“I also think that as with the case in 2020, that a lot of the Democrats thought that they would benefit politically from the violence so they don’t want to get too involved” in calling for more rational means of political opposition.
U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh listens during the first day of his confirmation hearing in front of the U.S. Senate on Capitol Hill in Washington on Sept. 4, 2018. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
Targeted Assassination Attempt
The Buffalo center of CompassCare was burned out just days after a California man was arrested near the house of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in an alleged aborted effort to kill the conservative jurist.
Nicholas John Roske was arrested with a black tactical chest rig, and a tactical knife, along with a Glock 17, clips, ammunitions, and zip ties, according to the probable cause statement filed with the court.
The FBI said that Roske traveled cross-country in what they are now saying was an attempt to kill as many as three Supreme Court Justices.
Roske, 26, said that he was upset over the Supreme Court decision that reversed Roe v. Wade which returned the question of abortion back to individual states.
Roske also expressed concern that upcoming decisions by the nation’s highest court would tend to favor conservative views on the Constitution, said an FBI warrant obtained by Fox News.
‘Democracy in Danger’
According to talk show host Rantz, Democrats have become obsessed with the idea that merely having differing views on political issues of the day from those of Democrats somehow threatens the fabric of democracy.
That message was conveyed by Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-Va.), whose re-election campaign sent a handwritten postcard to at least one constituent warning that “Democracy is at stake this election day. Republicans are the problem.”
Postcard from Rep. Jennifer Wexton’s (D-Va.) campaign office sent to a local constituent. (Provided)
The postcard, obtained by The Epoch Times, appeared to have no identification, such as a signature, but just referred to the need to re-elect Wexton or democracy will be in danger. The flip side of the postcard was marked as having been sent by “Jennifer Wexton for Congress.”
Wexton is being opposed by GOP nominee and Vietnamese refugee, Hung Cao.
Cao, a retired special forces operator who left the Navy as a captain—one rank below the flag rank of admiral—took umbrage at the apparent suggestion by Wexton’s campaign that he would endanger democracy.
“Jennifer Wexton should immediately apologize for her campaign’s claims,” said a Cao campaign spokesman in a statement to The Epoch Times.
“Hung Cao has fought for our country honorably for 25 years. He’s put his life on the line for his fellow Americans to protect our constitution. Wexton ought to be ashamed of her campaign slandering an immigrant to this country who wore our uniform in combat,” added the campaign.
A police officer mans a shooting scene after a gunman opened fire on Republican members of Congress during a baseball practice near Washington in Alexandria, Va., on June 14, 2017. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters)
Congress Targeted
The Capitol Police stepped up security for this year’s Congressional Charity baseball game, citing threats by leftist climate activists who have threatened to disrupt the game if climate bills aren’t passed by Congress, or at least are on the verge of passing.
“The real violence being committed at this baseball game is by Congress, by Manchin, by his Republican allies and by everybody in Congress who’s failing to take action on climate change, therefore consigning millions of people to die and millions more livelihoods to be destroyed,” said Dan Sherrell, an organizer for the protest at the baseball game.
The threats came years after the game was targeted by a left-wing gunman in 2017, who opened fire on a practice field for the Congressional baseball game, critically wounding then-House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and three others before being killed by Capitol Police.
The 66-year-old former construction worker and Bernie Sanders supporter, James T. Hodgkinson, attempted to kill Scalise and others because he “hated Republicans,” according to a report by the Los Angeles Times.
Accepting Political Violence?
A pre-print of a study published in July, which has yet to be peer-reviewed, found that “[s]ubstantial minorities of the [US] population endorse violence, including lethal violence, to obtain political objectives,” with nearly 8 million people in the United States at least “somewhat willing” to kill others to advance their political goals.
Published at MedRxiv, the paper concentrated on concepts like QAnon, Donald Trump, stolen elections, and Western European traditions as justifications by conservatives who find political violence acceptable.
Yet the paper also found that the largest minority of people who feel political violence is justified are those who find race-based violence justifiable.
“More than a third of respondents (36.2%) reported that violence was at least sometimes justified ‘to prevent discrimination based on race or ethnicity,’” with nearly 10 million Americans saying that violence was always justified to prevent racial discrimination.
With the contemporary expansion of the meaning of words like “discrimination,” to encompass concepts such as “microaggressions,” it’s much easier to see how violence is becoming more commonplace in a future that appears bleak, observers say, even as progressive seek to further expand definitions to widen their dispute on conservatives.
“When you have Joe Biden, two weeks ago, asking Merrick Garland to investigate crisis pregnancy centers for fraud, it’s an all-out war on these pregnancy centers,” said Harden, who points out that they provide their services for free so fraud would be impossible—unless you redefine the meaning of the word fraud.
Harden was referring to a provision in a July 8 executive order “to protect people seeking reproductive health services from fraudulent schemes or deceptive practices.” Biden has appointed Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta to head up the Department of Justice’s task force on abortion. Gupta has been accused in the past of calling crisis pregnancy centers like the one Harden runs “fake clinics,” raising worries that the DOJ will try to shut down pro-life clinics under an expanded definition of fraud.
“It’s like a dystopian novel,” said Harden.
The Epoch Times has reached out to the White House and Hochul, James, and Wextons’ offices for comment.
A grassroots movement to get involved in the Republican party in an Arkansas county has been met with resistance from established seat holders who have argued that the process by which the new members won their seats wasn’t valid.
After 71 people voted out the current chair and delegate seats of the Pulaski County Republican Committee (PCRC) last month in Little Rock, Arkansas, state delegates at the Republican Party of Arkansas’ (RPA) state convention on July 23 voted in favor of the Republicans’ Credentials Committee’s decision to disqualify the new delegates for reasons those new delegates say are untrue.
The Complaint
Members of the PCRC alleged in their complaint (pdf) to the credentials committee that the election of delegates for the state convention held during the Pulaski County Convention on June 30 was fraught with irregularities.
They accused the newly elected chairperson, Lorri Justice, of having “no plan” while attempting a slate election with a preprinted list of delegates.
For the first set of ballots, they accused them of coding ballots for voting preference.
According to the complaint, the second and third set of ballots also contained errors, though the complaint alleges that despite the errors, Justice, whom they claim was acting on partiality, “allowed the ballots and the votes to continue so they would have their preferred slate of candidates in place.”
Response to the Complaint
In the response to the complaint (pdf) to the credentials committee, Justice wrote that the procedure was based on the recommendations given by officials within the convention as well as legal counsel.
All complaints were accommodated and resolved, with no complaints existing prior to the final ballot, she wrote.
On the accusation that the newly elected group had “no plan or process for proceeding with the election of delegates,” Justice called this “bellyaching,” and “not a real complaint.”
She called the accusation that she tried to run a slate election false.
“One committee member complained that another was making multiple nominations at once,” Justice said. “Notwithstanding that this was proper and not a slate election, the delay-intending buffoonery was fully accommodated, and nominations were made individually.”
In addition, she said the complaint that the ballots were coded was also false.
“Different fonts were inadvertently used on a draft ballot,” Justice wrote. “This was simply a clerical error that was corrected once we were made aware of it. The complained-of ballot was not used. All errors were corrected, and all complaints were accommodated prior to the actual ballot.”
On the accusation that she was not impartial, she said, “Not only is this false, but the complainants have also hidden from you that some signatories are involved in an internecine conflict between the North Pulaski Republican Women’s group and the Pulaski Women’s group, with the former upset about the changes in control of the Pulaski County Republican Party in favor of the latter.”
Justice called the complaint a manifestation of how the old guard of Arkansas Republicans have “lost their grip on the “county party.”
“So, rather than this being a genuine complaint, it reflects a family feud by disgruntled individuals who, like faded movie stars, are screaming over losing their spotlight,” Justice said.
Delegates at the Pulaski County Republican Committee on June 30, 2022. (Courtesy of Kenneth Wallis)
‘Clearly Not Wanted’
Justice told The Epoch Times that the purpose of hers and the groups’ decision to get involved was in response to a sense of activism that was stirred in the wake of a national climate that she said appears to have “spiraled out of control.”
“There was how COVID was handled, to the stolen election, and now we have inflation, and it’s really spurring people to get involved locally,” Justice said. “We can’t change anything in Washington, but we can make changes here in our own backyard.”
However, from the beginning, the established Republicans in the county put up a wall, Justice said.
“The attitude was very poor,” she said. “We were clearly not wanted in the Republican party, and they weren’t even trying to hide it.”
Like how Democrats operate, Justice said there were attempts at gaslighting and belittling.
On the night of the vote when they needed to print ballots, “there suddenly was no print paper,” and after they had initially won their seats as delegates, the former chair wouldn’t hand over the list of members.
The disappearance of the paper on which to print the ballots was just one in many examples of why the meeting lasted from 6 p.m. to 2:30 a.m., Justice said.
At the credentials committee hearing on Friday, July 22, the day before the state convention, Justice said she was the only one allowed in the building as the delegates whose legitimacy was being challenged were left outside with two armed guards blocking the door.
Kenneth Wallis, one of the delegates who took footage of the scene outside of the RPA’s building, recorded whom he told The Epoch Times was 2nd District Chair Melonaie Gullick using the American Flag to block him from filming the proceedings while having law enforcement tell them they can’t be on the property and threatening them with arrest.
“There were about 30 to 40 people there when I arrived being kept outside in the heat,” Wallis said. “We were dressed in business casual because it was our understanding that we would be able to testify, but instead they decided to lock us out.”
‘This Was About Power’
“There they were, members of the county Republican Party left outside in 103-degree heat, most of them elderly people, not a bunch of rabble-rousers,” Justice said.
During the hearing, Justice said it became clear that this wasn’t about the ballots.
Present throughout the vote was RPA leadership such as state Chairman Jonelle Fulmer, Secretary Julie Harris, Victory Director Seth Mays, and Gullick, Justice said.
“Anyone could have raised an objection that night,” she said. “I asked three times, and no one raised an objection. They waited until two days before the state convention to turn in this complaint. Our county convention had been over for two weeks. The final ballots had been approved and accepted by the body.”
Delegate Rick McKay told The Epoch Times that he witnessed “multiple critical edits” being made to the final ballot under Gullick’s supervision.
“So, the very moment she took that file that was given to her from the floor of the convention and took it upon herself to start editing it, she took responsibility for any mistakes that didn’t get corrected on the ballot that she was in opposition to,” McKay said.
The PCRC, the RPA, and Gullick didn’t respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.
‘It’s a Shame’
The bottom line, Justice said, is that the vote was legitimate.
“It was a good election,” she said. “It should have never been in question.”
According to Justice, however, the complaint isn’t about the legitimacy of the election, but about power.
“They didn’t like that these new people won,” Justice said. “They perceived it as a takeover.”
In the state convention that next day, Arkansas Republicans voted 303–295 to uphold the credentials committee’s disqualification of the delegates.
“Half the facts were presented,” Justice said, “and that’s what they drew from because that’s all they knew.”
Justice said she didn’t get the opportunity to speak at the state convention.
“So, they basically disenfranchised 71 people who were duly voted as delegates to the convention,” Justice said. “It’s a shame.”
Similar stories of established Republicans marginalizing new members have surfaced in other states such as Nebraska, where The Post Millennial reported that six Republicans in the state were told they weren’t welcome at the Republican Party’s state convention as division grows between Trump supporters, who are opposed to Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts, and the old guard, who support Ricketts.
Pulaski County Republican Committee, July 21, 2022. (Courtesy of Kenneth Wallis)
‘A Terrible Decision’
Sen. Alan Clark, who was at the state convention, told The Epoch Times that the vote to not seat the new delegates was “a terrible decision.”
“The majority of delegates who voted not to seat them did that based on the belief that rules were broken and because of the recommendation of the credentials committee,” Clark said.
However, the facts weren’t clear at the state convention, Clark said, and it’s only now becoming apparent that it was a fair election.
The old guard has always resisted new infusions of members, Clark said, but eventually those new groups, like the Tea Party, blend in with the old.
“We have lots of new enthusiastic conservatives coming into the party, and in some counties, they are taking over,” Clark said. “That’s how politics works. You need that new blood for the party to survive.”
When the old order gets shaken up, there will be some who are upset, Clark said.
“But we can’t win if we can’t embrace the new people coming in,” Clark said.
As an independent news organization dedicated to reporting the truth, The Epoch Times has been subjected to excessive censorship by Big Tech.
In the latest such incident, Twitter on July 28 censored all of our content by putting up a blockade to our website, describing it as “unsafe,” and encouraging users not to proceed.
Twitter’s actions—just like those by other tech giants such as Facebook and YouTube—specifically targeted the reach of our independent news and video content.
Twitter hasn’t responded to multiple requests for comment and appeal, nor has the company explained what led it to censor our content or what caused it to lift its blockage two days later following a public outcry.
While it remains unclear why Twitter targeted us, what is clear is that The Epoch Times is different from most other major news organizations, in that we dare to follow the stories where the facts lead.
In our Jan. 6 documentary, our reporters take an unvarnished look at the events of that day and present new witnesses and evidence that challenge the prevailing narratives. It provides extensive evidence of excessive use of force by police that broke protocol and policy, and raises questions on the lack of security that day. So far, the documentary has received more than half a million views on our EpochTV platform.
In recent years, there have been other major stories on which The Epoch Times, because of our independence and adherence to traditional journalism, has differed from other major news organizations, only to be proven right.
For example, The Epoch Times reported accurately on events surrounding allegations that then-candidate and later President Donald Trump had colluded with Russia. From day one, The Epoch Times reported on the facts and through our reporting uncovered significant problems with the FBI’s probe of Trump’s campaign, which included problematic conduct involving surveillance.
While other news organizations won Pulitzers for their articles suggesting collusion between the president and Russia, The Epoch Times was, in fact, correct in reporting that the allegations had no support—as confirmed through investigations by special counsel Robert Mueller and the Department of Justice inspector general, as well as the ongoing probe of the origins of the FBI’s investigation by special counsel John Durham.
The Epoch Times was also among the first to report on the possibility that the novel coronavirus was leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. Our April 2020 documentary on the subject was censored by Facebook. Today, a lab leak is now held as the most likely explanation for the spread of the virus, by both media organizations and many government officials.
The dangers of allowing platforms such as Twitter to take on the role of arbiter of the truth is that they, in many cases, are plainly wrong. The most prominent example was Twitter’s suppression of the New York Post over its reporting on a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden, the son of then-presidential candidate Joe Biden.
This censorship behavior, which is antithetical to the protections Big Tech receives under Section 230, has also raised concerns about social media platforms censoring content on behalf of the government. Most recently, a federal judge ordered the government to cooperate in a lawsuit that alleges behind-the-scenes efforts to target the dissemination of information of stories related to COVID-19—including its possible origins and alternative treatments—that didn’t fit the government’s narrative.
“Government can’t outsource its censorship to Big Tech,” Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt said.
Public Outcry
The public outcry against Twitter’s censorship of The Epoch Times was swift, with three U.S. senators publicly questioning the platform—which in recent years has repeatedly found itself in hot water for acts of censorship—over its targeting of the news organization.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) demanded that Twitter “explain itself for this outrageous act of censorship.”
Meanwhile, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) asked, “Where’s the respect for free speech and freedom of press, Twitter?”
“We all remember your biased censorship of [the New York Post] and how that ended for you,” Scott said.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) described the action by Twitter as “alarming.”
“Twitter is censoring [The Epoch Times] under the guise of ‘unsafe’ speech. Remember what happened the last time corporate media and big tech tried to censor my investigation on Hunter Biden corruption?” he wrote. “The truth always prevails.”
Kevin Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation, described Twitter’s action as “an outrageous act of censorship.”
Stanford professor Jay Bhattacharya called out Twitter’s suppression, writing: “It is perfectly safe to click through to the [Epoch Times] site in the quote tweet. For some reason, Twitter decided that today was a good day to suppress access to Epoch Times.”
Sex trafficking survivor Bleu, who was among the first to notice the censorship by Twitter due to its blockage of her interview with EpochTV’s program “American Thought Leaders,” posted a video condemning the platform’s actions that went viral.
It also created a stir among Twitter users, with many condemning the platform’s actions.
The Epoch Times wants to thank everyone who spoke out against this latest instance of censorship.
We will keep reporting the only way we know how, rooted in our tagline Truth & Tradition, without favor or fear. The fight for truth is one that has no shore and that is as old as the ages. We believe that only with brave individuals going the distance and striving to record the truth of what happens, can the world have an accurate picture of events and history.
Now 67, Ballor still lives in Alliance, Ohio, where she was born. She recalled her road to recovery from having an abortion at a young age—and now witnessing Roe’s historic overturning a full 50 years later.
Her parents didn’t know better. Lacking guidance, Ballor conceived out of wedlock with her then boyfriend and, fear-driven, she visited a Canton Planned Parenthood where she was told her unborn baby was just a “lump of cells,” like a “tumor.”
She now agonizes over how foolish she was.
“I look back and I think, ‘How could I believe something like that?’” she told the newspaper. “This was not something that was sometimes said; it’s been said over and over and over. They stopped saying it publicly so much because there’s so much science that they have to refute, but one-on-one? Oh yeah.”
Tossing in the words “and no one will ever know” feigned the escape she (like other scared young women) was looking for.
Crossing State Lines at 16 for an Abortion at Dobbs Ferry Planned Parenthood
Ballor fielded the idea to her boyfriend. He said it was entirely her choice. She felt no fatherly commitment from him should she carry the pregnancy through, but he paid for her flight to get the abortion out of state, at the Dobbs Ferry Planned Parenthood facility in New York. Abortion wasn’t illegal in Ohio then, but facilities were lacking.
(Left) A photo from Ballor’s senior year at Mount Union College in 1976, four years after her abortion; (Right) Ballor in the March for Life in Washington D.C. in 2017. (Courtesy of Christine Ballor)
Looking back, the idea of a minor crossing state lines for an abortion sounds crazy—possibly even criminal. But Planned Parenthood didn’t care.
“They didn’t care that someone of age took me across state lines to have an abortion,” she recalled. “I was 16 years old; I was a minor. They could care less.”
He joined her on the flight, but was relieved when he had to wait at the airport upon the clinic station wagon’s arrival to pick up Ballor—with 5 or 10 other women who made the trip for the same reason. She envisioned her boyfriend chasing her, pleading for her not to go through with it. But as they pulled out, there was no turning back.
“I suddenly felt like I was moving along a conveyor belt with other silent, sad, and hopeless women,” she told Live Action. “From that point, I simply moved like a robot through the process, suppressing any thoughts and feelings. Looking back, I really didn’t need the sedative they gave me; my mind was already sedated with hopelessness.”
The Dobbs clinic, she described, was a “huge facility,” “like a hospital” for abortions. Neither she nor the others got counseling like they were supposed to before the procedure.
“Somebody asked, ‘Do you have any questions?’ Well, who’s going to ask a question?” she said. “And who’s going to say, ‘I’m not sure I want to do this?’ I just flew in from Ohio.”
Ballor tried to tune out the sounds and smells inside that cold, sterile room. The doctor told her, “Relax, this won’t take long.” And it didn’t. Afterward, she heard the weeping of other women in the waiting room. Her own tears started rolling down her cheeks.
“I never felt such emptiness and despair in my life,” she said. “I had been deceived into thinking my baby was just a blob of tissue. But I immediately wiped my eyes, gritted my teeth, and told myself not to cry because I had chosen to do this. Nothing could bring my baby back. I vowed to pretend this never happened. So, I walked out of that place of death and despair the same way I walked in, like a robot going through the motions. I lived in denial for a long time.”
In her own words, Ballor had killed her child. She knew it immediately. “I’ve heard this from other women too,” she said. “You don’t feel empty after you’ve just had a tumor removed.” She shut down emotionally and spent decades in denial, suppressing the demons plaguing her for what she’d done.
Falling Into Despair Before Finding Faith, Healing, And Becoming Pro-Life
Through college and her career as an elementary teacher, she sought intimate relationships out of wedlock, as sexual promiscuity was accepted, “the normal thing,” she said. “Today, it’s even harder to consider the consequences of having sex;” our bodies are precious vessels not to be thrown away “because some guy tells you he loves you.”
Ballor commemorates her lost child at the National Day of Remembrance for Aborted Children in Canton, Ohio, in 2016. (Courtesy of Christine Ballor)
Subconsciously, she sought callous and abusive partners, to the extent that her former fiancé broke into her apartment and raped her at gunpoint. Out of guilt, she felt “unworthy,” like she deserved this awful treatment.
“That’s the kind of path that I was on, and I was abusing alcohol and drugs,” she shared. “I was still keeping [appearances] outward, I was able to start teaching … but nothing was satisfying. I wore a good face; I was a good actress: ‘everything fine.’”
Snowballing into the breech of utter desperation, holding a bottle of tequila in one hand, a handful of Seconal in the other, she prayed, “God, if you exist and if you think my life is worth anything anymore, please, please help me!”
What came next was a miracle.
“The answer pierced my soul not in words but in the form of an instant knowledge that I was loved by an indescribable, unfathomable love that seemed almost impossible,” she told Live Action. “I felt wrapped in a warmth and peace I cannot describe. Yes, God loved me, and my life had meaning. My parents had not provided a religious upbringing, so I would spend three decades searching to know this God who told me He loved me.”
For Ballor, it was a turning point. She described divine forces leading her toward pro-life activism, first in Washington D.C. (where nobody knew her) where she joined a protest impromptu, asking to carry a sign saying “I regret my abortion.”
Ballor’s converting to Catholicism, joining the abortion healing program “Heart,” and becoming a pro-life “defender of life” were all bricks she laid on her path of healing in the years that followed.
An activist role took shape: as educator, imparting to women the truth she so needed as a teen; as walker in the March for Life; and as speaker with the Silent No More Awareness campaign, offering her testimony on the steps of the Supreme Court.
Then, on June 24, 2022, came another miracle.
A Decision 50 Years In The Making Opens a New Pro-Life Chapter
The Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade—a full 50 years after Ballor’s abortion. She was “jubilant.”
“I was praying outside of Planned Parenthood that day, I just happened to be there—that was my regular day to go and pray at Planned Parenthood,” she said. “My prayer partner and I—our phones started going off, and I just fell to my knees.
“I was crying, I fell to my knees, and started praying, thanking God for this.”
Pro-life supporters celebrate outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, DC, on June 24, 2022, after the overturning of Roe v Wade. (Oliver Douliery/AFP via Getty Images)
The landmark decision is just the beginning, she admits. “But it was a gift.”
The end of Roe dethrones the protected status of abortion under the federal government; the matter of legality now falls into the hands of individual states and the people.
Now, “the fight is going to be in the states,” she said, changing hearts and minds while warding off federal pro-abortion challenges.
Far from the acts of vandalism and disturbing demonstrations initiated by abortion advocates like Jane’s Revenge, Ballor’s activities involve education, telling her story, and revealing the truth of what abortion really is.
It’s time for the groundwork for replacing abortion facilities with pro-life health centers to expand, said Ballor. And whom does she credit for this?
“Our pregnancy centers outnumber all the Planned Parenthoods and the abortion facilities,” she added. “I truly believe God’s timing was to give the pro-life movement and especially pregnancy health centers a chance to really build up … and take care of those people after abortion becomes illegal.”
The Pennsylvania Department of State counts 4 million registered Democratic voters in the state and 3.5 million Republicans as of May 2022. But even with 550,000 more Democrats than Republicans, Pennsylvania is not quite a blue state. It is more purple, with 1.3 million registered voters who call themselves libertarian, Green, or “other.” These are the less predictable voters, who make Pennsylvania a swing state, capable of going Democratic or Republican.
And with 19 electoral votes, it is a must-win for presidential hopefuls.
Many, but not all Pennsylvania Republicans, believe Donald Trump is still the person for the job. They say it is vital to regaining the power of the Oval Office.
“It’s absolutely central to our survival,” Schuylkill county author Russell S. Hepler told The Epoch Times. “And 2022 as well. I don’t want to underemphasize this upcoming election, because that’s going to lay the foundation for 2024, for good, or for bad.”
Hepler, a pastor was speaking as an individual, not for his congregation. His book is titled “Yes! We Can Turn This Nation Around!: A Practical Guide for Christian Political Involvement.”
U.S. President Donald Trump arrives for a campaign rally at Pittsburgh International Airport in Moon Township, Pennsylvania on Sept. 22, 2020. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
Hepler says the United States is going in the wrong direction.
“If they keep pushing this radical leftist, economic, environmental, and cultural agenda, there isn’t going to be much left to America. When you’ve got a Supreme Court nominee who can’t even define a woman, we know this nation is in serious trouble,” Hepler said. “You can’t survive if you deny reality. That has been the basis for Marxism since its beginning. It’s always based on lies. It’s based on, ‘whatever I say the truth is,’ as the government, as the party, as the big brother.’”
Rick Rathfon, chairman of Clarion County Republican party, agrees that winning is critical for Republicans.
“Look at the mess that Biden has got us into in just 18 months. I mean, we need to take both the House and Senate back in November and to try to restore sanity and dignity in Washington,” Rathfon told The Epoch Times adding that if former President Donald Trump runs, he would support him.
But it will be ugly.
One Party, Two Views
Democrats will be out to destroy Trump from day one, Rathfon said. “They’ve never quit trying to destroy him. Trump did a lot of good things for our country. He absolutely did. But I think it would be a mistake for him to run, just because of the hatred that the Democrats and the mainstream media have for him.”
“I love Governor Ron DeSantis from Florida. I hear that in my travels, and from a lot of state committee people.”
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis speaks during the inaugural Moms For Liberty Summit at the Tampa Marriott Water Street on July 15, 2022. DeSantis is up for reelection in the 2022 Gubernatorial race against Democratic frontrunner Rep. Charlie Crist (D-FL). (Octavio Jones/Getty Images)
The Pennsylvania Republican Party did not respond to requests for comment in this story.
Sam Faddis is a retired CIA operations officer and author of “Beyond Repair: The Decline and Fall of the CIA” and “Willful Neglect: The Dangerous Illusion of Homeland Security.” Faddis has spoken to many Republicans as an organizer of a coalition of more than 75 patriot groups across Pennsylvania that are working together on election reform and other issues.
The majority of Pennsylvania’s Republican voters consider themselves “Make America Great Again/America first” people Faddis said, and they are 100 percent behind Donald Trump on the issues, even if they sometimes have questions about his tactics.
Issues are the center of gravity overwhelmingly for the Republican Party in Pennsylvania, he says.
“There is a gap about the size of the Grand Canyon between those [MAGA] people and a very large number of established Republican politicians sitting in Harrisburg,” Faddis told The Epoch Times.
“While I know the establishment does not want to recognize that fact—they want to continue to pretend like that issue doesn’t exist—for the base, that is kind of the issue.”
The base does not feel like establishment Republicans are representing people and what they stand for, he said.
“We’re over here with Donald Trump again, at least on all of the issues, and you guys want to pretend like 2016 never happened.”
Trump is Different
The problem is that Trump is fundamentally different from any president that came before him in recent memory, Republican or Democrat, Faddis said.
“He’s totally outside the system. He’s not part of the uni-party.”
The establishment in both parties have a general consensus on how America’s government is going to be run, Faddis said. That is, always bigger, always more expensive.
“Donald Trump is a wrecking ball, so of course he has to be destroyed as far as the establishment is concerned,” Faddis said.
If the Republican who runs is not MAGA, their campaign is dead-on-arrival in Pennsylvania, Faddis said. And he believes it would be a waste of time for another MAGA-minded candidate to challenge Trump.
“If Donald Trump runs, he will, head and shoulders, without any question, be the choice,” Faddis said. “There’s no question. I can’t imagine that another MAGA-type person could challenge him in the primary in Pennsylvania and have any hope of winning. That’s not possible.”
If Trump decides not to run, Faddis believes DeSantis would be the number one person that the most voters would instantaneously coalesce around.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis hold a COVID-19 and storm preparedness roundtable in Belleair, Fla., on July 31, 2020. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
“I think that, frankly, would be a smart political move, because in some ways, I think DeSantis is a less controversial guy than Trump, for the middle,” Faddis said.
“I can’t conceive of anybody, even a dyed-in-the-wool guy like Ron DeSantis, beating Trump in Pennsylvania. I mean, DeSantis is very popular here. And I love his policies. But you could not possibly convince the base to walk away from Donald Trump as it stands.”
Primary Fight
Several Republicans indicated that they don’t want to see DeSantis and Trump battle in a primary. For many, it would be like watching parents fight when you love them both and don’t want to choose a favorite.
Toni Shuppe, founder and CEO of Audit the Vote PA, has been investigating anomalies in the 2020 election since right after it happened.
“I personally believe, based on what I found through Audit the Vote, that Donald Trump won in 2020,” Shuppe told The Epoch Times. “I feel like he won the first time, he deserves his second term. I would vote for him if he runs. But I also really like Ron DeSantis.”
For most folks in this story, the dream ticket would be Trump and DeSantis, although not everyone is convinced DeSantis would be willing to take a vice presidential role when he could govern Florida instead.
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem addresses the Conservative Political Action Conference held in the Hyatt Regency in Orlando, Fla., on Feb. 27, 2021. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
For Shuppe, the dream ticket would be Trump and South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem. “DeSantis is young. He’s doing such a good job in Florida. I would like to see Trump and Kristi, and then potentially, eight years of DeSantis,” Shuppe said. “I think, in order to get the country back on track, restoring our constitutional republic, it’s going to take a long time. And I think that that is why a Trump-and-somebody-else ticket makes sense first, followed by eight years of someone like Ron DeSantis. That could really get things moving in the right direction.”
Kurt Dock, a Lancaster Township Republican Committee member, would like to see Trump run, but if he doesn’t, Dock believes the Republican party has strong candidates in Noem and DeSantis.
He says the Democrats have moved too far left.
“When the pendulum swings one way and goes so extreme, it usually comes back just that hard the other way,” Dock said.
“I would like to see someone a little bit more centrist. Not so much to the right. Instead of continuing the alienation, try to get some of the people that are very center, or center-left to come to our side. I don’t think it would be that tough to do.”
PUNTA GORDA, Fla.–Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz, Jr. told schools to “ignore federal guidelines aimed at preventing discrimination against students based on gender identity, saying they would “vastly expand the application” of Title IX.
In a July 27 letter to superintendents, school boards, private schools, and charter schools, Diaz advised that guidance documents from the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Agriculture “are not binding law” and asked school officials to “refuse to change their practices.”
The letter accused the federal government of trying to “impose sexual ideology on Florida schools” that would create a risk to the “health, safety, and welfare of Florida students.”
“The Department will do everything in its power to protect the well being of all Florida students,” Diaz said in his letter. “And to vindicate the right of all parents to know what takes place in their child’s classroom.”
The guidelines from the federal government extend protections under the law to include schools’ “obligations not to discriminate based on sex stereotypes, sex characteristics, pregnancy or related conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity.”
In June, Miguel Cardona, U.S. Department of Education Secretary explained in a news release that the guidelines will “ensure all our nation’s students—no matter where they live, who they are or whom they love—can learn, grow, and thrive in school.”
More than 50 years ago, Title IX was enacted to prohibit gender-based discrimination in educational institutions. In June, the U.S. Department of Education released a proposal that stated it would “provide greater clarity regarding the scope” of sexual discrimination. The U.S. Department of Agriculture became involved through the school-lunch programs in May when it was announced that it would begin interpreting Title IX to “include discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.”
In his letter, Diaz warned schools against making certain accommodations for transgender students who “identify” as the sex opposite of which they were biologically assigned, especially when it comes to bathroom accommodations.
“Specifically, for example, nothing in these guidance documents requires you to give biological males who identify as female access to female bathrooms, locker rooms, or dorms; to assign biological males who identify as female to female rooms on school field trips; or to allow biological males who identify as female to compete on female sports teams,” Diaz wrote.
In 2021, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law legislation barring transgender female athletes from competing on high-school girls’ and college sports teams. In April, the governor signed a bill that restricts instruction concerning gender identity and sexual orientation to children in lower grades. Dubbed by critics as the “don’t say gay” bill, it has been challenged in federal court and is still pending.
At a July 27 press conference, the governor took aim at schools that push “woke gender ideology.”
The governor, during the press event, suggested that school systems in other cities and states are included in their instruction suggestions that would encourage students to question their genders.
“Basically, this will be for elementary school kids where they’re instructed to tell them, ‘Well, you may have been a boy, that may have been what you said, but maybe you’re really a girl—that’s wrong,’” DeSantis said of the schools promoting “woke gender ideology.”
He said that Florida has “laid down a marker” to ensure that it’s “not something that gained a foothold here in the state of Florida.”
“The kids are off limits,” he said at the Tampa press conference.
Diaz’s letter told school administrators that the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services was “communicating with schools” and “suggesting they should comply with the U.S. Department of Agriculture guidance.”
He advised schools to ignore what he called “any suggestions” from the state agriculture department that schools display a poster themed “And Justice for All” that would indicate participation in the federal program.
The federal agriculture agency described the posters as a “primary method utilized to inform customers of their rights that displays information relevant” to federally assisted programs.
Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried joins crowd protesting the Supreme Court’s decision in the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health case on June 24, 2022, in Miami, Fla. The Court’s decision overturns Roe v Wade, the landmark ruling removing a federal right to an abortion. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Diaz’s letter prompted Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, a Democratic gubernatorial hopeful, to hold a press conference on July 29 to address the assertions in Diaz’s letter, as well as to accuse the governor of “creating a fictitious culture war.”
“Manny Diaz and the Department of Education have no oversight over the National School Lunch Program,” she said at her press conference on July 29. “This has nothing to do with bathrooms or locker rooms like Commissioner Diaz has suggested.”
Fried said the governor needs to prioritize the people of the state instead of creating another “manufactured crisis,” because he is “running for president.”
The education commissioner, she said, should focus on the task of “focusing on his job” and addressing the teacher shortage instead of “being Ron’s errand boy.”
The federal school food nutrition program has specific rules and regulations before funds are dispersed to the state, she explained.
“The department, as well as all of our schools, need to be in compliance,” Fried said. “Commissioner Diaz has overstepped his role—he has no oversight when it comes to our feeding programs in the state of Florida—when it comes to our school nutrition program.”
Neither the U.S. Department of Education nor the U.S. Department of Agriculture responded before press time, but the spokesperson for the Florida Department of Education said the Biden administration was responsible for attempting to hold federal programs “hostage.”
“Resident Biden is attempting to force his radical agenda on Florida schools by holding hostage programs our students need,” Alex Lanfranconi, Director of Communications for the Florida Department of Education told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement. “Our schools have NO obligation to follow this federal guidance and will not be threatened into submission.”
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 Illinoislodged 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.
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.
House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-NY) (C) speaks at a press conference, was joined by House Republican Whip Steve Scailse (R-LA) (L) and Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), following a Republican caucus meeting, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, on June 8, 2022. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
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, son of U.S. President Joe Biden, attends the ceremony honoring 17 recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, in the East Room of the White House in Washington, on July 7, 2022. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
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.
An aerial view shows the P4 laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China’s central Hubei Province on April 17, 2020. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)
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.
Border Patrol agents apprehend a large group of illegal immigrants near Eagle Pass, Texas, on May 20, 2022. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
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.
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.
Health authorities say mask mandates and social distancing have helped contain COVID-19, but a court has ruled indefinite quarantining of people is unenforceable. (Tatyana Blinova/Shutterstock)
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.”
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.
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.
According to a lawsuit filed by the Alliance Defending Freedom on behalf of Faith Action Ministry Alliance and Grant Park Christian Academy, a school that serves low-income and minority families in Tampa, Florida, Biden officials are threatening to take away the meals unless the school adheres to new Title IX interpretations on gender ideology.
“That choice that they are giving us [is] either to comply with this ideology and alter the course of our operations and to violate our own core principles and beliefs, or lose out on the nutrition for the children, lose out on the meals,” Pastor Alfred Johnson, the founder of Faith Action Ministry Alliance, said in a Wednesday phone interview with The Daily Wire.
“This is not just pertaining to Grant Park Christian Academy,” Johnson added. “You’re dealing with tens of thousands of students who are going to be impacted by this. Some of these schools are not even aware of how Title IX has been reinterpreted. And so many of them are going to be in violation, probably without even knowing about it.”
The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida against both the Biden administration and Fried, who is running for governor. Ironically, Fried claims to be dedicated to fighting hunger and food insecurity in the Sunshine State but remains poised to block Grant Park’s funding for school meals.
Commissioner of Agriculture Nikki Fried speaks at the Climate Leadership Summit. Photo by Kristen Livengood/Monroe County.
“Under my administration, we will implement universal free school breakfast and lunch,” says Fried’s gubernatorial campaign. “Kids can’t concentrate on school work with empty bellies. This is an investment in the health and education of Florida’s students.” (RELATED: DeSantis’ Former Gubernatorial Opponent Charged With 21 Felonies)
The lawsuit also addresses the larger ramifications of the administration’s coordinated effort with the agriculture commissioner’s office to force schools into adhering to dangerous and confusing new Title IX rules.
“If Grant Park Christian Academy complies with the new school lunch mandate, it will suffer harm to its educational mission, free speech, and religious exercise,” the lawsuit says.
“It will no longer be able to maintain sex-separated restrooms for boys and girls based on their biological differences; to maintain sex-specific dress code and uniform policies, where, for example, only female students are permitted to wear skorts; to draw its workforce from among those who share and live out its religious convictions; and to refrain from using pronouns that do not correspond to biological sex,” the suit adds.
“In short,” the suit said, “the Biden Administration and Commissioner Fried’s push to redefine sex in federal law has now reached the point where they will deny school lunches to underprivileged students, just because their school will not violate their religious beliefs.”
Grant Park Christian Academy has asked Fried’s office for an exemption to the rule arguing the school should not be forced to violate its religious beliefs for an arbitrary rule. Fried’s office has maintained the school must comply with the new Title IX rules or choose to forgo the lunch program.
The man accused of conspiring to murder Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh asked the internet for assassination tips weeks before he flew to the nation’s capital loaded with weapons.
Nicholas Roske searched on Google for the “quietest semi auto rifle” and the “most effective place to stab someone” before he arrived outside Kavanaugh’s home in June, according to an FBI warrant obtained by Fox News. The 26-year-old also said in an online chat forum he was going to “remove some people from the supreme court” to “stop roe v wade from being overturned.”
“I could get at least one, which would change the votes for decades to come,” Roske said, “and I am shooting for 3.”
Kavanaugh’s brush with death came amid efforts from congressional Democrats to stall legislation meant to beef up security for Supreme Court justices. Additional protections for the judges were provided promptly after the threat to Kavanaugh’s life.
The High Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in June—and the leaked draft preceding it—prompted a wave of left-wing violence and intimidation. At least 60 crisis centers, which counsel women on alternatives to abortion, have been firebombed or vandalized since May.
Threats have also been made to other branches of government. Progressive activists are agitating to shut down Thursday evening’s congressional baseball game due to the government’s alleged lack of action on climate change. In 2017, a former campaign volunteer for socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) shot five people, including Rep. Steve Scalise (R., La.), at a Republican practice event for the baseball game.
Roske, who called the police on himself, was apprehended by law enforcement outside Kavanaugh’s home in possession of a handgun, knife, pepper spray, and burglary tools. He has pleaded not guilty to attempted assassination.
The Department of Justice’s third-ranking official has a history of calling crisis pregnancy centers “fake clinics,” a false, inflammatory description employed by terrorist groups that have recently attacked the pro-life organizations.
Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta deployed the rhetoric in a 2020 letter urging senators to vote against a Trump judicial nominee. Nearly 60 crisis centers, which counsel women on alternatives to abortion, have been firebombed or vandalized over the past two months. An anarchist group that has claimed responsibility for many of the attacks, Jane’s Revenge, has used the same “fake clinic” rhetoric as Gupta.
The Biden administration has repeatedly accused Republicans of causing acts of violence through their rhetoric. The White House baselessly claimed a GOP-backed bill in Florida to restrict teaching about sexual orientation to young children “encourages bullying and threatens students’ mental health, physical safety, and well-being.” Democrats tried to link Rep. Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.) to a mass shooting in Buffalo, N.Y., in May that left 10 people dead. They claimed that Stefanik’s opposition to mass illegal immigration echoed the Buffalo shooter’s writings about “great replacement theory.”
Gupta’s remarks carry new significance after she was appointed this month to lead the Justice Department’s reproductive rights task force, formed to protect access to abortions in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Gupta also supervises the Justice Department’s civil rights division, which prosecutes attacks against reproductive health facilities, a classification that includes crisis pregnancy centers.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.), who introduced a bill this month to expand criminal penalties for attacks on the centers, said Gupta’s remarks are “no surprise” given the Justice Department’s “disregard” for the assaults on pro-life organizations.
“It’s shameful that Joe Biden’s Department of Justice—responsible for enforcing our laws—is ignoring the epidemic of violent attacks against organizations that are just trying to provide health care to women in need,” Hawley told the Washington Free Beacon.
While it has moved to protect abortion clinics, the Justice Department has largely ignored the violence against pro-life centers. Gupta and other DOJ leaders met with civil rights and pro-abortion groups this week to update them on the task force’s work. The Justice Department does not appear to have met with pro-life groups that have sought meetings with the agency over the firebombing.
Gupta slammed crisis pregnancy centers while opposing the nomination of Judge David Dugan because of his affiliation with a center in Illinois. At the time, Gupta led the civil rights group Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
The head of one pro-life group that has sought a DOJ meeting says Gupta’s remarks make her “unfit” to lead the task force.
“Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta’s attacks on pregnancy resource centers which help pregnant women in need are shameful and utterly irresponsible,” said CatholicVote president Brian Burch.
“Ms. Gupta should be investigating and prosecuting the radical criminals who are vandalizing and firebombing pregnancy resource centers nationwide,” Burch told the Free Beacon, adding that Attorney General Merrick Garland should “immediately rescind” Gupta’s appointment.
Gupta is not the only high-ranking DOJ official to attack crisis pregnancy centers. Kristen Clarke, the head of the agency’s civil rights division and a task force member, called the centers “harmful” and “predatory” after a 2018 Supreme Court ruling in favor of the facilities in 2018, the Free Beaconreported.
As part of its work, the task force is centralizing information about the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, a federal statute that makes it a crime to threaten or attack reproductive health centers. The Justice Department has brought multiple cases against activists who blocked the entrances of abortion clinics, but none so far against people who firebombed pro-life organizations.
The Justice Department did not address questions about Gupta’s comments. The agency provided comment from the FBI, which said it is investigating “a series of attacks and threats targeting pregnancy resource centers, faith-based organizations, and reproductive health clinics across the country, as well as to judicial buildings, including the U.S. Supreme Court.”
“The incidents are being investigated as potential acts of domestic violent extremism, FACE Act violations, or violent crime matters, depending on the facts of each case,” an FBI representative told the Free Beacon.
Former Vice President Mike Pence’s national security adviser, retired Gen. Keith Kellogg, said he would back former President Donald Trump in a hypothetical 2024 matchup with his former boss.
“Sometimes, you have to pick the lane you’re gonna run with,” Kellogg told the Washington Examiner on Tuesday when asked about a possible contest between Trump and Pence. “I’ve always been a Trump guy.”
Of the relationship between Trump and Pence, “We tried to bring him in tight,” Kellogg said in reference to Pence. “It’s not because we haven’t reached out to him.” Pence advisers “like Marc Short,” Kellogg added in the interview, “have pulled away from the Trump team,” referring to the former vice president’s chief of staff.
Neither Pence nor Trump have declared their candidacies for president. While Trump has strongly suggested that he might run again, there is growing speculation about a Pence 2024 candidacy as he continues to deliver speeches, including one to a conference of young conservatives in Washington on Tuesday.
“If I was putting money in Las Vegas down on the table as to whether he is going to run or not, I think he is running,” Kellogg said of Trump, “but I don’t know.” The retired general said he spoke with the former president several weeks ago.
Dual Speeches
Trump also returned to Washington to speak for the first time in more than a year, telling a crowd that the United States needs to place more emphasis on public safety amid rising crime, drug use, and homelessness.
Then- President Donald Trump (C) and Keith Kellogg (R) in a file photo. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images)
Americans “don’t have safety” and “don’t have freedom” right now, Trump said during a speech at the America First Policy Institute’s America First Agenda Summit on Tuesday.
“Our country is now a cesspool of crime,” the former commander-in-chief said. “We have blood, death, and suffering on a scale once unthinkable because of the Democrat Party’s effort to destroy and dismantle law enforcement.”
Trump added: “We’re living in such a different country for one primary reason … there is no longer respect for the law and there certainly is no order.”
Pence, meanwhile, told an audience on Tuesday that conservatives should look toward the future.
“In order to win, conservatives need to do more than criticize and complain,” Pence said. “We must unite our movement behind a bold, optimistic agenda that offers a clear and compelling choice to the American people.”
During the Joint Session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump issued a rare critical comment about Pence for taking part in the congressional certification of the 2020 election.
Trump wrote on his now-deleted Twitter account that the former vice president—before the breach of the Capitol—did not “do what should have been done to protect” the United States and Constitution.
The Epoch Times has contacted Pence’s Advancing American Freedom PAC for comment.
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.”
Senate Judiciary Ranking Member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) speaks at a hearing with the Senate Judiciary Committee in the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington on July 12, 2022. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
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.”
Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz testifies in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington on Dec. 11, 2019. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
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.
Under the law, a president can’t order domestic deployment of Guard; local officials must request it
A claim by the vice chair of the House Jan. 6 Select Committee that President Donald Trump didn’t order the use of National Guard troops in the District of Columbia on Jan. 6, 2021, is true because that would have been a violation of the law, former Pentagon chief of staff Kash Patel says.
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) told Fox News’ Bret Baier that Trump “never issued any order to deploy the National Guard to protect the Capitol.”
Patel said that Trump authorized up to 20,000 National Guard troops for use in D.C. or elsewhere on Jan. 6, 2021, but the use of those troops was later rejected by D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and the U.S. Capitol Police.
Under the law, the president can’t order the deployment of the military for use inside the United States, Patel said. At the time of the Jan. 6, 2021, unrest, Patel was chief of staff for Acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller.
“She knows the truth—45 [Trump] authorized the National Guard days before Jan. 6, and Pelosi and Bowser rejected it,” Patel told The Epoch Times. “Cheney knows it’s unconstitutional for any president to ever order the military to deploy domestically. He may only authorize their use, then there must be a request.
In the new documentary, “The Real Story of Jan. 6,” Kash Patel, former chief of staff for the U.S. secretary of defense, said National Guard troops were rejected by Capitol Police and the D.C. mayor. (Screenshot/EpochTV)
“By her own quote, she has cleared Trump of the very thing she has accused him of from Day 1—an insurrection,” Patel said. “So, yes, Trump never made that illegal order. He followed the law.”
Authorized 20,000 Guard Troops
As Patel explains in the new EpochTV documentary, “The Real Story of Jan. 6,” Trump authorized as many as 20,000 Guard troops for use on Jan. 6, 2021, during a meeting several days earlier. The offer of troops was rejected by Bowser and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), he said.
Under the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, the U.S. military can’t be used domestically for enforcing laws or keeping order. Part-time citizen-soldiers can only be used under certain conditions.
“The Supreme Court said two things must happen,” said Patel, the host of “Kash’s Corner” on EpochTV. “One: the President of the United States has to authorize, not order, the use of the National Guard.
DC Mayor Muriel Bowser rejected President Trump’s offer of National Guard troops on January 6 in this letter a day before. (Kash Patel/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)
“Once that happens, step two has to happen as well before they can be deployed,” he said, “and that is a request from the head of state, the governor, or in this case, Mayor Bowser because it’s Washington, D.C. Or federal law enforcement needs to request the National Guard to be deployed.
“If those two things don’t happen, then any issuance of the National Guard would be literally unconstitutional.”
According to the U.S. Department of Defense Inspector General’s report regarding the events of Jan. 6, 2021, the use of National Guard troops was discussed during a White House meeting on Jan. 3, 2021.
In attendance were Miller, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. Mark Milley, presidential chief of staff Mark Meadows, and Patel.
“The President told Mr. Miller that there would be a large number of protestors on January 6, 2021, and Mr. Miller should ensure sufficient National Guard or soldiers would be there to make sure it was a safe event.”
Patel said at the end of the meeting that Trump brought up Jan. 6, 2021.
“President Trump pivoted and said, basically, ‘Hey, what are you guys doing for security’—I’m paraphrasing here—‘for anything that might happen on Jan. 6?’
“He said, ‘If you need up to 20,000 National Guardsmen and women, not just in Washington, D.C., but anywhere in the country, you have my authorization,’” Patel recalled.
The Defense Department then took the presidential authorization to the U.S. Capitol Police and Bowser.
“Mayor Bowser, in writing, pursuant to her own letter that we released from her, sent to the Department of Defense, declined to issue any more National Guardsmen and women,” Patel said.
The same authorization was taken to the Capitol Police, which declined additional National Guard personnel, Patel said.
Official Jan. 6 Timeline
According to the Capitol Police’s official Jan. 6, 2021, timeline, the Pentagon contacted USCP on Jan. 2, 2021, to “determine whether USCP is considering a request for National Guard soldiers for Jan. 6, 2021, event.”
President Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., on Jan. 31, 2022. (The Epoch Times)
A day later, Capitol Police Deputy Chief Sean Gallagher responded that “a request for National Guard support is not forthcoming at this time after consultation with COP [chief of police] Sund.”
During a June appearance on the Fox News program “Hannity,” Miller recalled the meeting in which the use of the National Guard was discussed.
“The president said while we’re leaving, ‘Hey, one more thing,’ and we all sat back down and discussed what was going on on Jan. 6th,” Miller said.
“The president was doing just what I expect the commander in chief to do, any commander in chief to do. He was looking at the broad threats against the United States and he brought this up on his own. We did not bring it up.”
Ashli Babbitt, the 35-year-old Air Force veteran who was fatally shot outside the U.S. Capitol Speaker’s Lobby by Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd on Jan. 6, 2021, was “murdered … under the color of authority,” a use-of-force expert has concluded after reviewing video footage of the incident.
Just before 2:45 p.m. on Jan. 6, 2021, Babbitt began climbing through a side window leading into the Speaker’s Lobby and was shot in the left anterior shoulder by Byrd. She was pronounced dead a half-hour later at MedStar Washington Hospital Center.
Stan Kephart, who has testified in court more than 350 times as an expert witness on policing issues, reviewed the shooting in the new Epoch TV documentary, “The Real Story of Jan. 6,” which is streaming on Epoch TV.
“My conclusion … based on what I saw and observed in the video clips is that Ashli Babbitt was murdered,” said Kephart, a 42-year veteran of law enforcement and former director of security for the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics. He has testified on topics that include excessive force, police discipline, officer safety, and crowd control.
“She was shot and killed under color of authority by an officer who violated not only the law but his oath and committed an arrestable offense.”
Police use-of-force expert Stan Kephart is interviewed for the Epoch TV documentary, “The Real Story of Jan. 6” on June 2, 2022. (Tal Atzmon/The Epoch Times)
Kephart said he saw nothing in the video evidence to indicate that Byrd should have felt his life was in danger or that he was at risk of serious harm from the 5-foot-2, 110-pound San Diego woman wrapped in a Trump flag.
“In order for lethal force to be authorized, the officer has to be able to articulate that he or she was in fear of losing his life, was about to be killed, or grievously injured,” Kephart said in the documentary. “There is nothing I saw in that film that would indicate that was possible or probable from what unfolded.”
Byrd’s attorney, Mark Schamel, in a statement to The Epoch Times, called Kephart’s conclusion “unsupported and erroneous” and said the lieutenant was justified in the use of force.
“When Ms. Babbitt entered through the broken window and entered the inner protected area, wearing a backpack and refusing the verbal commands of multiple armed federal officers with weapons drawn, the threat she posed was clear and Lt. Byrd, as the first officer in the final line of defense, was absolutely justified in his use of force.”
The exact moment Lt. Michael Byrd fires at unarmed Ashli Babbitt, killing her. Byrd was cleared although a formal Internal Affairs interview was never conducted about the shooting. (Jayden X/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)
Aaron Babbitt, Ashli’s husband, said Kephart reached the same conclusion as other law enforcement experts, including former New York City police commissioners Bernard Kerik and Ray Kelly.
“I loved hearing that from him. He’s obviously well-versed in the use of force,” Babbitt told The Epoch Times, referring to Kephart. “He’s clearly a very smart man who has been in that business for a long time. He should be listened to.”
Ashli Babbitt with Bella, one of her treasured dogs, at home in San Diego. (Courtesy of Aaron Babbitt)
Babbitt disputed Schamel’s claim that his wife “refused” verbal commands from Byrd or anyone else. He questioned why Byrd was wearing a COVID face covering if he hoped to be heard shouting instructions.
“Witness testimony I’ve read, police included, said they heard no warning,” Babbitt said, adding that if they thought the situation was serious enough for deadly force, “the mask should probably come off your face. Complete disregard for human life and not following the use-of-force continuum.”
Video shot by political activist John “Jayden X” Sullivan through the Speaker’s Lobby windows shows Byrd had his finger on the trigger of his Glock pistol before Babbitt ever appeared in the window. He then removed his finger from the trigger for a short time before advancing on the open window and firing as Babbitt began to lean through.
Babbitt’s killing still hangs like a dark cloud over the events of that day. Questions remain about her death, even after the June release of a U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) report that concluded there was insufficient evidence that Byrd used excessive force when he shot the unarmed Babbitt as she attempted to climb through the broken window.
Kephart said Byrd should have written a firearms discharge report immediately after the incident. Byrd declined to give a statement to Internal Affairs detectives and was never formally interviewed before eventually being cleared of wrongdoing.
According to the June DOJ report, Byrd agreed to a “voluntary debrief and walk-through of the scene” with his attorney in late January 2021, in which he stated if the “mob of rioters” outside the Speaker’s Lobby gained entry, “it wasn’t going to go well.”
‘I Had No Clue’
In a 2021 interview with Lester Holt on NBC, Byrd said he couldn’t see into the Speaker’s Lobby hallway through the glass, didn’t know if the person climbing into the window was male or female, and couldn’t tell if the person had anything in their hands.
“It’s impossible for me to see what’s on the other side because we had created such a barricade, and it was high enough that the visibility was impossible,” Byrd said. He said he didn’t know there were three Capitol Police officers standing with their backs to the entry doors.
U.S. Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd was in command of police in the U.S. House chamber on Jan. 6, 2021. (Judicial Watch)
Byrd said police “were essentially trapped” in the lobby, and “there was nowhere to retreat” because entrances were barricaded.
“It sounded like hundreds of people outside of that door,” he said.
Byrd said he repeatedly shouted for people to get back—”I was yelling at the top of my lungs”—but added it was possible that he couldn’t be heard in the hallway.
When Holt asked Byrd if he knew whom he had shot, Byrd replied: “I had no clue. I didn’t even know it was a female until hours way later, sometime later on that night.”
He said he only found out later that Babbitt had no weapon.
“There was no way to know that at that time,” Byrd said. “I could not fully see her hands or what was in the backpack or what the intentions of—
“I know, based on my training and my policy, what I did was appropriate.”
Kephart said the shooting should have been evaluated using a litmus test from the 1989 U.S. Supreme Court case Graham v. Connor: whether force was ever needed and appropriate in the situation, the extent of the injury, and “whether the force was applied in a good-faith manner to maintain and restore discipline, or maliciously and sadistically.”
The DOJ report on the shooting was released in June by Judicial Watch, which sued the DOJ for Jan. 6, 2021, case records.
“After a thorough review of the facts and circumstances in this case, there is insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Lt. Byrd violated Ms. McEntee’s [sic] civil rights by willfully using more force than was reasonably necessary, or was not acting in self-defense or the defense of others,” the undated 14-page document reads. The report referred to Babbitt by her previous married name. She married Aaron Babbitt in 2019.
Kephart said the standard set by the Supreme Court in Graham v. Connor doesn’t refer to “willfully” using more force than necessary.
“They inserted willfully above knowingly, which is at best contradictory, and worst, disingenuous,” Kephart told The Epoch Times in an email.
Although Byrd refused to give a formal statement to investigators, the DOJ concluded that his apparent belief that Babbitt posed an imminent, potentially deadly threat was “reasonable.”
Ashli Babbitt (upper right) begins to fall back after being shot by Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd on Jan. 6, 2021. (Sam Montoya/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)
About five hours after the shooting, Byrd met with Internal Affairs detectives from the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, which investigated the shooting on behalf of the U.S. Capitol Police; he said he wanted to consult an attorney first. Byrd never made a formal statement to Internal Affairs investigators.
In his statement to The Epoch Times, Schamel, Byrd’s attorney, said that “actual experts who train federal agents and officers in the use of force have described Lt. Byrd’s conduct as exemplary.”
Investigative Reports
A Metropolitan Police Department Internal Affairs investigator who reviewed video footage from Capitol security cameras from just before Babbitt was shot reported, “Ms. Babbitt does not appear to be carrying anything in her hands,” according to an internal police report released by Judicial Watch.
One U.S. Capitol Police sergeant who was in the Speaker’s Lobby when Babbitt was shot told Internal Affairs investigators at the time of the shooting “there was a lot of screaming” and “I heard somebody screaming, ‘Get back, get back,’” an Internal Affairs report said.
A Capitol Police officer who was in the Speaker’s Lobby with Byrd said before Babbitt appeared in the window, various officers were shouting for the crowd to get back. After Byrd fired his weapon, the officer said, Byrd was “shaky” and “teary-eyed.”
“You know, you can just tell, like, I ain’t gonna say when somebody regrets to do something, when somebody just is just nervous, you know, they’ll rub their head, their [sic] pace back and forth,” the officer told an Internal Affairs agent.
However, one of the three officers stationed on the outside of the Speaker’s Lobby doors, where Ashli Babbitt and other protesters were gathered, told an investigator “he did not recall hearing any verbal commands being given from inside the Speaker’s Lobby,” according to a Jan. 6, 2021, police report.
One of the other two officers stationed outside the doors and facing the angry crowd also was asked if he heard anyone inside the Speaker’s Lobby saying anything.
“No, sir,” he replied. When asked if he considered using his firearm on rioters, he said, “So, you’re accountable for every round in, in your service weapon; obviously, you can’t shoot into an empty crowd. That’s so wrong.”
The third officer stationed at the doors also told investigators he didn’t hear any communications from police inside the Speaker’s Lobby, according to a Jan. 6, 2021, Internal Affairs report.
Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd had his Glock pistol drawn and pointed in the direction of U.S. Rep Troy Nehls (R-Texas) on Jan. 6, 2021. Photo illustration courtesy of Aaron Babbitt)
A Metropolitan Police Department Internal Affairs Division summary from Babbitt’s Jan. 7, 2021, autopsy said the medical examiner determined “the cause of death was a gunshot wound to the left anterior shoulder and the manner of death was ruled a homicide.”
Kephart said he was shocked at a photograph from the House floor earlier on Jan. 6, 2021, showing Byrd with his gun drawn and aimed in the direction of Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) and two other men.
“This man [Byrd] should be directed to submit to a fitness-for-duty examination immediately by his chief of police,” Kephart said. “Based on this photo alone, he is not qualified to possess a firearm. He is clearly demonstrating a conscious disregard for where he is. His firearm should be at a ‘low ready’ position until target acquisition.
“Any qualified firearms instructor would be horrified at this photo in view of what transpired after the picture was taken, where he shot and killed Ashli Babbitt, disregarding officers in the backdrop, and did not advance and assess the shot or provide first aid and take control of the crime scene—all of which he has been taught, trained, and certified to do.”
Nehls has spoken repeatedly of his belief that the shooting was murder. Nehls served as sheriff of Fort Bend County, Texas, from 2012 until 2020.
“The video was quite clear,” Nehls told Newsmax in 2021. “It was murder.”
As more voters across the country turn toward the Republican Party, retired Army Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc is closing the margin of an expected Democratic victory in the New Hampshire Senate race.
In the 2020 Republican Senate primary, Bolduc carried almost 60,000 votes as the runner-up. According to a poll taken in April, only one point separated incumbent Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) and Bolduc, one of 11 candidates for the Republican primary scheduled for Sept. 13.
Bolduc says he’s very concerned about the future of the United States.
“Currently, there is a plan for top-down governance and the abandonment of America’s values and principles,” he told The Epoch Times, describing it as a plan to “undermine” the United States.
Bolduc said “America is weak” at the moment, and there are a variety of issues it must continue to confront if the nation ever wants to recover its strength. These include, but aren’t limited to, abortion, gun control, the southern border, and the economy.
Abortion Violence
On the issue of abortion in the United States, Bolduc said, “The Supreme Court made the right decision by sending it back to the states.”
Regardless of which side of the issue women find themselves on, he said that “[they] have more control at the state level than they would ever have at the federal level.”
As a pro-life candidate, he considers the narrative that many on the left are pushing to be “very dangerous.”
While resident Joe Biden calls upon “pro-choice senators and a pro-choice House to codify Roe as federal law,” Hassan and colleagues are urging the president to “defend Americans’ rights to abortion” by executive order. In a recent 30-second television ad, she also said she would “fight and never back down” to protect the “personal freedoms” of women seeking an abortion.
Bolduc said the position of Biden and Hassan not only devalues life but has also created a climate for violence by claiming the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade is unconstitutional. To that end, Heidi Matzke, executive director of the Alternatives Pregnancy Center in Sacramento, shared at a Senate hearing on July 12 that “pregnancy care centers from coast to coast are being targeted for violent assaults of vandalism and hateful attacks online and in the media.”
For example, “fund abortion; abort God” was recently spray-painted on the Pathways Pregnancy Care Center in Littleton, New Hampshire. Police are investigating the incident as a hate crime.
According to Bolduc, violent assaults and vandalism are “just indicative of the divisiveness and the disunity promoted by the left.” These issues are “at the heart of why we have the problems that we have here in this country.”
Gun Control Confusion
Bolduc said the number of shootings across the country is also an indicator of an increasingly disgruntled and violent society.
“That’s not a problem with guns,” he said.
For example, Illinois has some of the toughest gun laws in the country, yet Chicago is one of the deadliest U.S. cities.
“It’s less about gun laws, and more about securing vulnerable areas, allowing police to do their jobs and have a good response, and being able to go after people who are the threat,” Bolduc said.
According to Bolduc, the culture of violence can be attributed to the U.S. justice system, which increasingly releases violent criminals back onto the streets while hamstringing and defunding the police. Support for police and community involvement are important to ensuring crime stays low, according to Bolduc. Rather than allowing divisiveness to creep in, people need to be brought together to solve the problem, he said.
The Southern Border
The ability to provide safer communities across the nation extends beyond the local community, Bolduc said. The southern border of the United States is out of control, as the country is currently failing to control the flow of drugs—particularly opioids such as fentanyl—and illegal weapons across the border.
“The southern border is now the most dangerous border in the world, and it’s essentially wide open under the Biden administration—it’s hurting America,” he said.
Bolduc said it has to be ensured that border patrol has what it needs to protect the country, such as adequate personnel, air and technology assets, a border wall, the enforcement of immigration laws, and more. Without these things, “America has vulnerabilities.”
“No country in the world would mimic what the United States is doing right now on its southern border,” he said, calling the Biden administration’s border policies “a disaster.”
“The sheer insecurity of America is frightening.”
The Economy Crunch
In addition to the security issues of the country, Bolduc said, “We are witnessing the worst economy in our nation’s history in terms of inflation, in terms of energy dependence, in terms of how it’s hurting Americans.”
Inflation has caused Americans to spend an extra $5,000 per year, as the cost of fuel, food, and other basic essentials climb to historic levels, he said.
“And while government spending is out of control,” many Americans “are cutting into their medical costs, cutting into their groceries, and just simply trying to make ends meet,” Bolduc said.
“It’s a dangerous place to be, and it has to change.”
Hassan has referred to her Republican challengers as “a group of really extreme opponents.” She didn’t respond to multiple inquiries from The Epoch Times to share her views on the issues facing the country. White House officials also didn’t respond to a request for comment.
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.
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.
‘You cannot call him Uncle f—ing Tom on my watch!’
Glenn Loury is sick and tired of the racially charged assault on Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas. The Brown University professor ranted on his podcast last week about the virulence of left-wing attacks on Thomas following the justice’s vote to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Loury, who is black, was particularly outraged at Samuel L. Jackson and others who invoked the racist “Uncle Tom” trope to denigrate the justice as a traitor to black Americans—an egregiously offensive thing to say, Loury argued, about a black man who grew up “a step from slavery” and rose to become one of the most accomplished jurists in the country. By defining Thomas solely by his conservative political views, his critics were denigrating “the value of this man’s contribution” to black history.
“Come on, man. Let’s stay in touch with reality,” Loury said. “I’m sorry, you cannot call him an Uncle fucking Tom on my watch!”
A coalition of 17 attorneys general is threatening Google with an anti-trust investigation if it censors pregnancy crisis centers from search results related to abortion.
Pregnancy crisis centers are different from abortion centers in that they provide resources for women who choose to carry their babies to full term.
The attorneys general of Virginia and Kentucky, Jason Miyares and Daniel Cameron, respectively, are leading the group, which sent a letter to Google on July 21.
In the letter, the group asks whether the tech giant has taken any steps to treat crisis pregnancy centers differently in search results since Roe v Wade was overturned.
Google, Miyares, and Cameron did not respond to requests for comment. Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt said he joined the effort because he did not want to see Google succumb to political pressure.
The AGs’ joint correspondence was in response to Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Congresswoman Elissa Slotnick’s (D-Mich.) June 17th letter asking what steps Google CEO Sundar Pichai will take to limit the appearance of anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers in Google search results when users search for “abortion clinics” or “abortion pills.”
“Google should not be displaying anti-abortion fake clinics or crisis pregnancy centers in search results for users that are searching for an abortion clinic or abortion pill,” Warner and Slotnik wrote. “If Google must continue showing these misleading search results and in Google Maps, the results should at the very least be appropriately labeled.”
An additional 12 Senators and nine members of Congress, including Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), signed the letter.
“Senator Warner believes that users who search for “abortion services” should receive results that are relevant to their searches,” said Valeria Rivadeneira, a Warner spokesperson. “Crisis pregnancy centers—which routinely misinform and mislead clients about their reproductive health—make every effort to appear in these search results in order to deceive individuals into thinking they offer a full range of reproductive health services.”
Rivadeneira added that Warner has not yet received a response to his June 17th communication to Google and that Google should apply appropriate labels to all organic search and map results.
Curtis Hill, former Attorney General of Indiana, said the cadre of Democratic politicians want Google to act as an arm of the government in suppressing information.
“It’s a typical sidestep that some government officials try to create, and we’ve seen it in other areas,” he said. “So, it’s highly appropriate for the state’s attorneys general to call it for what it is…possible antitrust violations for which they would face sanctions.”
Because Google operates in all their states, the company falls under the jurisdiction of each AG’s consumer advocacy responsibilities.
“They have the right to investigate companies that are operating within their state on information that consumers are being duped or otherwise are having difficulty being treated fairly,” Hill told The Epoch Times.
He commended his former colleagues for demanding to know whether Google intends to comply with the request made by members of the Senate and Congress.
“I’d want to know if the algorithms had been changed by a particular date and if any differences or distinctions seem to be in compliance with the request that was made,” Hill added. “It’s been suggested that some of the searches be limited. So, I would want to see the searches.”
Pregnancy crisis centers like the Crisis Pregnancy Support Center (CPSC) in Texas City, Texas, don’t just rely on Google for clients.
Instead, it’s word of mouth that brings pregnant women to their doorstep, according to Christy Anne Collins, CPSC executive director.
“Most of our referrals come from people in the community who are involved in social service type of work and know the services we offer,” she said. “We’re not competing with the abortion listings, and we don’t want to.”
Collins thinks it’s appropriate that Texas AG Ken Paxton is among the Generals who signed the letter.
“Google or anybody else shouldn’t be stifling free speech, not on this issue or any other issue,” she said.
Serving up to 170 individuals per month ranging in age from 9 to 52 years old, CPSC has been in existence since 1992.
“If somebody is interested in alternative information or they are interested in crisis pregnancy centers, we shouldn’t be blocked out,” Collins told The Epoch Times. “I’m very concerned that that kind of thing could happen very easily.”
