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.

“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.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Viktor Orban kicks off CPAC in Dallas

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Lone Star State of Europe’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

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 Hill reported 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.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Michael Bennet claims he doesn’t accept corporate PAC contributions. He’s taken thousands from groups that accept corporate PAC money.

Sen. Michael Bennet (D., Colo.) claims he doesn’t accept contributions from corporate PACs or federal lobbyists. A Washington Free Beacon review of his campaign finance records tells another story.

“I’m not taking a dime in corporate PAC money,” Bennet says in his first reelection campaign ad. “Washington could learn a lot from Colorado. That’s why I approve this message.” But the Colorado senator accepted more than $60,000 from PACs that accept corporate PAC contributions last quarter alone. Bennet also accepted $3,500 from the Blackstone Group’s corporate PAC in 2021. The same quarter he accepted that donation he claimed on Twitter that his campaign was “setting records without taking a cent from corporate PACs.”

On multiple occasions Bennet has also claimed that he has never taken any donations from lobbyists. Yet lobbyists have given him more than one million dollars since he entered the Senate in 2009, according to his campaign finance records.

Bennet taking money from corporations and lobbyists highlights how Democrats struggle to meet purity pledges demanded by left-wing activists. Such pledges help give the impression to voters that the candidates are free from outside influence. Other Democrats who say they swear off corporate PAC money, including Sens. Mark Kelly (Ariz.) and Raphael Warnock (Ga.), have exploited corporate donation loopholes.

At least 16 PACs that accept donations from corporations donated money to Bennet last quarter, according to his campaign finance records. Those PACs include the Real Estate Roundtable PAC and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association.

Similar to Democrats such as Kelly, Bennet also accepted tens of thousands of dollars from PACs funded by trade associations. Some of those PACs include the National Structured Settlements PAC and the American Council of Life Insurers PAC.

Much of Bennet’s other donations come from those connected to financial firms. From 2009 to the second quarter of 2022, Bennet accepted more than $5 million dollars from the securities and investment industry. Employees from the investment management firms Blackstone Group and Oaktree Capital Management have given Bennet over a half million dollars.

Bennet will face Republican challenger Joe O’Dea in November.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Published in Bold Christian Writing and Christian Nationalism

• American Christianity
• Christian Nationalism
• Thomas Achord

SURPRISE! ANOTHER BIDEN HIRE IS A CCP SHILL!

A Co-Chair of Joe Biden’s forthcoming White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health has appeared in documentaries produced by Chinese Communist Party-run outlets; lauding the regime’s agriculture and food policy as an approach that should be “learned by the whole world.”

Ertharin Cousin, one of five individuals selected by Biden to lead the conference, has also repeatedly praised the Chinese Communist Party’s agricultural policies, with her quotes frequently appearing on regime-run media.

Set to take place in September, the White House’s conference is slated to address nutrition and health in addition to food security and agriculture. It comes as inflation and food shortages plague the economy, dovetailing with efforts by left-wing activists and billionaires to eliminate meat from Western diets to supposedly combat climate change.

Cousin, who was a former executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme, appeared on an episode of China Global Television Network’s (CGTN) show Full Frame titled “The Hunger Paradox.”

Cousin is the sole interviewee in the 20-minute program aired by CGTN, which is entirely owned and operated by the Chinese Communist Party. It has been described by the Freedom House think tank as “a long-standing weapon in Beijing’s arsenal of repression” whose “mission is to attack designated enemies of the Communist Party.”

The episode peddles Chinese Communist Party talking points surrounding the success of its agriculture methods despite the regime’s notoriety for famine and food rationing during the Cultural Revolution.

“In China, agricultural reforms ensured most rural farmers had land to grow on, allowing them to be food self-sufficient. China’s poverty reduction efforts have contributed to 70 percent of the world-wide poverty reduction since the 1980’s,” asserts the host, who makes no mention of China’s history of famine.

MUST READ: REVEALED: Pelosi-Linked Lobbyists Are Pushing China’s Social Credit System For American Citizens.

“One of the things I’ve heard you say, which I think is fascinating and true, is that policies do make a difference and you point to China. So many people lifted out of poverty, so many people hungry that now have meals, so policies do make a difference don’t they,” he continues.

“Yes they do,” responds Cousin, adding “You would often hear me use China as an example of a country that the world said would never feed itself. That it would always depend upon assistance from the global community because 50 years ago, China was WFP’s largest recipient, and that all evolved to the point where President Xi now says that he will eradicate poverty by the end of 2020.”

“I’m looking forward to that,” Cousin exclaims.

Cousin proceeds to explicitly praise the actions of the Chinese Communist Party, praising the regime for its “commitment”:

“It did take commitment from government to developing the programs, investing in the activities that were necessary to ensure the agricultural system was one that could provide access to food, but also ensuring that people who could not afford food had access to food. And that made a difference in the evolution of China, and there are many other factors involved there but the reality of it is is it began with a commitment by leadership to ensure that they were self-sustained in food access.”

Cousin, who served in the Obama administration as the Ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture, has made similar comments throughout her public service tenure.

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

“China has made enormous progress in dealing with hunger and its experience can be learned by the whole world,” Cousin said during a visit to China in 2013, which was hyped in an article by state-run media outlet China Daily.

In 2016, speaking with another state-run media outlet Xinhua, she claimed that “China has created significant lessons for the world and established a true benchmark for what the world can achieve.”

As recently as July 2021, while delivering a keynote address at a conference, Cousin again praised the Chinese Communist Party for “despite the fact that some 60 years ago, the world said China would never be able to feed itself, not only does it feed itself today, but it is also a donor country, supporting food access across the globe for developing countries.”

In addition to Cousin’s praise for China potentially complicating her leadership role for the upcoming White Conference, she has also served on the Advisory board of pharmaceutical giant Bayer since 2019.

Small businesses seeking to grow their overseas sales are supposed to be the primary beneficiaries of loan guarantees by the U.S. Export-Import Bank (EX-IM), but a new analysis by a nonprofit government watchdog finds most of the funds go to corporate giants and corrupt regimes overseas.

“Small businesses, supposedly the intended beneficiary of the Export-Import Bank, received only $54.8 billion of the over $234 billion in total assistance since 2007, or about 23 percent” of the bank’s total funding, according to the report by Open The Books (OTB), a Chicago-based nonprofit that monitors government spending.

By filing more than 40,000 federal Freedom of Information Act requests and posting the checkbooks of 49 state governments, OTB has posted to the internet more than $6 trillion in public spending. The non-profit’s goal is to “post every dime in real-time.”

By far the biggest beneficiary of EX-IM lending is the Boeing Corporation, the largest U.S. aircraft manufacturer and one of the world’s most successful designers and builders of commercial airliners.

Boeing’s headquarters is currently in Chicago, but the company is planning a move to Arlington, Virginia, in the near future.

“The Export-Import Bank has been nicknamed ‘Boeing’s Bank’ by critics, and it is easy to see why. From 2007-2021, the aircraft giant received 33 percent of all of the Export-Import Bank’s assistance, totaling over $66.4 billion, while the second largest vendor received just over $5 billion. That’s more than all small businesses received combined,” the OTB report said.

“Boeing subsidiary Boeing Satellite Systems International reaped another $1.4 billion in assistance. Major international airline companies like Ryanair, Emirates Airlines, and Air Canada have all received assistance for Boeing purchases. Boeing employs a small army of 18 lobbyists to advocate for the Export-Import Bank,” the report said.

The second largest beneficiary of EX-IM funding is the Reston, Virginia-based Bechtel Corporation, which ranked only behind Boeing despite getting assistance for only seven contracts since 2007.

“The engineering and construction company received just over $5 billion from the bank for petroleum engineering in wealthy countries like the United Kingdom, Australia, and India, as well as with governments like Serbia and Kenya,” according to the OTB report.

General Electric Corporation and its subsidiaries whose exports of industrial engines and machinery in over 265 transactions earned them third place on the list of top vendors. The report said GEC got $4.7 billion in assistance between General Electric International Operations Company and General Electric Energy Parts alone.

About EX-IM’s overseas funding activities the report said, “the mandate of EX-IM is ‘filling the gaps’ to provide liquidity—facilitating the wheels of commerce. [A total of] 147 countries have received some amount of aid since 2007.

“While the United States sent billions of aid to some of the most corrupt countries and repressive regimes in the world, equally disturbing is the amount that went to wealthy countries that don’t need our aid.”

Ranked by countries, the largest beneficiary of U.S. taxpayer-guaranteed EX-IM loans is Nigeria, ruled by a regime that is ranked among the world’s most corrupt. “Ranked 149th in the world on a scale from least to most corrupt by Transparency International in 2020, importers in Nigeria received over $570 million from the Export-Import Bank.

“It would be a miracle if any of those dollars actually reached their intended recipient,” the OTB report said.

China, with the world’s second-largest economy, was also a large beneficiary of EX-IM resources.

“Second to only the United States in [Gross Domestic Product] GDP, businesses in China nonetheless received more than $6.4 billion in U.S. Export-Import Bank assistance. Even amidst Donald Trump’s trade war with China, $128,062,638.20 flowed to China from 2017 to 2020,” the report observed.

Russia and Turkey are also big beneficiaries of EX-IM funding.

“At least part of the over $1.9 billion that went to Russia likely went to line the pockets of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s oligarchs, who control most of the commerce in the country.

“Sberbank, Russia’s largest financial institution, was recently sanctioned by the United States for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, though they were approved for $29,103,807 of assistance from the Export-Import Bank,” the report said.

“Human Rights Watch warned in 2021 that Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been ‘dismantling human rights protections and democratic norms in Turkey on a scale unprecedented in the 18 years he has been in office.’ Still, the Export-Import Bank has sent over $6.2 billion to Turkey since 2007,” OTB reported.

The EX-IM bank currently has 396 employees, with 321 of them, or 81 percent, being made more than $100,000 annually. The highest paid employee made $199,300.

The bank has been the source of controversy for nearly a decade, with conservative Republicans demanding it is abolished as a corrupt example of crony capitalism, and Democrats defending it as an essential tool of U.S. foreign policy.

The then-Republican-led Congress allowed EX-IM to expire in 2015 but reversed itself five months later.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

After Andy Levin’s loss in Michigan, ‘Squad’ acolyte Nina Turner says ‘AIPAC bought another seat’

For the second time in a year, anti-Israel Democrats found themselves on the losing end of a bitter primary battle and rushed to blame the Jews.

On Tuesday night, pro-Israel Rep. Haley Stevens cruised to a 20-point win over fellow Michigan Democratic representative Andy Levin, who has championed legislation to restrict military aid to the Jewish state, argued that anti-Semitism is not an issue on the left, and aligned himself with his party’s most radical, anti-Semitic members. As a result, pro-Israel group AIPAC spent to boost Stevens and oppose Levin through one of its newly formed political action committees, the United Democracy Project—prompting Levin’s far-left allies to blame the so-called Israel lobby following the congressman’s defeat.

“Squad” acolyte and twice-failed congressional candidate Nina Turner, for example, quickly said, “AIPAC bought another seat.” Turner herself blamed her 2021 congressional loss on “evil money” after pro-Israel Democrats backed her primary opponent. Liberal anti-Israel group J Street also denounced AIPAC’s “aggressive outside spending,” which it called “harmful and unwelcome.” J Street’s statement did not mention its own outside spending in the race—the group dropped more than $700,000 to oppose Stevens.

AIPAC, of course, was not the only outside group that backed Stevens in the race. Pro-abortion giant EMILY’s List endorsed Stevens over Levin and spent more than $3 million to support the congresswoman through its own PAC, Women Vote!

While Levin did not mention AIPAC by name in his concession statement, the Democrat did attack what he called a “largely Republican-funded campaign set on defeating the movement I represent no matter where I ran.” In response, AIPAC said it was “proud” to have “helped pro-Israel Democrats prevail over detractors of the Jewish state” and accused its critics of hypocrisy.

“A double standard is applied to us when it comes to money in politics,” the group’s spokesman, Marshall Wittmann, told the Washington Free Beacon. “Those who criticize our involvement often hypocritically support the use of the same tools against pro-Israel candidates.”

Levin, who served as president of a progressive Detroit synagogue, has aligned himself with the Democratic Party’s loudest anti-Semitic voices.

In the past year, he’s repeatedly defended Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) and Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) from accusations of anti-Semitism. Tlaib has accused Jewish supporters of Israel of holding dual loyalties and in May collaborated with a pro-Hamas activist who urged Palestinians to attack Israel. Omar, meanwhile, has argued that U.S. support for Israel is “all about the Benjamins baby,” a reference to $100 bills that prompted swift condemnation from many prominent Democrats.

Despite those examples of anti-Semitism among his closest allies, Levin has argued that left-wing anti-Semitism is merely “part of a larger machinery to stoke fear and division.”

“I don’t really [think left-wing anti-Semitism is an issue],” Levin told Jewish Insider in March 2021.

Stevens’s victory over Levin marks the latest House primary win for pro-Israel Democrats. In 2021, pro-Israel Democrat Shontel Brown defeated Turner in Ohio’s 11th Congressional District and thanked her “Jewish brothers and sisters” in her victory speech. Roughly one year later, in May, Brown again defeated Turner, who failed to airbrush her anti-Israel past after she expressed “solidarity” with far-left groups that accuse Israel of apartheid.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

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. 

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

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 the New 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.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kheriaty also says he was censored by Twitter.

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

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

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

‘Self-Censor’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More Defendants

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

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

None were named in the original filing.

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

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

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

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

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

Source: The Epoch Times

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Black Americans Want Less Crime

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Woke’ Prosecutors Won’t Punish Criminals

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Democrats and Republicans need to rein in spending: Heritage Foundation’s Joel Griffith

With raging inflation and the Democrat-led Congress gathering enough Senate support to pass billions more in spending, Joel Griffith, a research fellow in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for economic policy studies at The Heritage Foundation, told NTD TV that if the United States does not rein in its irresponsible fiscal actions, the nation is headed for a worse economic crisis.

Griffith said that raising taxes on the wealthy will not get the federal government out of the financial hole it’s dug for itself over the past few decades, particularly the spending that’s occurred in the last two years.

“The only way to pay for all this would be to print the money, to borrow the money, or to raise taxes on the middle class. There’s no easy way out of this,” Griffith said during the interview. “And politicians don’t have an appetite to correct the problem. So, there’s going to be a crisis if we do not correct our ways. It’s just a matter of time.”

By technical definition, the United States already has entered a recession, but the Biden administration continues to deny the facts.

“Everybody loves the goodies, and now we’re suffering the consequences. And it’s so important for people to realize that the economic misery that we’re feeling right now is directly related to the mistakes that were made in the past two years, with shutdowns, with spending, and with printing,” said Griffith.

The U.S. government’s debt now amounts to more than $30 trillion, which calculates to $100,000 per person, and with current interest rates, it’s an additional $1,000 in debt, per person, being added each year, said Griffith.

Democrats’ ‘Inflation Reduction’ Bill

Senators Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced on July 27 that they had enough votes to pass a measure called the “Inflation Reduction Act of 2022” (pdf), which seeks to spend some $433 billion—about $369 billion toward energy and climate programs over the next 10 years, and $64 billion toward extending federal subsidies for three more years for some people buying private health insurance.

Meanwhile, many from both sides of the aisle viewed Manchin as a fiscal moderate who would not opt for further government spending, especially during a recession.

Griffith, however, said that he is not surprised by Manchin supporting liberal legislation that will expand the federal government, and hurt his own state of West Virginia, because he has observed that the senator supports liberal policies.

“We know what [Manchin has] supported in the past. And he has been for expanding the size and the scope of government. So I’m disappointed that he has agreed to a package that is going to dramatically increase taxes on businesses, [that] it’s going to actually include more taxes on fossil fuels. And it’s going to even further socialize our health care sector,” said Griffith.

The U.S. consumer is already paying, via taxes and inflation, the trillions of dollars the government spent and printed in the name of pandemic relief, said Griffith. This new package will only make the economy worse off.

“We are suffering through the consequences of too much spending … and to see the Senate now moving forward on a package that’s going to increase taxes and increase [the] costs on fuel production,  it’s unfortunate,” said Griffith.

Not Putin’s Fault

Griffith said for a family with a middle-class income, “We’ve seen your real take-home pay decline by more than $6,000 annually because of all this inflation.”

And even if inflation were to revert to normal tomorrow, about 2 percent annually, it will not negate the economic damage, only lessen it for the future, he said.

“Putting the blame on [Putin] and his actions in the war in Ukraine for rising prices—that’s simply, largely untrue,” said Griffith.

Gas prices were already on the rise long before Russian President Putin invaded Ukraine, said Griffith, adding, “Same thing goes with our food costs, commodity costs, fertilizer costs—all of those were rapidly increasing long before Putin decided to invade Ukraine.”

“Let’s remember, it was our own politicians who shut down our economy. It was our own Congress in the United States that voted to spend $6 trillion that we don’t have. And it was our central bank, our Federal Reserve, that printed $6 trillion out of thin air. That is what is largely responsible for this inflation, not Vladimir Putin,” said Griffith.

Another contributing factor to the poor economy is an aspect of the employment rate called the participation rate (i.e., the percentage of people who are working age and are either working or looking for work), which more accurately describes who is working, said Griffith.

“The [participation rate] is near generational lows. In fact, if we were to have a participation rate that would have remained steady over the past three years … it shows that more than a million people have actually dropped out of our workforce entirely.”

“That’s part of the reason why if you go to a restaurant, a bar, a retail store, you notice the service isn’t so good right now,” added Griffith. “And that’s because relative to our overall population, we have fewer people working today than there were just two and a half years ago.”

There has been some increase in the participation rate in the United States, said Griffith, because “as people draw down on those savings [accumulated during the time when the government was doling out pandemic relief funds], they’re finding it necessary to return to the workforce.”

Middle-Class Most Impacted

Griffith said the money the government is spending is coming from the taxpayer and that this will affect the middle-class the most because they won’t be able to save and “build wealth” because of the current and rampant inflation.

“And that’s what I’m very fearful of—that as we continue to spend far beyond our means, that it’s not just going to have an impact this year, and next year, [but] 10 years and 15 years from now, [and] we’re going to see even fewer opportunities [like the creation of new jobs] for typical American families,” said Griffith.

Mimi Nguyen Ly contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

IT’S ALL ADDS UP NOW.

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

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

Chapter 10 of her book further explains:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

They should grab it now and not let go.

My blood is boiling.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Michael Shapiro joins Blackstone from the Department of Transportation

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s son-in-law has joined private equity giant Blackstone as a “managing director of government affairs,” the latest addition to the New York Democrat’s family lobbying empire.

Michael Shapiro, who recently served as Joe Biden’s deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the Department of Transportation, will focus on infrastructure investments and projects at Blackstone, according to the firm. Shapiro lands the new gig as Schumer is poised to decide the fate of legislation on infrastructure spending and tax loopholes of interest to Blackstone. The move was first reported by Capitol Account, a newsletter founded by two former Bloomberg reporters devoted to covering the intersection of Wall Street and Washington.

Schumer is already under fire for blocking a vote on legislation opposed by companies that employ other members of his family. Progressive groups and Republicans have unsuccessfully pressured Schumer to schedule a vote on antitrust legislation that would rein in Big Tech firms. Schumer’s daughters, Jessica and Alison, are lobbyists for Amazon and Facebook’s parent company Meta, respectively. Shapiro married Jessica Schumer in 2016, after meeting at the Obama White House. The New York Times described their courtship as a “real West Wing romance.”

Blackstone said Shapiro, who advised Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 presidential campaign, will not lobby his father-in-law on issues related to the firm. But the private equity behemoth, which manages nearly $900 billion in assets, has lobbied the Senate on the Build Back Better Act, the massive infrastructure spending program. Blackstone also lobbied the Senate on carried interest, the loophole by which private equity firms obtain lower tax rates for income. Schumer is leading negotiations on the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes language to close the carried interest loophole.

Schumer has ties to other lobbyists for Blackstone. Steve Elmendorf, a prominent Democratic donor who runs the firm Subject Matter, in the past has defended Schumer over the senator’s ties to Wall Street. “In working with him for 25 years, he very aggressively represents the state of New York. Sometimes that means he’s representing one interest over another,” Elmendorf said in 2015.

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

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Group backed by Sixteen Thirty Fund to spend $5 million to support Mandela Barnes

Mandela Barnes, a Democratic Senate candidate in Wisconsin, is getting a major boost from a liberal dark-money network despite campaigning on a pledge to crack down on undisclosed funding in politics.

The Family Friendly Action PAC, a group run by Democratic political operatives that announced a $23 million election canvassing operation last week, endorsed Barnes, the presumptive Democratic nominee, on Monday and said it plans to spend at least $5 million to support his race against Republican incumbent senator Ron Johnson. The super PAC is primarily funded by the dark-money organizations Sixteen Thirty Fund and America Votes.

The funding is at odds with Barnes’s professed opposition to undisclosed political spending. The candidate has promised to “stand up to the corrupting influence of dark money” and highlighted the issue as a key plank of his campaign.

The Family Friendly Action PAC on Monday announced its endorsement of Barnes and said it was “proud to support him as he runs to replace Ron Johnson.”

The super PAC received $1.4 million from America Votes and $285,000 from the Sixteen Thirty Fund, according to FEC records.

The Sixteen Thirty Fund is one of the largest liberal dark-money organizations and poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the 2020 election. America Votes, another dark-money group, received most of its funding from the Sixteen Thirty Fund in the 2020 cycle, according to Politico.

Barnes has not publicly objected to the Family Friendly Action PAC’s endorsement or spending pledge. The super PAC’s Wisconsin state director Brita Olsen worked as a consultant for Barnes in 2019.

Barnes’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

This isn’t the first time outside groups have moved to help Barnes despite his supposed opposition to dark money and corporate PACs. On June 15, the Democrat posted a note on his website saying he needed help getting positive advertising about his personal background out to the pricey “Milwaukee, Madison and the Green Bay media markets.”

Days later, a group called the Courageous Leaders PAC—funded by Barnes donor Karla Jurvetson—poured more than $400,000 into ads promoting the exact message outlined by Barnes, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Barnes’s campaign also hired Marc Elias, one of the Democratic Party’s top “dark money” lawyers, the Washington Free Beacon reported earlier this year. Elias’s firm works for Arabella Advisors, a for-profit consulting firm that manages the Sixteen Thirty Fund and similar groups.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Mandela Barnes won’t say if U.S. is in recession

Wisconsin Democratic Senate candidate Mandela Barnes said the U.S. economy is dealing with “unprecedented growth,” and declined to say if the country is in a recession after six months of declining production, during an interview on Sunday.

Barnes, the presumptive Democratic nominee, tried to put a positive spin on the grim economic news by blaming U.S. economic problems on job creation and a low unemployment rate.

“Are we in a recession?” asked a reporter with WKOW-TV.

“Well, I’ll tell you, we have seen unprecedented growth for a long time right now,” said Barnes.

When asked what he meant by growth, Barnes responded that “growth is what leads to inflation.”

“The fact that we’ve had more job growth, the fact the unemployment rate is so low, the unfortunate reality that oil and gas companies are having record profit years while gas prices continue to rise across the country,” he said.

Barnes’s comments come as the Biden administration has scrambled to redefine the term “recession,” which has been traditionally characterized by two straight quarters of declining GDP.

Barnes is expected to face off against Republican incumbent senator Ron Johnson in the November election, after clearing the Democratic field last week. The Democratic primary is scheduled for next Tuesday.

Barnes, the current Wisconsin lieutenant governor, has had a rocky start when it comes to public speaking. During a major address last week, he said he was running against “Scott Walker,” who he called “one of the worst senators this state has ever had.” Walker is the former governor of Wisconsin who left office in 2019.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

West Virginia senator’s deal provides tens of billions of dollars in electric vehicle tax credits.

Sen. Joe Manchin’s $485 billion budget reconciliation package includes a provision he once called “ludicrous” and counterproductive to fighting inflation, according to a Washington Free Beacon review of the bill.

The deal Manchin struck with Senate Democrats to fight inflation includes tens of billions of dollars worth of electric vehicle tax credits, a policy once considered a non-starter for Manchin. As recently as April, Democrats thought negotiations reached an impasse after he said electric tax credits “make no sense to me whatsoever.”

“There’s a waiting list for EVs right now with a fuel price at $4.00, but they still want us to throw $5,000 or $7,000 or a $12,000 credit to buy an electric vehicle,” Manchin said on the Senate floor. “We can’t produce enough product for the people that want it and we’re still going to pay them to take it. It’s absolutely ludicrous, in my mind.”

Despite those words, the Inflation Reduction Act includes electric vehicle tax credits for up to $7,500 per vehicle. Those tax benefits apply to any family making up to $300,000 and can be used on any electric vehicle that costs up to $80,000.

The electric vehicle provision is the latest reversal for Manchin, who held up Democratic Party spending plans for more than a year over a litany of concerns that have been seemingly tossed aside. Last week, the bipartisan Joint Committee on Taxation concluded that the budget reconciliation package would raise taxes by billions on Americans making less than $200,000. Manchin previously said he would never support tax hikes during a recession, which the U.S. economy entered in July. Why Manchin caved on electric vehicle subsidies is unclear. Manchin said in March that he was “reluctant to go down the path of electric vehicles” over concerns about the ability for manufacturers to meet demand.

“I’m old enough to remember standing in line in 1974 trying to buy gas. I remember those days,” he said. “I don’t want to have to be standing in line waiting for a battery for my vehicle, because we’re now dependent on a foreign supply chain, mostly China.”

Republicans are unanimous in their opposition to the spending package. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell blasted Manchin over hypocrisy last week and called the Inflation Reduction Act a “reckless taxing and spending spree that will delight the far left and hammer working families even harder.”

“They want Americans to be faced with skyrocketing prices and higher taxes and fewer jobs, all at the same time,” McConnell said. “Democrats have outlined a giant package of huge new job-killing tax hikes, Green New Deal craziness that will kill American energy.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Tehran slated to sell China $27 billion in oil this year

Iran’s illegal oil trade has boomed under the Biden administration, with the hardline regime selling more than $44 billion worth of its heavily sanctioned oil to malign regimes like China, Syria, and Venezuela, according to figures published by a watchdog group.

From January 2021, when Joe Biden took office, to June 2022, Iran sold around $44.7 billion in oil primarily to China. The regime’s export revenues between March 2021 and March 2022 from oil, gas, and related products “totaled $39 billion, compared [with] $22 billion for the previous year—a rise of 77 percent and an extra $17 billion,” according to United Against a Nuclear Iran (UANI), a watchdog group that tracks Iran’s network of illegal oil tankers.

“This drastic increase in revenue is not surprising when you look at the increase in oil exports that have occurred under the Biden administration,” UANI chief of staff Claire Jungman told the Washington Free Beacon. “This is the result of terminally lax sanctions enforcement.”

In addition to looser sanctions on Iran, the Biden administration has turned a blind eye to enforcement as it seeks to ink a revamped version of the 2015 nuclear deal. These moves are meant to appease Iran and cajole it into signing a deal that will remove virtually all sanctions on the hardline regime, including its oil trade. China is the primary beneficiary of this policy, with Iranian oil imports quadrupling to the country in 2021 to $23.1 billion. The China-Iran oil pipeline is on pace to hit around $27 billion in 2022, according to UANI’s figures.

If sanctions on Iran are lifted as part of a new nuclear deal, Iran-China trade could reach around $60 billion per year, according to one former U.S. official.

“China made a mockery of the credibility of our sanctions programs and emboldened rogue actors across the world to follow suit,” Gabriel Noronha, a State Department special adviser for Iran during the Trump administration, told the Free Beacon.

Iran’s foreign currency reserves— which were nearly drained under the Trump administration’s maximum pressure campaign—will have “increased nearly tenfold by the end of this year,” according to Noronha.

“The United States refused to enforce its sanctions even while Iran was continuing to advance its nuclear program and its regional terror attacks,” Noronha said. “The result was that Iran’s economy revived itself.”

This financial relief gave Iran a cushion and lessened pressure that could have forced it into accepting a more stringent nuclear deal.

“The Iranian leadership does not feel pressure to finalize the nuclear deal because they’ve already enjoyed the benefits of effective sanctions relief,” Noronha said. “The fact that the Biden administration can’t even manage a return to the notoriously weak [nuclear deal] is evidence of the sheer diplomatic malpractice carried out by the Biden administration, particularly Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. envoy for Iran Rob Malley.”

As Iran and China boost their oil alliance, the U.S. emergency crude stockpiles dropped to their lowest levels in 37 years. This comes after the Biden administration agreed to sell China several million barrels from the U.S. stores, sparking a congressional investigation.

In July, Iran sold 746,915 barrels of oil per day to China, according to UANI.

Under pressure from watchdog groups like UANI, the Biden administration is beginning to issue new sanctions on Iran’s oil trade.

The State Department announced on Monday that it is “designating six entities” for their role in “facilitating illicit transactions related to Iranian petroleum.”

The administration says it is committed to reviving the nuclear deal, but will issue sanctions until the agreement is signed.

“The United States has been sincere in pursuing a path of meaningful diplomacy to achieve a mutual return to full implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA),” the State Department said, referring to the 2015 deal by its official name. “Until Iran is ready to return to full implementation of the JCPOA, we will continue to use our sanctions authorities to target exports of petroleum, petroleum products, and petrochemical products from Iran.”

UANI’s Jungman said the new sanctions are a good first step, but that “there are many gaps that need to be filled.” The administration still has not designated several oil tankers known to be ferrying illicit Iranian oil.

“Without designation on the vessels, the tankers will just register under new companies and continue to assist Iran in exporting its oil,” she said.

Noronha says these sanctions have come too late.

“China took advantage of the Biden administration’s weak posture and blatantly flouted our sanctions on Iran for over 16 months before the United States made any attempt to stop the trade,” he said.

The State Department says that it continues to engage China diplomatically as part of its efforts to crack down on its oil partnership with Tehran.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

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

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

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

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

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

Government officials have said they have not acted improperly.

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

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

The government is seeking to dismiss the case.

Violating Rights

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

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

Related Coverage

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

REVIEW: ‘Any Given Tuesday’ by Lis Smith

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s a hell of a drug.

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

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Public Outcry

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But it will be ugly.

One Party, Two Views

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trump is Different

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Primary Fight

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

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

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

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

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

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

He says the Democrats have moved too far left.

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

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

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Morningstar research arm may downgrade companies for working in disputed areas of Israel

A financial services giant builds its ratings around the premise that any entity operating in “occupied Palestinian territories” is connected to human rights violations—a standard that one foreign policy analyst says is a key pillar of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, which tries to gin up an economic boycott of the Jewish state.

The research arm of Morningstar Inc., a firm that advises investors and rates companies based in part on their social ethics, may designate a company as participating in human rights violations just for working in an area it calls the “occupied Palestinian territories,” according to Richard Goldberg, a former U.S. national security official and Middle East expert who published an independent analysis on the matter for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank.

Sustainalytics, the research arm, in its guidance documents says its “position is that in occupied territories where human rights are being systematically violated, any business activity in that region is connected to the violations in some direct or indirect way,” according to a review of Morningstar’s methods conducted by the law firm White & Case. This standard is also applied to other areas immersed in conflict, such as Yemen, the Western Sahara, Tibet, and the South China Sea.

Goldberg, who independently analyzed the White & Case report, said the reliance on this standard for the “occupied Palestinian territories” results in companies being downgraded just for performing work in a disputed area of Israel. He says these standards ultimately promote divestment from Israel, as companies seek to distance themselves to avoid a negative rating from the company. Ratings produced by firms like Morningstar serve as a primary guide for investors and can greatly impact a company’s appeal.

Morningstar is already battling charges that Sustainalytics unfairly downgrades companies working with Israel’s security and anti-terrorism sectors. Critics like Goldberg say the ratings system unfairly targets Israel’s partners and ultimately bolsters the BDS movement, which wages economic warfare on the Jewish state and its allies. White & Case’s review of the company’s practices found some instances of bias in certain products. It recommended multiple reforms that Morningstar says it is undertaking to make its ratings products fairer to Israel. This includes altering the language in some of its ratings products and canceling others.

Sustainalytics classifies the “occupied Palestinian territories” as the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, and Golan Heights—areas that remain disputed.

“We’re now getting to the deepest root of the BDS activity inside Morningstar,” Goldberg said. “Every downgrade of an Israeli-connected company starts with a BDS campaign assumption that Jews have no right to live in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights. If you’re a Jewish business operating near the holiest site for Jews in the world, you’re an assumed human rights violator according to Morningstar.”

“Just like the BDS campaign,” Goldberg said, “Morningstar’s premise is that companies that legitimize a Jewish presence in these areas must be investigated and harassed.”

A Morningstar spokesman would not answer specific questions about the ratings practices but told the Washington Free Beacon that the company “does not support the anti-Israel BDS movement.” The spokesman said the company is working with Jewish advocacy groups, including the Jewish Federations of North America, to address concerns of bias and implement the reforms included in the White & Case report.

Sustainalytics relies on research produced by nonprofit groups that critics view as anti-Israel. This includes Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, which describe Israel as an occupying force and apartheid state. Sustainalytics also has a relationship with a group called WhoProfits, which the watchdog group NGO Monitor has flagged as “a leader” in the BDS movement.

“Sustainalytics has the system rigged against Israel-connected companies from beginning to end,” said Goldberg. “You start with false anti-Israel assumptions and double standards that trigger unfair investigations, validate BDS claims with pro-BDS sources of information, and the unsurprising output is an unfair negative rating of Israel-connected companies.”

Pro-Israel organizations like the Jewish Federations, an umbrella group representing pro-Israel activities across the United States, say Morningstar’s ratings are more biased than the company acknowledges.

The White & Case report “makes clear that built-in bias against Israel infects Sustainalytics’s methodology and sources, and thus, its other [ethical] ratings products,” the Jewish group wrote in a recent letter sent to Morningstar’s top executives. “Morningstar should take the opportunity to cleanse its products of all anti-Israel bias and set an example of fairness and reliability for all companies providing [ethical] ratings, which represent one-third of dollars managed globally.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

A key inflation gauge the Federal Reserve tracks closely when setting interest rates jumped in June to its highest level in 40 years, suggesting the Fed’s fight to take the sting out of price pressures may be drawn out.

The Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index, released on July 29 by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), rose from an annualized 6.3 percent in May to 6.8 percent in June—marking the fastest pace of year-over-year price acceleration since 1982.

On a month-over-month basis, the PCE inflation gauge sped up from 0.6 percent in May to 1 percent in June, the fastest since 1981.

The so-called core PCE price index, which excludes food and energy and is the main PCE benchmark by which the Fed measures the pace of inflation against its 2 percent target, rose from an annual 4.7 percent in May to 4.8 percent in June.

In February 2022, the core PCE gauge clocked in at a multi-decade high of 5.3 percent, followed by 5.2 percent in March, 4.9 percent in April, and 4.7 percent in May, with some analysts dismissing June’s 0.1 percentage point uptick as a minor blip in an otherwise falling trend.

“Went up slightly (0.1%) in June but still a clear stabilizing/downward trend on core inflation (key metric for FED),” CrowdStrike co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch said in a tweet.

On a month-over-month basis, core PCE inflation gauge accelerated from 0.5 percent in May to 0.6 percent in June, the fastest since April 2021.

All four PCE measures came in above market expectations.

Fed Pivot Likely Or ‘Delusional’?

Traders and market analysts have increasingly been speculating whether a slowing U.S. economy and signs of inflationary pressures potentially easing will prompt the Fed to pivot in its tightening cycle and either pause hiking rates or reverse course entirely and begin to loosen monetary settings.

But hopes that the Fed will hit pause are “delusional,” according to Julian Bridgen, co-founder of Macro Intelligence 2 Partners.

“Stocks are still using the 2009-21 playbook ie as growth slows the Fed eases. But we now live in a pre GFC world, where inflation not deflation is public enemy no.1. Hence, with ECI @ 5%, PCE @ 6.8 they are delusional,” he wrote on Twitter.

“The only pivot we are getting is to 50bps vs 75bps hikes,” he added.

At its most recent policy meeting on July 27, the Fed opted for a 75 basis point rate hike, with Fed Chair Jerome Powell saying another big rise could be on the table if warranted by the data.

But traders are betting that the Fed will opt for a 50 basis point hike in September, with federal funds futures contracts putting the odds of a 0.5 percentage point rise at 73 percent and the chances for a 0.75 percentage point hike standing at 27 percent.

The Fed’s current target interest rate range is between 225 and 250 basis points.

By contrast, some analysts believe that the current economic slowdown will weigh more heavily on the Fed’s decision-making than elevated inflation.

“I still think a data dependent Fed, given a choice between growth and fighting Covid-driven inflation, will choose growth and pivot on rates later this year,” Gary Black, Managing Partner at The Future Fund LLC, wrote on Twitter.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

A global push to provide students with much more than just education under the banner of “community schools” has left many parents wondering what the program is all about, who’s behind it, and why its agenda is centered around the leftist concept of “equity.”

A full-service community school strives to “meet the social, emotional, physical and mental health, and academic needs of students,” according to the U.S. Department of Education.

It’s “the next generation of coordinated school health,” says the National Education Association (NEA), the largest teachers union in the country, in response to a model for these schools developed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and an organization once called the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development that now goes by ASCD.

The CDC calls them “healthy schools” and has developed a 10-part framework for addressing all aspects of a child’s health on campus called the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) model.

But community schools don’t only address students’ health. The NEA describes a community school as “a network of partnerships offering services that remove barriers to learning, like trauma, hunger, homelessness and the myriad of other problems faced by families living in poverty.”

On the NEA’s website, Cindy Long recounts an example in Las Cruces, New Mexico that offered mental health services to a 13-year-old boy who witnessed the murder of his uncle, then days later lost his father to suicide.

“[T]he full-time community school coordinator spent hours researching and applying for a grant to pay for his father’s and uncle’s funerals, a time-consuming effort that would be impossible for staff at a regular public school to handle on top of regular workloads,” wrote Long.

She also discusses schools that offer food banks, family computer rooms, donated clothing, on-site laundry facilities, medical and dental care, and more.

Long said the hope is that these services can be expanded to address “the needs of a student’s siblings, parents, grandparents, and neighbors. The idea is that lifting up a student isn’t possible unless her community is lifted up, too.”

However, some parents and community members disagree with schools taking on these far-reaching responsibilities.

Taking on ‘the Role of the Parent’

Kelly Schenkoske, a California parent who has extensively researched community schools and hosts a podcast called “A Time to Stand,” told The Epoch Times the CDC and ASCD are working together “to turn every school into a community school,” and that while the schools may sound wonderful, there are legitimate concerns.

“The schools are trying to take on the role of the parent and remove the parent from their relationship with the child. This is a complete obstruction and an assault on the family,” said Schenkoske, who homeschools her two children. “For me, the biggest concern with all of this is having the school be the nucleus of every community and handing over more control to the government and all of these ‘experts’ who are going to invade the home and tell families how to parent.”

Schenkoske became especially concerned when she learned the California Teachers Association (CTA), one of the largest teachers unions in the state, and the NEA have fully backed the WSCC model and that state educators recently held a conference in Los Angeles where they discussed community schools and multiple plans centered around equity, she said.

The United Nations (UN), the World Health Organization, most U.S. states, teachers and many non-government organizations also support the push for community schools.

California has already invested $4.1 billion in the Community Schools Partnership Program, including about $649 million in grants to 268 school districts across the state. The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) received more than $44 million.

The state program offers various grants to partners ranging from $100,000 to $2 million, and the U.S. Department of Education is also offering grants through its Full-Service Community Schools (FSCS) program.

CTA Vice President David Goldberg did not respond to inquiries, but he said at a virtual press conference on June 6 the teachers union is “all in” for community schools.

He applauded the state’s “deeper investment” in the community schools model, stating that “academic learning does not exist separately from social emotional learning.”

Echoing California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recent assertion that democracy itself is under attack in the United States, Goldberg touted the community schools model as a way of “developing democratic processes” to include the voices of parents, students, educators, and administrators at the table.

California Models

Former teacher Ingrid Villeda said she left her position at the 93rd Street Academy in south Los Angeles to become the community school coordinator at the elementary school. She told The Epoch Times that most of the new funding will go to pay salaries for the next five years for community school coordinators, parent representatives, and employees with the Healthy Start program, another initiative that was designed to increase the health of women and children.

Community schools differ from other schools because they get input from “community stakeholders,” Villeda said.

“Traditionally, a principal arrives at a school, and it’s their vision that is rolled out, and when those principals change or go to other schools, the school goes through this trajectory of change until another leader comes in, and then it stabilizes again,” she said. “With community schools, and all stakeholders having a voice, you create a vision that includes everyone, so it’s not dependent on me or the principal, but on our needs … and the vision is there for the long term.”

Villeda has worked with the community to provide free vision and dental screenings for children. Out of 925 students at the school, 350 were able to get free eyeglasses, she said.

In LAUSD, some high schools have health centers on campus. Her school has a partnership with nearby Fremont High School which is equipped with a full-service health center.

“So usually, if parents tell me they need to take their kid to the doctor … we call directly and we actually make an appointment for them, and show them how to get there,” Villeda said.

Currently, there are about 30 community schools operating in Los Angeles and six in San Diego with plans to convert 10 additional schools this year and more in the future, according to Villeda.

The NEA and the CTA say there are about 5,000 community schools nationwide.

Equity: Who Decides What a Child Needs?

Villeda, a self-described Democrat and “lefty” union activist, said that although equity means different things to different people, to her it means having access to services and opportunities.

“Equity to me is not that we all have the same, but that everyone has what they need,” she said. “And there are some of us that need more than others.”

If children don’t have everything they need, then it becomes the problem of the schools, Villeda said. The schools are then forced to find solutions, and that’s what they’re doing through community schools, she said.

“Me giving a child a sweater at school doesn’t mean that child is going to get an ‘A.’ It just means that that child is going to be able to sit in a classroom without being cold,” she said.

However, James Lindsay, author of “Race Marxism” and co-author of other books such as “Social (In)justice,” and “Cynical Theories,” told The Epoch Times that to understand the new education lingo, parents should first be aware that “equity means socialism.”

Equity is the “rebranding of socialism,” he said. “It’s the adjustment of shares so that individuals and groups are made equal.”

This means the proponents of equity, including the World Economic Forum (WEF), want to dismantle and rebuild “the whole system” of food distribution, transportation, and housing so the outcomes are made more equitable, Lindsay said.

He claims the WEF is also trying to create a bottom-up demand for health equity among the youth and ultimately change those systems in ways that may not appeal to everyone.

“They’re redesigning the whole system to create better so-called health outcomes, and they use it to justify bringing in things like ‘affirmative’ trans health care, as they call it,” he said.

“People need to understand that there is a purpose behind this, and it’s largely controlled by a few people who want to reshape what’s going on in the world according to what they think is necessary or that they want,” Lindsay said.

The WSCC model “mirrors the Soviet model where a council of appointed individuals make all the decisions with the schools,” he said.

‘Gender-Affirming Care’

A University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) document lists Planned Parenthood, which has actively supported “gender-affirming care,” as a potential partner of community schools. But schools and the medical community have recently come under fire for using this policy to encourage the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgery on minors who identify as transgender.

Lindsay contends that these transgender medical interventions are “not care,” but are instead “amputating children’s genitals and sterilizing them.”

Planned Parenthood is the single largest provider of sex education in the U.S., reaching 1.2 million people with education and outreach each year and promoting Comprehensive Sex Education as well as programs for LGBT youth.

In Dec. 19, 2019, Planned Parenthood of Los Angeles (PPLA) issued a press release announcing its instrumental role in the opening of 50 “Wellbeing Centers” in L.A. high schools, billed as the “first-of-its-kind collaboration between local partners to address the social, emotional, and sexual health needs of young people throughout Los Angeles County.”

According to the CDC’s virtual healthy school tour, under the WSCC model, school-based health centers can refer students and families to the public health department “for family planning, prenatal care, and concerns about sexually transmitted diseases,” and health educators will “frequently collaborate on activities and training for children and adolescents in the community.”

Planned Parenthood did not respond to an inquiry about whether its role in sex ed would be expanded under the community schools model nor whether it has applied for or received grant money as a community partner.

Meanwhile, Kimberly Ells, author of “The Invincible Family: Why The Global Campaign To Crush Motherhood and Fatherhood Can’t Win” and a policy advisor for Family Watch International, said she’s opposed to the WSCC model.

More and more parents are opting for homeschooling and realizing they may be better at educating their own children than the public school system they’ve trusted in the past, she said.

Ells wrote an article earlier this year for The Daily Signal, condemning “Communist-Style Community Schools” which she views as a globalist attack on the traditional role of parents and families.

“It’s like the worst example of cutting off the branch that you’re sitting on that I’ve ever seen. To try and undercut the family is to undercut civilization, because societies can’t thrive without strong families,” she told The Epoch Times.

A chapter in her book exposes the UN’s push to make Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) a “human right” of all children, while the program focuses heavily on gender theory and advocates for abortion, Ells said.

Another chapter focuses on the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child, and how it exploits health to include many of these controversial medical practices, she said.

“We need to wake up to the fact that there is a global agenda,” Ells said. “Even in the Sustainable Development Goals, one of the goals is health, but then it depends on what you believe ‘health’ to be.”

The California Department of Education, CTA, and NEA did not respond to inquiries.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

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

The deal is valued at $1.7 billion.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pfizer Purchase

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

That agreement was valued at $3.2 billion.

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stagflationary Winds Blowing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘War on American Energy’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Johnson described Twitter’s action as “alarming.”

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

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

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

Human Trafficking Interview Censored

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

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

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

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

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

Twitter Targets American Media, Not Chinese State Media

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ivan Pentchoukov contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oversight Committee

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

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

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

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

Hunter Biden

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

COVID-19 Origins

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other Key Priorities

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

What’s Happening:

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

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

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

From The Hill:

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

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

From The Hill:

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

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

From Twitter:

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

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

— Mike Palicz (@Mike_Palicz) July 27, 2022

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

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

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

From The Hill:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Key Takeaways:

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

SOURCE: The Patriot Journal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Ivy League law school will force students to write physical messages on a bulletin board after the listserv turned toxic

After a year of high-profile scandals, Yale Law School is retiring an all-student listserv that became a breeding ground for progressive activism and online pile-ons, citing the value of “face-to-face” interaction.

If students want to “debate important questions,” the dean of Yale Law School Heather Gerken announced in an email on Wednesday, they can post on a physical bulletin board in the law school’s hallway.

“Debate and dialogue are the touchstones of an academic institution,” Gerken said. The new forum will force students to “take time to reflect before posting, a habit that lawyers and members of a scholarly community must practice.”

Gerken’s announcement caps an annus horribilis for the Ivy League law school, which has seen near-nonstop scandals since 2021. The listserv played a role in many of those scandals: It facilitated a week-long pressure campaign against the Yale Law Journal over its alleged racism, as well as a public shaming campaign against Trent Colbert, the second-year law student who used the term “trap house” in an email. It also helped gin up outrage about a bipartisan panel on civil liberties hosted in March, which ended up needing police protection after hundreds of protesters disrupted the event.

“The listserv was a cesspool,” said Zach Austin, who served as the president of the Yale Federalist Society this past year. “Dean Gerken’s rhetoric is spot on: I hope students, left and right alike, take it to heart.”

The listserv’s demise comes just weeks after a controversial administrator, Ellen Cosgrove, retired from Yale Law School, prompting speculation that Gerken was taking steps to avoid a repeat of the scandal-filled year. Cosgrove, the law school’s associate dean, sat idly by while protesters disrupted the March panel. A few months earlier, she and another administrator pressured Colbert to apologize for his “trap house” email, an episode the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus likened to Mao’s cultural revolution.

As the scandals piled up, some students took to the listserv to bemoan the bad press—which only generated more of it. “What the actual fuck,” Yale Law’s Asian-American student group posted in response to Marcus’s article, calling her Mao comparison “offensively racist.” The post was one of several statements from the listserv highlighted in the Washington Free Beacon’s coverage of the trap-house saga, which kept the law school in the news for nearly a month.

These online dynamics are not unique to Yale. When the Federalist Society chapter at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law invited the conservative writer Josh Hammer to campus, the law school’s listserv devolved into profanity and public shaming.

“I’d be completely unsurprised (and in fact, willing to bet) that Joshie Hammer fucks (or at least tries to fuck—he probably was rejected repeatedly) we the trannies in his free time,” one student emailed the listerv. “Or—more likely—he just wants (and needs) to get just fucked in the ass . . . Maybe our lovely, idiotic FedSoc board is experiencing a similar dilemma within their own psychosexual selves.”

In the wake of such blowups, some law schools are scrapping their listservs altogether.

“Unsurprisingly, most of our peer schools no longer use listservs like these,” Gerken said. “They deploy other, more focused means to share information on events and opportunities with the community.”

The death of the listserv means the resurrection of an old Yale Law School tradition: In the days before email, students and faculty would post their views on a bulletin board, nicknamed the “Wall,” in the law school’s main hallway. That system, which Yale Law School is bringing back, “provided a healthy reminder that human beings are on the receiving end of the messages people send,” Gerken said. “Indeed, sometimes students would run into the very people with whom they were debating and speak face-to-face.”

The listserv’s death has left Austin cautiously optimistic.

“I wouldn’t call it a square deal yet,” he told the Free Beacon. “But if Gerken keeps leading like she has been this summer, then there’s a glimmer of hope that next year will be better for friends of free speech.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A network of progressive prosecutors boosted by the left-wing billionaire George Soros is rushing to defend a Virginia prosecutor who lied to reduce a career criminal’s prison sentence.

The Soros-funded group slammed circuit court judge James Plowman for removing Loudoun County commonwealth’s attorney Buta Biberaj (D.) from a robbery case. Plowman took the unprecedented step of throwing the progressive prosecutor and her team off the case after discovering she had withheld information about a 19-year-old burglar’s criminal record in order to “sell” a lenient prison sentence. In an amicus brief to the Virginia Supreme Court, Fair and Just Prosecution said the judge trampled on the prosecutorial discretion of Biberaj, whom voters elected “to reverse the course of mass incarceration.”

The missive is the latest instance in which Fair and Just Prosecution has waved off attacks on its left-wing prosecutors. Biberaj in 2020 signed on to defend Arlington County commonwealth’s attorney Parisa Dehghani-Tafti (D.) after a circuit judge demanded she submit written justification for the charging, dismissing, or settling of cases. Biberaj last December also joined dozens of progressive prosecutors to support Los Angeles County district attorney George Gascón (D.), who is facing a recall and a lawsuit from his deputies over his radical sentencing policies. Gascón and Dehghani-Tafti returned the favor and this month signed on to Biberaj’s appeal.

Soros has donated more than $40 million since 2014 to help elect liberal prosecutors who have moved to lighten bail and sentencing guidelines in half of America’s largest jurisdictions. But voters are turning on progressive prosecutors as crime rates skyrocket across the country. Biberaj, who ran with nearly a million dollars of aid from Soros, has come under fire for her handling of child endangerment and domestic abuse cases, freeing offenders who are a danger to the public. Her prosecutorial approach has generated a recall effort.

Kevin Enrique Valle was initially charged in Loudoun in May 2021 with two felony burglaries, a crime that carries a minimum five-year prison sentence in Virginia. But he had been arrested the same month for 10 other burglaries. Given the charges and his past convictions as a minor, Valle could have faced decades in prison. But those charges were not written up, and Valle entered into a plea agreement with Biberaj’s office, which sentenced him to just six months in prison. Plowman called the plea deal “an overt misrepresentation by omission.”

In its amicus brief, Fair and Just Prosecution painted Plowman’s court order as political retaliation, since he had formerly held Biberaj’s office as commonwealth’s attorney in Loudoun County. Virginia attorney general Jason Miyares (R.) said in a letter that the Loudoun County Court “has rightfully lost confidence in Ms. Biberaj, her deputies, and her office’s ability and willingness to effectively seek justice in this matter.” Biberaj responded by telling Miyares to “stay in your lane.”

In addition to campaign support, Soros has thrown tens of millions of dollars at justice reform groups that provide professional development to progressive prosecutors. The Tides Center, a criminal justice reform group, since 2016 has received more than $30 million from Soros’s Open Society Foundations, funneling its donations to third-party entities like Fair and Just Prosecution.

Biberaj has participated in three Fair and Just Prosecution-sponsored trips since her election. She joined Dehghani-Tafti and Fairfax County commonwealth’s attorney Steve Descano (D.) at the group’s annual convention in Durham, N.C., shortly after the three progressive Virginia prosecutors won their elections in 2019. One year later, she traveled with the group to New York City along with Philadelphia district attorney Larry Krasner (D.). Many of the same prosecutors, including recently recalled San Francisco district attorney Chesa Boudin (D.), attended a symposium months later in Los Angeles, though Biberaj was not present. This May, she attended a Fair and Just Prosecution junket in Washington, D.C.

Virginians for Safe Communities told the Washington Free Beacon it is “fast approaching the signature threshold” to trigger a recall election for Biberaj.

“We expect to file with the court by Labor Day and put Buta Biberaj on trial for her negligence, misuse of office, and incompetence in her duties,” said Sean Kennedy, the group’s president. “Buta Biberaj has alienated everyone in Loudoun County, including law enforcement, Democratic Party officials, and even her own staff, so she has to rely on her Soros-funded travel buddies to defend her.”

Top Democrats in Loudoun County have signaled they are ready to back a prosecutor other than Biberaj in the next election, whether through a recall or during the next commonwealth’s attorney election in 2023, the Free Beacon reported in June.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

The number of Americans who say universities are leading America in a positive direction has dropped 14 points in the last two years, according to a survey released Tuesday.

Varying Degrees, an annual survey released by the left-leaning New America think tank, found just over half of Americans, 55 percent, say higher education has a positive influence on the United States, down from 69 percent in 2020. While Republicans showed the greatest drop, plummeting from 61 percent in 2020 to 37 percent in 2022, self-identified Democrats’ confidence in colleges also declined 7 points.

Elite universities have been the subject of numerous controversies related to their ideological posturing. Georgetown sanctioned law professor Ilya Shapiro following his criticism of resident Joe Biden for appointing a Supreme Court justice on the basis of race. Princeton University ousted a renowned conservative professor who had received tenure, and Yale Law School has been rocked by calls from liberal students to harass conservatives on campus.

Many U.S. colleges are home to self-described liberal professors. At Harvard, for instance, 82 percent of professors surveyed this year called themselves either “liberal” or “very liberal,” compared with just 1 percent who identified as conservative.

Fewer Americans believe the government should fund higher education, declining by 6 percentage points over the past two years.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Peach State Democrat forced to go out of state to find a sheriff surrogate for a new ad

Georgia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams is out with a new ad that uses a “former deputy sheriff” to argue that Abrams’s opponent is making the state “less safe.” There’s just one problem: That officer never served in Georgia. 

In a July 12 ad titled “Dangerous,” Abrams’s leadership PAC, One Georgia, employs a “former deputy sheriff”—who is identified only as “Dennis”—to claim that Republican governor Brian Kemp “may talk tough” but “makes us less safe.” But “Dennis” never patrolled the mean streets of Atlanta—or any Georgia street, for that matter. “Dennis” is LGBT attorney and Democratic activist Dennis Collard, a Florida native who worked as a police officer in the Sunshine State from 1994-1999, his LinkedIn shows. Collard—who, according to his LinkedIn, uses pronouns he/him—went on to join an Atlanta-based law firm in 2003, roughly 13 years before he founded his own divorce firm in Atlanta.

This is far from the first time Abrams has been forced to go out of state in search of political support. Just 14 percent of the $50 million she’s raised for her campaign against Kemp came from Georgia residents. Nearly half of that money, meanwhile, came from Washington, D.C., California, New York, and Delaware. Abrams in May called Georgia “the worst state in the country to live.”

Jackson County sheriff Janis Mangum, who is one of more than 100 Georgia sheriffs to endorse Kemp, said she was “not surprised at all” to hear that Abrams struggled to recruit a police officer who served in the Peach State.

“I’m not surprised by that at all when you’ve got someone who talks about defunding the police. Defunding the police would be the worst thing for anybody to do in our state—it’s just absolutely ridiculous,” Mangum told the Washington Free Beacon. “And for somebody to think like that, I don’t know that you’re going to have any law enforcement officers get behind you.”

Abrams, who did not return a request for comment, has faced criticism over her role as a board member of the Marguerite Casey Foundation, which supports defunding police. Shortly after Abrams joined that board in May 2021, the foundation launched its “Answer the Uprising” initiative, which funds groups working to “transform, defund, [and] abolish police.” The foundation has, for example, funneled $200,000 to the Louisville Community Bail Fund, which later paid $100,000 to free an anti-police activist charged with the attempted murder of a Jewish mayoral candidate. 

Abrams has attempted to distance herself from the foundation by claiming she does not agree with its position on defunding police. According to the foundation’s website, however, the group’s “Answer the Uprising” initiative was “fully supported by Marguerite Casey Foundation’s Board of Directors, which recently named seven new changemakers to the Board, including Stacey Abrams.”

Prior to her political career, Abrams authored eight romance novels under the pen name Selena Montgomery. CBS in 2019 reached an agreement to turn one of those novels, Never Tell, into a TV drama. The 2004 romantic fiction book is heavy on both sex and sexual misconduct, a Free Beacon analysis found.

Abrams went on to serve as a state legislator and ran a failed campaign against Kemp in 2018. The Democrat lost by 2 points but never conceded defeat, instead calling the election “stolen” due to “voter suppression.” Collard also filmed an ad for Abrams four years ago, filed a campaign finance complaint against Kemp in 2019, and contributed $500 to Abrams’s campaign in March.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unipec’s Bids

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

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

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

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

Unprecedented Drawdown

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

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

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

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

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

Scrutiny

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

White House Pushes Back

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

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.

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.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

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

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

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

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

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

Whistleblowers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Request

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eva Fu contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The U.S. economy is declining at a pace not seen since the 2008–09 financial crisis, said Chris Williamson, chief business economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence, citing the latest round of Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) readings.

The headline Flash U.S. PMI Composite Output Index fell into contraction territory at 47.5 in July, from 52.3 a month ago, indicating a significant decline in private sector output. The pace of decline was the fastest since the early phases of the COVID-19 pandemic in May 2020, as both manufacturers and service providers reported weak demand conditions.

The services PMI fell short of the market estimate, with a reading of 47, down from 52.7. That was the biggest decline since May 2020, driven by a decrease in new exports, a drop in job creation, a jump in prices, and business confidence being at its lowest level since September 2020.

The manufacturing PMI eased to a two-year low of 52.3 in July, from 52.7 in June—anything above 50 indicates expansion. The market had penciled in a reading of 52.

This month, production levels were flat, new orders fell, employment growth moderated, and business sentiment plummeted to its lowest level since October 2020. More firms noted that they plan to cut personnel and slash costs.

PMIs are crucial economic indicators since they can suggest a general direction of trends in the manufacturing and service sectors.

“The U.S. #economy is contracting at a rate not seen since the global financial crisis in 2009 (excluding the initial pandemic lockdown), as the flash #PMI covering output of manufacturing and services fell sharply in July,” Williamson posted on Twitter.

Worse to Come?

Williamson noted that multiple forward-looking indicators, including the orders-inventory ratio signal, suggest that “worse is to come for U.S. manufacturing in August.”

“This means the #FOMC is hiking interest rates at a time when the U.S. economy is already showing severe signs of stress & recession risks have risen,” he wrote.

This week, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) will be holding its two-day July policy meeting. The market widely expects the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates by 75 basis points for the second consecutive month, although there’s a 20 percent chance of a 100-basis-point increase amid skyrocketing inflation, according to the CME FedWatch Tool.

While some market analysts think that this will help trim headline inflation levels, they also fear that these efforts might facilitate a recession.

“As for next year, we strongly suspect rate cuts will be the key theme,” ING economists wrote in a research note. “By delaying their response to high inflation and now having to move policy faster and deeper into restrictive territory, there is clearly the fear of a recession. At the same time, we think inflation could fall sharply from March next year onwards.”

Speaking in an interview with CNBC, economist Mohamed El-Erian said inflation has likely peaked, but it might be at the expense of the economy.

“I think inflation has peaked in the U.S., at least for the next three to four months. We’ve got to see how sticky some elements are,” he said on July 22. “But the problem is not that inflation is going to come down—that’s a really good thing. The problem is that inflation is going to come down with growth probably going into a recession, and that’s not good news.”

Concerns over an economic downturn have dramatically increased over the past month.

In addition to a higher-than-expected 9.1 percent consumer price index (CPI) in June, a broad array of metrics released this month have indicated a slowing economy

Personal spending eased to a 0.2 percent increase month-over-month, while personal income was unchanged at a 0.5 percent increase. The Institute of Supply Management’s (ISM) Manufacturing PMI fell to 53, construction spending tumbled by 0.1 percent, industrial production fell by 0.2 percent, and manufacturing output dropped by 0.5 percent.

Sentiments and expectations have also deteriorated among companies and consumers.

The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) Optimism Index slipped to 89.5 (100 was sentiment in 1986), the IBD/TIPP Economic Optimism Index in the United States remained at an 11-year low, and the Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index tumbled to 98.7 (100 was sentiment in 1985).

Despite the strong June jobs report, there have been signs that the labor market could be growing sluggish.

The number of Americans filing new claims for jobless benefits rose to a nine-month high of 251,000 in the week ending on July 16, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (pdf). The four-week average, which removes week-to-week volatility, has steadily climbed every week since the beginning of April.

Job openings and quits took a breather in May, while job cuts swelled in June.

Is the US in Recession?

In the meantime, all eyes will be on the second-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) report to determine if the United States has slipped into a technical recession. The market consensus is a growth rate of 0.4 percent, while the Bloomberg GDP estimate range from 55 economists is between minus 0.6 percent and 1.2 percent. But the Atlanta Fed Bank’s GDPNow model estimate shows minus 1.6 percent in the April-to-June period.

Many organizations have lowered their GDP forecasts for the next few years. S&P Global’s latest projections show zero percent in 2022, minus 0.4 percent in 2023, minus 0.2 percent in 2024, and minus 0.2 percent in 2025. The Conference Board downgraded its second-quarter expectation from 1.9 percent to 0.8 percent. For 2022, the Conference Board anticipates 1.7 percent expansion before slowing to 0.5 percent growth next year.

But until there’s considerable weakness in the labor market, the Fed’s tightening cycle will function on auto-pilot, according to Scott Anderson, chief economist at Bank of the West Economics.

“It feels a bit like one of those bad horror movies where the creepy music is already playing, but the character continues to walk into the seemingly abandoned house,” Anderson wrote in a note. “You know this isn’t going to end well though you’re not yet sure what is about to happen.”

According to the Fed’s Summary of Economic Projections that was updated from March, the median unemployment rate forecasts were raised to 3.7 percent in 2022, 3.9 percent in 2023, and 4.1 percent in 2024 (pdf).

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Anti-Republican super PAC the Lincoln Project congratulated resident Joe Biden for creating “one of the strongest economies in American history” even as the nation approaches its second consecutive quarter of negative growth in gross domestic product. 

Biden has had an “enormously successful first 18 months in office,” the Lincoln Project claimed on Monday in a rosy assessment of the president’s performance that’s at odds with the majority of Americans who blame Biden for record inflation.

“Resident Biden is a decent human being who exhibits the qualities we should cherish in a resident: he’s a strong leader with clear moral standards and empathizes with Americans for the challenges they face every day,” Lincoln Project cofounder Reed Galen said. “Resident Biden shows what American greatness looks like.”

The Lincoln Project cited job growth, wage increases, and historically low unemployment as proof of Biden’s success. But nearly a million-and-a-half Americans could lose their jobs next year, according to a report last month from the Federal Reserve. Around two-thirds of Americans say Biden is either “responsible” or “very responsible” for inflation, polling shows. 

Formed in 2019 to oppose former president Donald Trump, the Lincoln Project is known for spending millions of dollars to oppose Republicans such as Gov. Glenn Youngkin (Va.) while achieving little electoral success. The anti-Republican organization gained notoriety last year after it was revealed that founding member John Weaver sent suggestive messages to dozens of young men and at least one 14-year-old child.

The White House last week redefined the term “recession,” which is commonly understood as two consecutive quarters of shrinking GDP, ahead of a Thursday GDP report that will likely reveal the economy shrunk for the second quarter in a row. The White House said a recession is determined through “a holistic look at the data,” leading critics to accuse the Biden administration of covering its tracks so it won’t have to call the economic crisis a recession.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Wheat prices rose on July 25, days after Russian forces struck the southern Ukrainian port of Odesa.

Chicago wheat futures surged by as much as 4.6 percent before paring the gain to trade 3.1 percent higher at $7.82 1/4 per bushel by 3:21 p.m. in Singapore.

Corn futures rose by as much as 2.8 percent on July 25 before the gain eased to 1.4 percent, while soybeans were up by just 0.3 percent.

Wheat prices dropped by almost 6 percent on July 22 after Russia and Ukraine, both of whom are major exporters of grains, reached a deal to allow crucial grain shipments to safely leave three Ukrainian Black Sea ports: Odesa, Pivdennyi, and Chornomorsk.

That level of prices haven’t been seen since before Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his “special military operation” in neighboring Ukraine in February.

The agreement was brokered by Turkey and hailed as a vital step toward helping to avert a global food crisis.

Representatives of Turkey, as well as Ukraine and Russia, met in Istanbul on July 22 to sign the deal, along with United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said of the deal on July 22: “We are proud of being instrumental in an initiative that will play a major role in the solution of the global food crisis that has occupied the whole world for a long time.”

The president also said the deal would “contribute to preventing the danger of hunger that awaits billions of people in the world.”

Missile Strike

However, Russia said on July 25 that its cruise missiles had struck military infrastructure in Ukraine’s Odesa port over the weekend, shortly after the agreement was signed.

The strike used “Kalibr missiles” and destroyed Ukrainian military infrastructure, “sending a Ukrainian military boat to the Kiev regime’s favorite address in a precision strike,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Telegram on July 24.

The “favorite address” was a reference to Ukrainian forces on Snake Island in the Black Sea who reportedly told a Russian ship to “go [explicit]” itself before a Russian strike in February.

Serhii Bratchuk, a spokesman for the Odesa military administration, said on Telegram that Kalibr-type cruise missiles hit the infrastructure of the port and that two were shot down by Ukraine’s air defense forces.

“Two hit the port’s infrastructure facilities,” he wrote.

Natalia Humeniuk, a spokeswoman for the Ukrainian military’s southern command, said on TV that the missiles didn’t hit grain storage at Odesa’s port.

An estimated 20 million metric tons of grain have been held up in the port of Odesa in southwestern Ukraine, according to the BBC.

Wheat futures rose by 70 percent to a record high of $12.94 per bushel in the two weeks after the invasion began, prompting concerns that the conflict could impact global supplies, worsen food insecurity, and drive prices up further.

Wheat prices have gradually declined by roughly 42 percent since reaching those initial highs, but U.S. wheat features are still 15 percent higher than where they were last year, while the Benchmark French milling wheat futures are 65 percent higher than they were at this time last year, according to Business Insider. 

The EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, Josep Borrell, said on July 23 that the bloc “strongly condemns” the attack.

He wrote on Twitter, “Striking a target crucial for grain export a day after the signature of Istanbul agreements is particularly reprehensible & again demonstrates Russia’s total disregard for international law & commitments.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

It’s all part of the script of The Great Reset – just look at who invested a half-billion dollars into this major online grocery retailer as government prepares to radically restrict livestock farming and meat production.

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

• In early June 2022, the government of The Netherlands announced it would cut the size of livestock herds in the country by 30% to meet European Union nitrogen and ammonia pollution rules
• According to Dutch Parliament member Thierry Baudet, the government is following the script of The Great Reset, which requires weakening the country, making it more dependent on food imports, and diluting nationalism by taking in more immigrants. To make room for immigrant housing, they need to take land from the farmers
• The newly assigned Minister for Nature and Nitrogen Policy, Christianne van der Wal-Zeggelink, is married to Piet van der Wal, who together with his brother are heavily invested in the major online grocery retailer Picnic. In September 2021, Bill Gates invested an estimated half-billion dollars into Picnic, thereby becoming one of its lead investors. Gates’ involvement has raised questions about government corruption
• At the same time the Dutch government is preparing to radically restrict livestock farming and meat production, Gates is gobbling up farmland back home. Despite land prices being at a record high, Gates purchased a 2,100-acre potato farm in North Dakota in June 2022, bringing the total land share held by the Gates’ Red River Trust above 270,000 acres
• Gates claims he intends to lease the farmland to farmers. Viewed from the perspective of The Great Reset, it would then appear Gates may be engaged in the same kind of wealth-shift scheme as BlackRock and other investment groups that are buying up single-family homes and turning them into rentals. The end goal is to eliminate all private ownership and turn the population into serfs

In early June 2022, the government of The Netherlands announced it would cut the size of livestock herds in the country by 30% to meet European Union nitrogen and ammonia pollution rules.^1,2 As a result of this “green” policy, many farmers will be driven out of business³ and they have gathered in protest across the country.

This is important because many may not realize that even though The Netherlands is a small country, it’s the second-largest exporter of agriculture in the world, after the United States.⁴ As with current energy shortages, the forced reductions in farming and food production are said to be an “unavoidable” part of the Green Agenda to improve air, soil and water quality.⁵

In a public statement about the new emissions targets, the Dutch government even admitted that “The honest message … is that not all farmers can continue their business.”⁶ Those who do continue will have to come up with creative solutions to meet the new emissions restrictions.

A Clear Case of Corruption?

The restrictions on nitrogen for livestock farmers have befuddled many. Why would government restrict farming at a time when food shortages and famine loom on the horizon worldwide? Some claim to have discovered conflicts of interest within the Dutch government that can help explain this irrational move.⁷

The newly assigned Minister for Nature and Nitrogen Policy (who created the nitrogen regulations and is responsible for overseeing the cuts to farming), Christianne van der Wal-Zeggelink, is married to Piet van der Wal, who together with his brother, Bouke van der Wal, own a massive supermarket chain called Boni.

As noted by The Conservative Treehouse,⁸ “when Dutch farmers sell product to Boni they are directly funding the wealth of the government minister who seeks to destroy their livelihoods.”

The van der Wal family is also heavily invested in a major online grocery retailer called Picnic. Picnic buys food at wholesale prices directly from Boni, which minimizes its operational costs. Picnic basically functions as a home delivery service for Boni.

In September 2021, Bill Gates entered the Dutch enterprise. He invested an estimated half-billion dollars into Picnic, thereby becoming one of its lead investors.⁹ Not surprisingly, Picnic focuses on selling the fake “food” that Gates is invested in and promotes, imitation beef in particular.

The CEO of Picnic, Michiel Muller, a Dutch climate change activist, has also publicly vowed to “change the entire food system” to be in line with sustainable goals,¹⁰ which falls right in line with Gates’ agenda.

The strong recommendation to replace beef with fake meat was made in Gates’ book “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need,” released in February 2021.¹¹ In an interview with MIT Technology Review, he also suggested that people could learn to like fake meat and, if resistance continues, regulations may be needed to force the switch.¹²

According to The Countersignal,¹³ “many participating in the ongoing farmers’ protests in Holland have openly stated they believe Gates may be partly responsible for pushing additional climate laws.” Curiously, July 10, 2022, a large Picnic delivery facility in Almelo, Holland, burned to the ground under mysterious circumstances.^14,15,16

Why Get Rid of Farmers Amid Rising Food Insecurity?

https://www.bitchute.com/embed/IiyQrr5wOyc/

The attempt to rid The Netherlands of livestock farmers really only makes sense if seen from the globalists’ point of view, with an eye on The Great Reset, the Green New Deal, Agenda 2030 and related Sustainable Development Goals.

According to Dutch Parliament member Thierry Baudet, the Dutch government is following the script of The Great Reset, which requires weakening the country, making it more dependent on food imports, and diluting nationalism by taking in more immigrants. To make room for immigrant housing, they need to take land from the farmers.

Indeed, according to Dutch Parliament member Thierry Baudet (video above), that’s really what the nitrogen restrictions are all about. The Dutch government is following the script of The Great Reset, he says, which requires weakening the country, making it less independent and more dependent on food imports.

The Great Reset script also calls for diluting nationalism and weakening borders by taking in more immigrants, and to make room for immigrant housing, they need to take land from the farmers. So, the new nitrogen rules are basically a precursor to a land grab. They intend to put farmers out of business so they can take their land and stack it full of low-income, government-assistance apartment buildings.

Aside from that, farmers also pose a threat to the technocratic elitists because they don’t need to rely on government for basics such as food and shelter, and they can allow those who buy their food to maintain their independence as well.

The globalists’ plan is to eliminate access to as much real food as possible, and replace natural foods with patented foodstuffs so that the population becomes entirely dependent on them for survival. At that point, they are easily controlled. Eliminating independent food producers — farmers — is therefore a key to the globalist cabal’s eventual success.

Gates Gobbles Up Farmland While Pushing Fake Foods

At the same time the Dutch government is preparing to radically restrict livestock farming and meat production — likely with Gates’ blessing, if not due to his influence — Gates is gobbling up farmland back home.

Despite land prices being at a record-high, Gates purchased a 2,100-acre potato farm in North Dakota in June 2022, bringing the total land share held by the Gates’ Red River Trust above 270,000 acres — up from about 242,000 acres in mid-September 2021.

The following map, from AgWeb,¹⁷ shows the distribution of his land holdings prior to his North Dakota acquisition. As you can see, the vast majority is farmland.

Gates Plan: Turn Farmers Into Modern Serfs

However, as reported by AgWeb at the end of June 2022, Gates didn’t get a warm welcome:¹⁸

“North Dakota hosts ‘corporate farming laws’ that barres [sic] corporations and limited liability companies from owning and leasing farms and ranches. With the Gates’s new $13.5 million farmland purchase, North Dakotans — including the attorney general — are concerned the sale violates the state’s law. The North Dakota attorney general’s office sent a letter to the Red River Trust on Tuesday, alerting the trustee of the North Dakota land law.

‘Our office needs to confirm how your company uses this land and whether this use meets any of the statutory exceptions, such as the business purpose exception,’ wrote Drew Wrigley, North Dakota attorney general.”

MoneyWise¹⁹ followed up on the story, reporting that by July 5, 2022, Gates had secured legal approval for his farm purchase — a decision that has raised the ire of many North Dakotans who don’t believe Gates has good intentions.

According to MoneyWise, “The anti-corporate farming law does allow individual trusts to own farmland if it is leased to farmers — and that’s what Gates’ firm plans to do.” Viewed from the perspective of The Great Reset, it appears Gates may be engaged in the same kind of subversive wealth-shift scheme as BlackRock and other investment groups that are buying up single-family homes.

They buy them, often sight-unseen and at above-market prices, with the intent of turning them into rentals. This too is part and parcel of The Great Reset and the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals.

The intent is to eliminate all private ownership and turn the population into modern serfs. “Serf” is a term that describes people who are required to work for the “lord” who owns the land they live on, or who are otherwise underpaid, overworked or exploited in some way.

That’ll be all of us, one day, if the world doesn’t wake up and refuse to go along with the globalist cabal’s Great Reset plans. The plight of the Dutch farmers is just the beginning.

Originally published July 22, 2022 on Mercola.com

Sources and References

• ¹ Substack, The Freedom Corner with PeterSweden July 1, 2022
• ² Reuters June 10, 2022
• ³ Bloomberg June 28, 2022
• ⁴ WEF. November 27, 2019
• ^5, 6 Indian Express July 3, 2022
• ^7, 8, 10 The Conservative Treehouse July 12, 2022
• ⁹ USSA News July 10, 2022
• ¹¹ Market Watch February 16, 2021
• ¹² MIT Technology Review February 14, 2021
• ^13, 14 The Countersignal July 11, 2022
• ¹⁵ Newspunch July 11, 2022
• ¹⁶ Sott.net July 11, 2022
• ^17, 18 AgWeb June 28, 2022
• ¹⁹ Moneywise July 5, 2022

Source: The Epoch Times

COVID-19 injections may damage the innate immune system in children from properly developing and functioning, according to epidemiologist and researcher Paul Alexander.

People are born with an innate immune system, which is the body’s first line of defense against the many pathogens they encounter.

Alexander says that while the innate immune system in young children is broadly effective and potent, it is still “antigenically naive,” and it is exposure to germs and foreign substances that helps train their innate immune system to function.

Related Coverage

Genetic COVID Vaccines May Damage Children’s Innate Immunity—Dr. Paul Alexander

“The children have a window of opportunity to train the innate immune system properly, and principally, they’re trying to train the innate antibodies and the innate NK [natural killer] cells,” Alexander told EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program. “They get that training, those cells of the innate immune system, get training by the exposure to a pathogen.”

“Why the training of the antibodies is so key is because in that period of time in young childhood, once the innate immune antibodies and the innate immune system can be trained and you allow it to be trained, it functions,” he added.

This training may be disrupted when children are administered the messenger RNA shots based on the initial virus strain. That is because the vaccine antibodies are highly specific in targeting the spike protein and prevent the innate antibodies from doing their job.

“The vaccinal antibodies would bind to the spike antigen, [and] first block the innate antibodies from its functional capacity, which is binding,” Alexander said.

He also says that proper training helps the immune system differentiate a normal cell from a non-self pathogen. If the immune system is not able to do that, it can lead to autoimmune disease as a result of the immune system attacking the body.

“So it is absolutely critical that the innate immune system, and particularly the innate antibodies very early on in childhood, be allowed this training,” he said.

Strong Innate Immunity

Without being vaccinated, healthy children are able to eliminate and sterilize the virus to prevent infection, replication, and transmission, Alexander says. That is why children, for the most part, do not show any symptoms or have mild symptoms, especially against the Omicron variant that is dominant in the United States and other countries.

“Children come with this innate immune system, it’s their first line of defense … That is critical and that is why young people, normally young children, do so well against pathogen[s] and they survive in the environment, not having a copious number of years of existence, they’ve not had exposure to a bunch of stuff, to pathogen. Yet, they bump up against these things in the environment and they do well,” Alexander said.

Studies have shown that children have a robust innate immune system that can effectively eliminate the virus.

In September 2020, researchers compared blood samples from pediatric (children and youths younger than 24 years old) and adult COVID-19 patients to try to understand why children had milder disease compared to adults. They found that the pediatric group had certain proteins (IFN-gamma and interleukin-17A) that were not present in the adult cohorts. These proteins play important roles in the innate immune response.

The same researchers provided evidence in a different study in April 2021 on why children fared better when infected with the virus, saying that it was because children’s innate immune response stopped the virus in its tracks before it had a chance to spread.

The study, published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation Insight, involved 27 adults and 12 children who tested positive for COVID-19 at Montefiore Medical Center’s emergency department. The authors found that, compared to adults, children had larger quantities of genes associated with immune cells, including several proteins secreted by immune cells.

Related Coverage

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

None of the children in the study required oxygen, whereas seven adults did and four adults died.

Data also show that the immune system in infants is a “vigilant establishment” that is flexible and can respond to many stimulants.

The authors of a 2018 study wrote that “mounting evidence supports the concept that infantile immunity is in fact a highly regulated, but intellect, orchestrated, functional, and dynamic network of competent molecular and cellular components.

“This wakeful immune scheme plays pivotal roles in protecting the growing and developing infants from pathologic conditions (e.g., inflammatory situations) as well as providing adequate and appropriate defense against infections by promoting immature or deviant to highly mature responses,” they added.

The Push for Vaccination

Although children are generally at low risk for severe disease when they contract the virus and have a robust innate immunity to fight it, health authorities say that children as young as 6 months are recommended for the COVID-19 vaccines.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) authorized and recommended the shots for young children last month although the CDC’s own data and several other studies indicated that the vaccinated were more likely to get infected with COVID-19, including Pfizer’s clinical trial in children (pdf).

The FDA also stated in a press release on June 17 that the estimate of the efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine was unreliable “due to the low number of COVID-19 cases that occurred in study participants,” which was based on 10 cases, three in the vaccinated and seven in the unvaccinated.

Alexander says that a governmental health authority that makes a recommendation for vaccination based on a small number of events is concerning and says that there is no data to support vaccinating very young children.

“We know from a scientific point of view, a methodological point of view, that that is a red flag for high risk of overestimating the treatment effect,” Alexander said. “We don’t make policy decisions or any kind of decision on two events or three events in a study.”

“There’s so much uncertainty in terms of what is beneficial or not. And we found when you read the submission, you see that at some point, they reported that children who got multiple infections of COVID were vaccinated. That’s a red flag. We also read that the children who got the most severe adverse events were vaccinated,” he added.

The Danish health authority is taking a different course from the CDC, as it put out guidance in June 2022 that children aged 5 to 17 would not be offered primary vaccination, acknowledging that children “only very rarely have a serious course of COVID-19.” The vaccine would only be administered “after specific medical assessment.”

‘Risk-Benefit Analysis Has Changed’

Real-world data from Singapore shows that nearly two dozen children suffered serious adverse events from an mRNA shot.

A new study from Singapore examining the effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine against Omicron in over 250,000 children aged 5 to 11 between January to April 2022 found that 288 children were hospitalized and 22 suffered a serious adverse reaction to the vaccine.

A serious adverse reaction, according to the Singaporean Health Sciences Authority (pdf), is if it results in hospitalization or an extended hospital stay, a significant reduction in disability or functioning level, a life-threatening illness or death, birth defects, or a medically important event.

Of the 288 hospitalized children, five were given supplemental oxygen. And of the five on oxygen, four were admitted to the intensive care unit, two were fully vaccinated, two were partially vaccinated, and one was unvaccinated. No deaths were attributed to COVID-19.

“In terms of admission to intensive care, there’s no evidence here that vaccination provides protection, there’s no evidence that vaccination provides protection against oxygenation here,” John Campbell, a retired nurse educator said in a video on July 21.

The authors of the study did not give more information on the adverse events other than mentioning that 22 children (0.005 percent of all doses administered) experienced them.

“The risk of adverse events is roughly more than four times the risk of the child requiring oxygenation or indeed being admitted to intensive care,” Campbell said, adding that “the risk-benefit analysis has changed.”

Prolonging Pandemic

Vaccinologist and virologist Geert Vanden Bossche claimed in early 2021 that the mass vaccination of people during a pandemic would likely drive the propagation of more infectious variants of the original strain of the virus, thus prolonging the pandemic.

“I mean, in their own right [the vaccines] are of course excellent, but to use them in the midst of a pandemic and do mass vaccination. Because then you provide, within a very short period of time, the population with high antibody titers so the virus comes under enormous pressure,” Bossche said in an interview in March 2021.

“That wouldn’t matter if you can eradicate the fire, if you can prevent infection, but these vaccines don’t prevent infection, they protect against disease.”

The vaccines initially provided over 90 percent protection against symptomatic infection, but after the emergence of Omicron, they became less than 50 percent effective against infection after a short period of time, even after booster doses.

Related Coverage

Genetic COVID Vaccines May Damage Children’s Innate Immunity—Dr. Paul Alexander

Alexander states that with the continued administration of mRNA vaccines that produce non-neutralizing antibodies that can’t eliminate the virus and stop transmission, the pandemic will not end.

“In other words, if you keep vaccinating with these vaccines, you can never ever stop this pandemic. This pandemic can go on for 100 years, it will never end. And what we’re seeing is, it’s infectious variant after infectious variant, more infectious, each iteration that is coming is more infectious. So it’s a terrible situation,” he said.

For the pandemic to end, Alexander explains that herd immunity must be reached, and “to get to herd immunity, you need to cut the chain of transmission.”

The FDA, the CDC, Pfizer, and Moderna did not reply to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

With The Washington Post blaring that “Big Tech is bracing for a possible recession,” the Biden White House is redefining the word.

A recession is traditionally defined as two consecutive quarters in which the nation’s Gross Domestic Product shrinks. A new report Thursday will assess the results of the second quarter. Shrinkage took place in the first quarter, and with inflation running at 9.1 percent, there’s not a lot of hope for economic good news.

As noted by Business Insider, economists Bloomberg surveyed believe growth will be a paltry 0.9 percent, but the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s GDPNow model pegs shrinkage at 1.6 percent.

“The big headwinds for consumers are price inflation and higher interest rates. And inflation could erode the excess savings consumers accumulated through the pandemic, especially if price increases continue to run ahead of wage growth,” Capital One CEO Richard Fairbank said Thursday, according to CNN.

“We’re seeing an increase in bad debt to slightly higher than pre-pandemic levels as well as extended cash collection cycles,”  AT&T CEO John Stankey said the same day.

Yellen: There’s an org called the National Bureau of Economic Research that looks at a broad range of data…I will be would be amazed if the NBER would declare this period to be a recession

FLASHBACK: in ’08, NBER didn’t announce until Dec the recession had begun A YEAR EARLIER

— Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) July 24, 2022

But consumer pain does not make a recession, according to a White House handout,

“What is a recession? While some maintain that two consecutive quarters of falling real GDP constitute a recession, that is neither the official definition nor the way economists evaluate the state of the business cycle. Instead, both official determinations of recessions and economists’ assessment of economic activity are based on a holistic look at the data,” the handout said, listing labor market, consumer and business spending, industrial production and income data will all be mined.

The White then offered a prediction: “Based on these data, it is unlikely that the decline in GDP in the first quarter of this year — even if followed by another GDP decline in the second quarter — indicates a recession.”

Despite the growing mountain of gloomy economic forecasts, the handout said, “Recession probabilities are never zero, but trends in the data through the first half of this year used to determine a recession are not indicating a downturn.”

In fact, it said, “There is a good chance that the strength of the labor market and of consumer balance sheets help the economy transition from the rapid growth of the last year to steadier and more stable growth.”

Biden owns this recession. He is the WORST resident in American history.

— Proud Elephant 🇺🇸 (@ProudElephantUS) July 21, 2022

Related:

Levin: Joe Biden Is ‘Sabotaging’ Economy, Implementing Marxist Ideology Under Guise of Climate Policy

Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers was not as chipper. In a Sunday interview, he called chances of coming out of the battle against inflation without a scarred economy “very unlikely,” according to Bloomberg.

“There’s a very high likelihood of recession when we’ve been in this kind of situation before,” he said.

“Recession has essentially always followed when inflation has been high and our employment has been low,” he said.

Summers said new policies are needed.

“There’s a lot we can do to contain or control inflation,” he said. “But if we continue with the kind of ostrich policies we had in 2021, there’s going to be much, much more pain later.”

Minnesota’s Jeff Ettinger now says he ‘know[s] how to fight inflation’ as his former company made food ‘affordable’

Minnesota Democrat Jeff Ettinger says he “know[s] how to fight inflation” because his former company made food “affordable.” That company is facing an array of lawsuits that say it conspired to inflate the price of pork.

Ettinger served as CEO of Hormel Foods from 2005 to 2016. During that time, Hormel conspired with other pork processors to run a “classic … price fixing scheme” to drive up the price of ham and bacon, active lawsuits facing the company argue. While Hormel has said the allegations are “completely without merit,” one of the companies involved in the purported scheme agreed to a $42 million settlement in early July.

Now, Ettinger is running in an August special election to replace the late Jim Hagedorn after the Republican congressman died in February. Ettinger has attempted to fight concerns of record-high inflation under resident Joe Biden by touting his time at Hormel—in a July 10 ad, the Democrat said he “know[s] how to fight inflation” as his “business was making food affordable.” He went on to repeat the claim twice in the following week.

The price-fixing lawsuits that loom over Hormel, however, could undermine Ettinger’s ability to navigate a perilous political climate that is driven by voters’ concerns over the economy. According to a June MinnPost poll, 94 percent of Minnesotans say rising gas and grocery prices have made their lives more “difficult” or “inconvenient.” On a national level, meanwhile, Americans view inflation as the top problem facing the country and believe that problem is Biden’s fault—64 percent of likely U.S. voters say the Biden administration’s policies have increased inflation, according to a March Rasmussen poll.

Ettinger declined to comment.

According to the series of lawsuits against Hormel, the food processing company in 2009 began sharing sensitive information with its competitors about its “profits, prices, costs, and production” in an attempt to drive up pork prices. A who’s who of grocery and restaurant chains have joined the lawsuits, the first of which was filed in 2018—prominent plaintiffs include Kroger, Hy-Vee, Buffalo Wild Wings, Jimmy John’s, and Sonic Drive-In.

Ettinger, who grew up in Los Angeles, made big money from his time at Hormel—his total compensation in 2016 alone was $36 million, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The Democrat’s financial disclosure also shows tens of millions of dollars in investments, and half of the roughly $800,000 Ettinger has raised came from his own pocket.

Ettinger’s wealth sparked one of his primary opponents, small business owner Rick DeVoe, to accuse Ettinger of being out of touch with everyday voters in Minnesota’s First Congressional District, who DeVoe said are sick of “corporate malfeasance.” Still, Ettinger said in his July ad that he understands why Minnesotans “feel squeezed.”

Ettinger used his financial advantage to emerge from the special election’s May 24 primary and will face Republican Brad Finstad in November. Finstad, a former state legislator, served in former president Donald Trump’s Department of Agriculture and has raised $614,000 to Ettinger’s $805,000.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Several individuals connected to a 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign plot to cast Donald Trump as a covert Kremlin collaborator are working in high-level jobs within the Biden administration—including at least two senior Biden appointees cited by Special Counsel John Durham in his “active (and) ongoing” criminal investigation of the scheme, according to recently filed court documents.

Jake Sullivan, who now serves as Biden’s national security adviser, and Caroline Krass, a top lawyer at the Pentagon, were involved in efforts in 2016 and 2017 to advance the Clinton campaign’s false claims about Trump through the media and the federal government, documents show. Other evidence shows that two other Biden officials—senior State Department official Dafna Rand and Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler—also are entangled in the so-called Russiagate scandal.

It’s not known whether these Biden appointees have been interviewed by Durham’s investigators. But as the probe widens, some government ethics watchdogs anticipate that Biden’s presidency could be pulled into the scandal, which saw the FBI abuse its surveillance powers to spy on a Trump campaign adviser based on Clinton opposition research.

Just as the Democrats have used their control of Congress to cast President Trump and the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol as threats to American democracy, Republicans are vowing if they regain power after November’s congressional elections to investigate the years-long effort to question Trump’s 2016 victory and undermine his presidency.

The top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Mike Turner, recently pledged to hold hearings and issue subpoenas “to get to the bottom of [Russiagate] so this never happens again, so we never have Americans having to distrust their own government because of the politicization of the FBI [and] of our intelligence community.”

RealClearInvestigations has learned that Congress has referred to the Special Counsel’s Office at least a dozen cases of potential perjury involving former Clinton campaign officials and Obama administration officials who have testified behind closed doors about their involvement in Russiagate. Hill lawyers and investigators have met with Durham’s staff about the criminal referrals stemming from the sworn depositions.

Republican sources say that the roles played in Russiagate by Krass, Sullivan, Rand, and Gensler may be among the first to draw attention in hearings. Although the full range of their efforts has not been made public, here’s what is known so far.

Caroline Krass: Clinton Donor and Top CIA Lawyer

Krass, 54—whom Biden appointed as general counsel of the Defense Department early last year—is the former top CIA lawyer cited by Durham as “General Counsel of Agency-2” in his indictment of former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann.

Durham alleged Sussmann first tried to plant a fabricated report with the FBI’s general counsel about a secret cyber-link between Trump and Russia-based Alfa Bank in order to set in motion an investigation of Trump before the 2016 election. Then, after the election, Sussmann filed a similar report with Krass’ legal shop at the CIA, the prosecutor said.

Although a Washington, D.C. jury in May acquitted Sussmann of lying about who was paying him to approach the FBI, the trial revealed that FBI field agents specializing in cyber crimes debunked his report within days of receiving it, and even suspected some of the evidence was cooked up. “We think it’s a set-up,” one agent warned in an internal FBI email. FBI brass working under then-Director James Comey, however, prolonged the investigation for several months.

Nevertheless, after Trump won the election, Sussmann brought the same Trump-Alfa Bank ruse to Krass—a Clinton donor and Obama appointee, then working under CIA Director John Brennan. Durham has found evidence that Krass welcomed the tip.

“We’re interested,” he said Krass told him in their December 2016 phone call. “We’re doing this review and I’ll speak to someone here, and someone will get back to you to arrange a meeting.”

Krass allegedly told Sussmann she would consider the information for inclusion in the intelligence review of alleged Russian interference in the election that Obama had ordered at the time. A declassified version of the review, known as the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), was released to the public the next month and accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of meddling in the election to help Trump win. A classified version included an annex with several unfounded and since-debunked allegations against Trump developed by the Clinton campaign as part of the so-called Steele dossier. It’s not known if the two-page annex, which claimed the allegations were “consistent with the judgments in this assessment,” included the Alfa Bank canard, since several sections remained blacked out when it was made public in 2020.

The ICA became a foundational document for subsequent Trump-Russia probes and has been used by Democrats and the media to suggest the 2016 election was stolen from Clinton.

“The greatest concern with the role of Krass is her ‘interest’ [in Sussmann’s tip] despite the lack of foundational support [for it],” George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley told RCI. “As with the FBI, the Clinton campaign found eager [Obama] officials to move on any such allegation [against Trump].”

On Feb. 9, 2017, Sussmann secured a sit-down meeting at CIA headquarters with “a representative from the Office of General Counsel,” according to documents reviewed by RCI, where he turned over more dubious material allegedly linking Trump to Russia. The CIA lawyer he met with worked under Krass, who did not leave the agency until several months later, despite the change in administrations.

The attorney, identified at trial only as “Steve M.,” said he would pass the tips on to CIA technical experts, as well as an FBI liaison officer, but they too dismissed the data as “self-generated,” meaning they appeared to be designed to arrive at a predetermined conclusion of a nefarious cyber-link. Complete datasets were withheld from the CIA.

Apparently, the CIA did not even ask for the source of Sussmann’s walk-in tip, including where he got the data files he gave the agency. The FBI exhibited a similar lack of curiosity when Sussmann reported the false Trump-Alfa Bank connection.

However, like FBI brass, Krass and her boss at the time, CIA chief Brennan, were aware of Clinton campaign efforts to portray Trump as a Kremlin agent, and it was no secret that Sussmann’s Perkins Coie law firm represented her campaign.

“As Brennan’s top lawyer, she would know everything about that,” said Kash Patel, the former House Intelligence Committee investigator who interviewed Sussmann in a closed-door deposition in December 2017, and was the first to discover the Alfa Bank smear operation he ran at the FBI and CIA on behalf of Clinton campaign operatives.

Evidence shows that Krass had other reasons to be skeptical of Sussmann’s claims. As legal adviser to Brennan, she was involved in the referral her boss made to the FBI in 2016 to open a counterespionage case to find out how Russian intelligence intercepted information about Hillary Clinton’s plan to tie up Trump in a Kremlin scandal. The intercept revealed the Russians were on to a plot by Clinton and her then-foreign policy adviser Jake Sullivan to “stir up” a scandal on Trump about Russia during the Democratic convention in late July 2016.

Brennan appears to have been less concerned about the Clinton campaign’s disinformation campaign than the fact Moscow knew about it. This so alarmed Brennan that he briefed Obama about it, according to a summary of his handwritten notes, declassified in 2020.

The referral, known as a counterintelligence operational lead (CIOL), was sent to Comey, who in turn forwarded it to then-FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok to investigate.

Strzok—who was fired by the FBI after his anti-Trump views became public—opened an investigation, not of Clinton but the Trump campaign. Krass’ chief of staff at the time, Brian Greer, confirmed that the purpose of the CIOL was not to investigate the Clinton campaign’s dirty tricks, but to run a counter-spying probe to see if the Russians had penetrated the Clinton camp. The concern, he said, was that Clinton “may have been spied on by a hostile intelligence service.”

Seemingly reflecting the attitude of his former boss at the spy agency, Greer opined that “there’s nothing illegal about” what Clinton did to Trump. “Even if it’s unsavory,” he shrugged, “that’s just politics.”

Federal campaign records reveal that Krass donated at least $3,575 to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 and 2008 campaigns for president. Before Obama appointed her to the CIA in 2014, she served as his special counsel for national security affairs in the White House.

Brennan’s handwritten notes were turned up by Durham and opened a new track in his investigation, which early on had appeared to clear the CIA of wrongdoing. But now Durham is actively investigating this CIA front, according to one of his pre-trial filings. His grand jury has interviewed at least eight current and former CIA employees, and he is seeking out other agency employees who may have attended the meeting with Sussmann.

“The government has been undertaking additional steps to determine if additional personnel were, in fact, present at this [Feb. 9] meeting with [CIA] employees,” Durham noted. “In addition, the Special Counsel’s Office maintains an active, ongoing criminal investigation of these and other matters that is not limited to the offense charged in the [Sussmann] indictment.”

It could not be determined if Krass is among former CIA employees interviewed by Durham’s team. Durham’s office remains tight-lipped, and neither the CIA nor Pentagon responded to requests for comment. Attempts to reach Krass were also unsuccessful.

During his 2017 House Intelligence Committee interview, Sussmann and his lawyer promised to provide the committee copies of all the documents he gave to the CIA, but Patel said they failed to turn them over. The former staff counsel said he is confident Durham has obtained them.

Meanwhile, Judicial Watch is suing the CIA for all its records of contacts with Sussmann under the Freedom of Information Act. The Washington-based watchdog group recently filed the lawsuit after the CIA failed last year to reply to a request for the records, including notes, related to agency phone conversations and meetings with the Clinton campaign attorney.

“The CIA is in cover-up mode about its communications with the [Clinton] lawyer implicated in a shady spy operation against President Trump,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said. “What is the CIA hiding about its role in this plot against Trump?”

Fitton maintains that what happened at the CIA could be an even bigger scandal than what happened at the FBI.

As one of the Intelligence Community’s top attorneys, Krass also was involved in Obama’s sudden decision after Trump won to make it easier for the CIA and FBI to root through raw personal communications intercepted globally by the National Security Agency, according to sources familiar with high-level legal consultations regarding the revision to spying rules at the time.

The departing president’s executive order relaxing rules for mining the NSA’s highly classified databases went into effect less than three weeks before Trump took office. At the same time, the White House rushed to preserve all intelligence related to Trump and Russia and disseminate it across U.S. agencies.

The order, known as “12 Triple 3,” allowed the FBI for the first time to sift through large troves of incidental communications—including phone calls and emails—involving U.S. citizens, without NSA filtering or even wiretap warrants. In effect, agents could put advisers and appointees of Trump, along with their family members and friends, under warrantless surveillance.

The easing of longstanding restrictions on intelligence-sharing set off a massive fishing expedition.

The FBI didn’t have much time to exploit the raw intercepts before Trump put his own people in place. So in a last-minute scramble, it asked both the CIA and NSA to search their holdings and collect as much information as possible on Russian oligarchs and other figures for any links to Trump and his advisers—namely, Gen. Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, and Carter Page.

The information was hastily processed and compiled into analytical reports and shared with other agencies, as well as Congress, putting Trump and his presidency under suspicion before he could even take the oath of office. Some of the material also was leaked to the New York Times, CNN, the Washington Post, and other major media—even though it was largely unsubstantiated.

In short, the new rules that Krass, along with other intelligence agency lawyers, helped draft making it easier to share raw streams of communications also made it easier to frame Trump as a Russian stooge before Obama left office.

Although Brennan’s appointment ended the day Trump was inaugurated, Krass stayed behind in her CIA job through the end of April 2017. When she finally resigned, she left behind a team of around 150 attorneys in her legal shop at Langley. They all remained in their positions in spite of the change in administrations.

Krass is not the only Russiagate-tied official who has resurfaced in the Biden administration.

Jake Sullivan: Potentially False Testimony

Sullivan, 45, played a pivotal role in the baseless Alfa Bank story as the Clinton campaign’s foreign policy adviser.

He is the “foreign policy adviser” referenced in the Sussmann indictment as one of the campaign officials who was briefed on the scheme to cook up the debunked rumor that Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin were secretly communicating through Alfa Bank’s computer servers. Sullivan promoted the “secret hotline” hoax in a campaign statement via Twitter just days before the November 2016 election, claiming, “This could be the most direct link yet between Donald Trump and Moscow.” He even called on “federal authorities” to investigate.

Former Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook testified at Sussmann’s trial that he discussed the Alfa Bank project with Sullivan before going to Clinton herself for approval to publicize it.

Sullivan is also the “foreign policy adviser” cited in U.S. and Russian intelligence as the mastermind behind the Clinton campaign plot to “stir up” a Trump-Russia scandal ahead of the Democratic National Convention in July 2016. During the party’s gathering in Philadelphia, Sullivan drove a golf cart from one TV network news tent in the parking lot to another, pitching producers and anchors the fable that Trump was conspiring with Putin to steal the election.

Now operating out of the West Wing as Biden’s national security adviser, Sullivan is under scrutiny for potentially false testimony he gave to Congress regarding his knowledge of, and role in, the campaign’s opposition research efforts against Trump. Lying to Congress is a felony, although it’s rarely prosecuted.

“He has the gall to come into Congress—I took so many of those depositions—and say he had no idea how the [Clinton-funded Steele] dossier was created, or who the $10 million [that] Jake Sullivan and the DNC were paying was being utilized [by] to collect fraudulent information [on Trump and his advisers],” said Patel, a former federal prosecutor, who had worked for GOP intelligence chair Devin Nunes when he took the depositions. ”So, I think John Durham’s on his case.”

An attorney for Sullivan did not respond to questions, while a spokeswoman for the National Security Council declined comment.

Prosecutors say the Clinton campaign operation to tar Trump continued even after the election, with Sullivan again taking a prominent role.

In February 2017, Sullivan met with another central figure in the plot to plant the Trump-Alfa smear with investigators—Daniel Jones, a former FBI analyst and Democratic staffer on the Hill, whose goal was to reignite the investigation and put Trump’s fledgling presidency under a cloud of suspicion.

On Feb. 10, 2017—one day after Sussmann met with a member of Krass’ staff at the CIA—Sullivan secretly huddled with Jones and his partners at FusionGPS, an opposition research firm that worked for the Clinton campaign, to hatch the post-election plan to resurrect rumors Trump was a tool of the Kremlin. As RCI first reported, the meeting—which lasted about an hour and took place in a Washington office building—also included former Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. The group discussed raising money to finance a multimillion-dollar opposition research project headed by Jones to target the new president. They ended up raising several million dollars for the effort, organized under a nonprofit called The Democracy Integrity Project. In effect, Jones’ operation would replace the Clinton campaign’s operation, continuing the effort to undermine Trump.

It’s not known whether Sussmann also attended the Feb. 10 meeting, but he had paid a visit to CIA headquarters that same week to peddle new disinformation about the supposed secret server.

At the time, the FBI closed its Alfa Bank probe, finding nothing sinister. ”The FBI’s investigation revealed that the email server at issue was not owned or operated by the Trump Organization but, rather, had been administrated by a mass-marketing email company that sent advertisements for Trump hotels and hundreds of other clients,” Durham wrote in his indictment.

Nonetheless, Jones and Sullivan kept promoting the canard as true. Jones reached out to old bureau colleagues to pass on supposedly fresh leads, and the FBI looked into the new leads, while Sullivan went on national media to give the impression there was still something to the rumors.

In a March 2017 interview with CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer, for example, Sullivan discussed a story leaked to CNN by unnamed sources that the FBI was continuing to investigate the rumors of “a secret hotline between Trump and Russia.”

“How surprised were you to hear last week that this investigation is still ongoing?” Blitzer asked.

“I wasn’t surprised,” Sullivan said, “because what we learned during the campaign was that very serious computer science experts—people who work closely with the United States government—had uncovered this secret hotline between the Alfa Bank, the Russian bank, and the Trump organization.”

Sullivan insisted that the computer scientists “weren’t just making up crackpot theories.”

In fact, Durham is actively investigating their leader for potential fraud and conspiracy: computer contractor Rodney Joffe, who was offered a top post in a future Clinton administration, according to recent court filings. Joffe, who recently was terminated for cause as a longtime FBI informant, has invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and refused to cooperate with grand jury subpoenas. His lawyer did not respond to phone calls and email messages.

Dafna Rand: An Anti-Trump Outfit Called TDIP

A longtime Clinton aide currently serving in the Biden administration as the director of the Office of Foreign Assistance, Rand also played a key role in spreading the Alfa Bank hoax.

In early 2017, Jones recruited Rand, a former Senate Intelligence Committee colleague, to sit on the board of The Democracy Integrity Project to help dig up new dirt on Trump, according to incorporation papers, while continuing to push the debunked Trump-Alfa Bank allegations.

In October 2018, TDIP blasted out an email to top Washington journalists with the subject line, “TDIP News Brief,” which attempted to keep the Alfa Bank hoax alive. The three-page bulletin, a copy of which was obtained by RCI, rehashed the alleged “connections between a computer server associated with the Trump Organization and servers associated with Russia’s Alfa Bank.” It speculated Democrats would subpoena information from “the server in question” if they regained control of Congress in the midterm elections the following month.

Rand’s resume on LinkedIn omits her role at TDIP (pronounced T-DIP), which is revealed only in the nonprofit’s IRS tax filings. A Democratic Party donor, Rand previously worked as a top aide to Clinton at the State Department. Before that, she served in the White House as a national security adviser to Obama.

Responding to grand jury subpoenas, her old colleague Jones reportedly has cooperated with Durham’s investigation.

Rand did not return requests for comment.

Gary Gensler: At SEC, Still After Trump

Biden nominated the longtime Clinton operative to head the Securities and Exchange Commission in February 2021, and Gensler was confirmed by the Senate and then sworn in as chairman of the Wall Street regulatory agency two months later.

Notably, the SEC press release announcing his appointment and detailing his personal biography omitted his prior role as chief financial officer for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 election team, where he managed the campaign budget, including expenditures that weren’t properly reported.

In March of this year, the Federal Election Commission fined both the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee for violating campaign finance laws by falsely claiming that more than $1 million used for the Steele dossier and other opposition research against candidate Trump was for “legal advice and services.”

Durham has sought these and other financial records as part of his investigation and has interviewed several former Clinton campaign officials including Mook, who handled opposition-researching spending and other budget matters and consulted with Gensler’s office during the campaign.

Patel said investigators would be wise to continue following the money trail. He maintained that he and other lawyers on the House Intelligence Committee found that the Clinton campaign failed to report the proper purpose of millions of dollars in additional funding.

“They need to keep digging, because there’s at least $10 million and maybe $20 million more that went directly into opposition research,” Patel said, adding that the Clinton effort to frame Trump as a Russian agent was ”massive.”

Last year, Gensler named Melissa Hodgman his associate director of enforcement. She happens to be married to disgraced former FBI official Peter Strzok, who’s also implicated in Durham’s probe. Strzok led the investigation of Trump and his campaign, codenamed “Crossfire Hurricane,” before he was fired in 2018 over anti-Trump texts he exchanged with his mistress, former FBI lawyer Lisa Page.

As adviser to the head of the SEC’s enforcement division, Hodgman currently is helping oversee an investigation into Trump’s social media start-up, Truth Social. According to regulatory filings, the SEC last month served Trump Media & Technology Group with a federal subpoena for records. The company owns Truth Social, Trump’s answer to left-leaning Twitter, which kicked him off its platform last year over remarks he made concerning the Jan. 6 riot.

The SEC reportedly wants to know more about merger talks between Trump’s parent company and Digital World Acquisition Corp., a publicly traded company regulated by the SEC. RCI contacted the SEC about the investigation and Gensler’s previous work for the Clinton campaign, but did not hear back.

Patel warned that too many of the people who “abused their power” in the Russiagate conspiracy to frame Trump have returned to power.

“A lot of these Russiagate conspirators are back recycled in the Biden administration,” said Patel, who recently published a book related to the Russiagate scandal, “The Plot Against the King.” “They must be held accountable or they’ll only abuse their power again.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Advocacy group Judicial Watch has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) alleging that the agency is slow-rolling a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to turn over records tied to resident Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.

Judicial Watch filed the FOIA suit against DHS on July 17 at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, asking the court to force the agency to turn over all non-exempt records concerning government-provided security services to Hunter Biden or companions on any international trips from 2010 to 2013.

The advocacy group said in a July 20 statement that the Secret Service, which is part of DHS, had “failed to respond adequately” to three FOIA requests in March and April demanding records of security services—and related use of taxpayer funds—provided to Hunter Biden and companions.

“The Secret Service is violating FOIA law by slow-rolling and hiding Hunter Biden records,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in the statement. “What is the Secret Service trying to hide about Hunter Biden?”

DHS didn’t respond by press time to an Epoch Times request for comment on the lawsuit.

‘Questions Have Been Raised’

The backdrop for the lawsuit is Secret Service records obtained by Judicial Watch in 2020 showing hundreds of international trips taken by Hunter Biden during the first several years of the presidency of Barack Obama while receiving Secret Service protection.

“While it is typical for the families of the president and vice president to travel with them, questions have been raised about whether Hunter Biden used the government trip to further his business interests,” Judicial Watch stated.

Missing from the records the advocacy group obtained in 2020 was information on whether Hunter Biden’s travel was on Air Force One, Air Force Two, or other government aircraft or whether other family members were present.

Judicial Watch’s complaint indicates that the Secret Service had acknowledged the group’s FOIA request and by April 19 had “located potentially responsive records, was processing the records, and would send them” to Judicial Watch “upon completion of the processing.”

But those records haven’t been handed over to Judicial Watch, nor has DHS explained why it hasn’t yet transmitted the documents, the complaint alleges.

Other Hunter Probe

Besides Judicial Watch, Republicans in Congress have also sought Secret Service records tied to Hunter Biden’s travels while his father was vice president.

While the Secret Service turned over 259 pages of records (pdf) to Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the pair of senators objected to what they said were “extensive” and “improper” redactions that impede their ability to “understand the full scope of the interactions between Hunter Biden, his associates,” and the Secret Service.

Grassley and Johnson have been probing Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings. The senators released a report in 2020 (pdf) that said Hunter Biden’s job with Ukrainian energy firm Burisma created a “potential conflict of interest” for his father, who was heavily involved in U.S. policy toward Ukraine.

In 2019, Hunter Biden sat for an interview with ABC News, in which he insisted he hadn’t done anything “improper” in his business dealings, although he acknowledged “poor judgment.”

Hunter Biden told the media outlet that he “did nothing wrong at all,” but conceded that it was “poor judgment to be in the middle of something that is … a swamp … in many ways.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The first major peer-reviewed study of monkeypox infections has found that the virus is primarily being transmitted through the sexual activity of gay and bisexual men in the United States and around the world.

The Journal of New England Medicine on Thursday published a study that looked at monkeypox infection across 16 countries between April and June, when cases began to emerge in countries outside of Africa.

The study reported on 528 infections diagnosed between April 27 and June 24, of which 98 percent were in gay or bisexual men with a median age of 38. Of these cases, 95 percent of the infections were suspected to have been transmitted through sexual activity—41 percent also had HIV.

Disease experts and officials from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) don’t consider monkeypox a sexually transmitted infection but have always said it could be transmitted through intimate contact, such as sex. It can also be spread by close contact and even infected clothing and bedding.

Until this year, monkeypox virus infection in humans has been rare outside of Africa, where it is endemic but mostly spread from animals. But there are now more than 16,000 cases worldwide in countries that mostly have not historically had monkeypox, according to the CDC.

Most of the cases appear to be in North America and Western Europe, where some of the first cases were linked to major LGBT events in Spain and Belgium, considered ground zero for facilitating transmission of the virus.

The leading theory among disease experts is that the monkeypox virus was sexually transmitted at those events.

An uptick in recent U.S. cases suggests transmission occurred at the tail end of Pride Month in late June and early July, based on the study finding that incubation is between three and 20 days (usually seven days).

Former Trump Health Officials Blame CDC

CDC officials were hesitant to recommend canceling marquee U.S. LGBT events, similar to the super spreading events in Europe that occurred the month prior.

LGBT event organizers were also treading carefully in the spring, wanting to avoid stigmatizing the LGBT community. U.S. health officials opted instead to boost targeted messaging to warn gay and bisexual men, who were deemed most at risk.

But officials should have done more, says Dr. Paul Alexander, a former Trump administration health official and researcher.

“All this needed was leadership saying no skin to skin contact, no anal sex, no sex, none for a few weeks and we would have helped this high risk group, but no, it’s political games and now the low-risk general heterosexual population is at risk especially from bisexual males,” Alexander wrote in a blog post.

The blog post also included a Twitter thread by a gay U.S. man recounting in graphic detail his experience with contracting monkeypox during an orgy in Palm Springs.

Alexander expressed concern that bisexual men could facilitate the spreading of the monkeypox virus outside of the LGBT community to heterosexuals. In fact, the CDC has said they know of eight cases in women and two new cases in children—one a toddler and the other an infant, BBC News reported.

“Heterosexuals could spread this if one partner is infected and there is rough abrasive sex that involves tearing of tissue,” Alexander added.

“This is not about being ‘gay,’ the virus is transmitted in bodily fluids and infected pustules and lesions in the infected person, through any tears on the skin or tissue e.g. rectal micro lesions etc,” he continued. “If heterosexuals engage in anal sex and one is infected with monkeypox or another [sexually transmitted disease], the other will get infected if there is tissue tearing.”

Although monkeypox infection generally clears up within a couple of weeks without the need for medical treatment, it has hospitalized some who experience severe anorectal pain, severe sore throats, and acute kidney injury.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

A New York man was released from jail without bail hours after he tried to stab Rep. Lee Zeldin (R., N.Y.), a foregone conclusion because of a bail reform law passed in 2019.

The Monroe County Sheriff’s Office in Rochester, N.Y., charged David Jakubonis with attempted second-degree assault and released him before his trial, according to a Thursday press release. Jakubonis, an Iraq war veteran who was inebriated, used a small weapon with two sharp prongs to assault Zeldin, telling the representative, “You’re done,” when he swung at him during a campaign speech for veterans in Perinton.

His words as he tried to stab me a few hours ago were “you’re done”, but several attendees, including @EspositoforNY, quickly jumped into action & tackled the guy.

Law enforcement was on the scene within minutes.

The attacker will likely be instantly released under NY’s laws. pic.twitter.com/wZEyIyrjFe

— Lee Zeldin (@leezeldin) July 22, 2022

“After being charged with a felony for last night’s attack, the man who tried to stab me was instantly released back onto the street due to New York’s insane cashless bail law,” Zeldin told the Washington Free Beacon. “Too many people throughout our state have suffered violent attacks and even death, as a result of criminals who were allowed to walk free because of soft-on-crime bail policy. We must repeal cashless bail in New York!”

Attempted assault is a felony in New York, but criminal justice reform legislation passed in 2019 bars judges from setting bail because the charge is “nonviolent,” the New York Times reported. Zeldin predicted his assailant would be released shortly after the incident due to state law.

In another case in June, a New York City offender stabbed two Subway passengers the day after he was released from jail for brandishing a knife at police.

The attack comes as elected officials face increased threats of violence in the United States. In 2017, a far-left gunman shot up a practice for the Congressional Baseball Game in Washington, D.C., nearly killing House Republican Whip Steve Scalise (La.). A left-wing group threatened this year’s upcoming game, warning of “serious consequences” if it doesn’t get its way.

Zeldin is running to unseat New York Democratic governor Kathy Hochul in November. Members of Zeldin’s campaign staff restrained Jakubonis until law enforcement officers arrived and took the assailant into custody. The congressman was uninjured.

Along with other U.S. states, New York saw crime rise over the past two years. Zeldin’s assault took place on the outskirts of the city of Rochester, which set an all-time record for homicides in 2021. The FBI reported the United States in 2020 had its largest ever annual homicide increase, up 30 percent from 2019.

Zeldin is one of two Jewish Republicans in Congress. The Empire State had a record number of assaults against Jews in 2021, as anti-Semitic incidents have reached an all-time high nationwide, the Anti-Defamation League reported in April.

Update 6:46 p.m.: This piece has been updated with a comment from Rep. Zeldin.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Illinois set to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue

Illinois Democratic governor J.B. Pritzker celebrated the departure of two GOP billionaires and one of the state’s biggest businesses in remarks delivered last weekend to a group of Democrats gathered in the Sunshine State.

Pritzker opened remarks at a Florida Democratic Party event by calling Ken Griffin, the CEO of hedge fund Citadel, a “spoiled rich kid” and arguing that Griffin’s decision to relocate his company to Florida stemmed from disappointment over his preferred gubernatorial candidate’s loss last month in the Republican primary. “Griffin announced he was taking his toys and leaving Illinois,” Pritzker told the Tampa Bay crowd. “Again, really sorry about that.”

Griffin, who was not long ago the richest man in Illinois, cited Florida’s lower crime rate and more hospitable business environment as reasons for the move, which cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars in annual income tax revenue. A spokesman for Citadel said that the hedge fund’s employees paid more than $1 billion in taxes to Illinois over the past decade.

While his remarks drew attention from the mainstream press, Pritzker’s comments about Griffin and another billionaire, former Illinois Republican governor Bruce Rauner, were largely overlooked.

It’s a curious political argument from Pritzker, a governor facing reelection in November and who has seen three major companies announce plans to decamp from Illinois in the past two months: Caterpillar, Boeing, and Griffin’s Citadel. The remarks were an obvious attempt to position Pritzker as an alternative to Gov. Ron DeSantis (R., Fla.), so his decision to highlight the businessmen who have chosen to take their companies to Florida from Illinois is puzzling.

Pritzker mocked Rauner, who moved to Florida in 2018. Rauner, whose net worth is estimated to be in the hundreds of millions, paid $50 million in state income taxes in 2016 alone. “He’s your problem now,” Pritzker said. “Sorry about that.”

Citadel was the third major Illinois employer that recently announced its intention to leave the state. In May, Boeing announced it was moving its headquarters to Virginia from Chicago. The following month, Caterpillar, which has been headquartered in Illinois for nearly 100 years, said it would move 230 jobs in the state to Texas.

Several leaders in the Illinois business community cite rising crime in Chicago as a primary reason why they consider leaving the state. Murders in Chicago rose by 60 percent in 2021 compared to the previous two years. Shootings were up 66 percent and car theft was up 19 percent during the same time period.

A spokeswoman for Pritzker did not respond to a request for comment about whether he celebrates the departure of all billionaires from Illinois, or just Republican business leaders.

Democrats who attended Pritzker’s speech included Rep. Val Demings (D., Fla.), who is now running statewide for Senate. Demings did not respond to a request for comment about whether she agrees with Pritzker’s assessment of Griffin.

Pritzker faces reelection in November against Republican Darren Bailey and is rumored to have presidential aspirations.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s top donors were Texans

Californians along with out-of-state donor George Soros have contributed heavily to Democrat Beto O’Rourke’s gubernatorial campaign to unseat Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott.

Soros, a Hungarian-born businessman who has championed Democrats and their causes for decades, is known for backing progressive candidates. Many of the candidates he helped elect are considered far-left, such as George Gascon, who won the Los Angeles District Attorney race in 2020 but is facing a second recall effort for his soft-on-crime stance.

O’Rourke, who unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. Senate against Republican Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018 and the Democratic nomination for president in 2020, amassed $27.6 million in campaign contributions from late February through June. Abbott raised $24.9 million in the same period.

Abbott maintained $45.7 million cash-on-hand, well above O’Rourke’s $23.9 million.

In addition to Soros’ $1 million contribution, O’Rourke received $1 million each from Tench and Simone Coxe, an Austin, Texas, couple formerly of California. He is a venture capitalist, and she is co-founder of Blanc & Otus public relations.

Texas campaign records show many of O’Rourke’s large donations came from out of state. He received a total of $500,000 from 28 California donors who gave $10,000 or more. Our Texas Pac of Colorado donated $500,000, and the American Federation of Teachers in Washington D.C. gave $300,000.

Meanwhile, many of Abbott’s campaign donations came from Texans. His top donor was S. Javaid Anwar, a Midland oilman and regular GOP contributor, who gave the governor’s campaign $750,000. Abbott appointed Anwar to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board twice.

Only one of Abbott’s top donors, Kenny Troutt, a California real estate billionaire who contributed some $500,000, was out of state.

O’Rourke began a seven-week campaign swing this week across the Lone Star State, where he is scheduled to make 70 stops. Abbott has vowed to follow O’Rourke’s campaign with an ambulance listing what the “real” candidate actually stands for, while launching ads against his oponent.

Abbott wasted no time seizing O’Rouke’s ties to the left with an ad titled: “Defend Texas from George Soros!”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

For followers of “Star Trek,” one of the most memorable antagonists is the Borg, a race of beings composed of organic and biomechanic body parts linked together in a hive mind called the “Collective.”

In their quest to achieve perfection, the Borg travel through the galaxy extending their power and control by integrating the knowledge and technology of other alien species through a process called “assimilation,” whereby individuals are forcibly injected with nanoparticles that alter their cellular DNA and transform them into drones for the Collective. Each Borg has no individual thoughts or will. They are part of a group consciousness where all are constantly supervised, guided and controlled.

In an example of life imitating art, the World Economic Forum is a major player in world affairs today.

Klaus Schwab, a German economist and mechanical engineer, founded this non-governmental organization in 1971. The WEF is best known for the annual conferences it holds in Davos, Switzerland, which bring together hundreds of political and business leaders from around the world to discuss international issues. Funded by approximately 1,000 multinational corporations, private donors and government contributions, it is one of the most important networks in the world for the globalist power elite.

In 1992, Schwab began a parallel organization called the Global Leaders for Tomorrow (the name changed in 2004 to the Forum of Young Global Leaders). Applicants to this program are subjected to a very rigorous selection process. The more than 1,200 graduates include some of the most powerful presidents, prime ministers, senior government advisers, health bureaucrats and business leaders in the world.

In June 2020, at its 50th annual meeting, the WEF announced the launch of the “Great Reset,” an initiative to reimagine the world and transform the global economy.

This effort involves transhumanism, the development of technologies across digital and biological worlds to improve human mental and physical capabilities — that is, to make disabilities, suffering, disease, aging and involuntary death a thing of the past. Schwab described this in more detail in his 2016 book “The Fourth Industrial Revolution.” According to him, this revolution will change not only what we do but also who we are.

In a 2016 Swiss television interview, the interviewer asked when he thought implantable microchips would be implemented on humanity. Schwab said, “Certainly in the next 10 years. And at first we will implant them in our clothes. And then we could imagine that we will implant them in our brains, or in our skin.”

In a 2020 book co-authored with Thierry Malleret, “COVID-19: The Great Reset,” Schwab declared that the COVID-19 crisis represented an unprecedented opportunity to reimagine the world — that is, to implement the Great Reset. This includes genetic engineering involving making people part-synthetic, incorporating them into the Internet of Bodies (an evolution of the Internet of Things), and merging them into a required global digital identification regime in order to participate in this reimagined world.

Schwab’s top adviser and transhumanist Dr. Yuval Noah Harari openly admits that the gathering of enormous amounts of data on individuals would enable global elites to build a digital dictatorship that tyrants of the past could only have imagined.

Here are a few more ideas expressed by Dr. Harari that illustrate his worldview:

“By hacking organisms, elites may gain the power to re-engineer the future of life itself.”

“Science is replacing evolution by natural selection with evolution by intelligent design. Not the intelligent design of some god above the clouds, but our intelligent design, and the intelligent design of our clouds — the IBM cloud, the Microsoft cloud. These are the new driving forces of evolution.”

“Humans are now hackable animals. The whole idea that humans have this soul or spirit and they have free will, and nobody knows what’s happening inside me, so whatever I choose, whether in the election or whether in the supermarket, this is my free will — that’s over.”

Sacrificial Sam

“Now, humans are developing even bigger powers than ever before. We are really acquiring divine powers of creation and destruction. We are really upgrading humans into gods. We are acquiring, for instance, the power to re-engineer life.”

“Fake news has been with us for thousands of years. Just think of the Bible.”

“All these stories about Jesus rising from the dead and being the Son of God — this is fake news.”

To be continued in Part 2.

The views expressed in this opinion article are those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by the owners of this website. If you are interested in contributing an Op-Ed to The Western Journal, you can learn about our submission guidelines and process here.

The United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for sustainable development informs government policies to restrict farming and transform the food systems in different parts of the world, said Alex Newman, an award-winning international journalist who has covered this issue for over a decade.

The 2030 Agenda is a plan of action devised by the United Nations (U.N.) to achieve 17 sustainable development goals (SDG). The goals and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development were adopted by all UN member states in 2015.

Then-Secretary General of the U.N. Ban Ki-moon called the 2030 Agenda “the global declaration of interdependence,” (pdf) Newman said in a recent interview on EpochTV’s “Crossroads” program.

“In my opinion, [it] was a direct swipe at our Declaration of Independence … So instead of being independent nations, we will all be now interdependent.”

The 2030 Agenda “covers every element of human life, every element of the economy,” including global wealth redistribution not only within the nations but also among the nations, Newman commented. The Agenda “specifically says that we need to change the way that we consume and produce goods,” he added.

Goal number two on the 2030 Agenda deals specifically with food, Newman said.

In September 2021, the U.N. held the Food Systems Summit, which emphasized the need “to leverage the power of food systems” for the purpose of achieving all 17 sustainable development goals by 2030, according to a U.N. statement.

“Everyone, everywhere, must take action and work together to transform the way the world produces, consumes, and thinks about food,” the statement said.

Taking Over Farmland

The sustainable development agenda emerged in the 1970s when the United Nations tried to define it at a conference in Vancouver, Canada, in 1976. Newman said.

The conference, which was the first U.N. Conference on Human Settlements known as Habitat I, adopted the Vancouver Declaration (pdf), a report that provided recommendations for U.N. member states.

Newman quoted an excerpt from this report: “Land cannot be treated as an ordinary asset controlled by individuals and subject to the pressures and inefficiencies of the market. Private land ownership is also a principal instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth, therefore contributes to social injustice.”

Newman said that, in his view, the U.N. ultimately wants to get rid of private land ownership. “We see this all over the world. This is not just happening in the Netherlands.”

He thinks that a war is taking place against farmers and ranchers, especially those who are independent or those who are not part of the system. “They want to remove small farmers, even medium farmers, from their land, and they want to bring it all under the control of these—I think there’s no other term to describe it—fascistic public-private partnerships.”

Newman noted some examples to illustrate his opinion: The Chinese regime forces peasants to move to megacities, farmers are killed in South Africa, and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the United States proposed a new rule that could bankrupt small and medium farmers.

In March 2022, the SEC proposed a regulation that “would mandate publicly traded companies to report on their carbon emissions and other climate-related information,” as well as report similar information from any companies with which they do business, according to an SEC statement.

As a consequence, all companies in the business supply chain of a publicly traded entity would have to report their carbon emission and climate-related data.

U.S. Sens. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and John Hoeven (R-N.D.) led 30 lawmakers to urge SEC to repeal its proposal, calling it a “regulatory overreach.”

”Imposing regulatory overreach on farmers and ranchers falls outside of the SEC’s congressionally provided authority,” the senators said in a statement. “This substantial reporting requirement would significantly burden small, family-owned farms.”

The American Farm Bureau Federation said in a statement that the proposed rule could create “substantial costs” for farmers because they do not have teams of compliance officers or attorneys like large corporations. Moreover, it may push out of business small and medium-sized farmers and force food-processing companies to look for agricultural raw products outside of the United States, the statement asserted.

Centralizing Food Supply

 “If you control the food supply, you control everything,” Newman said.

“One of the things that the communists loved to do is create scarcity and create dependents. As long as you have independent people who are able to take care of themselves, there really is no need for the government to run your life and to control everything that you do,” Newman said.

“Americans are good examples,” Newman continued. “As long as the food production is widely diffused, and it’s in the hands of independent producers, it becomes very difficult to get people to bend to your will.”

The whole idea of using food as a weapon has been a hallmark of communist regimes for 100 years, Newman explained. “It’s also been a hallmark of the very same people who are openly promoting the U.N. Agenda 2030, the sustainable development goals, and even the World Economic Forum.”

Those who contrived “the controlled demolition of our food supply … want to completely restructure it,” in order to gain total centralized control of that because it gives them absolute power over everybody under their jurisdiction, Newman said.

For example, the Chinese regime and the mega-corporations formed a public-private partnership to centralize control of the food supply, Newman said.

It’s similar to what occurred in Nazi Germany, where on paper private companies own the business and ostensibly manage their businesses, but, ultimately, the private companies will be taking their orders from the government, Newman explained.

In the United States, the ESG metrics are used to “hijack control of the business sector, of the individual companies, and put them at the service of the goals of what I call the predator class—the people behind the World Economic Forum, behind the United Nations,” Newman said. (ESG stands for environmental, social, and governance criteria that are used to evaluate companies on how compliant they are with sustainability.)

The food supply centralization is just one component of their agenda, but it is a very critical one, which along with energy and other things, allows them to control humanity, he added.

World Economic Forum Involvement

In January 2021, the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the government of the Netherlands launched a new initiative called Food Innovation Hub, according to a WEF statement. The Hub, joined by several public and private sector partners, is a key platform that will use technology and innovations for food systems transformation, the statement said.

The Food Innovation Hub secured “multiyear funding “ from the Netherlands’ government and established its Global Coordinating Secretariat that would coordinate the efforts of the regional food hubs as well as align with global food processes and initiatives such as the UN Food Systems Summit, the statement read.

The global food Secretariat would be located in Wageningen, Netherlands, at the heart of the Dutch agrifood ecosystem, and would direct the development of global, regional Food Innovation Hubs, according to the “Invest in Holland” website.

“The work of these regional hubs is already underway, with more than 20 organizations leading the initiative across Africa, ASEAN [Association of Southeast Asian Nations], Colombia, and India, and the European hub,” the website said.

Ramon Laguarta, CEO of PepsiCo, said in the WEF statement: “Food is one of the main levers we can pull to improve environmental and societal health. With the right investment, innovation, and robust collaboration, agriculture could become the world’s first sector to become carbon negative. … Unlocking this potential will take ambitious multi-stakeholder, pre-competitive collaborations to transform the food system—exactly what these Hubs are designed to cultivate.”

Among the solutions advocated by the WEF to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions is replacing livestock-derived foods with alternative forms of protein, such as insects, and lab-cultured proteins, according to a 2019 white paper (pdf) commissioned by the WEF.

In response to this recommendation, several indoor agriculture start-ups have emerged, including Ÿnsect, “the first fully automated vertical insect farm in the world, able to produce 100,000 tons of insect products a year,” a WEF report said.

In March, France-based Ÿnsect acquired Jord Producers, a U.S. mealworm manufacturer, to expand its operations in the United States by entering the American chicken feed market, said a company statement.

How People Can Stop Food Takeover

If people want to prevent food supply from being used as a tool to control them, they need to find alternative sources of food locally, Newman said. “You need to have a relationship with the local farmers in your community, get to the local farmers market, deal with the local farmers, come up with some agreement,” such as getting delivery of fresh, seasonal produce from the local farms for 100 bucks a week, he said.

“We need to really start providing an alternative economic structure, because if we let them get control of the entire food supply, I guarantee you, it will be used as a weapon to take your freedom, to get you to do things you otherwise wouldn’t want to do, to undermine the sovereignty of your nation, whether you’re in the United States or another country, and ultimately to dispossess people of their private land and of their freedom.”

“If you have agricultural land, do not sell out to these people. They’re trying to bribe the farmers to leave their land.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Ruling against EPA sets precedent for a series of lawsuits against agency overreach

As the Biden administration reels from a string of recent legal defeats, political analysts hail the U.S. Supreme Court’s latest ruling, West Virginia v. EPA, as but one component of a new, broad-based approach that the courts are taking to halt a century-long effort by progressives to empower the administrative state and rule Americans by bureaucratic decree.

Dating back to President Woodrow Wilson 100 years ago, progressive presidents, including Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden, have worked to transfer law-making authority from Congress to their executive agencies. Wilson, the father of modern-day progressives, believed the Constitution, with its separation of powers, was an outdated document and that professional bureaucrats were superior at decision-making, compared to the time-consuming and compromise-ridden process of passing laws through elected representatives.

Wilson wrote in the 1887 article “The Study of Administration” that “the many, the people, who are sovereign [under the Constitution] have no single ear which one can approach, and are selfish, ignorant, timid, stubborn or foolish.”

“The greatest revolution since the Constitution in many ways has been this movement away from legislatures into agencies,” Matthew Spalding, Dean of Hillsdale College’s Graduate School of Government, told The Epoch Times. “The crisis here is the movement away from consent,” as Americans increasingly lose their right to have a voice in setting the laws and regulations that control their lives.

In 1984, for example, the Supreme Court handed down a decision that came to be known as the Chevron Doctrine, ruling that federal agencies had the authority to decide the scope of their power in situations where congressional authorization was ambiguous. Since this ruling, Chevron v. National Resources Defense Council, the courts have sided with federal agencies in cases where the authority of agencies was challenged.

Now, for the first time in a century, a series of rulings from federal courts have put up a roadblock to halt administrative encroachment. Two factors have brought about this change. First, the appointment by the Trump administration of 234 federal judges, including three Supreme Court justices. And second, the Biden administration’s unusually brazen attempts to push federal agencies well beyond their legal authority in order to impose a left-wing agenda on the United States without popular consent.

West Virginia Ruling

In the case of West Virginia v. EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) attempted to force America’s electric utilities to switch from fossil fuels to wind and solar. On June 30, the Supreme Court ruled that the Biden administration had no authority to do so.

“For years, unelected bureaucrats in the administrative state have been trying to destroy our fossil fuel industries by transforming the EPA into a communist-style central planning authority because they know they can’t get their radical environmental policies passed through Congress,” said West Virginia State Treasurer Riley Moore in an official statement, lauding the decision as “a victory for the rule of law.”

“Part of the problem is Congress writing these broad laws that leave a lot of room for interpretation by the agencies that are supposed to execute the laws,” William Shughart, senior fellow at the Independent Institute, told the Epoch Times. “That has led to this explosive growth in the administrative state. The West Virginia ruling applies the brakes to that growth.”

‘Major Questions Doctrine’

One of the key components of this Supreme Court ruling is the “major questions doctrine.” This is the concept that agencies, which are unelected by and unaccountable to the public, cannot make up rules on issues of major importance to Americans without clear authorization from elected representatives.

“The Supreme Court decision speaks to the legal flaws with trying to mark an entire industry for termination,” Jonathan Berry, a partner at Boyden Gray & Associates, told The Epoch Times. “What the Supreme Court is saying is that when you take on initiatives of major economic or political significance, those measures have to be authorized by a clear statement from Congress.”

“One of the most profound aspects of this ruling is its portability across regulatory regimes,” Berry said. In rendering its West Virginia decision, the Supreme Court looked at prior rulings, including those against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). “The common thread across those cases is the executive branch using an administrative agency to wade into policy areas beyond what Congress authorized,” Berry added.

In August 2021, the Supreme Court ruled that the CDC did not have legal authority to ban landlords from evicting non-paying tenants. In January of this year, the Court ruled that OSHA did not have authority to force employees of large companies to take the Covid-19 vaccine.

“What we’re seeing here is extremely significant,” Spalding said. “The way the Court works is they do these things in different cases here and there, but they’re putting a doctrine together that ultimately builds up to a larger case. The heart of the matter is the unconstitutionality of essentially shifting legislative authority outside of the legislative branch into these agencies.”

“There are already tons of lawsuits out there that have been winding their way through the legal system for years,” Bonner Cohen, senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research, told The Epoch Times. “Some of those lawsuits will eventually make it to the Supreme Court, but a lot of them may be dealt with at lower court level simply because people can now point to the precedent that was set in West Virginia v. EPA.”

Administrative Overreach

Last week, a Trump-appointed federal judge temporarily blocked orders by the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) that attempted to force states to, among other things, allow transgender children to compete in sports in schools according to their gender identity rather than their gender at birth. Twenty state attorneys general brought a suit against the DOE directive, arguing that the authority to decide such policies “properly belongs to Congress, the States, and the people.”

Two other areas where administrative overreach by the Biden administration will likely be challenged next are a directive from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regarding “green accounting” (that is, accounting that factors environmental costs in the financial results of operations) and gun control initiatives from the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF).

In a case that closely parallels West Virginia v. EPA, the SEC issued a directive that all listed companies must provide audited reports on the greenhouse gas emissions of their operations, as well as those of their suppliers and customers. In addition, companies must detail their strategies to reduce such emissions. Critics believe this will open companies up to a rash of environmental lawsuits and actions by activist asset managers like BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard. West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey was among the first state officials to threaten legal action in response.

The ATF has been attempting to expand the legal definition of which gun parts constitute a firearm in an effort to implement a Biden administration initiative, which failed to pass Congress, against unregistered homemade guns, thus turning a formerly legal practice into a felony. A lawsuit against this has already been filed by the Gun Owners of America. In addition, the ATF was found to be keeping records of “several hundred million” gun purchases, despite the fact that Congress explicitly outlawed a federal gun registry.

Loss of Public Trust

Such attempts to circumvent public consent by legislating through unelected federal agencies inevitably lead to a loss of public trust in government.

“If there’s no consent, no responsibility, no check-back system, then you really are undermining public confidence in that process,” Spalding said. Regarding the ATF and gun control measures, a June poll by NPR/Ipsos found that, while most gun owners said they would accept universal background checks, they “harbored a deep distrust of government.”

“The more that this administration steps over the line and claims for itself powers that the peoples’ representatives in Congress have not given it, the more we should expect a decline in trust and in legitimacy,” Berry said.

As the courts begin to push back against administrative overreach, however, the backlash from the political left has been escalating, including demands for “packing” the Supreme Court with more left-leaning judges, or even abolishing the Court altogether.

Following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, President Biden stated, “We cannot allow an out-of-control Supreme Court, working in conjunction with extremist elements of the Republican Party, to take away our freedoms and our personal autonomy.” A recent survey by Rasmussen and the Heartland Institute found that, in the wake of the EPA decision, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and the pro-Second Amendment Bruen decision (regarding concealed weapons), most Democrats and younger voters see the Court as a racist and sexist institution and want to pack it with progressive judges, remove it, or replace it.

“These findings clearly show that most Democrats and young Americans do not respect the sanctity of the Supreme Court when it issues decisions that run counter to their agenda,” Heartland Institute Research Fellow Chris Talgo told The Epoch Times. “As a former U.S. history and American government teacher, I can say without a doubt that our education system is not teaching the basics when it comes to civics. Most American students cannot name the three branches of government, let alone understand the role of separation of powers. This does not bode well for the future of freedom, seeing as how young voters are hostile to the very institutions that preserve our freedom.”

The Justice Department, for example, permitted weeks of intimidating protests outside the homes of conservative Supreme Court justices after the opinion to overturn Roe v. Wade was prematurely leaked prior to the formal ruling. Following the arrest in June of an armed man who was charged with attempted murder at the home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) demanded that U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland “detail the steps the Department of Justice is taking to protect our Supreme Court Justices in the wake of an unprecedented harassment and intimidation campaign.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was criticized for taking weeks to bring a bill protecting Supreme Court justices and their families to a vote, even after the alleged assassination attempt against Justice Kavanaugh. When the bill was put to a vote, 27 Democrats voted against it.

Granting Power to Experts

Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, who disagreed with the majority in the West Virginia case, argued that the courts must defer to the EPA, which she deemed the “expert agency,” and allow the agency to interpret the scope of its own power. Critics of this approach, however, remain skeptical of granting too much power to experts and question whether administrators are in fact experts when it comes to issues like national energy policy or making personal medical decisions.

“These are career government employees,” Cohen said. “They are not experts.”

“Look at the experience the country had during the pandemic, where we had such experts as Dr. [Anthony] Fauci and Dr. [Deborah] Birx and others throughout the federal government who completely mishandled the public health response to COVID-19,” Cohen said. “If these are the experts, we need to free ourselves from experts, because they got it spectacularly wrong.”

One of the methods used to expand administrative power has been the declaration of government health emergencies, including the pandemic health emergency, the climate health emergency, the racism health emergency, and the “gun violence” health crisis.

“Anytime you encounter the word ‘emergency,’ anytime you encounter the word ‘crisis,’ be careful,” Cohen said. “It may in fact be a crisis because those things happen, but it may be nothing more than a pretext for a power grab.”

“The invocation of an emergency is not a justification for combining the powers of government into a single person,” Berry said. “That’s the definition of tyranny.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The Washington Post sternly condemned President Joe Biden for his “shameful” greeting of Saudi Arabian royalty, but has remained mum on its owner’s extensive business dealings with the Saudis.

The paper—which is owned by Amazon executive chairman Jeff Bezos—led the charge following video of Biden fist-bumping the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. The Post’s publisher, Fred Ryan, wrote that Biden’s trip “erodes” the “moral authority” of the United States. In his piece—which is topped with an artistic rendering of Biden shaking a blood-covered hand—Ryan criticizes the president for “turning a blind eye” to the Saudi regime’s alleged murder of Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi. Ryan said Biden was sending the “message that the United States is willing to look the other way when its commercial interests are at stake.”

Just four months before Biden’s trip, however, it was Amazon traveling to the oil kingdom for commercial interests. A senior Amazon executive was photographed shaking hands with high-ranking Saudi officials to finalize an economic partnership between the multinational conglomerate and the Islamic theocracy. The Post did not cover Amazon’s Saudi agreement, according to a review of the paper’s archive.

Since Bezos’s 2013 purchase of the Post, experts have speculated that his substantial Amazon holdings may influence the paper’s coverage. A 2018 piece in HuffPost featured anonymous statements from several Washington Post employees who said they felt uncomfortable criticizing Amazon given Bezos’s ownership of the paper.

“I tend to do less critical thinking about Amazon than I do, say, about Facebook or Google or Walmart, and the reason is fairly obvious: because I am thankful for the opportunity I have, which wouldn’t exist without Jess [sic] Bezos,” one employee said. “Conflicts of interest are there no matter how well we do our jobs,” another said.

Bezos has a $116 billion stake in Amazon, which has taken major steps to expand its footprint in Saudi Arabia in recent years. During the March 19, 2022, meeting between Amazon officials and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Investment, the company stressed its “commitment to the Kingdom.”

“This partnership underscores our commitment to the Kingdom and our customers in it, and will contribute to accelerating the growth of the e-commerce sector, as well as enabling businesses to take advantage of the great growth opportunities that the Kingdom offers,” said Ronaldo Mouchawar, an Amazon vice president for the Middle East region.

The major deal followed several steps taken last year by Amazon to establish a foothold in Saudi Arabia. In January 2021, Amazon extended its trademark Prime delivery service to Saudi Arabia. Two months later, Amazon announced plans to add 11 new buildings and hire 1,500 new workers in Saudi Arabia. The company also partnered last month with Saudi start-ups to help improve the country’s logistics infrastructure.

None of the developments were covered by the Post, which appears to have last covered Amazon’s business dealings in Saudi Arabia in October 2019, when the company decided to cease operations in the country following Khashoggi’s murder.

Writers at the Washington, D.C.-based liberal news outlet have not shied away from criticizing others for involving themselves with the Saudis. The Post denounced entertainment companies such as Disney for allowing their shares to be purchased by the Saudi government, criticized influencers for attending a Saudi-sponsored music festival, and attacked performers like Mariah Carey for doing shows in the country.

The paper did not respond to a request for comment on its coverage of Amazon, which also did not respond to request for comment.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

ANALYSIS: Does wearing a fancy top hat indoors to conceal your unsightly bald dome make you dumber?

Washington Post columnist Max Boot wears a fancy top hat—indoors and outdoors—to conceal his freakish bald head. It may or may not be making him dumber, given the profoundly stupid tweet he posted while attempting to insult a group of veterans who actually did serve their country in uniform.

“Just imagine how all these right-wingers would have reacted with horror if they had been around when Harry Truman desegregated the military,” Boot wrote on Twitter, the social networking platform. “Now that was woke!”

Boot’s ridiculous and racially charged comment came in response to a New York Post op-ed written by Jason Church, a retired U.S. Army captain. Church argued that our military should focus more on preparing for armed conflict with bad actors around the world and less on embracing the “diversity, equity, and inclusion” ethos of government bureaucrats.

“The Navy is producing instructional videos on gender pronouns while its poorly maintained ships crash at sea,” wrote Church, citing a Washington Free Beacon report. He also suggested—quite reasonably—that lowering the military’s physical fitness standards in the name of “inclusivity” was not a good thing. Other changes designed to make the military more “woke,” Church argued, have “weakened training, lowered morale,” and “diminish[ed] the fighting spirit, cohesiveness, and reputation of America’s Armed Forces.”

Boot, who never served in the military but has written several books about war, had responded with the cerebral heft of a Salon commenter, and Church let him know it. “With respect to @MaxBoot, this is beneath you and the Post,” he wrote. “We are right to be worried about politicizing the military and @VeteransOnDuty will voice these concerns. Smugly dismissing this as bigotry is cheap and wrong.”

Church, who joined the Army in 2011 and received a Purple Heart in Afghanistan, is the chairman of Veterans on Duty, a national membership organization dedicated to “exposing how the woke revolution in the services works” and compelling the military to “get back to basics” by electing like-minded policymakers.

Jeremy C. Hunt, a black Army veteran and member of the Veterans on Duty board, also blasted Boot’s smug commentary. “We care about a military that wins,” he wrote in response to Boot’s tweet. “If you want an example of modern segregation in the military, look no further than the Biden administration’s racist [diversity, equity, and inclusion] protocols that you defend.”

Boot attempted to defend himself, once again channeling the intellectual rigor of the Salon comments section. “Diversity makes the military stronger,” he wrote. “Will you criticize Trump as well as Biden?”

Church, Hunt, and their fellow Veterans on Duty members fought for democracy by defending their country against foreign enemies. Boot “fights for democracy” by writing boring columns in the Post.

On Sunday, for example, Boot defended Biden’s meeting with bone-saw dictator Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, whom the president once pledged to make a “pariah” until flip-flopping as soon as rising gas prices threatened Democratic prospects in the midterm elections.

READ MORE: I Forced a Bot to Read 1,000 Max Boot Columns and Write a Max Boot Column of Its Own

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

WHY ISN’T ANYONE STOPPING THIS?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More than two months after Pennsylvania’s May 17 primary election, the Department of State still has not certified the election results. It’s an administrative failure that undermines confidence in the state’s election system, according to Republican state Rep. Seth Grove, chairman of the State Government Committee.

That is one of numerous examples Grove described at the state capital building in Harrisburg during a July 19 press conference in which he released a 186-page report (pdf) with the long title, “Election Reform in Pennsylvania: Missed Opportunities and Continued Chaos-an Interim Report on The Status of Elections in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania After the Veto of House Bill 1300.”

Grove is still advocating for something like HB 1300, which Gov. Tom Wolf vetoed in June 2021. It was a package of election reforms that called for voter identification and provided for early in-person voting; moved the voter registration deadline back from 15 days to 30 days before the election; established a state bureau of election audits; allowed for pre-canvassing of mailed ballots; and would have made it easier for older and disabled voters by moving them to the front of the line or providing curbside voting so they could remain in their car.

The bill also introduced stiffer fines and longer possible prison terms for election tampering.

But Wolf didn’t go for it.

“This bill is ultimately not about improving access to voting or election security, but about restricting the freedom to vote,” Wolf said in a statement about the veto. “If adopted it would threaten to disrupt election administration, undermine faith in government, and invite costly, time-consuming, and destabilizing litigation.”

It didn’t seem like Wolf read the bill, Grove said in his report.

“Unfortunately, Gov. Wolf vetoed the bill despite seeming largely unfamiliar with the contents. By vetoing the legislation, he made himself the sole obstacle to historic reform that would have improved nearly every aspect of election administration in Pennsylvania. Most importantly, it would have allowed the General Assembly to live up to our constitutional requirement for uniformity and fairness in elections and prevent any reoccurrence of the national attention our current, broken process received during and after the November 2020 Election.”

Incidents from the Report

The report details troubles in the state’s elections that have happened since 2020. The following incidents are a sampling of those described in more detail in the report:

In 2021, a Luzerne County man admitted to using his deceased mother’s information to apply for an absentee ballot.

During the May 2021 primary, some counties faced a shortage of paper ballots at polling places on election day, in part due to higher than expected in-person voting. Shortages happened in Clearfield, Delaware, Lebanon, and York counties, and possibly others.

In Fayette County during the same election, an issue with barcodes meant ballots were not scanning or being recorded. Affected ballots were set aside and counted by hand when polls closed.

Also in the May 2021 primary, nine Snyder County voters received the wrong ballots, and Erie County voters left two polling sites with their marked ballots.

During the November 2021 general election, during the preelection process, Berks County’s Spanish-language ballot instructions included the incorrect date for the election, affecting 17,000 mail-in ballots.

In the same election, the Lehigh County Board of Elections decided to count undated ballots. In response, members of the House Republican Caucus issued a letter threatening impeachment unless the law was followed. The matter resulted in litigation in federal courts, with the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals ordering the undated ballots be counted.

That was not the last of ballot issues.

Another case in federal district court challenged the practice of disqualifying ballots lacking a secrecy envelope. The case is not yet resolved.

And recently, the Department of State filed suit against the Berks, Lancaster, and Fayette county boards of elections over certification disputes arising from the 2022 primary election. At issue is the treatment of ballots lacking a date. These counties certified results excluding such ballots, as required by Pennsylvania law.

Court Case Holding Up Certification

When the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals issued its decision about undated ballots in the May 2021 primary, the Pennsylvania Department of State ordered Berks, Lancaster, and Fayette counties to certify an updated election result including the count of any ballots previously rejected for lacking a date.

The three counties did not do so, claiming that the previous court decision applied only to that case, and that the election code does not provide for election results to be certified a second time.

The case remains in Commonwealth Court, which is holding up certification of the 2022 primary election.

Grove called on the governor and his fellow lawmakers to try again on election reform legislation.

“It is my hope all sides and stakeholders can come to the table to compromise and bring true and meaningful election reform to Pennsylvania voters,” Grove said in a statement. “House Republicans have stood, and still stand, ready to address the myriad of election issues urgently in need of correction.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Left-wing Democrat mega donor George Soros has donated $1 million to help Beto O’Rourke’s efforts to unseat Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, filings show.

Records filed with Texas Ethics Commission published Tuesday show the billionaire donated the sum to the Beto for Texas political action committee in June, according to The Hill. O’Rourke’s campaign confirmed the donation to the outlet.

O’Rourke has benefited from laws in Texas that allow uncapped campaign donations. According to filings, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee has received a number of donations over six or seven figures.

Soros, 91, frequently supports progressive causes. He has spent at least $40 million in support of liberal prosecutor candidates between 2014 and 2021, according to a report published by Virginia-based Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund.

Additionally, the progressive investor gave more than $125 million to a Democrat-aligned super PAC to boost Democrat groups and candidates ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.

Soros handed over his donation to Democracy PAC, which he set up in 2019. Democracy PAC is his main political action committee to support Democrats in what was a “long-term investment” beyond the 2022 elections.

He has also spent tens of millions of dollars funding media properties, including journalism schools and industry organizations, according to a report by the Media Research Center.

Matt Palumbo, author of “The Man Behind the Curtain: Inside the Secret Network of George Soros,” said the billionaire funds many left-wing groups, media companies, and political candidates through his Open Society Foundation.

Palumbo, during an interview for EpochTV’s “Facts Matter” program, also said Soros uses his influence to control what is written about him.

Soros’s foundation claims to promote democracy and individualism, but in reality it supports a more radical agenda, said Palumbo.

Abbott Leads O’Rourke

According to a poll from the University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs, Abbott leads O’Rourke by 5 percent among likely voters (pdf).

The report states that Abbott leads at 49 percent to O’Rourke’s 44 percent, with 5 percent undecided and 2 percent intending to vote for Libertarian Mark Tippetts.

“More than nine out of 10 Abbott (95 percent) and O’Rourke (92 percent) voters are certain about their vote choice, while 5 percent and 8 percent indicate they might change their mind between now and November,” the report states.

“Abbott holds a 27 percent (60 percent to 33 percent) lead over O’Rourke among white voters while O’Rourke holds a 72 percent (80 percent to 8 percent) lead over Abbott among Black voters, and a 9 percent (51 percent to 42 percent) lead among Latino voters.”

Women prefer O’Rourke (6 percent) while Abbott outpaces O’Rourke with support of men (18 percent), according to the report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

While Dr. Anthony Fauci on Tuesday amended his Monday retirement announcement, Republicans who have criticized Fauci’s COVID-19 leadership were not changing their tune.

A Tuesday report from The Hill contradicted one from the day before concerning Fauci’s plans. Politico had reported that Fauci would retire by the end of resident Joe Biden’s term.

“I’m not going to retire. No, no, I’m not going to retire. I may step down from my current position at some time,” Fauci said. Fauci, 81, is currently the president’s chief medical adviser, as well as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

As Fauci told the story on Tuesday, he had been asked if he would keep working if former President Donald Trump wins the 2024 presidential election.

“I said a very innocent but true thing. I said whether it’s Donald Trump or it’s Joe Biden’s second term, I don’t intend to be in my current position in January of 2025,” Fauci said.

“What happens between now and then I have not decided, but the one thing I do know is that I have other things that I want to do in a professional way that I want to have the capability — while I still have the energy and the passion to do them,” he said.

Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has sparred with Fauci in Senate hearings, welcomed the change.

“Excellent – because I look forward to ascertaining Fauci’s involvement in the cover-up of the lab origins of COVID — Under Oath!” he tweeted.

Excellent – because I look forward to ascertaining Fauci’s involvement in the cover-up of the lab origins of COVID — Under Oath! https://t.co/LHmpE8QuWs

— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) July 19, 2022

Other Republicans reacted to the possibility of Fauci stepping down by saying that the career bureaucrat does not deserve to happily slip off into the golden years of retirement.

“Whether Fauci retires or not, he still must be investigated and held responsible for his role in Covid-19,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia tweeted.

“Fauci thinks he’s just going to retire and move on with his life. Not on my watch,” Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert said. “He belongs in jail.”

Whether Fauci retires or not, he still must be investigated and held responsible for his role in Covid-19.

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) July 18, 2022

Fauci Announces He Will Be Leaving His Job

Fauci thinks he’s just going to retire and move on with his life.

Not on my watch. He belongs in jail.

— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) July 18, 2022

 In an Op-Ed for The Wall Street Journal, James Freeman linked Fauci’s fading popularity with that of Biden.

“One shuttered the country and the other campaigned as a shut-in. Two Beltway lifers who promoted the disastrous lockdown policies of the Covid era seem to be on their way out of Washington. And even left-leaning media folk seem ready to see them depart,” he wrote.

Glenn Kessler’s bold claims lack context, evidence, credibility

The Washington Post‘s executive fact-checker on Monday made a number of bold assertions involving a fellow journalist. “Always great to hang out with the brilliant and talented @TaylorLorenz,” Glenn Kessler wrote on Twitter, the social networking platform, “a terrific addition to the @washingtonpost staff.” The tweet included a photo of the two journalists posing in pandemic-era face masks and casual business attire.

Kessler’s comments are worth unpacking with an aim toward enlightening readers who rely on our expertise. As the Post‘s chief arbiter of truth, Kessler has established himself as a cultural influencer who drives the conversation both within the Beltway and beyond. His words should be taken seriously as well as literally. Anyone who practices journalism, one of America’s most noble professions, carries a burden of great responsibility.

READ MORE: Fact Checking’s Final Frontier

The Washington Free Beacon will never stop holding members of the media to account. A rigorous standard is necessary to ensure they don’t abuse their power by peddling misinformation to vulnerable American consumers. When no one else has the courage to fact-check the fact-checker, we will. Please enjoy the following thoughtful analysis.

CLAIM #1: “Always great to hang out with … Taylor Lorenz.” 

VERDICT: Not credible. Because in the attached photo we are unable to see the expression on either journalist’s face, a more decisive assessment is not possible at this time. The evidence we do have suggests Kessler is exaggerating at best. Lorenz is obsessed with the internet. She has a history of lying about her age and partying with teens. As several of her colleagues have observed, she says a lot of “cringey” things like “I’m the most online reporter that you can find” and “Younger people recognize the power of having their own brand.” She wears a brand-name N95 mask and keeps the thermostat at 87 degrees. She might be a lizard person. Those aren’t traits one typically associates with a “great” hang.

CLAIM #2: “Brilliant and talented.” 

VERDICT: Insufficient evidence. When making such a bold assertion in a public forum one has a moral obligation to provide supporting evidence. Kessler neglected to do so in this case, which suggests he knows the statement to be false. That’s not necessarily a crime; he wasn’t under oath. Nevertheless, given his role as a professional fact-checker it seems reasonable to assume a nefarious motive. Misinformation is the single greatest threat to our democracy. In this case, Kessler has misrepresented his personal opinion as a statement of objective fact. That’s dangerous. Even if it were technically true—which it’s not—the fact-checker’s words might be seized upon by Facebook grannies and other social media users to promote their political agenda.

CLAIM #3: “A terrific addition to the Washington Post.” 

VERDICT: Missing crucial context. This is another example of Kessler peddling misinformation by exploiting the American’s public inability to distinguish true fact from subjective opinion. He neglected to explain the metrics by which he has assessed Lorenz to be a “terrific addition” to the Post, and declined to consider the dissenting views of other journalists who despise her self-promotional approach to brand-focused influencing.

New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, for example, did not appreciate Lorenz publicly dissing the Times for failing to allow “influencer journalists” to build their brands. “Is there something going on in the world other than the desire of some folks to get more attention?” Haberman wrote in early March, referring to Russia’s recently launched invasion of Ukraine. Lorenz, who worked at the Times before joining the Post earlier this year, reportedly called Haberman a “bitch” for questioning her obsessive coverage of a 15-year-old’s social media posts.

FINAL RATING: 3½ CLINTONS

Source: The Washington Free Beacon

George Soros boosted District Attorney Alvin Bragg in his campaign for office

Facing criticism from across the political spectrum, a Manhattan district attorney boosted in his campaign for office by George Soros, has moved to drop murder charges against a bodega worker caught on camera defending himself from a violent assault.

The office of District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D.) filed a motion to drop the second-degree murder case against Jose Alba, a middle-aged employee who used a knife to subdue an assailant assaulting him at work, according to the New York Post. The Manhattan prosecutor’s office said it could not prove Alba had been unjustified in his use of deadly force after his more physically imposing attacker lunged behind the counter, threw him against a wall, and grabbed him by the collar, the motion states. Bragg had initially set Alba’s bond at $250,000, an unprecedented move for an office that has largely abandoned cash bail. New York City mayor Eric Adams had opposed the charges, saying Alba acted in self-defense and was “following the law.”

The motion is one of the only times Bragg has reversed course under pressure. In June, the mother of a murdered Army veteran castigated a Bragg attorney in court to no avail after the prosecutor sentenced her son’s killer to just seven years in prison. Bragg has evaded accountability for many other assault cases, even amid public outcry. His office has not issued further charges in the case, though the assailant’s girlfriend had pulled a knife from her purse and stabbed Alba, according to the bodega worker’s attorney.

Soros in 2021 donated more than $1 million to Bragg’s campaign, helping to elect the Harlem native as part of a decade-long push to install liberal prosecutors across the country. The progressive megadonor has spent more than $40 million to place dozens of left-wing prosecutors in half of America’s largest jurisdictions, a June Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund report found, ousting many career prosecutors in the process. In cities and municipalities nationwide, the prosecutors have radically overhauled bail laws and pursued lightened sentencing.

Bragg handily won his November election by 67 percentage points, promising to reduce incarceration. He told prosecutors in a memo shortly after taking office to avoid prison sentences for most felony cases except under “extraordinary circumstances.”

In the past three years, homicide has shot up 52 percent in New York City, according to the latest NYPD crime data. Shootings are up more than 100 percent, and car theft is up 91 percent. The city in 2021 recorded nearly 500 homicides—the most it’s seen in a decade.

Update 3:13 p.m.: This piece has been update with additional information.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

The Ron Paul Institute featured at its conference last month a former United Nations weapons inspector who spent time in jail on child sex charges.

During the June 4 conference, Scott Ritter, a longtime critic of U.S. foreign policy, blasted the Biden administration’s support for Ukraine against Russia’s military invasion in a speech titled “Two-Front War: Biden’s Mouth is Writing Checks the U.S. Military Can’t Cash.”

The former U.N. weapons inspector, who has been arrested at least twice for attempting to solicit underage girls, was convicted of and served jail time for exposing himself online in 2009 to a police officer posing as a 15-year-old girl. A similar 2001 charge was reportedly dropped after he participated in a pre-trial probation program.

The isolationist think tank’s decision to host a speech by Ritter comes after another non-interventionist group, the Quincy Institute, removed an article written by Ritter from its website following an outcry from social media posters who noted that he was a convicted sex offender.

The Ron Paul Institute, which has been promoting Ritter’s speech on its website and social media, did not respond to a request for comment about its choice to feature a convicted child predator to tee off against the bipartisan effort to aid the embattled Ukrainian government.

It’s not the first time the institute and its namesake founder, former congressman Ron Paul, have partnered with controversial figures as part of a larger effort to promote isolationist policies that help America’s foreign adversaries.

Several of the group’s founding leaders have long-held ties to pro-Kremlin organizations, including a public relations shop created to shore up Vladimir Putin’s image. Paul also claimed the U.S. government had foreknowledge about the Sept. 11 attacks and intentionally let Osama bin Laden remain at large for years to justify foreign wars.

The former congressman also spoke at a conference hosted by a Holocaust denier whose group accused “Zionist billionaires” of “financially raping” the Russian people.

Ritter, a contributor to the Kremlin-funded Russia Today, last year wrote an article for the Quincy Institute that downplayed Russian cyber attacks. The Quincy Institute removed the article after Twitter users raised concerns about Ritter’s sex offender record.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Almost 60 percent of Americans believe that the Chinese-owned short video app TikTok should be removed from app stores after revelations that American user data has been repeatedly accessed in China, according to a new poll.

In a survey conducted by the Convention of States Action and Trafalgar Group, 58.6 percent of respondents said they supported “efforts to remove TikTok from app stores now that the company has revealed American’s user data can be accessed by TikTok employees in China.”

Meanwhile, 17.8 percent of respondents were opposed to such action, and 23.6 percent said they were not sure. The poll was conducted from July 7 to July 10, surveying more than 1,000 likely 2022 election voters with a margin of error of 2.9 percent.

The results came less than a month after leaked recordings of internal company meetings obtained by Buzzfeed News allegedly showed that from least September 2021 to January, engineers in China had access to the app’s U.S. data.

TikTok employees at times had to turn to their colleagues in China to determine how U.S. data was flowing, which the U.S. staff weren’t authorized to independently access, according to the report.

The July survey showed that Independents (56.9 percent) and Republicans (76.8 percent) were more likely to support measures to remove TikTok, while 39.2 percent of Democrats agreed with this proposal.

The recent revelations have renewed scrutiny on the app, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, that officials and experts say may be used by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for espionage and to conduct information operations. They cite national security laws in the country that compel companies to cooperate with Chinese intelligence agencies when asked.

TikTok has repeatedly denied such allegations, saying that it stores U.S. user data on servers outside of China and that it would never allow Beijing to access such information.

“TikTok is just another invasive tool for communist China to infiltrate Americans’ personal and proprietary information,” Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) previously told The Epoch Times.

“This app presents a very real threat to our national security, and the United States should take strong action to stop the CCP’s espionage campaign.”

The Trump administration had sought to ban the social media app, citing data security risks. But resident Joe Biden later reversed the measure, and instead ordered the Commerce Department to evaluate the platform to determine whether it poses a national security risk.

In addition to U.S. user data being accessed by Beijing to conduct espionage operations, TikTok may also be used to shape Americans’ perceptions to be favorable to the Chinese regime, according to Mark Meckler, former interim CEO of social media platform Parler and president of the Convention of States Action, the advocacy group that commissioned the survey.

Meckler described TikTok as one part of the communist regime’s long-running “digital warfare against the United States.” He pointed to the Chinese military’s concept of “total war” that seeks to leverage an array of methods and arenas outside of traditional warfighting domains, such as media and culture, to overcome the enemy.

“This is just one more slice in that pie giving the Chinese Communist Party an opportunity to do damage to the United States by affecting the culture of young people,” Meckler said.

The Epoch Times has reached out to TikTok for comment.

Eva Fu contributed to this report. 

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

A new study published this month revealed that COVID-19 mask mandates in schools have little to no effect.

“Our findings contribute to a growing body of literature which suggests school-based mask mandates have limited to no impact on the case rates of COVID-19 among K-12 students,” researchers at the University of Southern California and the University of California–Davis said in a preprint study published on Research Square.

Researchers evaluated two school districts in Fargo, North Dakota, in which one had a mask mandate and the other did not during the 2021–2022 academic year.

“We observed no significant difference between student case rates while the districts had differing masking policies nor while they had the same mask policies,” they noted, adding that the “impact of school-based mask mandates on COVID-19 transmission in children is not fully established” amid mandates nationwide.

A number of other studies have found no link between mask mandates and a drop in COVID-19 cases.

In one study published in May, researchers found that COVID-19 mask and vaccine rules implemented by Cornell University had limited impact against the transmission of Omicron in late 2021 and 2022.

“Cornell’s experience shows that traditional public health interventions were not a match for Omicron. While vaccination protected against severe illness, it was not sufficient to prevent rapid spread, even when combined with other public health measures including widespread surveillance testing,” the paper said.

And researchers in Spain found that mask mandates for children in Spain weren’t linked to a lower rate of COVID-19 cases or transmission.

In an evaluation of schoolchildren, kids aged 6 and older in Catalonia were required to wear masks once school reopened during the COVID-19 pandemic, the researchers said.

Researchers compared the incidence of COVID-19 in older children to younger children to try to determine whether the mandates had been effective in the aim of reducing transmission of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes COVID-19, in schools.

Their study identified a much lower case rate in preschool, where there were no mandates when compared to older groups who were required to wear masks. Five-year-olds, for instance, had an incidence of 3.1 percent, while 6-year-olds had an incidence of 3.5 percent.

Researchers in Toronto, Canada, and California replicated a 2021 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study of counties in Arizona, published in The Lancet in May, that expanded the number of data points and extended the time period. They discovered that cases quickly declined in the weeks after the CDC cut off its study and decreased more quickly in the counties that didn’t have mask mandates.

“School districts that choose to mandate masks are likely to be systematically different from those that do not in multiple, often unobserved, ways. We failed to establish a relationship between school masking and pediatric cases using the same methods but a larger, more nationally diverse population over a longer interval,” the researchers said.

“It was known long before COVID-19 that face masks don’t do anything,” Former Pfizer VP Michael Yeadon, a toxicologist and allergy research specialist, told The Epoch Times in May.  “Many don’t know that blue medical masks aren’t filters. Your inspired and expired air moves in and out between the mask [and] your face. They are splashguards, that’s all.”

Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Internal research shows Pfizer’s executives have been announcing the next stage in the fight against the pandemic before government officials can even study the issue, annoying experts and scientists, and leaving the public questioning whom they can trust. Who’s really in charge?

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

• The COVID-19 pandemic has been a real boon to Pfizer. Not only has it doubled Pfizer’s annual revenue, it has also given the drugmaker unique weight in determining U.S. health policy — something that concerns even staunch vaccine-pushers like Dr. Paul Offit
• Pfizer’s revenue in 2021 was $81.3 billion — approximately double that of 2020 — and the COVID shot accounted for $36.78 billion of that
• Pfizer’s COVID jab dominates 70% of the U.S. and European markets, and Paxlovid, its COVID drug, has become a standard treatment choice in hospitals. This despite findings showing the shot doesn’t prevent infection or transmission, and that Paxlovid causes severe rebound and supercharges mutations
• The U.S. had thrown away 82.2 million expired COVID jab doses as of mid-May 2022, yet the Biden administration ordered another 105 million doses at the end of June 2022 for a fall booster campaign that will cost taxpayers $3.2 billion
• Pfizer’s contracts are almost exclusively slanted in Pfizer’s favor. They’re guaranteed payment while having no financial liability for injuries and deaths, and it appears this indemnification applies even if they were to be found guilty of fraud

According to Kaiser Health News (KHN),¹ the COVID-19 pandemic has been a real boon to Pfizer. Not only has it yielded “outsize benefits” in terms of profits, but it has also “given the drugmaker unusual weight in determining U.S. health policy.”

“Based on internal research, the company’s executives have frequently announced the next stage in the fight against the pandemic before government officials have had time to study the issue, annoying many experts in the medical field and leaving some patients unsure whom to trust,” KHN reporter Arthur Allen writes, adding:²

“When last year Bourla suggested that a booster shot would soon be needed, U.S. public health officials later followed, giving the impression that Pfizer was calling the tune.

Some public health experts and scientists worry these decisions were hasty, noting, for example, that although boosters with the mRNA shots produced by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech improve antibody protection initially, it generally doesn’t last.

Since January, Bourla has been saying that U.S. adults will probably all need annual booster shots, and senior FDA officials have indicated since April that they agree … The company’s power worries some vaccinologists, who see its growing influence in a realm of medical decision-making traditionally led by independent experts …

When resident Biden in September 2021 offered boosters to Americans — not long after [Pfizer CEO Albert] Bourla had recommended them — Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia … wondered, ‘Where’s the evidence you are at risk of serious disease when confronted with COVID if you are vaccinated and under 50?’

Policies on booster recommendations for different groups are complex and shifting, Offit said, but the CDC, rather than Bourla and Pfizer, should be making them. ‘We’re being pushed along,’ he said. ‘The pharmaceutical companies are acting like public health agencies.’”

The fact that a vaccine-pusher like Offit — infamous for claiming a baby can safely tolerate 10,000 vaccines at once³ — is questioning and pushing back against Pfizer’s influence over health policy reveals just how brazen, unethical and potentially dangerous that is.

Massive Profits Made From Useless Products

According to Allen, Pfizer’s revenue in 2021 was $81.3 billion⁴ — approximately double that of 2020 — and the COVID shot accounted for $36.78 billion⁵ of that. For comparison, Lipitor, Pfizer’s previous top selling statin, generates roughly $2 billion a year,⁶ while their strep vaccine, Prevnar 13 rakes in $6 billion a year.⁷

Its mRNA gene transfer injection against COVID now dominates 70% of the U.S. and European markets, and Paxlovid, Pfizer’s COVID drug, has become a standard treatment choice in hospitals. This, despite researchers finding Paxlovid (molnupiravir) causes severe rebound and supercharges mutations.

In a rational scenario, that finding would have put a stop to its use, but no. In an official health advisory⁸ to the public, issued May 24, 2022, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention first warns that Paxlovid is associated with “recurrence of COVID-19 or ‘COVID-19 rebound,’” and then in the very next sentence stresses in bold print a narrative supporting its use and enriching Pfizer with instructions saying:

“Paxlovid continues to be recommended for early- stage treatment of mild to moderate COVID-19 among persons at high risk for progression to severe disease.”

Allen also notes that, during an investor call, a Pfizer official highlighted reports of Paxlovid’s failure, but spun it into “good news” for investors, as patients may require multiple courses!⁹ Obviously the objective has long ago shifted from helping humans to raping them for as much profit as possible.

Similarly, while Pfizer’s COVID jab clearly doesn’t prevent infection or spread, and Americans are rejecting the shots in growing numbers — 82.2 million doses had expired and were chucked in the trash as of mid-May 2022¹⁰ — the U.S. government still went ahead and ordered another 105 million doses at the end of June 2022.

These are intended for a fall booster campaign, at a cost to taxpayers of $3.2 billion.¹¹ The U.S. is actually paying about 50% more for each of these new jab boosters this time around — $30.47 per dose compared to $19.50 per dose paid for the first 100 million doses.

The U.S. government has also promised to purchase another 20 million courses of Paxlovid, at an eye-watering cost of $530 per five-day course. Basically, Pfizer is being financially rewarded for producing products that are useless at best and dangerous at worst, and we’re all paying for it. In case you’re curious, that is another $10.6 billion transferred from U.S. taxpayers to Pfizer.

Future Boosters Won’t Undergo Human Clinical Trials

After you likely thought it couldn’t ever get any worse, KHN also touches on, but doesn’t delve into, the fact that Pfizer suggested they skip human trials as they move forward with jabs that are reformulated for newer variants. If this strikes you as crazy, you’d be right. It’s sheer madness, but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration — a clearly captured agency — has already surreptitiously agreed to this egregious miscarriage of science.

How this wicked scheme, known as the “Future Framework,”¹² was adopted by the FDA without formal vote is explained by Toby Rogers, Ph.D. — a political economist whose research focus is on regulatory capture and Big Pharma corruption¹³ — in the video above. He also explained it in a June 29, 2022, Substack article:¹⁴

“Yesterday [June 28], the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee approved a bivalent COVID-19 shot with the Wuhan strain and the Omicron variant … Wait, hold up, I thought the FDA was voting on the Future Framework yesterday?

The policy question was whether reformulated COVID-19 shots would be treated as new molecular entities (which they are) in which case they should be subject to formal review or whether reformulated shots would be treated as ‘biologically similar’ to existing Covid-19 shots and be allowed to skip clinical trials altogether.

Apparently the FDA did not have the votes to just pass this as a policy question. If you ask anyone whether reformulated mRNA represents a new molecular entity, well of course it is, so that would require formal regulatory review.

What the FDA did instead was to smuggle the policy question in disguised as a vote about reformulated ‘boosters’ for the fall.

In essence, the FDA just started doing the Future Framework (picking variants willy nilly, skipping clinical trials) and essentially dared the committee members to turn down a booster dose — knowing that all of the VRBPAC members are hand-picked because they’ve never met a vaccine they did not like.

So of course only two people on the committee had the courage to turn down a booster dose — even though it was based on this preposterous process (that was never formally adopted) where there was literally no data at all … By stealth, the FDA replaced a system based on evidence with a system based entirely on belief.”

Countries Held to Ransom

In 2021, secret details of Pfizer’s contracts came to light, showing they are essentially holding countries hostage to nonnegotiable demands for payment in full AND freedom from liability.¹⁵

In late February 2021, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported¹⁶ that Pfizer was demanding countries put up sovereign assets as collateral for expected vaccine injury lawsuits resulting from its COVID-19 jab.

Several countries, including Brazil, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic and Peru, agreed to this demand, putting up bank reserves, military bases and embassy buildings as collateral. In short, theses governments are guaranteeing Pfizer will be compensated for any expenses resulting from injury lawsuits against it, so the company won’t lose a dime if its COVID shot injures people.

Shockingly, these terms are binding even if those injuries are the result of negligent company practices, fraud or malice!

Government purchasers must acknowledge that the effectiveness and safety of the shots are completely unknown, all while indemnifying Pfizer against any and all financial liability.

In October that same year, Public Citizen published the secret contracts^17,18 between Pfizer and Albania, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Dominican Republic, the European Commission, Peru, the U.S. and the U.K., further revealing the extent to which these countries handed power over to Pfizer. In almost all scenarios, Pfizer’s interests come first.

For example, government purchasers must acknowledge that the effectiveness and safety of the shots are completely unknown, all while indemnifying Pfizer against any and all financial liability. This is the ultimate corporate maleficence, using their leverage to force the kill shot down these countries’ throats and avoiding any personal responsibility for damages.

Even if Pfizer eventually is convicted of fraud in the U.S. and loses all its liability protection from the COVID jabs because of it, that judgment would not impact these foreign contracts. These countries sold their souls to Pfizer and have absolutely no recourse but to pay even if the shots kill everyone.

The contracts for at least four countries also secure Pfizer’s intellectual property rights even if the company is found to have stolen intellectual property rights of others. In such case, the government purchaser becomes the liable party. As explained by Public Citizen:¹⁹

“For example, if another vaccine maker sued Pfizer for patent infringement in Colombia, the contract requires the Colombian government to foot the bill. Pfizer also explicitly says that it does not guarantee that its product does not violate third-party IP, or that it needs additional licenses.

Pfizer takes no responsibility in these contracts for its potential infringement of intellectual property. In a sense, Pfizer has secured an IP waiver for itself. But internationally, Pfizer is fighting similar efforts to waive IP barriers for all manufacturers.”

Equally shocking is that countries are forced to follow through on their vaccine orders even if other drugs or treatments emerge that can prevent, treat or cure COVID-19.²⁰ Is it any wonder, then, that governments around the world have suppressed the use of safe and effective outpatient drugs like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin?

If these drugs were allowed to be used and could be proven to work, the COVID injections would be completely unnecessary and their emergency use authorization would disappear, yet governments are on the hook for hundreds of millions of doses.

Pfizer Has ‘Habitual Offender’ Track Record

The fact that Pfizer has behaved like a criminal who works out a cover story for a planned murder before committing it is not surprising, considering its history. Pfizer, has been sued in multiple venues over unethical behavior, including unethical drug testing and illegal marketing practices.²¹

In his 2010 paper,²² “Tough on Crime? Pfizer and the CIHR,” Robert G. Evans, Ph.D., Emeritus Professor at Vancouver School of Economics, described Pfizer as “a ‘habitual offender,’ persistently engaging in illegal and corrupt marketing practices, bribing physicians and suppressing adverse trial results.”

Between 2002 and 2010 alone, Pfizer and its subsidiaries were fined $3 billion in criminal convictions, civil penalties and jury awards. They are recurrent criminal felons. None of these convictions has deterred their nefarious behavior.

In 2011, Pfizer agreed to pay another $14.5 million to settle federal charges of illegal marketing,²³ and in 2014 they settled federal charges relating to improper marketing of the kidney transplant drug Rapamune to the tune of $35 million,²⁴ as well as $75 million to settle charges relating to its testing of a new broad spectrum antibiotic on critically ill Nigerian children.

As reported by the Independent²⁵ at the time, Pfizer sent a team of doctors into Nigeria in the midst of a meningitis epidemic. For two weeks, the team set up right next to a medical station run by Doctors Without Borders and began dispensing the experimental drug, Trovan. Of the 200 children picked, half got the experimental drug and the other half the already licensed antibiotic Rocephin.

Eleven of the children treated by the Pfizer team died, and many others suffered side effects such as brain damage and organ failure. Pfizer denied wrongdoing. According to the company, only five of the children given Trovan died, compared to six who received Rocephin, so their drug was not to blame.

The problem was they never told the parents that their children were being given an experimental drug. What’s more, while Pfizer produced a permission letter from a Nigerian ethics committee, the letter turned out to have been backdated. The ethics committee itself wasn’t set up until a year after the trial had already taken place. Pfizer’s rap sheet also includes bribery, environmental violations, labor and worker safety violations and more.²⁶

Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing

Now, despite Pfizer being one of the least ethical drug companies, we’re told to trust them with our very lives, and the lives of our precious children. They’re going to put out booster shots this fall that have undergone absolutely no testing whatsoever, and we’re to simply throw caution to the wind because Pfizer — which has no liability whatsoever — says so.

In 2014, Pfizer faced a surge of lawsuits that accused it of hiding known side effects of its anticholesterol drug Lipitor.²⁷ They got off scot-free that time, as a federal judge dismissed thousands of cases alleging the drug caused Type 2 diabetes.^28,29 But at least they had liability and could be sued.

When it comes to the COVID jabs, injured patients and family members of those killed by it won’t even have the ability to sue for damages, as governments around the world have indemnified them completely, and it looks as though they might not even be liable even if they’re found guilty of fraud. But we will have to see what the courts rule on that one. Still, that any nation would agree to a contract like that is just mindboggling.

Meanwhile, mounting evidence shows the COVID shots destroy immune function over time, and Pfizer’s own trial data reveal deaths and serious adverse events numbering in the tens of thousands.

It’s hard to tell who’s more deserving of punishment — Pfizer or the equally captured federal agencies, the FDA and the CDC, that go along with them and do nothing to protect the lives of the youngest members of our society. Clearly, it’s up to us to protect ourselves and our loved ones, because wolves in sheep’s clothing are ruling the roost — they’re making all the decisions, and captured agencies are simply doing their bidding.

Originally published July 18, 2022 on Mercola.com

Sources and References

• ^{1, 2, 4, 9} KHN July 5, 2022
• ³ Science Daily January 10, 2002
• ⁵ Washington Examiner February 8, 2022
• ⁶ Axios October 30, 2019
• ⁷ True Cost of Health Care
• ⁸ CDC Advisory May 24, 2022
• ¹⁰ NBC News June 6, 2022
• ¹¹ Businesswire June 29, 2022
• ¹² FDA Briefing Document June 28, 2022
• ¹³ Brownstone Institute June 22, 2022, Author’s Bio
• ¹⁴ uTobian June 29, 2022
• ¹⁵ STAT News February 23, 2021
• ¹⁶ The Bureau of Investigative Journalism February 23, 2021
• ^17, 19 Public Citizen October 19, 2021
• ¹⁸ Twitter Zain Rizvi October 19, 2021
• ²⁰ COVID19up.org August 17, 2021 (archived)
• ²¹ SGT Report January 7, 2021
• ²² Healthcare Policy 2010 May;5(4):16-25
• ²³ DOJ October 21, 2011
• ²⁴ Reuters August 6, 2014
• ²⁵ The Independent March 23, 2014
• ²⁶ Corporate Research Project Pfizer
• ²⁷ Reuters August 8, 2014
• ²⁸ Drugwatch Lipitor Lawsuits
• ²⁹ Reuters May 12, 2021

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Via this genetic engineering experiment, they’ve literally injected ‘seeds of demise’ into everyday people like a cockroach spray. Based on a 2011 estimate, he believes an extra 700 million will be killed from this bioweapon – and they’ve known about the risks since 2005.

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

• David Martin, Ph.D., presents evidence that COVID-19 injections are not vaccines, but bioweapons that are being used as a form of genocide across the global population
• The spike protein that the COVID-19 shots manufacture is a known biologic agent of concern
• Martin believes the number that may die may have been revealed back in 2011, when the World Health Organization announced their “decade of vaccination”
• The objective for the decade of vaccination was a population reduction of 15% globally, which would be about 700 million people dead; in the U.S., this may amount to between 75 million and 100 million people dying from COVID-19 shots
• When asked what timeframe these people may die in, Martin suggested “there’s a lot of economic reasons why people hope that it’s between now and 2028”
• The projected illiquidity of the Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid programs by 2028 suggests the “fewer people who are recipients of these programs, the better;” Martin believes this may be why people 65 and over were targeted with COVID-19 shots first

In this revealing interview with Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com, David Martin, Ph.D., presents evidence that COVID-19 injections are not vaccines but bioweapons that are being used as a form of genocide across the global population.¹

In March 2022, Martin filed a federal lawsuit against resident Biden, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services alleging that COVID-19 shots turn the body into a biological weapons factory, manufacturing spike protein. Not only is the term “vaccination” misleading when referring to COVID-19 shots, it’s inaccurate since they are actually a form of gene therapy.²

“And we are not only not going to be sued for, you know, any libel or misinformation, we are actually holding people criminally accountable for their domestic terrorism, their crimes against humanity and the story of the coronavirus weaponization that goes back to 1998,” Martin says.³

SARS-CoV-2 Has Been in the Works for Decades

Martin has been in the business of tracking patent applications and approvals since 1998. His company, M-Cam International Innovation Risk Management, is the world’s largest underwriter of intangible assets used in finance in 168 countries. M-Cam has also monitored biological and chemical weapons treaty violations on behalf of the U.S. government, following the anthrax scare in September 2001.⁴

According to Martin, there are more than 4,000 patents relating to the SARS coronavirus. His company has also done a comprehensive review of the financing of research involving the manipulation of coronaviruses that gave rise to SARS as a subclade of the beta coronavirus family.

Much of the research was funded by the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) under the direction of Dr. Anthony Fauci.⁵ Martin explained:⁶

“I think it’s important for your listeners and viewers to remember that it was 1999 when Anthony Fauci and Ralph Baric at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill decided to start weaponizing coronavirus they patented in 2002 — and you heard that date correctly, that’s a year before the SARS outbreak in China.

You know, they knew it was a bioweapon since 2005. They knew it was effective at harming populations, intimidating and coercing populations”

COVID-19 Shots Are an ‘Act of Bioterrorism’

According to Martin, the spike protein that the COVID-19 shots manufacture is a computer simulation of a chimera of the spike protein of coronavirus. “It is, in fact, not a coronavirus vaccine. It is a spike protein instruction to make the human body produce a toxin, and that toxin has been scheduled as a known biologic agent of concern with respect to biological weapons for the last now decade and a half,” he said.⁷

Rather than being a public health measure as they were widely campaigned to be, COVID-19 shots are an act of bioweapons and bioterrorism. Martin shared that in 2015, Dr. Peter Daszak, head of the EcoHealth Alliance that funneled research dollars from the NIAID to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for coronavirus research, stated:⁸

“We need to increase public understanding of the need for medical countermeasures such as a pan-coronavirus vaccine. A key driver is the media and the economics will follow the hype. We need to use that hype to our advantage, to get to the real issues. Investors will respond if they see profit at the end of the process.”

Daszak, who Martin refers to as “the money launderer in chief,” “actually stated that this entire exercise was a campaign of domestic terror to get the public to accept the universal vaccine platform using a known biological weapon. And that is their own words, not my interpretation,” Martin said.⁹

Martin: 100 Million May Die Due to COVID Shots

Both Pfizer and Moderna’s COVID-19 shots contain nucleic acid sequences that are not part of nature and have not been previously introduced to the human body. This amounts to a genetic engineering experiment that did not go through animal studies or clinical trials.

However, already people are dying from the shots and, Martin states, “many more will” due to issues such as blood clots, damage to the cardiovascular system and problems with liver, kidney and pulmonary function.¹⁰

An onslaught of reproductive and cancer cases related to the shots are also anticipated. “The fact of the matter is an enormous number of people who are injected are already carrying the seeds of their own demise,” Martin said.¹¹ As for how many may die, Martin believes the numbers may have been revealed back in 2011, when the World Health Organization announced their “decade of vaccination”:¹²

“Based on their own 2011 estimate, and … this is a chilling estimate, but we just have to put it out there … When the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Chinese CDC, the Jeremy Farrar Wellcome Trust and others published The Decade of Vaccination for the World Health Organization back in 2011 their stated objective was a population reduction of 15% of the world’s population.

Put that in perspective, that’s about 700 million people dead … and that would put the U.S. participation in that certainly as a pro rata of injected population somewhere between 75 and 100 million people.”

When asked what timeframe these people may die in, Martin suggested “there’s a lot of economic reasons why people hope that it’s between now and 2028.”¹³ This is because of “a tiny little glitch on the horizon” — the projected illiquidity of the Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid programs by 2028.

“So the fewer people who are recipients of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the better,” Martin said. “Not surprisingly, it’s probably one of the motivations that led to the recommendation that people over the age of 65 were the first ones getting injected.”¹⁴ Other populations at risk are caregivers, including health care providers, and others in the workforce who were forced to be injected, such as pilots.

“Why is it that we’re suddenly having 700 flights a day being canceled because, allegedly, airlines don’t have pilots? … the dirty secret … is there a lot of pilots who are having microvascular problems and clotting problems, and that keeps them out of the cockpit, which is a good place to not have them if they’re going to throw a clot for a stroke or a heart attack,” Martin said.

“But the problem is we’re going to start seeing that exact same phenomenon in the health care industry and at a much larger scale, which means we now have, in addition to the problem of the actual morbidity and mortality, meaning people getting sick and people dying.

We actually have that targeting the health care industry writ large, which means we are going to have doctors and nurses who are going to be among the sick and the dead. And that means that the sick and the dying also do not get care.”¹⁵

Why COVID Shots May Change Your DNA

It’s been stressed by the media and public health officials that COVID-19 shots do not alter DNA. However, Martin brings attention to a little-known grant from the National Science Foundation, known as Darwinian chemical systems,¹⁶ which involved research to incorporate mRNA into targeted genomes. According to Martin:¹⁷

“Moderna was started … on the back of a 10-year National Science Foundation grant. And that grant was called Darwinian chemical systems … the project that gave rise to the Moderna company itself was a project where they were specifically figuring out how to get mRNA to write itself into the genome of whatever target they were going after.

That could be a single-celled organism, it could be a multi-celled organism or it could be a human. And the fact of the matter is Moderna was started on the back of having proven that mRNA can be transfected and write itself into the human genome.”

It is completely unknown what the short- or long-term effects of the spike protein analog that’s inside people who received COVID-19 injections will be. But with respect to alteration of the genome, Martin states that data show mRNA has the capacity to write into the DNA of humans, and “as such, the long-term effects are not going to merely be symptomatic. The long-term effects are going to be the human genome of injected individuals is going to be altered.”¹⁸

Fraud Removes Big Pharma’s Liability Shield

The 2001 anthrax attack, which came out of medical and defense research, led to the passage of the PREP Act, which removed liability for manufacturers of emergency medical countermeasures.

This means that as long as the U.S. is under a state of emergency, things like COVID-19 “vaccines” are allowed under emergency use authorization. And as long as the emergency use authorization is in effect, the makers of these experimental gene therapies are not financially liable for any harm that comes from their use.

That is, provided they’re “vaccines.” If these injections are NOT vaccines, then the liability shield falls away, because there is no liability shield for a medical emergency countermeasure that is gene therapy. Further, lawsuits that can prove the companies engaged in fraud will also negate the liability shield. Martin states:¹⁹

“One of the convenient things about the PREP Act is the immunity shield from liability actually is only as good as the absence of fraud. Because if there was fraud in the promulgation of the events, leading to an emergency use authorization, then all of the immunity shield gets wiped out.

So the reason why it is so important for conversations like the one we’re having to actually be promoted and be advanced is because the pharmaceutical companies — and this includes Pfizer and Moderna and J&J — know they are perpetuating a fraud. The great thing about this is when that fraud is established, 100% of the liability flows back to them.

… when a fraud was the basis for a fraud, then we actually have a number of other legal remedies that allow you to pierce that veil. So in the end, there’s no question … and it’s quite evident based on the current mortality and morbidity data that given the fact that when it comes to biological weapons and bioterror each count comes with $100 million penalty. That’s what the federal statute gives us.

The penalty for corporate domestic terrorism, when you have per count $100 million a pop liabilities — that is an existential threat that takes a company like Pfizer or takes a company like Moderna out of existence. And that is what we’re working for every day.”

If you’d like to follow the progress of the ongoing legal cases seeking to expose the truth — that a criminal organization is seeking to obtain control over the global population via the creation of patented bioweapons marketed as novel viruses and injections — you can find all the details at ProsecuteNow.io, a website compiled by Martin and colleagues.²⁰

Originally published July 16, 2022 on Mercola.com

Sources and References

• ¹ Rumble, Greg Hunter’s USA Watchdog June 28, 2022
• ² Europe Reloaded March 23, 2022
• ³ Rumble, Greg Hunter’s USA Watchdog June 28, 2022, 1:21
• ^4, 5 Substack July 24, 2021
• ⁶ Rumble, Greg Hunter’s USA Watchdog June 28, 2022, 9:52
• ^7, 8, 9 Rumble, Greg Hunter’s USA Watchdog June 28, 2022, 3:26
• ^10, 11 Rumble, Greg Hunter’s USA Watchdog June 28, 2022, 6:22
• ¹² Rumble, Greg Hunter’s USA Watchdog June 28, 2022, 7:58
• ^13, 14 Rumble, Greg Hunter’s USA Watchdog June 28, 2022, 12:40
• ¹⁵ Rumble, Greg Hunter’s USA Watchdog June 28, 2022, 13:38
• ¹⁶ National Science Foundation, Darwinian Chemical Systems
• ^17, 18 Rumble, Greg Hunter’s USA Watchdog June 28, 2022, 17:21
• ¹⁹ Rumble, Greg Hunter’s USA Watchdog June 28, 2022, 52:01
• ²⁰ Prosecute Now

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Moderate Democrats will play a key role in the coming midterm election and very likely handle the U.S. House to the Republicans, analysts said.

The main reason for the rebelling moderates is President Joe Biden’s policies.

“This [moderate voting] base is becoming increasingly disenchanted with what seems to be the ongoing failures of the Biden administration on major party platforms such as rising inflation, gas prices, and a pretty weak economy,” Jamie Wright, a political pundit at The Wright Law Firm, told The Epoch Times.

Josh Wilson, a political consultant and ex-aide to former Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, shared the view that the state of the economy under Biden is a significant factor in the shift.

Besides this, Wilson also pointed out that the historical pattern of midterm elections for the party of the president will also contribute.

“Simply based on U.S. electoral history, where the president’s political party tends to suffer major losses during the first midterm of the presidential term, it is highly likely that Republicans will see major gains in the House of Representatives,” he said.

Progressive Movement Pushing Moderates Away

For over a decade, progressive activists have been pushing the political spectrum in the United States to the left in various ways, from woke textbooks in the education system to protests on the streets.

As a result, some moderate Democrats found themself isolated and being pushed out.

Elon Musk, the Tesla CEO who was a liberal, shared a meme on April 28 explaining how the progressive movement has made him closer to the conservative side. The meme shows the political left moving away from the centers since 2008 while the center and right remaining stationary. As a result, he falls into the area close to the conservative without even changing his political stance.

The meme was liked by over 1.5 million users after Musk shared it on his Twitter account.

Biden, who mainly posed as a moderate during his campaign, followed the progressive movement closely after he came to the White House and adopted policies from the woke agenda.

That deepened the discontent among moderates.

A major factor was the extreme lockdowns, mask mandates, and vaccine mandates related to the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, also known as the novel coronavirus, outbreak.

“You just have one public official who’s never been elected … no scientific citation for any of these mandates, simply telling Americans: ‘do what you’re told,’” Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent Democrat, criticized the policies during an interview with The Epoch Times’ sister media NTD at the “Defeat the Mandates” rally in Washington on Jan. 23.

The mandates were “all designed to instill fear and confusion in Americans, and it’s just a catastrophic exercise in bad government and manipulation,” he added.

Biden’s Energy Policies and Soaring Gas Price

Another area that moderate Democrats feel upset about is the economic performance during Biden’s presidency, especially the rising inflation and gas prices.

According to CNBC’s All-America Survey, Biden’s economic approval rating dropped 5 points from April’s survey to 30 percent. His approval of the overall handling of the presidency dropped to 36 percent. Of the 800 people across the nation polled by CNBC, 51 percent believe Biden’s efforts to fight inflation are making no difference, and 30 percent think the measures are actually hurting.

The Biden administration has strictly adhered to its climate crisis agenda, rejecting boosting domestic energy production and insisting people should buy electric vehicles as an alternative option amid high gas prices.

However, electric vehicles are unaffordable for many families.

A Consumer Reports survey shows that 52 percent of people say they would not buy an electric vehicle because the costs of buying and maintaining them are too high.

How Moderate Democrats May Act in Midterms

Though the moderates are not as popular in the mainstream media or on some politicians’ priority agendas, they still make up the majority of Democrats, Wright said.

“There is a real power struggle between the moderates and the extreme left within the party. However, moderates still make up the majority,” she said.

She believes it’s important for the Democrat candidates to appeal to the moderate voting base to ensure they don’t leave the party over failed policies.

Wilson believes the moderates will act in two ways—either they won’t show up or vote Republican—and will cost the Democrat Party heavily.

“Democrat members of the Congress seem to be trending more to the left but Democrat voters are not. To be more specific, Democrats in D.C. seem to be putting social issues ahead of economic issues. [However,] most voters want the government to focus on things that impact them daily,” he said.

“It’s more likely that moderate Democrat voters will not vote in the midterm if [they are] extremely fed up, rather than cast a ballot for a Republican,” he said. “If the Republican candidate in those swing districts is also a moderate, they may be able to bring Democrat voters across the line.”

“By not showing up and voting for the Democrat, Democrat voters will absolutely be protesting the current situation and indirectly helping Republicans take control,” he added.

The situation is also likely to put moderate Democrat candidates in harm’s way because “they will be painted as extreme liberals during the campaigns” under the current political climate, Wilson stated.

Masooma Haq and Jack Phillips contributed to the report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tesla Owners Share Alarming Message Received on Screen Amid Heat Wave

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

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

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

Oil prices rose on July 18 as the U.S. dollar softened and after resident Joe Biden wrapped up his trip to Saudi Arabia, failing to secure a pledge from the Middle Eastern country to boost crude output.

Brent crude futures for September settlement rose $4.53, or about 4.5 percent, to $105.70 a barrel as of 4 p.m. EDT on July 18, after a 2.1 percent gain on July 15.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures for August delivery gained $4.53, or about 4.7 percent, to $102.10 a barrel, after climbing 1.9 percent in the previous session.

Last week, both Brent and WTI posted their biggest weekly drops in about a month as recession fears dented market sentiment.

Yet, oil supplies remained tight and the U.S. dollar has eased off recent highs, with both factors offering support to crude prices.

Softer Dollar

The greenback weakened on July 18 after hitting multi-decade highs against a basket of currency peers last week. The DXY dollar index touched nearly 109 on July 14, before slipping to 107.45 by 4 p.m. EDT on July 18.

A weaker dollar tends to support oil prices and other dollar-denominated commodities as it makes them a more attractive buy for holders of other currencies.

Some analysts said that the July 19 oil rally is unlikely to last, with high inflation maintaining pressure on central banks to keep tightening even in the face of growing signals of an economic downturn.

“Bear market bounce” is how Keith McCullough, CEO of investment research firm Hedgeye, described the moves in crude, in a post on Twitter.

Buoyed by a weaker greenback, other commodities rose, including wheat and copper. A key industrial input, copper is seen by many analysts as a barometer of a recession.

“Another good example of a crashing market that’s bouncing this morning,” McCullough said of the action in the price of copper, which rose over 3 percent on Monday morning after tumbling 8.2 percent last week.

Wheat futures on the Chicago exchange rose 1.6 percent on July 18, recovering from their lowest in around five months.

Relief rallies are common in bear markets, experts say.

Biden in Saudi Arabia

The July 18 moves in the price of oil and other commodities come on the heels of Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia, which wrapped up without a pledge for the Kingdom to boost oil supply. Biden has called on Saudi Arabia and other Gulf oil producers to ramp up oil production in a bid to cool high gasoline prices and, more broadly, inflation.

Inflation in the United States, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, accelerated in June to a fresh 40-year high of 9.1 percent.

Despite the rally in a number of commodities, they’ve trended downward in recent weeks, suggesting inflationary pressures may be easing.

Gasoline prices have dropped over the past several weeks, with GasBuddy analyst Patrick De Haan saying in a July 17 statement that the most common gas price in the United States was $3.99 per gallon. The median gas price stood at $4.39 a gallon nationwide, while the top 10 percent most expensive locations averaged $5.71, De Haan added.

bell&email=walkerboh2112%40msn.com

Despite no pledge from Saudi Arabia to boost output, Biden administration officials held out some hope for a little more supply-side relief.

Amos Hochstein, a senior State Department adviser for energy security, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on July 17 that, following Biden’s trip, several Gulf oil producers would be taking “a few more steps” to boost output, though he did not say which countries and by how much.

But analysts at ING said in a note that the Biden administration’s view that producers in the Middle East would boost output seems rosy and “comments from Saudi Arabia were less optimistic.”

“The Saudis have said that any changes in output would be done within the broader OPEC+ framework, and that the group would monitor the market and respond if needed,” they wrote, adding that, with the exception of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, there’s “little in the way of spare capacity.”

Markets will be watching the Aug. 3 OPEC+ meeting closely for supply signals as the cartel’s current output pact expires in September.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The party has spent millions to nominate radicals across the country

The Democratic Party is attempting to help nominate a journalist with ties to salacious drag queens and Neo-Nazi “Jew hunters,” according to NBC News. Arizona Democrats last week circulated a press release intended to undermine Karrin Taylor Robson, the GOP gubernatorial candidate running against Kari Lake, a longtime news anchor and Democratic donor who volunteered for Barack Obama’s campaign in 2008.

Election observers correctly assumed that the reason Democrats were attacking Robson was to boost Lake’s chances of winning the Republican nomination for governor. Given her close ties to the drag queen and Neo-Nazi communities, Lake is presumably the candidate Democrats would prefer to face in November. The party pursued a similar strategy in 2016 by helping Donald Trump win the GOP presidential nomination. Alas, that didn’t work out as they’d hoped.

Trump endorsed Lake last year despite her 2017 comments denouncing his performance at a press conference following the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va. Lake told her Facebook followers that Trump “showed absolutely no self-control” during the press conference, which she described as “a train crash … a real $hit$how.” She is currently leading the primary field by 8.5 percentage points, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average. Arizona holds its primary on August 2.

Ironically, Lake is now attracting support from some of the same Neo-Nazi types responsible for the Charlottesville rally. In August 2021, she posed for a photo at a campaign event with Ethan Schmidt-Crockett and Greyson Arnold, renowned icons of incel racism. Schmidt-Crockett, for example, recently posted a video in which he announced his plan to “celebrate white history and Christian heritage [by] bringing back some good old Jew hunting.” Arnold, meanwhile, has repeatedly defended Adolf Hitler and argued that the United States fought on the wrong side in World War II.

Lake has also been accused of hypocrisy for her recently established opposition to drag queens. The candidate, who has attacked drag queens as dangerous to children, reportedly maintained a close friendship with a prominent Arizona drag queen named Richard Stevens, aka Barbra Seville. “I’ve performed for Kari’s birthday, I’ve performed in her home (with children present,) and I’ve performed for her at some of the seediest bars in Phoenix,” Stevens wrote on Facebook last month.

Arizona is not the only state in which Democrats have meddled in the Republican primary by backing the most controversial GOP candidate. They helped Doug Mastriano win the GOP gubernatorial nomination in Pennsylvania by running ads touting his pro-Trump credentials. In Illinois, the state’s billionaire governor J.B. Pritzker (D., Ill.) and the Democratic Governors Association spent $30 million attacking Richard Irvin, a moderate black Republican, to spoil his chances of winning the GOP gubernatorial nomination.

The party has even meddled in House primaries by supporting radical candidates. Nancy Pelosi’s House Majority PAC attempted to defeat Rep. David Valadao (R., Calif.), who voted to impeach Trump, by boosting his pro-Trump primary opponent. It didn’t work, but the party’s efforts have been widely criticized. For all their wailing and moaning about the democracy being under assault, Democrats have been actively seeking to promote Kari Lake and Republican candidates who embraced the campaign to overturn the 2020 election.

Good luck!

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Hunter Biden held dozens of talks with his father from 2008 to 2016, often shortly after returning home from trips abroad on business, according to data from the younger Biden’s abandoned laptop.

At least 30 such talks took place, The New York Post reported on July 16, based on a personal calendar on the laptop. The meetings took place at either the White House or the vice president’s residence at the U.S. Naval Observatory.

The latest revelation comes amid President Joe Biden’s continued claim that the two have never spoken about Hunter Biden’s business dealings, which included transactions with entities and individuals in countries such as Russia and China.

One of the talks occurred in February 2012, when the young Biden met with his father at the Naval Observatory. The meeting came four days after Hunter Biden was wined and dined by billionaire oligarchs in Moscow.

In November 2015, Hunter Biden met with his father again at the Naval Observatory, two days after returning home from a trip to Romania.

On April 15, 2016, Hunter Biden met with Daniel Kablan Duncan, who was at the time the prime minister of Côte d’Ivoire. Less than an hour after the meeting, the young Biden met with his father at the Naval Observatory.

House Republican Conference Chair Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y) told the NY Post that the latest discovery is more evidence of corruption.

“Hardly a day goes by without another revelation about how intimately involved Joe Biden was with his son Hunter Biden’s corrupt foreign business dealings,” Stefanik said. “The fact that Joe was in meetings with senior foreign leaders on behalf of Hunter and his business associates while vice president further proves that Joe has been lying to the American people.”

Cory Mills, who’s seeking the Republican nomination to represent Florida’s 7th Congressional District in the midterm elections, said the Post’s findings warrant legal action against the Bidens.

“Hunter Biden should be arrested and Joe Biden impeached,” Mills wrote on Twitter.

The laptop’s calendar also showed that Eric Schwerin, the former president of Hunter Biden’s now-dissolved investment firm Rosemont Seneca Partners, was an invite recipient on 21 of the 30 meetings between Hunter Biden and his father.

In April, The Epoch Times reported that Schwerin visited the White House at least 19 times from 2009 to 2015, after reviewing White House visitor log records. One of the meetings took place in the West Wing on Nov. 17, 2010.

Read More

White House Doesn’t Dispute Joe Biden Left Voicemail About China Story for Hunter Biden

Biden Spoke to Hunter About China Business Deals, Voicemail Reveals

The Post also revealed that Hunter Biden had set up a meeting between his father and Andrés Pastrana Arango, the former president of Colombia, on March 2, 2012.

Before the March 2012 meeting, Hunter Biden and his partners at Rosemont Seneca Partners were allegedly seeking business with Brazilian construction company OAS, according to emails from the laptop, the Post reported. The Brazilian firm was interested in several projects in Columbia at the time, including a hydroelectric power plant worth $1.8 billion and a renovation project to a subway system in Bogota worth $3 billion.

“If it works, we’ll all be rich,” Schwerin wrote to Hunter Biden in an email in August 2011, according to the Post. Emails showed Hunter Biden traveling to Bogota in November 2011.

It’s unclear if OAS won any of the projects the company was interested in.

Eventually, OAS was involved in a Brazilian government corruption scandal and agreed to pay a total of 1.92 billion Brazilian reais ($461 million) by 2047 as part of a leniency deal the company signed with Brazil’s federal government in 2019, according to Reuters.

White House officials didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.

Recently, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), and Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) wrote an op-ed published by the Post declaring that they aim to investigate the Bidens’ business dealings if Republicans take back the House after the 2022 midterm elections.

“Contrary to Joe Biden’s statement that he never spoke to Hunter about his foreign business dealings, associates state that he was fully aware of his family’s business dealings and influence peddling,” the three lawmakers wrote. “There is evidence of a direct sum of money set aside for ‘the Big Guy’—who witnesses have identified as Joe Biden—from foreign nationals.

“A Republican majority will be committed to uncovering the facts the Democrats, Big Tech, and the legacy media have suppressed.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

SUNAK’S WIFE IS A FOREIGN CITIZEN WITH A SHAREHOLDING IN THE WEF-LINKED COMPANY.

Former British finance minister Rishi Sunak – a frontrunner to become Britain’s next Prime Minister – has family ties to a technology partner of the World Economic Forum that has advocated for a Chinese Communist Party-style economy complete with trackable, digital identities and currency.

Sunak, who topped the second round of voting by Conservative Members of Parliament (MP) in the Tory leadership race on July 15th following Boris Johnson’s resignation, is widely considered the “neoliberal” or “globalist” candidate.

The father of Sunak’s wife Akshata Murthy is the founder of Infosys, an Indian information technology company that provides services to a host of Fortune 500 companies and banks. One of the company’s leading services is Finacle, a digital banking platform. Murthy remains a foreign citizen with “non dom” i.e. non UK tax-paying status despite her husband’s work as Britain’s most senior finance chief, and expectation of becoming Prime Minister.

Infosys is listed as an official partner of the World Economic Forum (WEF), which has been accused of seeking to develop the technological infrastructure to implement a global “social credit score” system.

Social credit scores have been used by authoritarian regimes to deny rights and restrict the movements of individuals who fail to comply with diktats. For the World Economic Forum, social credit priorities would likely focus on left-wing social issues like climate change, diversity, and equity.

Klaus Schwab’s Candidate.

Far from being a silent partner, InfoSys has earned praise from the WEF, being dubbed a “global leader in next-generation digital services and consulting.”

“With three decades of experience in managing the systems and workings of global enterprises, it steers clients through their digital journey by enabling them with an artificial intelligence-powered core that helps prioritize the execution of change…”

– WEF on the Sunak-linked InfoSys

Several Infosys executives have also contributed articles to the WEF website, including the company’s Global Head, President, and Chief Compliance Officer.

MUST READ: CONFLICTED MUCH? – World Economic Forum ‘Anti-Corruption’ Champion Is Pfizer Director AND Reuters CEO.

Infosys President Mohit Joshi has penned articles for the site in favor of digital banking, which provides the technological framework for the “social credit score” system the WEF has come under scrutiny for attempting to effectuate across the world.

Joshi echoes these sentiments in an article for the WEF from August 2020: “Why it’s time to take central banks’ digital currencies seriously.”

“What is clear is that the crisis of COVID-19 presents many challenges – but also a unique opportunity to rethink how money is managed and used in our society,” he asks.

“There also credible concerns that paper money can transmit the virus,” he claimed before asking:

“Who then can blame the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) when it announced in February that it would be destroying cash collected in high-risk environments, such as public transport, markets or in hospitals?”

“Digital currencies could remove the cumbersome operational and security apparatus which surround conventional forms of money transmission,” continues his article, before claiming “there are political and social benefits as well.”

China’s Candidate.

“The potential for China here is immense. If the e-RMB is adopted broadly as a system to streamline trade and reduce risk, China could become the world’s trade banker, as well as its factory. Yet the bigger goal for China is actually more local, and relates to financial inclusion. Digitising the RMB will grant access to financial services to hundreds of millions of citizens, including some of the most disadvantaged. This benefit is something that can be applied to any country across the world,” continues the article, which also revealed that Infosys is contributing to digitization efforts.

MUST READ: Boris Johnson Resigns: He Couldn’t ‘Carrie On’ Any Longer. So What Next?

Another op-ed by Joshi – “Digital identity can help advance inclusive financial services” – advocates for granting every person a “unique digital identity” to conduct financial transactions. He points to the Chinese Communist Party as a successful example of this policy:

“The Chinese government in Zhejiang Province has developed an “enterprise digital code” for just this purpose, responding to small and mediums banks (SMBs) with easy-to-access financial resources. MYBank, a subsidiary of Ant Financial, the Chinese Big Tech firm, collaborates with the Chinese government through this scheme to provide cheap loans and other financial products to SMBs.”

He also calls for the creation of a “digital stability board” to regulate all payments.

“This “digital stability board” would give members the platform to share best practices and monitor risks in digital commerce and health care, for instance. With this board in place, data trusts could be built to manage individuals’ and SMBs’ data,” he explains.

Infosys is also a member of the WEF’s Partnering Against Corruption Initiative (PACI), which includes cross-industry representatives from the world’s largest corporations. The National Pulse recently exposed how the initiative, which purports to fight for transparency in business practices, is the former CEO of Reuters who now serves as a board member at COVID-19 vaccine maker Pfizer.

Its leaders are also involved with different WEF sub-groups, such as the Global Head of Sustainability and Design Consulting Services Corey Glickman, who is a member of the WEF Pioneer Cities working group.

Sunak himself has a history of being soft on China, telling the Telegraph that he wanted a “complete sea change” in relations with the Chinese Communist Party in favor of increased trade ties and economic collaboration. China, in turn, has endorsed Sunak’s candidacy.

THIS WILL END WELL.

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023 authorizes taxpayer funds for the U.S. Department of Defense to research and develop plant-based proteins for members of the military.

The congressional legislation, H.R. 7900, establishes a “Pilot Program on Research and Development of Plant-based Protein for the Navy.”

The bill stipulates that by March 1st, 2023, the Secretary of the Navy “shall establish and carry out a pilot program to offer plant-based protein options at forward operating bases for consumption by members of the Navy.” Plant-based protein options are defined as “edible vegan or vegetarian meat alternative products made using plant and other non-livestock-based proteins,” according to the bill.

At least two naval facilities will be made to participate in the pilot program and “prioritize facilities where livestock-based protein options may be costly to obtain or store.”

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2023, which dictates appropriations for military activities and programs run by the Department of Defense, explains that the pilot program will run for three years. Following its completion, the Secretary of the Navy will submit a report to Congress including the following findings:

(1) The consumption rate of plant-based protein options by members of the Navy under the pilot program.

(2) Effective criteria to increase plant-based protein options at naval facilities not identified under subsection (b).

(3) An analysis of the costs of obtaining and storing plant-based protein options compared to the costs of obtaining and storing livestock-based protein options at selected naval facilities.

On June 22nd,  the Committee on Armed Services held a markup session to consider the bill, with the House of Representatives later voting 57 to 1 in favor of recommending it.

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

The pilot program comes amidst intense scrutiny over billionaires such as Bill Gates purchasing massive amounts of U.S. farmland to develop plant-based alternatives to animal meats. The Microsoft founder recently called on rich nations to switch entirely to synthetic beef.

The Chinese Communist Party has also collaborated on similar ventures, launching expansive influence operations targeting American agriculture officials with free trips to China.

The new district attorney in San Francisco fired at least 15 employees from the prosecutor’s office after her left-wing predecessor Chesa Boudin was recalled last month.

“Today, I made difficult, but important changes to my management team and staff that will help advance my vision to restore a sense of safety in San Francisco by holding serious and repeat offenders accountable and implementing smart criminal justice reforms,” DA Brooke Jenkins said in a statement about the firings.

Jenkins added in a statement that she “promised the public that I would restore accountability and consequences to the criminal justice system while advancing smart reforms responsibly”

“My new management team … with decades of prosecutorial experience at the highest levels, will help our office deliver on that promise. I have full faith and confidence that these women will promote and protect public safety while delivering justice in all of its various forms,” she said.

Among those who were fired include former San Francisco Managing Attorney Arcelia Hurtado, who headed the city’s Innocence Commission. Hurtado expressed her disappointment on Twitter, invoking her ethnicity and sexual orientation.

“After over 2 years of tireless and devoted service to the City and Cty of SF, I was unceremoniously fired without cause via phone by the Mayor’s appointed DA,” she wrote. “I am the highest-ranking Latina/LGBTQ member of the management team at that office. I will continue the fight 4justice.”

Other staffers to lose their jobs at the district attorney’s office included Rachel Marshall and Simin Shamji, reported KRON-4.

Recall

Boudin was recalled on June 7 amid criticism of a citywide surge in crime, homelessness, and drug usage in public. Jenkins quit Boudin’s office in 2021 after joining in 2014.

And last month, Boudin told San Francisco Chronicle he became a scapegoat for the spike in crime.

“A lot of my supporters and endorsements and donors and Democratic clubs that were behind me are urging me to run now, or in 2023,” Boudin said. “I’m committed, as I always have been my entire life, to doing the work to support our communities, to fight for a fairer system of justice.”

Controversial billionaire investor George Soros’ network of left-wing organizations provided Boudin with $600,000 for his 2019 election, according to the Washington Times. However, after he was recalled, a spokesperson for Soros said that he never contributed to Boudin.

“We disagree with any analysis that labels any prosecutor as a ‘Soros prosecutor’—each candidate stands on their own,”  a spokesperson told the Washington Free Beacon. “Justice & Public Safety PAC, the political action committee through which Mr. Soros supports prosecutor candidates, has not supported—in the past or in the present, directly or indirectly—Boudin.”

But according to the Free Beacon report, Smart Justice California Action Fund donated about $180,000 to oppose Boudin’s recall. That group got funding from the California wing of the Justice & Public Safety PAC.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Donors in California, New York, and Washington, D.C.

Stacey Abrams has raised almost $50 million for her gubernatorial campaign in Georgia. Just $7 million (14 percent) of that fundraising haul came from residents of that state, however, according to an analysis by Washington Free Beacon alum Lachlan Markay.

Nearly half the money raised by Abrams’s campaign and leadership committee ($22.7 million) came from donors in three deep-blue states and one liberal territory that wants to be a state but never will: California ($10.2 million), Washington, D.C. ($6.4 million), New York ($3.6 million), and Delaware ($2.5 million). The result is not entirely surprising given that Abrams recently described Georgia as “the worst state in the country to live.”

Those astonishing figures stand in stark contrast to the fundraising numbers posted by Abrams’s opponent, Gov. Brian Kemp (R., Ga.), who has raised most of his campaign funds from in-state donors. More than 83 percent of the $31.5 million raised by Kemp’s campaign and leadership committee came from Georgia residents, the analysis found.

Axios reports, smartly and briefly:

If the trend holds, Abrams would be the only Georgia gubernatorial nominee from either party since at least the 1990s to receive a majority of campaign funds from out of state, according to an Axios analysis of campaign finance records.

Abrams, a dangerous election truther who committed violence against our democracy by falsely declaring herself the winner of the 2018 gubernatorial election, is widely expected to lose to Kemp again in November.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

The opening paragraph of Gen. Daniel Hokanson, chief of the National Guard Bureau, on their website reads:

“The National Guard is a lethal, cost-effective, dual-role operational force that provides strategic depth to the Army, Air Force, and Space Force, and responds to crises in our homeland. We are capable of operating in a complex global security environment, and continue to invest in modernization and readiness to prepare for the threats of the future. Today’s National Guard is an integral part of addressing the gravest challenges facing the Joint Force.”

Sort of… at least it should be.

Unfortunately, these days the Guard is being manipulated and often attacked on all sides as the proverbial political football.

First came the question of its use. Although the Guard was properly called into Minneapolis after the George Floyd rioting and into Portland after that benighted city’s post-election violence (maybe it should have been earlier), the question of why it was not present for the Jan. 6 events—however you want to define them—remains unanswered. From what we understand, then-President Donald Trump, under whose leadership they served, offered them to the Congressional leadership who, for whatever reason, were disinterested.

Yet worse, however, is what has happened now to the actual members of this volunteer army, the National Guard. (Yes, we should never forget that National Guardsmen, many of whom served previously, are all volunteers. What could be more patriotic than that?)

Those volunteers who did not dutifully—subserviently might be a better word—take the COVID-19 vaccines will be ejected from the National Guard.

From here on The Epoch Times:

“About 40,000 National Guard and 22,000 reserve soldiers will be blocked from service for rejecting the COVID vaccines, U.S. Army officials said on July 8.

“’Soldiers who refuse the vaccination order without an approved or pending exemption request are subject to adverse administrative actions, including flags, bars to service, and official reprimands,’ an Army spokesperson told Military.com.

“The deadline for the Defense Department’s vaccination mandate passed at midnight on June 30. The order cuts off pay and some of the military benefits to the 62,000 service members.”

I’m going to say right now that those 62,000 are most likely among the bravest of the National Guard because they have the courage to stand by their beliefs as few do.

Ironically, news of this despicable treatment of the very people to whom we owe our thanks arrived not long before the father of it all, Dr. Anthony Fauci, began to backpedal.

“White House COVID-19 adviser Anthony Fauci conceded Wednesday morning that COVID-19 vaccines don’t protect ‘overly well’ against the virus.

“Speaking during a Fox News interview, Fauci told host Neil Cavuto that ‘one of the things that’s clear from the data [is] that … vaccines—because of the high degree of transmissibility of this virus—don’t protect overly well, as it were, against infection.’”

So if they don’t protect “overly well” why are we kicking all those people out of the National Guard?

Few of those being ejected are anywhere near the supposed danger age of over 70 or so with the requisite co-morbidities. Most are reasonably physically fit, possibly quite fit. But they have to go. No “our bodies, ourselves” for them.

Fauci, in the Cavuto interview, suggested the vaccines indeed did work against severe reactions for older people because he had evidence. It turned out, however, that the evidence he provided was from a study with only one person—himself. He had taken an array of shots and boosters and, at 81, only got a self-described mild case of COVID.

I will counter that with another study of one person—myself. I’m only a few years younger than Fauci. I took the initial Pfizer shots way back in February 2021, abjured all boosters after that, almost never wore a mask except when forced on airplanes, and have been in many crowds, unmasked, in New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Nashville and have never contracted COVID at all, at least as far as I know.

Does that prove anything? Of course not, but neither does what Fauci told Cavuto “as a scientist.” Not remotely.

I don’t know for sure what inspired Fauci’s backpedaling and his ludicrous cover, but I suspect there’s a world of potential lawsuits out there that could cause grave financial harm to Big Pharma and those like Fauci who work so closely with them. One of the reasons some say they recommend these dubious shots to children is to avoid these devastating suits. When the government makes vaccines mandatory for children, the companies that produce them are held harmless.

Following on the theme of volunteers, and since I live in the Volunteer State (Tennessee), I would be remiss in not noting that as of now our Republican governor, Bill Lee, has been on the wrong side of the National Guard story, doing nothing, despite many asking, for the ejected Guardsmen. (The Tennessee Star has been covering this closely.)

Also in Tennessee, 5th District Congressional candidate Kurt Winstead, a brigadier general in the National Guard himself, has been curiously silent on his beleaguered fellow Guardsmen.

This, although the policy endangers far more than just the National Guard—it seriously endangers the already endangered national security of our country. As Breitbart is reporting, it’s on the brink of engulfing our entire army:

“At least 260,000 American troops—or about 13 percent of the 2.1 million total force—are not fully vaccinated despite a Biden administration vaccine mandate for the military, and many of them could face discharge.

“According to the Department of Defense website, at least 268,858 service members as of July 13 are still not in compliance with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s August 2021 mandate for every member of the military to be fully vaccinated with two doses of a vaccine. That figure does not count the thousands who have not taken any doses.”

I guess Biden is planning on having Ukrainians do all our fighting for us. Sorry, folks, we just don’t have the troops.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Patrick Byrne met with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Dec. 18, 2020, to urge him to investigate allegations of election fraud. Byrne, the founder and former CEO of online retailer Overstock, is set to testify before the Jan. 6 House Select Committee on July 15.

In an exclusive interview with The Epoch Times, Byrne recounted his meeting with Trump, which included former national security adviser Michael Flynn and Sidney Powell, former attorney to Trump’s campaign and former federal prosecutor, along with a number of White House officials.

The roughly 4.5-hour meeting was “nothing like it has been reported,” Byrne said in an interview with EpochTV’s “Facts Matter” program on July 14.

Byrne said he used a prior invitation from a White House staffer for a tour of the building as a way to gain entry with Flynn and Powell, with the hope of getting to talk to the president about his plan to investigate the widespread allegations of voter fraud.

“We were always after the most minimal on that range of options, which was to do a quick investigation that we said could be done in a few days,” Byrne said of the plan.

‘Perfectly Reasonable Conversation’

Byrne describes a chance encounter with the president as he walked by that enabled the group to meet in the Oval Office. The trio presented to Trump two executive orders—one signed by former President Barack Obama in 2015 and one by Trump in 2018—which, they said, gave Trump the authority to launch an investigation in the event of foreign interference in the election.

“It has nothing to do with the theories of vote flipping from space. It has nothing to do with the alleged South Korean jets, or Germany this, or Italy that, or any of that,” Byrne said.

Instead, Byrne said, “the argument that was made to the president was that under two executive orders … that say if a foreign nation interferes in one of our elections, disrupts an election, the president really gets a range of options.”

According to Byrne, these options ranged from “something very light-handed, like, ‘let’s have a quick investigation’ to something more substantial, like, ‘let’s have a serious investigation.’”

Much of the conversation prior to the arrival of White House attorneys in the room, according to Byrne, centered on the question of whether multiple government documents constituted enough justification to launch an investigation based on the authority given in the executive orders.

The documents included an Oct. 30, 2020, pre-election warning by the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) that Iranian state actors were targeting U.S. state websites to obtain voter registration data, as well as an Oct. 22 warning; an updated notice on Nov. 3 that said the foreign actor was successful in at least one state; and an FBI, CISA, and DNI statement on the SolarWinds Orion vulnerability.

“That was a perfectly reasonable conversation to have,” Byrne said. “Everybody was acutely aware that every word we were saying was historic, could be judged by history, should be judged by history.”

Byrne, who said he didn’t vote for Trump in 2016 and hadn’t ever voted Republican, said he was impressed at “how smart he [Trump] is,” which never came across “from the way he was portrayed in the media.”

‘No Uniforms’

Trump studied the documents in silence as he received them and then made precise comments, Byrne said.

“So what is it you folks are asking me to do?” Trump eventually asked, leaning back, according to Byrne.

Byrne said he laid out several choices that Trump could make to pursue a “very quick and dirty investigation.”

“That’s why I think that if there’s any charges for them, they should come after me” rather than Trump.

The first option Byrne laid out was to investigate “the obvious six counties where the voting record was stopped,” he said.

Or, a more “heavy-handed option,” he added, would be to target 31 counties previously selected by a political scientist.

“He [Trump] said immediately: ‘just go with the six.’”

Byrne then suggested a cyber team could make copies of hard drives to conduct forensic analysis. Alternatively, investigators could travel to the counties and remain on site for several days to count the ballots and livestream the forensic checks.

To lead the investigation, Byrne proposed a joint team composed of cyber analysts from the United States Marshals Service under the Justice Department and the National Guard.

At that point, Pat Cipollone, then-White House counsel—who had joined the meeting at some point and was sitting behind Byrne—stepped forward to raise objections, according to Byrne.

“Mr. President, the nation will go nuts if they see even one uniform around this,” he said, according to Byrne’s recollection. Others, including Flynn, also opposed the idea.

“The DHS [Department of Homeland Security] has teams that are perfectly adequate for this,” Bryne recalled Flynn saying after a second or two of silence.

Byrne made his case again.

“Sir, just to be clear, obviously, it’s your choice, not my choice,” he said. “I think that we’re in this national crisis because we’ve had a complete breakdown of trust, and I’m not sure that doesn’t extend to the FBI and the DHS.”

“If this is all about reinvigorating the system of trust, the U.S. courts are very trusted and the military is very trusted,” and the National Guard, while in uniform, consists of citizen soldiers, making their presence more acceptable, he said he argued.

Trump let him finish “that whole spiel” before voting him down.

“He said, ‘Pat, no uniforms.’ I said, ‘Yes, sir,’” Byrne recalled.

Byrne insists that he’s the only one who ever put the idea of “uniforms” on the table. “It was not Donald Trump, not anyone else.”

“It was on the table for about 28 seconds. And everybody in the room said no. And Donald Trump said no,” he said. “It was robustly put down.”

‘Obstructionists’

Byrne said Trump that evening hinted at least twice that the idea of leaving the White House held an appeal.

“I’ll never spend a night in this town again. I’ve got my golf courses, I’ve got my friends. Trust me Pat, my life’s going to get a lot better,” he said, according to Byrne. “But how can I do that? If I think that this election was stolen and there might be a foreign element involved, how can I really do that?”

“He was anything but some crazed tyrant clutching to power,” Byrne said.

What also became clear, he said, was that Trump “was being completely undermined by everyone around him.”

Trump, at one moment, turned to Cipollone to express his disappointment that he hadn’t been alerted to the executive powers.

“Why didn’t you even tell me about these orders, Pat? … Why did I have to hear it from them? At least they want to fight for me.”

“Mr. President, I’m not your campaign lawyer. I’m your White House lawyer,” Cipollone answered, according to Byrne.

“This man [Cipollone] has been telling staffers systematically … that we have to get you out of here, [that] we have to get the president in the transition mode, just get him to concede,” Byrne said he told Trump, adding that he could get White House staffers to back up his statements within half an hour.

Cipollone’s response according to Byrne was: “Mr. President, you know how hard I’ve been working for you?” according to Byrne, who then watched as Cipollone and several other officials “stormed out.”

“​​They stormed out three different times,” he said. “I was shocked at how they treated the president. I didn’t even vote for the guy. I didn’t even really like him until this meeting, frankly.”

“They were just so clearly being obstructionists,” Byrne said. “I was hearing that they were being told, if you get the president out the door, there’ll be a million dollar job for you in such-and-such lobbying firm. But if you don’t, your kids aren’t getting into Yale and your kids are getting thrown out of the school they’re in.

“This was going on up and down the DOJ and up and down the administration.”

According to Byrne, one of the White House lawyers told Trump that he had the authority to appoint Powell as special counsel if he chose to do so.

“Finally the lawyer said, ‘Mr. President, you don’t have to fight with us. You can just make Sidney Powell that special counsel just by saying it. You don’t have to sign anything,’” Byrne recalled.

About 30 minutes later, Trump was so fed up with his White House attorneys, Byrne said that’s what he did.

“I’m saying it, Sidney Powell is now a special counsel,” Byrne recalled the president saying.

“Another lawyer spoke up and said, ‘you can’t do that, she needs security clearance. It is going to take months to get a security clearance,’” Byrne said. He then said Flynn told the president he had the same authority to grant her a top secret clearance verbally, which he said the president gave.

“It was left sort of with a rough understanding this was going to happen,” Byrne said. The three—Byrne, Powell, and Flynn—left somewhere past midnight with a sense of excitement that they were “clearing up the mystery.”

Over the weekend, though, when Powell tried to get a White House ID and desk, they discovered the arrangement “had all fallen through.”

Byrne said he was later told that lawyer and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani had convinced the president to back out of the plan.

Giuliani on his radio program on July 14 recalled the events at the White House during the meeting.

He said he was called over to the White House by the president and reviewed the documents “purporting to show foreign involvement in the election.”

“I read through them carefully, I came back, and I said it’s clear to me that there’s not enough here,” Giuliani said.

He said the president “didn’t disagree at all” with him and Giuliani thought “it was his sense anyway.”

“Well, then that’s it,” Giuliani said the president said. He added that “at some point, the president made it very clear he wanted them out of the White House, and they were escorted out of the White House, one of them by me.”

Questioning election results and calling for an investigation hadn’t been viewed as controversial until that November, Byrne said.

“I didn’t see that as a huge deal between being in a constitutional crisis that could end the nation—which I knew where we’d be if we tried to choke down the election that nobody had any real confidence in—or getting an answer like that.”

But “it’s different being an entrepreneur than lawyer,” he noted. “I’m just thinking, gee, our country is going to enter this nebulous, awful space or we can in seven days, whatever, we’ll have a total answer to this. That’s how an entrepreneur thinks.”

The Epoch Times has reached out to Trump, Powell, Flynn, Cipollone, and Giuliani for comments.

Click here to watch the full interview.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Resident Joe Biden is losing support from some of his biggest backers.

Bill Kristol, who founded and edited the neoconservative magazine The Weekly Standard, became a fierce critic of Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign and led the NeverTrump movement.

In 2018, Kristol co-founded The Bulwark, whose coverage is largely centered around criticism of Trump.

Two years later, he endorsed Biden in the Democratic primary, calling it a “simple choice,” and in the general election.

On Wednesday, however, Kristol argued that Biden should announce he won’t run for re-election.

He said on Twitter that a retirement announcement by Biden would bolster the Democrats’ chances in the 2022 midterm elections and lead to a Democratic victory in the 2024 presidential race.

Straightforward from here:

1. Biden announces not running again.

2. 2022 focus turns to R extremism, Ds do well in Nov.

3. Inflation subsides, Ukraine defeats Russia, Biden is successful 1-term president.

4. Younger moderate D defeats Trump or Trumpist in ’24.

Pourquoi pas?

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) July 13, 2022

As the president’s popularity drops further and further amid historic inflation and other crises, even liberals are increasingly giving him the cold shoulder.

A recent New York Times/Siena College poll indicated that 64 percent of Democratic voters want someone else than the incumbent as their nominee for president in 2024.

Biden snapped at a reporter who asked him about the poll at a White House event Tuesday.

“Read the polls, jack! You guys are all the same,” he said.

“What’s your message to Democrats who don’t want you to run again?”

BIDEN: “Read the polls! Read the polls, Jack! You guys are all the same.” pic.twitter.com/e0G3Sfufwm

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) July 12, 2022

Related:

Conservative Anti-Trump Magazine The Weekly Standard Announces Closure

If Biden were to run for re-election in 2024, he’d start his second term at the age of 82, smashing presidential age records.

Democrats have quietly circulated concerns about his age and unpopularity.

Kristol repeated his desire for Biden to eschew a 2024 re-election campaign in a subsequent tweet.

A lively (I thought!) podcast with @SykesCharlie.

We discuss just how (predictably) dangerous Trump proved to be, and the failure of Republicans and conservatives to come to grips with this.

Bonus: I make the case for Biden announcing he’s one and done.https://t.co/Ux5LubuqpN

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) July 13, 2022

At the now-defunct Weekly Standard, the neoconservative ideologue became a crucial proponent of President George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The invasion has since become regarded as one of the worst foreign policy disasters in U.S. history.

Kristol reinvented himself by aligning with progressive Democrats as a Trump critic after the 2016 GOP primary, establishing himself as a mainstay on liberal cable channels such as CNN and MSNBC.